Women and politics

Stream convenors(s): Mary Walsh, University of Canberra
Complete list of papers

Other streams:       Australia's contribution to political studies    The disciplinary history of political science    Australasian politics    Political sociology    The politics of resistance and class    Health, politics and policy    International politics     Political theory    Environmental policy and politics

Presenters:

PANELS

The impact of feminist scholarship on Australian political science
Convened by Lisa Hill, University of Adelaide

Lisa Hill will introduce a discussion of the impact or lack of impact of feminist scholarship on Australian political science over the last two decades by reference to the Australian Journal of Political Science.
In 1999 Drs Chappell, Curtin and Hill conducted a gender audit of the Australian Journal of Political Science 1979-1998 and made a number of preliminary findings. It was intended as a follow-up to a similar audit that had been undertaken twenty years earlier by Marian Sawer. Our chief goal was to discover if there had been any change in the journal's record of publishing and reviewing the work of women in the discipline. In general, findings were fairly disappointing. Despite the growth of women and politics as a legitimate academic pursuit, a minimal number of works written by and about women and politics were being chosen for publication by AJPS. Despite an isolated period of improvement, the rate of articles written by women increased by only 1.8 percentage points in a twenty year period. Though the feminist challenge to the traditional paradigm of political science has definitely made its mark in Australia, it has not been as effective as its many of its hardworking promulgators had hoped. Participants will be asked to explore the reasons for lack of impact in this discipline and in this country. Panel members will include:

Marian Sawer, Australian National University

Mary Walsh, University of Canberra

Liz van Acker, Griffith University

ABSTRACTS

Pat Brewer, School of Management & Policy, University of Canberra
Has identity politics shifted feminism to the right?
Identity is central in the development of political movements. It operates at both the level of the individual and the collectivity. Yet the content of such an identity can be located anywhere within the political spectrum. It has been argued that the second wave of feminism, women's liberation, emerged from the left in the late '60s and was located firmly on the left. While not contesting feminism's left origins, this paper examines the impact of the successes of feminism as a political movement within a climate that has shifted to the right. It argues that neo-liberal policies and the growth of fundamentalist religious groups, along with the collapse of the former socialist states in Europe and the USSR have created a climate in which the movement, intellectually and organizationally, has moved in a rightward direction. Central to the intellectual shift is the conception of the identity 'woman' based on polarized difference. Such a view has both unified and divided feminism. The content of the politics of difference has combined with the political attacks and ideological content used by the forces hostile to feminism. This has organizational consequences for feminism. It has combined ideological similarity with the consequences of material and personal insecurity flowing from the policies advocated on the basis of the feminist analysis of the family. Gains made opening alternatives for women from the pressures of the family have backfired when many women confront the insecurities generated by the shift to market driven economic rationalism. Feminism is portrayed as the cause of such insecurity in attacking the apparent 'security' of the past. At the same time the very success of feminism in overcoming many of the barriers to access to equality for some, has obscured the ongoing nature of inequality faced by the majority of women.
Email: pab@management.canberra.edu.au

Tahnya Barnett Donaghy, Hawke Institute, University of South Australia
Equality mainstreaming: Lesson learning from Northern Ireland
Mainstreaming has been hailed as the new wonder-drug of equal opportunities. In the last decade gender mainstreaming has received support and endorsement from the United Nations, European Union and Council of Europe, Commonwealth Secretariat, and many governments world-wide and has been _proselytised_ by organisations such as the World Bank, the ILO, and the OECD. At a time when both practitioners and academics are calling for a greater understanding and research on mainstreaming this paper develops both a practical case study and explores some of the deeper conceptual understandings of mainstreaming models, through the analysis of the Northern Ireland mainstreaming equality approach. Recently Northern Ireland, a region not traditionally associate with equality developments, has emerged as one of the world leaders in mainstreaming equality policy. The policy involves a statutory duty on all public authorities to give due regard to the promotion of equality of opportunity on nine different counts (gender, marital status, dependant status, age, sexual orientation, disability, race, religion and political opinion). Through the Northern Ireland Act 1998 a number of detailed requirements of public authorities are specified in relation to this duty, and its implementation is overseen by a rigorous and committed Equality Commission. This paper explores the development, breadth and depth of this model. It charts its emergence in relation to local political developments, and preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the strengths and weakness of this unique approach. The paper then provides a theoretical analysis of the methods employed, contributing the conceptual understandings of mainstreaming models and offering a new dimension to the understanding their development and application. As Australia has been identified as a country in which early mainstreamed advancements were made, and later co-opted and manipulated, this paper will provide an interesting insight into a case study in which Australia could draw and learn from.
Email: tahnya.donaghy@unisa.edu.au

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