Doing Women's Studies by Gabriele Griffin

Author:Gabriele Griffin [Griffin, Gabriele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9781842775011
Google: Tt1zKpU4SUUC
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Goodreads: 10614270
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2005-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Gender sensitivity as the professionalism of Women’s Studies students Women’s Studies students in all nine countries talked about certain competencies, skills and qualifications that they acquired through Women’s Studies training. Among them we identified critical thinking, analysing and synthesizing abilities, innovative working methods, teamwork skills, specific gender and diversity expertise, knowledge of working life and how to influence workplace cultures in a feminist way. The results look quite uniform. There are several reasons for this. First, as pointed out above, many of these skills are common among all university students. ICT and communication skills, organizational and managerial abilities also characterize Women’s Studies. Second, Women’s Studies is known for its innovative pedagogics, being supportive of criticism, analysis and teamwork. To criticize, analyse and engage in change could be defined as one of the main contributions of Women’s Studies to university education. As a comparatively new field, teachers in Women’s Studies also cooperate extensively internationally, which might streamline training in Women’s Studies more than in other academic fields. This learning could be used in curriculum development under the Bologna process. Third, the composition of the interview samples underlines the positive side of Women’s Studies training. Fourth, in addition there are students who see Women’s Studies as one subject among others, and one which does not differ from the others. It should also be emphasized that not all occupations or workplaces have a demand for Women’s Studies expertise. In fact, many interviewees said that they did not reveal their gender expertise in job interviews.

Discourses of work and career

The discourse of sheer luck and pure chance A common feature among the interviewees in generalist programmes is that current students have rather vague ideas about future work and past students often talk about their present jobs as a coincidence, as something unplanned, unexpected, as sheer luck or pure chance. This discourse of sheer luck and pure chance was a dominant one which was found everywhere. For example, a Hungarian art historian said; ‘It just happened to be the cool solution that I specialise in it, I mean in gender’ (Juhász 2003: 18) and a Slovenian woman was just ‘lucky’ to find a job (Drglin et al. 2003: 30). A Spanish current student had not even considered the possibility of working in the field of equal opportunities. She was very surprised to get a job in a women’s association: ‘When I was doing my MA I thought “it’ll be impossible to find a job related to this”, but then it happened’ (Carrera Suárez and Viñuela Suárez 2003a: 27). When asked what she did after completing her studies one German graduate working in a trade union said: ‘this legal aid job in an attorney’s office, this secretarial thing, it was simply a stop-gap for me. I just wanted to find any kind of job that allowed me to use my education. And it just so happened that this position was free and I applied.’ When asked if she had planned to follow this career path, she responded:

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