Negotiating Feminist Futures: Women's Studies Graduates And The Labour Market
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- Outcomes from this research
- 1 - Surveying newly enrolled and completing Women's Studies students about their how they relate their enrolment to their anticipated career directions. More than 700 students were surveyed from Australia (Monash University, Flinders University, Victoria University, University of Sydney), the UK (University of Surrey, Roehampton; Lancaster University; University of Hull) and the USA (UC Irvine; Duke University; University of Sthn Maine; Ohio State University, Washington State University).
- 2 - Interviewing graduate recruiters, personnel officers, career counselors and human resources managers.
- 3 – Interviews with graduates.
This multi-faceted research project was completed in 2002, although interest in the results is on-going. The Chief Investigator was Maryanne Dever who worked on different aspects of the project with Denise Cuthbert and research assistants Liz Day and Xiaomei Ma (with assistance previously from Sara Williams, Lisa Star, Lindsey Pollak and Anna Dacre). The research was supported by a Faculty of Arts 1999 Project Development Grant ($1880) and a 1999 New Research Initiatives Grant ($12,000).
'Negotiating Feminist Futures' directly addresses how Women's Studies programs relate to the domain of the vocational and how Women's Studies graduates fare in the labour market. It was designed to provide some concrete answers to the questions, "What can you do with Women's Studies?" and "What do you want to do with Women's Studies?" at the same time as exploring new ways to think about the meaning of 'professional' or 'vocational' skills. The information gathered through this project shed light on some previously unexamined connections between gender, subject choice and the study-to-work transition for young women. This information helps us in advising new Women's Studies students on their varied career options, at the same time as providing us with new ways to intervene in debates over what constitutes 'vocational' studies and about the future of Women's and Gender Studies.
The research project had three parts involving;
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Significant findings from the study were:
- Career or vocational issues did not feature prominently in students' initial reasons for enrolling in the field.
- Nevertheless, the career “usefulness” and “credibility” of WS/GS was a common feature in students' discussions with peers and family members who wanted to know about the value of studying WS/GS.
- Students who were close to completing their undergraduate studies in WS/GS appeared to hold quite firm opinions about the broader professional and workplace applications of a WS/GS qualification.
- When asked to nominate their planned or desired career destinations, students nominated an extremely broad range of employment sectors.
- Anxieties expressed by students about the future “worth” of their studies were not matched in the experience of graduates or in the views of employers.
- Graduates confirmed the view that their WS/GS education had assisted them in figuring out “how things worked” and that to them the application of this knowledge was indisputably “vocational”.
You can access an on-line article based on findings from this project in the Journal of International Women's Studies and another from Women's Studies International Forum.
Outcomes from this research
Selected publications based on this project:
- M. Dever, ‘Women's Studies and the Discourse of Vocationalism: Some New Perspectives'. Women's Studies International Forum 27: 5 & 6 (2004), 475-88.
- M. Dever, '"I Don't Know Where This Will Take Me": Rethinking Study/Work Relationships for Women's Studies Students'. Women's Studies Quarterly. 30: 3 & 4 (2002), 256-70.
- M. Dever, D. Cuthbert and L. Pollak. 'Life After Women's Studies: Graduates and the Labour Market' in Robyn Wiegman, ed., Women's Studies On Its Own, NC: Duke University Press. 2002.
- M. Dever and E. Day, 'Beyond the Campus: Some Initial Findings on Women's Studies, Careers, and Employers'. Journal of International Women's Studies, 2: 2 (May 2001).
- M. Dever, D. Cuthbert and A. Dacre. 'Women's Studies Graduates and the Labour Market: New Thoughts and New Questions' Atlantis: Canadian Journal of Women's Studies. 23:2 (1999), 102-110.
Selected conference and workshop presentations:
- M. Dever, ‘Students, Careers, Employment: Findings from an International Study'. Panel Member: Gender Studies and Beyond. Fifth European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education, Humbolt University, Berlin, 28-31 August 2007.
- M. Dever, How students characterised the vocational gains from Women's Studies (or why we need not be anxious)', Plenary paper presented at Australian Women's Studies Association (AWSA) Conference, University of Queensland, 12-16 July 2003.
- M. Dever, ‘Negotiating Feminist Futures: Rethinking Study/Work Transitions for Women's Studies Students', ‘A New Girl Order: Young Women and the Future of Feminist Inquiry', King's College, London, 14-16 November 2001.
- M. Dever, 'What do you "do" with Women's Studies? Looking for answers to the big question', Women's Studies Research Seminar, University of Surrey Roehampton, 16 October 2000.