Women's studies seminar series

Caroline Norma, PhD candidate, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne

Feminist artist Taeko Tomiyama in 1980 complained that prostitution had been mischaracterised as art in Japan. Writing about the geisha system, she recommended that feminists take a closer look at what Japan’s traditions obscure, because geisha was actually an ‘evil system of selling women’ that was ‘purified by art…[and] an overlay of sophisticated and worldly aestheticism’. This paper will look at the way the geisha system has been associated with art and high culture in Japanese history. Historians have overlooked the prostituted geisha. They celebrate a small group of women who men supposedly revere for their artistic skill while disparaging a larger group of women who men use for prostitution. It will suggest that the geisha system has been romanticised by this association with high art. The author will argue that romanticisation is a problem more generally for its concealing of the true harm of prostitution for women and girls.

Dr Lorene Gottschalk, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, University of Ballarat

One of the claims made in workplace legislation is that casual employment benefits employees as well as employers in that it claims to provide choice for workers and greater work-life balance. The rhetoric in particular focuses on the benefits for women, placing caring as their primary role.

The use of casual staff, including sessional teaching staff, is a common practice in Australian universities. The numbers of casual staff in the higher education sector has increased significantly in the last decade. This research was conducted at UB and used a questionnaire to all staff and indepth interviews of sessional teaching staff. The findings revealed both similarities and differences between women and men in their motivation to work as a casual or sessional teacher. For example women more than men seek careers and job security and women more than men frequently, but unsuccessfully, use casual and sessional work as a career strategy.

Both women and men desire work/life balance and flexibility though more so women. However, the conditions of employment threaten work/ life balance despite the rhetoric that casual work enhances work/life balance.

Dr Suellen Murray, Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

In Australia, a response to domestic violence has been to assist women and children to leave their home. From the 1970s, women’s refuges were established and, in the 1980s, public policy reinforced this position of attempting to provide protection by removing women and children from the place of violence. However, in doing so, women’s (and their children’s) lives and their relationship to this place - their home, and everything that it entails - were disrupted. Indeed, discourses about domestic violence assumed that women’s lives would be disrupted. More recently, public policy reforms have allowed for the greater possibility of a woman remaining safely in her own home (and her violent partner being removed). In this paper I will explore these changes concerning domestic violence and place and consider their implications for understandings of gender.

Dr Lorene Gottschalk, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, University of Ballarat

MTF believe themselves to be women, a belief that is nurtured and reinforced by the medical profession and the transgender industry. MTF seek recognition as women in all spheres, in the law in relation to marriage, in equal opportunity in the workplace in access to all spaces that women can enter including health centres, refuges, sports and festivals.

In 2006 in Australia a group of older women decided to hold what they described as a private party open to women born and raised as females. This criteria intended to exclude male to female transgenders (MTF) from attending. The reasoning of the organisers was that the event was organised as an opportunity for women to share experiences that are unique to women and experiences with which a man, because of his different life experiences, would not be able to identify. Furthermore, they argued that a MTF, though possibly legally recognised as a woman, also had totally different life experiences and thus would not be in a position to join in the sharing of experiences with women born and raised female.

The methods MTF use to gain access varies and includes surreptitious means and legal challenges. This paper discusses the strategies used by MTF to claim entry to such space as their right. It then asks the question of whether an MTF can be a woman by exploring the unique socialisation of girls and boys and the unique experiences of MTF from childhood, through adolescence and early adulthood to the point of diagnosis of GID to their formal/legal identification as a woman.

Sue Brown, School of Human Movement and Sports Sciences, University of Ballarat

Very little is known of the style of leadership women adopt in sport in Australia. My PhD research has found that women view the concept of leadership as a way of influencing change by taking a consultative approach to decision-making. They use open, informed and meaningful communication with their followers, and their actions reflect their core values of fairness, respect and integrity. At club and regional levels, women tend to be action-orientated and lack confidence to delegate tasks. Women in leadership positions of more responsibility demonstrate more sophisticated capabilities to lead. They are more strategic and political in their approach; more confident to delegate; prepared to make difficult and unpopular decisions in the best interest of the organisation; and cultivate a collaborative working environment.

The findings of this study provide a clearer understanding of how women view themselves as leaders and how they lead in a sporting environment. This knowledge challenges existing recruitment and leadership development practices currently used by the sport industry in Australia.

Associate Professor Sheila Jeffreys, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne

As the sex industry has grown and become normalised in many countries, close links have been developed with other businesses. Strip clubs and brothels in Australia offer corporate membership and gold cards, for instance. Strip clubs offer their venues for product launches and the entertainment of clients. Big corporations set up funds to provide prostituted women to their executives. Escort agencies in Australia supply escorts to corporations so that they can offer inducements to visiting businessmen. All of this creates problems for the equal opportunity of women in business and the professions. Women may not be able to network with colleagues and clients, or secure contracts.
Already there have been major court cases in the US over this issue in relation to women workers in finance houses. This talk will consider the practice of doing business in sex industry venues, and through the sharing of prostituted women, and its implications for women in business.

Kewei Lin, Post Graduate student, School of Business, University of Ballarat

In this seminar I will discuss career opportunities for Chinese female employees in small and medium-sized enterprises in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China. By means of a case study of an electronic manufacturing company in Shenzhen, I will consider the barriers women face to equal employment. The primary data suggests that although opportunities for Chinese female employees increased during the economic reform era, women at both worker and management level need to expend more effort than their male counterparts in order to reach the same level of employment. The barriers facing women in Shenzhen are due to gender bias, the impact of Chinese traditional ideas about the role and status of women, limited access to education, and specific Chinese cultural issues such as the Guanxi factor.

Dr Fadi J Charchar - Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Science, University of Ballarat

There are substantial gender differences in the pattern, severity and treatment of heart disease independent of environmental risk factor exposure. However, this leads to the common misperception that heart disease is not a real problem for women. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the potential role of sex hormones in heart disease, particularly the potential protective effects of oestrogen. However, the failure of the recent clinical randomised trials to show a cardioprotective effect for hormone replacement therapy has refocused interest on the role of genes in cardiovascular biology and disease. Over the last decade, compelling evidence has emerged that sex differences in our vessels are not only determined by gender-related differences in sex hormone levels but also by genetic, gender-specific characteristics at the cellular level. This gender-dependent regulation may have important implications for understanding the basis of the gender gap in heart disease and may eventually lead to the development of sex-specific treatments. This lecture will attempt to summarise the current thinking for the role of hormones and genes in gender differences in heart disease and what it all means to women.