Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Introduction. Matricentric Feminism : Abjection and Disruption in Australian Stories of Mothering
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'[...] it has also become a place for radical and "gender critical" feminists concerned to centre women and mothers in their work, and who retain a sense of the importance of embodiment, sexual difference and a feminist analysis of gendered power relations. While the university purports to be a place for the free expression of ideas, the post-modern turn and some more recent strands of ideological progressivism have made the free expression of the full range of feminist ideas, including those pertaining to women and mothers, menstruation, breastfeeding and child care, increasingly difficult to name, explore and analyse. [...]even as women have gained access to all domains of social life as civil equals, becoming a mother continues to generate entrenched structural inequalities, including, in particular, a pronounced wage, wealth and leisure gap. [...]we have creative writing-poetry and prose-by a range of Australian women writers dealing with the topic of motherhood and mothering and, again, we can find quite frequently a theme of loss-a loss of ideals, the loss of fantasies of perfection, the loss of security, the loss of identity, the loss of income, the loss of a child, the loss of life and more.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Hecate vol. 45 no. 1/2 Carole Ferrier (editor), Jena Woodhouse (editor), 2019 21220789 2019 periodical issue

    'The house husbands or SNAGS, a new phenomenon, did not see this as a permanent role and most, sooner or later, tired of a lack of life in the public sphere; despite a brief fashion for the male population's public job being private Home Duties, many men longed to re-enter the usual world; one in which important or sometimes stimulating things went on. The Australian Institute of Family Studies (in the government Department of Social Services) has regularly researched attitudes to gender roles within households in relation to things such as divided domestic work and has found, in its surveys, considerable support for shared housework. Other factors are in play in many countries, especially the incidence of child marriage (650 million girls) and of Female Genital Mutilation (imposed upon 200 million girls), the latter increasingly administered by actual health services rather than the stereotypical old, female relative with a razor blade and a sewing basket. The witches and midwives of centuries ago were one thing (documented, for example, in Barbara Ehrenreich's 1973 Witches, Midwives and Nurses) but more recently, in COVID-19 times, women are much in demand in their jobs/professions as health workers, and have been given enthusiastic encouragement to lead their working life in close contact with often viralent infections, as "essential workers"-a category that seems to have benefits for the bourgeoisie who belong to it, but not many for nurses working long and demanding shifts, wearing often-uncomfortable Personal Protective Equipment, in hospitals and infection-testing clinics.' (Carole Ferrier, Editorial introduction) 

    2019
    pg. 3-22, 308
Last amended 4 Mar 2021 14:46:50
3-22, 308 Introduction. Matricentric Feminism : Abjection and Disruption in Australian Stories of Motheringsmall AustLit logo Hecate
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