NEGOTIATING COMPETING DEMANDS:

8th International Biennial Conference

21ST CENTURY MOTHERHOOD

July 13th – 16th, 2016, Melbourne, Australia

RMIT University, City Campus

This conference will explore, examine, critique, theorise and respond to key issues

related to how mothers negotiate competing demands in the twenty first century. The

conference is grounded in feminist theory – particularly Adrienne Rich’s account of

Motherhood as Patriarchal Institution and Mothering as Practice – and will explore

the ways through which cultural understandings and social practices continue to

impact mothers’ lives. The competing demands that mothers negotiate include but are

not limited to paid work and professional pursuits, unpaid work (including care-
work), creative activities, sporting commitments, online endeavours, volunteerism,

religious involvement, and personal relationships. Specific attention will be paid to

the current trend of outsourcing mothering to paid-carers and/ or grandparents. How

women negotiate such competing demands alongside their mothering roles, and the

impacts of such negotiations on a mother’s sense of self will also be explored.

Submissions are welcome from, but not limited to, scholars, students, activists,

community workers, bloggers, mothers, and others who research, work or are

interested in this area of scholarly and social activism.

If you are interested in being considered as a presenter,

Please send a 200-word abstract and a 50-word bio by the 5th of February 2016

to amirci2016@gmail.com

AMIRCI 2016 CALL FOR PAPERS

Well it has come and gone, another December, another festive season, another New Years Eve. I had a super quiet one. Just me, my mate John and seven dogs. It was great, although exhausting and a bit stinky.

Anyway, onto what we were loving in December:

Did you hear what the Federal Government did in that dead period between Chrissy and New Year? Yeh. They made us start paying for pap smears. Lets tell them our cervixs (cervi?) are not a revenue raising opportunity for them.

Autostraddle reviews 6 disability friendly sex toys. Continue reading →

So I’m a slack arse and haven’t posted anything since…I don’t even want to comment.

But I’m making an early new years resolution to make more of an effort (and simultaneously preparing for the fact that as of next year I’ll be spending half my week at a beach house on my own with my puppy and therefore should have more time to do things like post to my poorly neglected website). BREATHE.

Anyway, this is what I noticed happening this past month.

Annie Leibovitz shot the 2016 Pirelli Calendar and it has hardly any visible boobs!

Target Australia has real human women in it’s summer catalogue!

The big wigs of world politics are meeting in Paris at the moment to debate the future of the planet. How does gender equality and women’s empowerment intersect with climate change?

The “Gender Fairy” a new chapter in gender inclusive education for kids.

Clementine Ford informed an employer that their employee used misogynist language towards her on Facebook and he lost his job. WIN

The Australian Senate is running an inquiry into the forced sterilisation of women with disabilities. 

I was 14, I was trying to catch the train home – I’d been to friends place after school. I had to walk through a group of guys who were sitting in the way: sprawled across the stairs at the train station. I thought I heard them talking about me as I walked, saying “her?”, “yes”. A couple of them started to get up, and called out. I felt gripped with fear as I ran down the stairs. They chased me but were slightly behind me. The train pulled into the station at that moment and I jumped on it.The doors closed before anyone of them could get on. I have no idea what they were planning to do.

I was 16 I was catching the train home in my school uniform and a man sitting across from me leant forward so that the tip of his erect penis came out the bottom of his shorts.

I was walking down the street in my school uniform, when a car slowed down next to me, rolling along while the guy in the drivers seat asked me where I lived. I thought I was going to be abducted.

I was 18. Young. When I first started going out. I was kissing a guy at a club. I was walking out when my friend grabbed me and said “you’re not leaving with him, I know this guy. He wont care that you’re a virgin, he wont care if you sayno, he’ll have sex with you anyway.” The fact that this was a genuine concern… is an indication of the culture we live in. Continue reading →

YWCA Victoria runs awesome community discussion panels and this time joining Clementine Ford for TINAtalks 2 will be Celeste Liddle (Indigenous activist, journalist, unionist), Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea (Neurogenetic disease specialist and co founder of Women in Science Australia) and Ellen Sandell MLA (State MP for Melbourne, Greens).

In Melbourne and want to know more? Check out their Facebook page and/or the event page! 

Living in Delhi has made me a feminist hypocrite (though maybe me becoming a femo-crite is somehow offset by my boyfriend simultaneously turning into a feminist).

How does a strong, independent, highly-educated, liberal-minded, well-travelled woman who identifies as a feminist suddenly and consciously impose patriarchal restrictions on herself?

Well, I sort of got railroaded into it. Pun intended.

You see, the first carriage of every Delhi metro train is reserved for ladies (at the front of the platform the hot pink signs adorned with sparkly stars and happy, cursive lettering could be mistaken for adverts for the latest Barbie. But no. They simply demarcate this gendered space). Continue reading →

When Paula and I decided to move to India, I thought it would be just another in the long list of places we’ve happily experienced together. We have both been to multiple developing countries – she has been to India before and also worked in Afghanistan – and I expected New Delhi would be much like what I’ve already seen of the third world; busy, noisy, dirty and dysfunctional. What I didn’t expect is that the experience would become an object lesson in a contagious social disease: misogyny.

Of course, I was aware of India’s struggles with sexual violence, and Paula had told me about the time she slapped a tout in a market for grabbing her bottom. I was ready for this and, as a qualified urban planner, I was intellectually prepared for the ways in which women might be excluded from the public realm. But I did not anticipate that it would make me see my own relationship in a completely new light. Continue reading →