The ideology of choice. Overstating progress and hiding injustice in the lives of young women: Findings from a study in North Queensland, Australia

Baker, Joanne

doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2007.11.001

Cited by 106 publications

(118 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Beddoes & Pawley, 2015;Baker, 2008). The continuity of the lifecourse is divided into target-oriented and marked off projects: there are family projects, doctoral thesis projects, work projects, building projects and fitness projects, which on one hand increases effectiveness and on the other breaks the comprehensive understanding.…”

Section: Temporal Continuity In the Lifecourse Of Doctoral Studentementioning

confidence: 99%

Typical and Individual Doctoral Processes and Lifecourses: The Types of Narratives of the Project Manager, the Survivor and the Seeker

Maunula

2015

WJE

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One task of the doctoral education is, globally as well as nationally, to produce and renew the highest expertise and knowledge in a high quality and efficient way. Even though in this global time the high-quality knowledge and skills are a competition factor which the success of the societies is expected to be able to lean on, also the doctoral students and their individual factors are significant. The accelerating global change is strongly reflected at the individual level: an attempt is made to respond to the changing expectations and to prepare individually and diversely. The individual doctoral students and the graduating doctors come from different everyday lives and contexts. The graduating doctors' expertise and skills are individually colored during the individual doctoral processes. Often the doctoral students' and the graduating doctors' individuality is ignored -even though individuality in other contexts is identified more clearly than before. In this article I examine the lifecourse experiences and stories of under-40-year-old female doctoral students with a family and form three different types of doctoral student on the basis of the material. The examination concentrates on the areas of the lifecourse; the family, doctoral studies and work as well as on the dynamic wholeness formed by them in the temporal continuum of the lifecourse. The objective is to make the generalized doctoral process more comprehensively intelligible.

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Section: Temporal Continuity In the Lifecourse Of Doctoral Studentementioning

confidence: 99%

Typical and Individual Doctoral Processes and Lifecourses: The Types of Narratives of the Project Manager, the Survivor and the Seeker

Maunula

2015

WJE

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“…Postfeminism, with its disavowal of gender inequity as a force in contemporary western women's lives and its celebration of women's capacity for free choice, addresses women as unconstrained subjects living in a world full of opportunities and possibilities previously denied to them. Unfettered access to these "choices" has become a bottom-line value of postfeminism (Baker, 2008;Braun, 2009;Stuart and Donaghue, 2012). This emphasis on "choice" is also a central feature of the discourses of sexualised culture, and the idea that women choose to engage in sexualised self-presentations purely for their own benefit (rather than for men) has firmly taken hold (e.g., Amy-Chinn, 2006;Baumgardner & Richards, 2000).…”

Section: Postfeminism Culture and "Choice"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She then identifies "confidence level" as being the differentiating factor between these two motives. Similarly, Claire's statement that "people can really be anything for a reason" reflects the postfeminist notion that, freed from the constraints of the past, women can legitimately pursue whatever course of action they wish (Baker, 2008), including stripping or wearing "short shorts". Similar to the idea expressed in Extract 9, if women have the appropriate "reason and justification" for engaging in such practices, that is, if it reflects what "they want" and it is "a personal choice", then there is no issue.…”

Section: "Personal Choice" Versus "Conformity"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contending that women can autonomously "choose" to enact a sexualised vision of femininity, the use of this discourse conceals the extent to which these ideals have become normatively required of young women (Evans, et al, 2010;Lamb, 2010;Gill, 2007aGill, , 2008. The "choice" discourse thus arguably functions to allow the postfeminist subject to fulfil the neoliberal requirement that she understand herself as being free from social influence and restrictive gender norms, and that she attribute her actions to her own authentic personal desires and choices, (Baker, 2008(Baker, , 2010. This also requires that, at times when a potential darker side to sexualised self-presentation is discussed, that these negative engagements are accounted for in terms of individual characteristics of vulnerable women (those with low self-esteem)…”

Section: Confident Choice Versus Counterproductive Conformitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The neoliberal insistence on understanding all actions as "choices" has largely removed the discursive tools needed to recognise and critique the underlying sexism and sexual politics of many elements of sexualised culture (Baker, 2008;Gavey, 2012;Gill, 2012a;Gill & Donaghue, 2013;Stuart & Donaghue, 2012).…”

Section: Confident Choice Versus Counterproductive Conformitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The confidence trick: Competing constructions of confidence and self-esteem in young Australian women's discussions of the sexualisation of culture

Thompson

Donaghue

2014

Women's Studies International Forum

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In recent years, an explicitly sexualised style of femininity has become more visible in Western media and societies, accompanied by the idea that women can freely choose to self-sexualise to signify their empowerment. In addition to these celebratory interpretations, self-sexualisation among young women has been subject to more patronising readings; in particular, the view that women are duped into engaging in thinly disguised sexual self-exploitation, to which they are made vulnerable by low self-esteem. This paper presents a discursive analysis of multi-session focus groups with seventeen Australian undergraduate women, in which they discussed their own and other young women's engagements with sexualised culture. Participants saw sexualised self-presentations as a legitimate choice for women to make, citing enjoyment and heightened confidence as the main benefits to be had. However, they also put forward the view that seeking sexualised male attention is often motivated by low self-esteem, in which case such behaviour would not lead to lasting boosts to confidence, but rather would engage women in a downward spiral of objectification and decreasing self esteem. These competing constructions of the role of sexualised attention in both promoting and threatening confidence and self-esteem for young women highlight how young women's engagement in sexualised culture is simultaneously open to empowering and disempowering readings. In the long-running U.S. television comedy show Arrested Development, the video series Girls Gone Wild is the subject of a recurring parody in the form of a series entitled Girls With Low Self-Esteem. The parody is achieved simply by the retitling of the series; no explanations are needed in order for the audience to "get the joke". This neatly captures a paradox presented by the sexualisation of culture: on the one hand engaging in a raunchy, overtly sexualised form of selfpresentation is offered as a means of increasing confidence and feeling empowered by "wildly" transgressing conventional boundaries that restrict feminine sexuality, while on the other, engagement in these practices can often result in patronising and pathologising judgements concerning the allegedly low self-esteem of women who seek male attention in this way.The phrase "sexualisation of culture" has come to stand in for a set of related phenomena in western cultures involving a marked (re)sexualisation of young women's bodies in the media and society more broadly. These phenomena include the dramatic increase in the prevalence of sexually explicit images in the media (see Hatton & Trautner, 2012), the mainstreaming of pornography, and changes in sexual mores (Attwood, 2006;McNair, 2002;Yost & McCarthy, 2012). Within this broad context there has been a great deal of interest in what has become known as "self-sexualisation" --the adoption of an overtly sexual style of self-presentation (particularly among young women), features of which include the wearing of revealing clothing to go clubbing, sexually suggesti...

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A life of ease and immorality: Health professionals' constructions of mothering on welfare

Breheny

Stephens

2008

Community & Applied Soc Psy

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Mothering on welfare is often discussed as perpetuating disadvantage and discouraging individuals from meaningful social activity defined as paid employment. This is understood in the context of increasing commitment to a neo-liberalist agenda, where people are viewed as autonomous individuals in a market economy, and unequal rewards within this economy are due to individual failings. The discourse analysis presented here examines how health professionals in New Zealand construct what it means to be a mother on welfare within the context of interviews on the health care needs of adolescent mothers. Mothering on welfare is predominantly described as transgressing social norms, where a life of ease is an indicator of immoral conduct and personal value is determined through education and employment. The welfare mother is also viewed as transgressing the norms of appropriate family structures and the sexual practices sanctioned within these structures. The legitimate work of mothering is absent in these accounts while the life of ease and plenty on welfare is made visible. These discourses draw attention to the ways in which welfare mothers are disqualified from neo-liberal definitions of citizenship, and demonstrate how motherhood on welfare is regarded as undermining rather than contributing to society.

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The ideology of choice. Overstating progress and hiding injustice in the lives of young women: Findings from a study in North Queensland, Australia

Cited by 106 publications

References 9 publications

Typical and Individual Doctoral Processes and Lifecourses: The Types of Narratives of the Project Manager, the Survivor and the Seeker

Typical and Individual Doctoral Processes and Lifecourses: The Types of Narratives of the Project Manager, the Survivor and the Seeker

The confidence trick: Competing constructions of confidence and self-esteem in young Australian women's discussions of the sexualisation of culture

A life of ease and immorality: Health professionals' constructions of mothering on welfare

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