15 November 2012
More than 100 years on from South Australian women winning the right to vote, do women now have the equal right to be rich, ambitious, and career-driven?
The strident differences between how society still views the roles men and women will be the platform for this year’s Clare Burton Memorial lecture on November 20 at the University of South Australia’s Allan Scott Auditorium, City West campus from 5 pm.
Authors of The F Word: How we learned to swear by Feminism, Jane Caro (pictured right) and Catherine Fox (pictured below) will deliver the lecture For Love, which will examine how women’s work and achievements are measured against the resilient stereotype that they should be driven by love and selflessness rather that reward and recognition.
With backgrounds in media, advertising, journalism, writing and public speaking, the pair will bring their broad experience of the working world and in particular the world of communications to examine just how traditional assumptions about what does and should drive women still permeate the modern dialogue around women in relation to work, family and success.
They will explore many of the touchstone issues around women and work including:
- why the trade-off between a job and parenting is still routinely represented as a choice for mothers and not fathers;
- why the duties around maintaining home and hearth are still considered best managed by women and why that work is still unpaid and undervalued;
- why women who are successful in business or industry continue to run the risk of being considered aggressive and unfeminine;
- and why women, even those who are sole or primary breadwinners in a family have to be careful not to acknowledge that money might be a motivator in their lives.
Caro will explore the notion of “doing it all for love” in the lives of women and how it effects their status and their treatment and Fox will track the way beliefs about what drives women and their “innate” abilities serves to openly and secretly undermine their chances for a fair go in the workplace.
At a time when issues around misogyny and institutional patriarchy have been abuzz in mainstream and social media, this timely presentation will open up new ideas and help to challenge some of the intransigent myths about women - their role in families, communities, workplaces and the wider economy.
The event is sponsored by UniSA’s Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, The Australian Technology Network of Universities and the Women’s Executive Development Program.
The annual lecture commemorates leading advocate for social change in the lives of women, researcher, bureaucrat and academic, Dr Clare Burton, who died in 1998.
Interviews with the presenters Jane Caro and Catherine Fox can be organised upon request.
Michèle Nardelli office: 08 8302 0966 mobile: 0418 823 673 email: michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
