The
Meagre Harvest The Australian Women's Movement 1950s - 1990s
Marketing
yourself to employers - A step-by-step guide to getting the job you want
by Gisela Kaplan, Alien and Unwin, 1996. 242 pp. $29.95
Reviewed by Sue Wills
Gisela Kaplan set herself a difficult task. As the title and subtitle of her book suggest, it was a twofold task. The Meagre Harvest suggests an evaluation of the Australian women's movement - 'to ask what has been achieved' (xi). The subtitle - The Australian Women's Movement 1950s-1990s - suggests a history ('we need to know what happened' (xi)) or, more accurately, as much of the history as is necessary to make that evaluation. But there is also a third strand to the book to which I will return.
What kind of history of the Australian women's movement does the book offer? It is not a history of the movement in the sense that it gives an overview, chronologically or thematically, of the formation and development of the movement in the different Australian states over time, tracing the rise and fall of groups, the debates, arguments and campaigning around particular issues. She works almost exclusively from secondary sources, which may explain some significant omissions.
Nor is it a history of the movement in the sense that it gives an account of the movement as a social movement - the way it worked, the ways in which it went about the tasks it set itself, the way it organised itself. Indeed, the repeated (e.g., pp 34, 61, 65) references to the Women's Liberation part of the movement as 'unorganised' rather than 'differently organised' is one of those cliched stereotypes of the movement that should have been killed off by contrary evidence long ago. In Sydney, the Women's Liberation Movement was sufficiently well organised to, for example, establish and get government funding for Elsie Women's Refuge, the Leichhardt and Liverpool Women's Health Centres and the Rape Crisis Centre.
Kaplan's history of the women's movement is, as she puts it, coverage of 'the broad sweep of events, seen from today's perspective' (xii). In other words, she has gone back to see what the women's movement did or said about the things she wants to include in her harvest. So she covers some aspects of women's movement activities in the areas of work, gender roles, health and welfare, women in decision making bodies, abortion, sexuality, prostitution, lesbianism, migrant women and Aboriginal women.
Her harvest is somewhat meagre, but that is partly because she has left half of the crop in the ground. She correctly points to the failure of EEO/AA measures to make dramatic changes: but she is wrong to attribute this to the absence of an Australian bill of rights and the assortment of state and federal laws (p 175).
Her rather breathless recitation of facts and figures on the position of women in the areas of work, education, marriage and the family do indeed reveal a less than 100% success rate. But there are many omissions such as the raising from matters of private concern to matters which governments must address, of issues such as domestic violence, the provision of childcare, and specifically women's health matters.
Nor is there any mention of the changes to state based criminal codes: sexual assault (formerly rape) laws have been changed; what is and is not admissible evidence in rape trials has been changed; and changes to the legal definition of what constitutes ,provocation' in cases where women have killed their battering spouses are all directly attributable to women's movement activism.
The third theme that Kaplan develops is much more problematic. This is her attempt to ask questions such as 'What promises have been fulfilled?... what were the mistakes... omissions or wrong turns.. ? "(xii) It is difficult to see the point of this kind of exercise of comparing 'what is or was' with 'what might have been'. For example: 'Work was pivotal to all feminist and radical agendas... With hindsight it is arguable that this was a mistake in the sense that strategies were based on the assumption of full employment.' (p 58) With hindsight, Saddam Hussein might well decide that invading Kuwait was a mistake. But he did invade and his and everybody else's world was changed as a result.
It's just as well Kaplan intended her book to be provocative. Two examples (of many) of unexamined cliches will illustrate.
'... one may speculate that the women's movement in Australia has... been a protest by the upper (well-educated) echelon of middle-class women. Enlisting working-class women in their struggle lent weight to the cause, but did it benefit working-class women? I see no evidence of this.'
Such speculation either writes out of the history of the women's movement altogether the actual active involvement of working-class women or, perhaps more offensively, reduces their involvement to the role of dupes, conned by their more educated sisters into lending their working-class credentials to the movement. It is also hard to see how equal pay, changes to sexual assault laws, and access to safe, affordable abortions, for example, benefit middle-class women only.
And there is the, now apparently obligatory, scolding of the next generation of women who she characterises as 'docile conformists without a political agenda and anxious and confused about their shrinking career prospects' (p 158). These are not the young women I come into contact with.
Kaplan is right to claim hers as the first full length book in Australia on this topic. It won't be the last and it is unlikely to be the best.
Sue Wills has been actively involved in the gay and women's movements since the early 1970s and is co-curator of The First Ten Years of Sydney Women's Liberation document collection.
by Dale Shaw Ferguson, Hale and Iremonger, 1996, ISBN 086806-605-2, RRP: $29.95 which includes 'Your personal job search manager' disk, 159 pp.
Reviewed by Nicola Pfennigwerth Elliott
Dale Ferguson's career has encompassed teaching and working with personnel agencies, the CES and as an employment case manager. He writes in his introduction that he has used well known and tested marketing strategies in the compilation of this book.
However, when I began to read Marketing Yourself I felt as though I was being given the guru treatment: do it my way or no way. Mr Ferguson mentions (threatens) several times that if you do not follow his instructions to the letter you will not get the job you want. I guess with his track record of success he can make these sorts of claims, but I did find them a bit annoying and egotistical.
I ploughed on, nonetheless (I was trapped as a passenger in a long-distance car trip), and surprised myself by eventually enjoying the book and, even stranger, agreeing with the author on many points.
According to Ferguson, the key to job seeking success is a master plan. You are presented with a plan to get that job, organised into eight steps or chapters with titles such as 'The Strategy', 'Effective Use of the Telephone' and 'Getting the Offer.
In each chapter you are supplied with the knowhow to achieve the chapters goals with flowcharts, examples, acronyms (as memory prompts) and scene setting.
The 'bonus' disk 'tool box' contains blank forms for resumes, and suggestions for writing telephone and interview scripts, time logs and the like. The disk also contains quizzes to test what you have learned from the book. If you do not score at least 7, you are referred back to the relevant section in the book for some re-reading! The disk was a useful accessory to the book but not vital, so don't feel left out if you haven't got a computer at your disposal.
I did find some of Ferguson's ideas potentially useful, especially his suggestions on improving communications skills, short-term memory, resumes and pre-prepared answers. However, I did not feel that this book was specific enough to be really useful to scientists, female or male. Instead it was seemingly aimed at those in non-scientific management areas, such as finance, computing and marketing and possibly industry.
Marketing Yourself is a quick, easy read which has some good ideas on improving job-seeking and everyday communication skills. Some of these ideas could be adapted to your own field. But in an already over-crowded genre there are other books that do a better job. Borrow it from an employed friend or your library.