Dear All,
We hope you are well. This is a very belated newsletter as we did not send one out in March. Although Liz is organised and had many events to pop in, I did not manage it. The missed deadline was a consequence of the rush of February, the start of semester and teaching and renewed concerns about Covid-19 and what the spread of the pandemic across Western Australia would mean. That came with a renewed need to consider the meaning of care – in our community, for our families, for ourselves and for those we know to be vulnerable. It also meant a contemplation of what isolation means and why and how isolationist discourses have been used in Australian national life as synonyms for the state caring about citizens. However, in our current context there was a new thread to the discussion, a suggestion of the need for interaction and how the necessity of isolation had to be balanced with a need to maintain the social and mental health and wellbeing of individuals and the community. This directed us to consider the impacts of social isolation. What makes up, within all of this, the common good? How do we form sustainable communities?
We were pushed to consider this precise question during the
International Women’s Day celebrations which fell in the weeks surrounding 8 March 2022. IWD was initiated as a concept at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910 and has been celebrated as a series of meetings and protests demanding equal pay and equal rights since 1911. The first IWD event was hosted in Australia in 1928 when the
Militant Women’s Movement (a branch of the Communist Party of Australia) held a march in Sydney to call for equal pay for equal work, an 8-hour day for shop girls and paid leave. Still an international event, but now principally hosted by the United Nations, the theme proposed by UN Women for IWD this year was
Changing Climates: Equality today for a sustainable tomorrow, which recognises and celebrates the contribution of women and girls around the world, who are working to change the climate of gender equality and build a sustainable future.
The GRN was invited by
Dr Siddier Chambers (GRN member) and Nirri Shah as Conveners of the Gender Equality Committee,
United Nations Association of Australia, WA Division (UNAAWA) to join them and
Southern Aboriginal Corporation (SAC) to host an event at the Hillview Intercultural Community Centre in the City of Canning on 17 March 2022. It was attended by over 60 people who listened to invited contributions from a panel seeking to change the climate of gender equality and build sustainable futures.
The Opening Address began with a call to arms by
Dr Sandy Chong, President UNAA, WA Division for considered policy action to drive gender equality. Asha Bhat, CEO, Southern Aboriginal Corporation, followed with an example: telling the story of the growth of the SAC through strategic alliances with other Indigenous legal corporations, in parallel with her journey from a migrant deemed unemployable to her current role as the CEO of SAC. She reminded us of the importance of community and of the difficulties faced by those in marginalised communities. I closed the address with an Acknowledgement of Country, recognising the generosity of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, the Custodians of the unceded land on which we met, to share with us their Country and their knowledges. I also asked those attending to join with me in three pledges:
- to be an active bystander against discrimination in all its forms, especially with respect to gender and race. To work to promote respect and social justice and develop strategies of inclusion and sustainable practice: recognising deep historic local and global inequalities and cultural prejudices that shape distortions and inequities and inhibit full participation in society;
- to work towards sustainable environmental practices and recognise our urgent global climate crisis; and
- to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and with all people living in war zones and under oppressive conditions and regimes.
The superb keynote panel comprised: Corina Martin, Mulgyin Jaru/Kitja and Gooniyandi woman, Lawyer & CEO at Aboriginal Family Legal Services;
Dr Sally Lamping & A/Prof Toni Dobinson, both School of Education, Curtin University; Israa Sedda, Parenting Mentor & Co-Founder of Muslim Kids Playgroup; and Dr Sandy Chong. The telling of their stories of service and transformation as community leaders was moderated by
Dr Siddier Chambers.
March closed with the
International Day of Transvisibility (#beseen), which celebrates gender diversity and recognizes trans and gender diverse experiences and achievements. The first TDOV was held internationally in 2009 and was the result of youth advocacy. As the VC’s note pointed us to, TDOV came one week after the release of the
2021 National Student Safety Survey, which among the harrowing results showing the extent of sexual assault and sexual harassment experienced by students and users of our campuses, highlighted the particular and acute
vulnerability of students of diverse sexuality and gender. These results give further meaning to the necessity of the hashtag “be seen” but also point to the necessity of further work to be done in this area. If there are ways the GRN can do so, please be in contact with Therese, Samantha, Liz or the GRN Research Champions.
One contribution we will make is through three talk we will cohost with the
John Curtin Gallery. In May,
Dr Mandy Downing, Dr Peta Dzidic and Dr Samantha Owen will respond to the
Isaac Julien exhibition in a talk honouring bell hooks:
Finding Comfort Through Discomfort. In June we have opportunity for two talks. One for the Lindy Lee exhibition,
Moon in a Dew Drop, which challenge us to think about identity through different lenses. The other is
Soft/Hard: radical lover by R. Goo, which responds to the theme of ‘Queering the Gallery’ through the unique perspective of the late multidisciplinary trans artist,
Bec O’Neil. Drawing pieces selected from the Curtin collection is Bec’s vision of radical acceptance and their understanding that, ‘as queer people we have to accept ourselves and others in whatever shape or form we take’ (JCG Exhibition Program: Season Djeran/Makuru).
Theo Constantino and Lia McKnight are working on these exhibitions. If you would like to speak to and with either of these beautiful and delicate exhibitions, please be in contact with us.
Observing the tumult and the insecurity could cause us to retreat to the satire of Mary McCarthy’s
The Groves of Academe or David Lodge’s
Campus Trilogy or even to the recent Netflix series
The Chair. Instead I urge you to engage with the ideas contained in the volume co-edited by Queensland-based academics Ali Black and Rachael Dwyer,
Reimagining the Academy: ShiFting Towards Kindness, Connection, and an Ethics of Care. The book is the product of a fully virtual conference they hosted in 2019 and a concomitant call they made to to “shiFt academic cultures towards care, connection, collaboration and creativity”. They asked us to follow the work of NZ-based academic Niki Harré and to abandon the play of the “finite game,” the competitive logic that appears to drive university life (
Harré, 2021), and instead to opt for radical inclusion and to play the infinite game, that which disrupts:
>> The infinite game is a symbol of our potential as people living together to be open and inclusive, and to promote the life, and growth, that helps us flourish as individuals and communities. This game imagines a world in which our heartfelt, personal response to life, our deep listening to others (especially those who don’t fit in), and our careful observations and thought about the social, natural and physical world come together to create and recreate our institutions. (
Harré, 2017) <<
My reading of this is for us to ask for our university, and the GRN, to operate as a community of care. For our classrooms to be those spaces. For our research to be defined as slow scholarship, that which starts with an ethics of care, and considers how we work together. Taking care as our practice will sustain us but this requires us to recognise care as labour, and to value it, to ask others to do the same. To recognise the moments and spaces taken to breathe, to offer kindness and to give room when needed. These should not be radical acts in the university – or indeed in life. Kindness should be commonplace. If perhaps we set that as the basis from which we weave, we will observe differently and allow all to be seen and heard.
The latter forms the basis of the
Gender Reading Group established by
Dr Peta Dzidic with
Dr Amy Dobson and with some minimal help from me and organisational assistance from Liz. Please join us for the next one, we would love to have you there. Email your interest to Peta or one of us.
Many thanks and hope to see you in April,
Samantha with Therese and Liz
p.s. thank you to those who send inclusions for the newsletter to us. We really appreciate it. Please do send in your publications - we'd love to capture them here.
