Feminist challenges to the constraints of law : donning uncomfortable robes?

Legal judgment writing mobilises a process of story-telling, drawing on existing judicial discourses, precedents and practices to create a narrative relevant to the specific case that is articulated by the presiding judge. In the Feminist Judgments projects feminist scholars and activists have sought to challenge and reinterpret legal judgments that have disadvantaged, discriminated against or denied women’s experiences. This paper reflects on the process of writing as a feminist judge in the Australian Project, in an intimate homicide case, R v Middendorp. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler on intelligibility, iterability and the communality of violence and vulnerability, this article argues that feminist judgments necessarily require some uncomfortable compromises with unjust gendered institutions. While ‘donning the robes’ may be an uncomfortable process, a feminist re-articulation of the law’s carceral power serves to unsettle and challenge some aspects of gendered oppression, even though it cannot unsettle the operation of the institution. The article concludes that effective feminist interventions by members of the judiciary may require donning robes that are not entirely comfortable in order to persuade and advocate for change

What matters to women: beyond reproductive stereotypes

This article reports on a qualitative study of reproductive decision-making. The findings suggest that many of the popular stereotypes of women’s aspirations and motivations that fuel public discussions of Australia’s falling birth-rate and policy initiatives such as paid maternity leave are inaccurate and unhelpful. The article also challenges the efficacy of preference theory in accounting for women’s choices with respect to work and family

Fully present and accounted for? Women's transitional work practices

In this paper from the Transitions and Risk: New Directions in Social Policy conference, JaneMaree Maher and Jo Lindsay argue that employed mothers may be best characterised as working in \u27permanent\u27 transitional labour markets. They suggest that women may be constructing new and flexible models of mothering and employment that focus on skills, tasks, and time management in response to inflexible social institutions. But these work strategies may mask entrenched resistance from governments and employers to really supporting flexible employment

Framing the mother:Childhood obesity, maternal responsibility and care

Currently in developed nations, childhood obesity is generating widespread concern and prompting social and institutional responses. Obesity is constructed as a broad public health crisis, but individuals are constructed as responsible for their own bodies and body sizes within this crisis. We are particularly interested in two aspects that focus on women as central to this phenomenon; the first is the imputation of maternal responsibility for the weight of children and the second is the role that specific fears about flesh and women’s bodies play in how childhood obesity is represented. We analyse media representations of childhood obesity in Australia and draw out the discourses of maternal responsibility and the intertwining of mothers and children’s bodies. We frame the childhood obesity crisis within a broader discussion of women, care and responsibility, suggesting that childhood obesity offers another embodied location to reinforce and extend women’s roles and responsibilities as mothers, in response to changing patterns of work and care

Social class, anxieties and mothers\u27 foodwork

In the context of concerns about childhood obesity, mothers are placed at the forefront of responsibility for shaping the eating behaviour and consequently the health of their young children. This is evident in a multitude of diverse sites such as government reports, health promotion materials, reality TV shows and the advice of childcare nurses and preschools. These sites produce a range of resources available to mothers to draw on to constitute themselves as mothers in terms of caring for their children\u27s health. Drawing on a qualitative study of mothers recruited through three Australian preschool centres, this article examines how the working-class and middle-class mothers of preschool-aged children engage with knowledge about motherhood, children and health and how those engagements impact on their mothering, their foodwork and their children. We argue that, unlike the working-class mothers pathologised in some literature on obesity, these working-class mothers demonstrated a no-nonsense (but still responsibilised) approach to feeding their children. The middle-class mothers, on the other hand, were more likely to engage in practices of self-surveillance and to demonstrate considerable anxieties about the appropriateness of their practices for their children\u27s current and future health

To be or not to be a mother? Women negotiating cultural representations of mothering

This article is based on a recently completed study of fertility decision making in Victoria. Drawing on semi structured interviews with 100 women, it explores how dominant discourses of mothering influence women in their life decisions about children. While much research indicates that all women negotiate dominant ideals of good mothering, our findings suggest that such stereotypes need to be further broken down. For women who have children, images of the 'good mother' are less prevalent than pragmatic concerns about how to manage mothering. Women without children, in contrast, understand mothering as all encompassing and potentially overwhelming. These findings suggest that Australian women share ideals and assumptions about mothering with their counterparts in the United Kingdom and the United States, but they also point to an increasing gap between how mothering is viewed and how it is practised

Conceptual orthodoxies and women's everyday labours: rethinking the employment of mothers

JaneMaree Maher and Jo Lindsay criticise descriptions of working mothers that focus on conflict, guilt and career disruption. They argue that women are developing new models of mothering and employment focusing on transferable skills and the integration of necessary labour