Education and work in service of the nation: Canadian and Australian girls' fiction, 1908-1921

This chapter compares early twentieth-century Australian novels by Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, and Lilian Turner to Canadian novels by Nellie McClung and L.M. Montgomery to demonstrate important differences in attitudes towards education and work. Girls’ fiction in these white settler colonies has many similarities, containing strong ideals related to domesticity, education, employment, and femininity. In the Canadian fiction, attitudes towards women’s higher education and employement are generally much more positive. Although both Australian and Canadian girls’ fiction typically conclude with marriage, Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Nellie McClung’s Pearlie Watson are offered the opportunity to pursue higher education and use this education to teach others. In contrast, Lilian Turner’s Paradise and the Perrys, Ethel Turner’s Fair Ines, and Mary Grant Bruce’s ’Possum emphasise the importance of domesticity while also showing how girls sought to earn income without leaving home. Through our comparison of these Canadian and Australian novels, all published between 1908 and 1921, we demonstrate how the different feminine ideals embodied through these heroines are inevitably intertwined with the needs of the nation

Uneasy alliances: Traditional dynamics in women's relationships in urban Hindu society (1910-2010)

This paper argues that in spite of the phenomenal economic progress made by India, the urban Indian Hindu woman still faces major challenges and hindrances in charting the course of her existence, some aspects of which are still located within a very traditional discourse. Women of particular age groups combine highly competitive careers in medicine, management, engineering, and other demanding professions with marriage and motherhood, while simultaneously juggling the eternal roles of the docile, hardworking daughter-in-law and the dutiful daughter. It is, yet again, another sacrifice of individual needs and time on the part of the urban Indian Hindu woman within a discourse that imposes constant adjustment and compromise from one's birth as a female child. The economic context might appear to be very different in this century, and the socio-cultural discourse may appear to have changed along with it, but the expectations and the status quo of the urban Hindu woman has not changed very much, given the underlying historical and socio-cultural discourse that is still extant.

'Of course I didn't work … only when I had to': narratives of women's working lives and what really counted

There was a long-held belief, that, prior to the 1970s, women were no longer involved in paid labour once they were married or began to have children. Official statistics also supported this particular national narrative. This paper argues that this narrative did not accurately reflect the historical situation because the methods used to determine who worked and when did not fully capture all of women's paid labour at the time. This is reflected in a small study of older women and their recollections of paid employment. Some women initially claimed that they did no paid work after marriage, but with low key, in-depth and persistent questioning, it became clear that many women did work in an unofficial capacity (in the black economy) or alongside their husbands in their paid employment. This is a preliminary study that underlines the importance of life-course narratives in the social sciences to delve deeply into women's memories and thus their experiences.