Australian Women Writers Challenge Completed!

It’s true. I’m one of those most annoying of people – a convert.

I embarked on this challenge purely out of guilt. A low rumbling guilt that had been gnawing at me for some time. I had been aware of the Australian Women Writers Challenge since 2012. I had looked at the website and clicked on the links to read the reviews; looked with interest at what was being read. But it seemed like a club that I didn’t belong to. None of the books really appealed. Most of the authors were not on my radar. I shrugged off any need to be a part of it.

Yet the statistics were hard to ignore - in most major newspaper and journal publications in 2012, over 70% of books reviewed were by male authors and the remaining 30% by female authors.  Well. When you think about how reviews and publicity translate to sales, well it does make the feminist blood boil a little….bubble, bubble, bubble.  Once I had noticed it, the prevalence of male authors being promoted and generally supported by the media and book industry compared to female authors was like a piece of spinach in your teeth or a smudge of peanut butter on your chin.  How could I not take part in redressing the balance? 

Yet still, another year went by and I avoided it. My reading choices and my time seemed all too precious. Too many books, too little time. I didn’t want to actually alter my reading habits. I already had a comprehensive "to be read" pile by the bed, I told myself, hiding behind that excuse rather than admitting the truth. I was biased.

 

But in 2014 I did it. I signed up. I realised four books wasn’t too much to ask. I had discovered some contemporary Australian authors (partly thanks to AWW website) and my interest was piqued. I remembered some books I had enjoyed in the past by Australian female authors and realised it wasn’t such a great risk to delve into another book written by them. Early in the New Year, with a summer beach holiday on the horizon and a few books by Australian women writers jumping into my view at the bookshop and the library, I decided to get over myself and signed up for the Stella challenge– read four books and review three.  

And yep, now I’m one of those annoying people – a convert! The challenge has broadened my reading. It has introduced me to some memorable books and some under-rated authors. It has also, I have to say, confirmed some of my biases about Australian authors (of either gender).  Overall, it has absolved me of my guilt, made me a more discerning reader and a more supportive reader of local women writers.

I read: 

“Whisky Charlie Foxtrot" by Annabel Smith

“Child of the Twilight” by Carmel Bird

“The Ghost at the Wedding” by Shirley Walker 

“The Fish-hair Woman” by Merlinda Bobis.

I reviewed the first three on Goodreads and the this blog. And now, with this wrap up post, my challenge is complete! What next?

Well I have gone from having not read one book by an Australian woman writer last year to having read a dozen this year. So I might write some reviews and do the challenge all over again.

Make Care Fair Petition

Did you know that almost half of parents say the cost of childcare for children under school age is too high compared to what they earn?  36% are considering leaving the workforce.

 

Many women who want to return to work, me included, are faced with doing the calculations. Will they earn enough to cover the costs? And any left over? Is it worth it?

While work is not just about the money and many parents chose to work even just to cover costs of childcare – for sanity, career, sense of worth, work ethic, adult company - the reasons are numerous. 24% of working mothers say working isn’t economically viable - however they remain in the workforce due to independence and the necessity for career progression. 

Many parents haven’t got the choice. With three kids under school age, I’m someone who can’t afford to go back to work – and yes this will change, families grow and circumstances change.  But it isn’t only about cost. Access to childcare is a big issue too. In my area, there are no places available for toddlers in child care - believe me! I’ve checked! The waiting lists are 12 months to 18 months long.

Make Care Fair research says 74% of women found it difficult to find available quality care while they worked.

Make Care Fair are tackling the issue with a petition to Kate Ellis, minister for the status of women and Jenny Macklin, the minister for families. All you have to do is  go to the website - where you can check out their research and sign the petition.For those of you with twitter and facebook - there are links there as well to help spread the word.

Here’s just a sample of the research:

  For every AUD$1 the Government spent on childcare, the Government get back AUD$1.86 in revenue from improved workforce participation rate.

  48% of women said the cost of childcare negatively hit their career but not their partner’s career.

  Leaving the workforce for cost of care reasons has a compound negative effect. After leaving the workforce 52% of unemployed carers feel that their skills have been reduced whilst off work, and 49% have reduced confidence in their ability to return to work. 

  

  The relationship between the cost of care and employment choices affects employees on all incomes, i.e. from those on relatively high incomes (AUD$90K and upwards) to those on relatively low family incomes (AUD$50K and below).

  51% say one parent would have to quit their job if the costs of childcare increase.

        

  50% of parents would increase their hours of work if care was more affordable.

 

Happy International Women's Day!

I’m a feminist and....... I craft?

What have you been doing, so far, on this International Women’s Day? I’ve dressed children, vacuumed the floors, mopped, done two loads of washing, changed beds and called the high school to make an appointment with the year 12 co-ordinator. And now I can finish some sewing. Yes – that is my life; lots of housework and crafting. And no, it’s not 1965 – it’s 2012! And here I am, a modern educated feminist, who has a life right now that very much resembles my own mother’s life in the sixties. Has anything changed?

Being at home with small children can be a lot like a bad acid trip. And for those of you fortunate enough never to have endured a bad acid trip, it’s like floundering around in a world that is in a state of flux where achieving anything, even the most mundane and ordinary, is virtually impossible. See the connection?  I could do housework until the cows come home and still have handprints on the t.v. and food smears on the furniture.  It’s like a sad predictable pantomime where I’m the butt of the joke - cleaning in one room while the kids are messing stuff up just behind my back but I can’t hear the audience shouting, “Look behind you!” The lack of achievement or completion of anything, despite such hard work, can be demoralising and frankly a bit depressing. I can’t have my days being only about child rearing and housework.  I’m simply not someone who can be at home with kids and find fulfilment in the nurturing and domesticity – I have to have something more; something creative.

I remember being pregnant with my first child. I was just 20 years old and studying at a fine arts degree, majoring in sculpture. With a big belly and wearing overalls, I welded and cut metal and, gee,  was I tired as that belly got heavy! The realisation dawned on me that sculpture like this and being a mother to a baby were two mutually exclusive activities. In the end I welded some metal rods to little bases and made some old bricks into flowers on those stalks; a twee sculpted garden.  It was raising the white flag - a declaration of capitulation to domesticity. As a mother, my art was going to have to be home based.

Great Granny's Crochet Quilt

I come from a long line of crafters. My great grandmotherwas known for her fine crochet work, my granny and her sisters were all good craftswomen and my mum could make just about anything and tackle any craft she came across. Through their crafting, these women were ingenious and resourceful and, through common sense and poverty, they were also environmentally sustainable.  There was a need to darn and mend and recycle and stitch and make do. No idle hands! Spare time was used up in useful creative pursuits. And is this a bad thing? There seems to have been a pendulum swing back to crafting. Influenced by retro fashion and environmentally sustainable sensibilities (and with a dash of whimsical sentimentality), recent generations have embraced craft. In doing so, we honour our mothers and grandmothers and give recognition and validation to their skills and talents. But do we also confine our creativity to a domestic sphere and add to our household workload?

I’m not an artist – I make art and craft while at home with kids, just as my mother did. Mum would always say she wasn’t creative because she couldn’t draw and yet she could do any craft you can imagine and make most things, all while remaining serene and raising eight children. But it was all house or children focused craft - dolls, clothes, wall hangings, quilts, cushions and doilies. Just like female painters of old were confined to painting domestic scenes. This element to crafting raises the feminist shackles in me and makes me want to, if not burn my bra, at least re-fashion it into a macramé pot plant holder! Because I have become, for want of a better term, a “stay at home mother”,  in charge of all things domestic, does that mean all my creative energies must be focused toward the family as well?

 It’s a practical fact that craft is a creative pursuit that fits in well with the housekeeping and child rearing. But sometimes I find the domestic focus of craft dispiriting. It’s not like I can be welding a huge sculptural folly in the back yard is it? No. I’m crocheting a funny looking but useful pinafore in left over wool using up minimal space and making minimal mess. I’m not painting a mural for public work or even a fairly naive wonky painting for some exhibition. No, I’m stitching a felt robot hot water bottle cover for the children – recycled, environmentally sustainable and fun for the kids. Sometimes the creative frustration still bubbles away and the home themed and practical focus of craft is just another confinement. 

While a return to craft has been a big trend for many people, I question how it fits with our feminist ideals. Crafting is time consuming and could my time be better employed? Does crafting distract me from other achievements? While I love that craft skills, like those my mother and grandmother and great grandmother had, are recognised for the skill and cleverness, it is still essentially a domestic pursuit. And then there is the crafting with irony - we can be subversive with our sewing,  dogmatic with our doilies, strident with our stitching – but in doing this are we invalidating the traditional crafts of our mothers by making fun of them? Or are we saying, “I can craft with irony and still be a feminist even though I’ve just spent at least 18 hours cross stitching rude words to a wall hanging?”

 Craft is also popular for the sustainability of the practices and recycling opportunities it presents. But while we’re darning, turning doilies into collars, recycling frocks into children’s skirts and jumpers into legwarmers, what are we getting? Besides a pair of legwarmers we don’t really want or need and the satisfaction of not having added the hole-ridden jumper to landfill? Because we can recycle it, does it mean we should? (see denim light shade!) 

And what of the hours and creative energy spent doing it? Would I have been better off seeking more education? Reading a book? Writing a book? Creating art? Getting out of the house? Improving employment opportunities? Doing voluntary work? By doing craft, are we, as stay at home mothers, just keeping our head above the drowning pull of housework or burying our creative heads in the sand of domestic life? Are we enhancing our lives in line with a Ruskin philosophy or simply adding to our domestic load? Are we avoiding homogenised-globalised-consumerism by making individual different household items? Or simply surviving creatively while our children are little?

So! I craft because it fits in with my lifestyle at the moment and if I didn’t, my creativity would be severely frustrated and that frustration may bubble and explode in any manner of strangeness. But sometimes I wonder if, like some sort of “Stockholm” syndrome, I have begun to love my domestic imprisonment without even realising it and my creative ideas have now become all contained and homey?  Have I forgotten the big picture of what I want to do with my life? Do I avoid thinking about my life while I numb my thoughts with a meditative chant, “knit two, purl two”? Is it a kind of  therapy for the shell shocked repercussions of child birth? Or do I realise that, for now,  to have individual, idiosyncratic, handmade items grace our everyday life is a privilege that enriches our home? I don’t know!  Why do you craft?

Now, where’s that bra? I have just the pot plant for it....

mind the gap!

Does it sometimes seem to you, that your life happens in the gaps? 

In those funny shaped little moments...

...the small cracks of time between all the mothering/caring/cleaning/work and _ _ _ _?
.

Of course all of it - the whole kit and kaboodle - makes up your life, but it's still important to have bits of time just to yourself....and to fill them with colour and textures

 

Images are from Juliana Santacruz Herrera "projet nid de poule" on the footpaths of Paris.   

posted by Julianne Sister outlaw

Mothering Hour



Australian Home Journal, August 1, 1958

It says:

Six children to love and wash for!

Mothering hour at the Heffernan home in Surrey Hills, Victoria, is always a family affair, when everyone from five-year-old Bobby to toddling Jenny lavishes love on baby Sue.

Mothering hour? Who would have thought that in 1958 you only had to mother for an hour a day? And I especially love the look on toddling Jenny's face. Far from a look of lavishing love.....she looks ready to bop the baby on the head

Happy mothering day !

posted by sister outlaw Julianne

“A Mother’s Help”

I found this in a Home Journal from April 1959

It says,:

Her family grows by twos and threes! Yes, twins AND triplets – and four strapping schoolboys!” There’s never a day that I’m not washing, Aunt Jenny,” says Mrs. Moran of Woodford Island, Clarence River, N.S.W., “and I’ve learnt over and over – for those little daily washes, nothing is so handy and economical as Velvet .”

Yep! That’s HAND WASHING! She also adds,

“I do mountains of dishes when they are at school,” says Mrs. Moran. “Doesn’t take long and Velvet suds are so easy on my hands”

Mrs. Moran of Woodford Island had nine children – including little twins and triplet babies - and a “mother’s help” was a bar of Velvet soap? Surely it was a bottle of gin????

I’m going to go and press the button on my washing machine and then press the button on the dishwasher and feel positively lazy!

posted by Julianne Sister Outlaw