Careers for Graduates with Women's Studies Honours
Kerryn
"I studied for a Bachelor of Arts with combined honours in Women's Studies and History at Monash University between 1995 and 1999. Since completing my degree I have been employed in the Human Resources field working in local government in an inner-metropolitan Council. I have found that studying women's studies developed and refined my critical and lateral thinking skills, while completing the honours year honed my researching skills and made me resourceful in finding and presenting information. Politically, studying women's studies both refined the interest I already had in feminism and women's issues, and developed it into a tool that I am able to utilise both in the workplace and in my life more generally to enable me to make a difference where I can. Further, the courses I studied introduced me to subject areas and ways of thinking I most likely would never have had access to otherwise, and I still value my ability to read and critique issue and events from this unique perspective. Since leaving Monash I have commenced studying for a Masters in Commerce at Melbourne University, and I continue to find that the solid critical and research skills I attained while completing honours at Monash have provided an excellent foundation for both future tertiary study and career development."
Catherine
"I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Laws degree in 1993. I completed my Bachelor of Arts (Honours in Women's Studies) in 1998, and completed my Bachelor of Laws in 2000. The knowledge I gained from Women's Studies was extremely rewarding, both personally and professionally. It provided me with a greater understanding of the intersection between gender and power in our society, and complemented my studies in Law. Furthermore, it equipped me with the necessary skills to articulate and analyse issues of social inequality-skills that have been invaluable in my volunteer and paid work. Whilst completing my studies, I volunteered as a phone counsellor for WIRE (Women's Information Referral Exchange). This provided an opportunity to apply my academic understanding of feminist issues to women's everyday experiences of discrimination. During the last year of my Law degree, I began working part time for a well-known Melbourne law firm in their new client inquiries department. I will begin my Articles of Clerkship with this firm in March 2003. Finally, I have also tutored in the Criminology and Criminal Justice program at Monash University."
Ilsa
"My 1999 honours year in Women's Studies represented a turning point in my career, and set up goals which are only now beginning to come to fruition. It was the year I decided to eventually pursue a PhD, and it was the subject area that I based my dissertation around that directly informed my doctoral research topic: long-term effects of domestic violence. So this year finds me (a mature-age, ex-defence force, ex-teacher, ex-retail, ex-ward clerk, and current mother of three) with a scholarship and knee-deep in my first year of my PhD . This year has also seen another long-term career goal come to pass. I have finally managed to secure a publishing contract for a couple of fictional books that I wrote more or less as a hobby. So between academic supervisors and fiction editors, literature reviews and copyright law -- I am being kept busier than I can ever remember and enjoying almost every moment".