Careers for Graduates with Women's Studies PhDs
Patricia
"I am currently in a full time permanent academic position in the Department of Communication and Film at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU), Cambridge, while living in London. I lecture in film and what is referred to in the UK as 'Communication' and which is equivalent to what Australian universities would call a mixture of Cultural Studies and Visual Culture. This means different subjects see me teaching a broad range fields such as philosophy, film theory, linguistics, sexuality studies. Of course, feminist theory tends to permeate each subject. Women's Studies is a part of each curriculum I teach, even though I am no longer in a Women's Studies unit. I think this is essential to the understanding that feminism is not a subject but an ethic to which all students should be exposed. I am also currently writing my second book and publishing articles. I have presented conference papers in Australia, Italy, The Netherlands, Scotland and England. Prior to taking up my current position at APU I taught Women's Studies at Monash from 1996-2000. The adaptable, interdisciplinary nature of Women's Studies has meant I have also taught in the Department of Criminology at Monash University and guest lectured in film at La Trobe University. Far from being purely academic, my personal commitment to Women's Studies and the general attitude towards feminism fostered through my PhD at Monash University and my own work was one of the things that got me my job at APU (despite the job description not mentioning feminism). It may have also provided the conviction I needed to take the risk and move across the world!"
Valerie
"My postgraduate work was philosophical and theoretical, and certainly not vocationally motivated. I loved my studies and remain highly indebted to them on a daily basis, even though my day-to-day work these days appears to be far removed. While I was studying I did consider an academic career but it would be fair to say that by the end of my studies I was less than favourably disposed towards the idea. I began working in the Department of Education as a public servant while I was still writing up, just to pay the rent. I was expecting it to be very short term and before I started I held many preconceptions about what public servants did and what the work would be like. I definitely expected the public service to be boring, but I was surprised at how interesting the work turned out to be. Given the kinds of skills I had gained through my post graduate studies, I was increasingly asked to take on a lot of work others didn't have the same capacity to do, especially anything involving analysis and research. I have also found that I had developed pretty fair organisational skills along the way and this also helps. The sort of things I do include: conduct and manage research, prepare reports for different audiences, evaluate research and other reports, develop and write up ideas for programs, present papers at conferences, manage contracts, handle meetings, memos and administration.
Some of it doesn't look all that different from an academic career, although I must say that there certainly are differences. For one thing, the hours are much less flexible in the public service. These days I work in the Office of Training and Tertiary Education, looking at the role online technologies play in education. As well as research and planning, I do a fair bit of performance measurement and evaluation which has turned out to be pretty interesting as well. I get support to continue my education in areas that interest me (yes, there's still study after the PhD, just much less intense!), and the pay is generally better than the academy which is very important for the state of the mortgage. I'm not sure that there is a natural synergy between academic life and the public service, but I was able to slide in pretty easily as it happened. I am certainly very grateful that the skills I learned in my PhD studies have made it possible for me to remain gainfully employed - that was always going to be interesting!"