Women composing selves, seeking authenticity: A study of women’s development in the workplace

Citation

Fenwick T (1998) Women composing selves, seeking authenticity: A study of women’s development in the workplace. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 17 (3), pp. 199-217. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260137980170306

Abstract
The workplace has received increasing attention in the past decade as an important site of adult learning and development. Responses in the form of educational programmes, organizational structures and leadership to promote ‘continuous learning', and a new focus on workplace teaching have proliferated. But our understanding of the activities and processes of workplace learning remain vague, particularly in the case of women, for whom experiences of learning in work are entwined with issues of gender bias, relationships, family, power, and identity. This article describes a study examining the workplace learning experiences of 17 women, using oral history methods. The study found that central to these experiences was women's exploration and expression of self. Themes discussed in the article include recognizing and naming self, confronting and breaking free of workplace structures constraining the self, and recovering an ‘authentic' self. Analysis focuses particularly on reconciling postmodern theories of subjectivity with what appears in this study's findings to be women's strong sense of a centred core self. Women today... compose lives that will honor all their commitments and still express all their potentials with a certain unitary grace... in finding a personal path among the discontinuities and moral ambiguities they face, they are performing a creative synthesis with a value that goes beyond the merely personal. (Bateson 1990:232)

Journal
International Journal of Lifelong Education: Volume 17, Issue 3

People

Professor Tara Fenwick

Emeritus Professor, Education