title: Women, Work and Learning
Creators: name: Cavanagh, Jillian Maria
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2007
Subjects: subject: Women
subject: Work
subject: Learning
subject: Career Development
subject: Support
subject: Workplace Policies

description: Contemporary work is beset by changing laws, globalisation and technology. Such changes, together with the growing intensity of work, means work practices are constantly changing. Increasing numbers of women are entering into this work, often in contingent roles and many in administrative and service-related employment. Frequently, these contingent forms of work offer little in the way of career paths or support for ongoing learning and career development. This study investigates the work and learning experiences of a cohort of nine female auxiliary workers within the legal sector. These women are held to be illustrative of the growing ranks of contingent workers and their experiences in contemporary working life. The study examines the affordances for these women’s learning and levels of support available to them for participation in learning through their work.The study is informed by a critical ethnographic approach that recounted the work and learning practices of these women through a series of structured interviews, observations and reflective journals written by both the participants and the researcher. This is interwoven with an autoethnography of the researcher’s work experiences within the legal workplace. Having advanced the case for learning through auxiliary kinds of work, the study describes and discusses three legal practice managers’ purposes of, conceptions about and practices for the learning of auxiliary legal workers in their legal practices. Next, it elaborates and discuses these women’s experiences of, conceptions about and practices to learn through their work. The literature dealing with aspects of the changing nature of work and contemporary issues affecting women at work such as power relations, the impact of policy, gender equity and discrimination illuminates the problems for these women workers. It also elaborates the nature of learning through work, and the self-identity and social identity of women at work and the notion of workplace knowledge within organisational practice. How opportunities were afforded and maximised by these women was important as their learning was set within the structures of the workplace that served to inhibit their progress. Yet, these women needed to learn to perform effectively and to retain their employment, and perhaps to progress. The women worked within an environment characterised by change and the findings of the study positioned each of them as committed workers and continuous, self-directed learners; that is, learning was fundamental to their everyday work and they shared a strong resolve to find ways to learn. The study found strong and consistent evidence of personal epistemologies, reflexive practice and personal agency being exercised in the conduct of these women’s work and learning. Through these processes, the women developed a sense of their own identity at work as workers and learners and they enacted those identities. Yet, all this was found, to be necessitated by and in the face of low workplace affordance for their work and learning. That is, formal learning policies and programs were not readily accessible to auxiliary level women at work. However, the study suggests that if these women were offered opportunities to participate in formal learning programs at work they would probably do so. It was concluded that improvement in the workplace norms, values and practices associated with contingent workers, such as these nine auxiliary legal workers, was needed, firstly, for the legal practices to enact policies, procedures and opportunities for auxiliary level staff to participate in kinds of learning that promote professional and self development and, secondly, for auxiliary level women to be aware of, to learn and to participate in new ways to practice and to strive for professional and self development. Overall, this study illustrated how workplace policies and practices can work against the needs, learning and aspirations of workers, who perform essential support and service roles, yet are not seen as being central to workplace success. Interactive collaborations between workplace managers and contingent workers are needed to continually find new ways to help these workers change and grow at work within workplace environments that are invitational for them. In all, the study found that the agency and personal epistemologies of these auxiliary workers was essential in their negotiation of learning, the enactment of peer support and to necessarily cross boundaries of practice in learning and working. While such agency is commendable, it is held that this agency might be deployed more productively in workplaces, if it were not continually having to be exercised to overcome the low invitational qualities of the very workplaces in which they work and learn.