Wednesday 8 March is International Women’s Day (IWD), which is a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It’s also a call to action for accelerating women’s equality.

This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity which asks us to actively support and embrace equity within our own sphere of influence.  

At the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, women are not only contributing to groundbreaking innovation, but they are also often leading it. 

Today, and every day, the Alfred Deakin Institute is celebrating its impressive cohort of women and hope to inspire the next generation of young women into a career in humanities and social sciences research. 

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we spoke to three female researchers at the Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI), all at different stages of their career. 

They share their career journey, reflections on this year’s IWD theme, the challenges they have faced being a woman in humanities and social sciences research and the incredible women who have shaped their own lives. 

Professor Michele Grossman

Research Chair in Diversity and Community Resilience, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

What made you decide to pursue a career in research?   

I have actually had two phases in my research career. The first phase was during my 20+ years as a teaching and research academic, when I focused on Indigenous Australian cultural representation after my training at undergraduate and doctoral level in literary studies and cultural analysis. The second phase was when I retrained, mid-career, to become a social sciences researcher because I wanted to switch to researching with people rather than texts. A period at my former university employer in which I served as Associate Dean Research and Research Training really opened my eyes up to the potential for research to change lives and communities for the better. Once I found my focus area of terrorism studies, which allowed me to draw on the cross-disciplinary methods and knowledge I’d developed to that stage in my career, there was no looking back! 

Why is it vital that we #EmbraceEquity in social sciences and humanities research?   

Equity should be embraced all the time and everywhere, not just in research! But it is particularly important that we continue to focus on gender equity, alongside other forms of equity and social justice, in social sciences and humanities research because of the way in which disciplines in these areas can be especially alert to the biases and blind spots we bring to the way in which we make and circulate knowledge. Without equity, we will continue to reproduce ways of knowing and living in the world that either ignore, dismiss or downplay both lived and structural aspects of disadvantage and discrimination. Our capacity to analyse the reasons for and impacts of inequity means we have a particular responsibility to practice what we preach as researchers. 

Which woman do you look up to the most, and why?   

There are so many women I look up to it’s hard to identify just one, and to choose just one period of history! It’s women writers who have really been the most abidingly inspirational for me over time: Edith Wharton, a 19th-century American writer who analysed her own upper class social caste in all its privilege, pettiness and cultural parsimony with great courage and murderous accuracy; another American writer, Grace Paley, who did things with vernacular language in the 1970s that made my head spin with delight and who was a wonderful feminist, social activist and general troublemaker; the 20th century Canadian writer Alice Munro, whose Lives of Girls and Women diagnosed perfectly the tensions and dilemmas I experienced as a young woman negotiating an intellectual life; and another 20th century woman, the South African novelist and essayist Nadine Gordimer, who more than any other writer I can think of grasped the volatile dynamics of her time and place and transformed them in the process, making of her writing a profoundly clear-eyed political act that honoured complexity and never descended into either propaganda or self-indulgence. 

How has equity informed your research?   

In terrorism studies gender equity has always been an issue, although fortunately that’s been changing over the last decade or so. While there are more women scholars in the field now doing brilliant and highly impactful research and writing, issues around gender and terrorism are still under-researched when it comes to the roles and capacities of women within terrorist movements and networks. I try to ensure in all the studies I design and run that gender is a key lens through which we examine not only the dynamics of terrorism but also our own preconceptions about the roles, agency and capabilities of women who are ‘bad actors’ in terrorist contexts across different settings and ideologies. 

What advice would you give to aspiring female researchers?   

Find good role models and mentors who are doing the kinds of research and being the kind of researcher you want to become – but remember that this may change over time, and so will your role models and mentors! Mid-career, I chose a very dear friend and colleague of mine at another university as my role model and asked myself how she’d managed to craft her career in the way that she had (which I admired greatly) and then set about doing similar things in my own career. I never told her I’d modelled myself on her career trajectory and the role she’d played in helping me develop my own sense of research satisfaction and success until many years later, but it was a lovely moment when I shared that confidence with her. 

What is your greatest professional accomplishment so far?   

My greatest sense of professional accomplishment stems from watching relatively small studies that I did here in Australia take off to be either replicated or built on by other researchers in other countries, and to see both the intellectual growth and the practical outcomes that emerge from my work for the benefit of communities through changes in policy and practice – whether that’s the research I’ve done on community reporting on radicalisation to violence or understanding youth resilience to violent extremism, to give a couple of examples. I love the way in which research that is sincere in its mission to serve the public good can end up resonating with others in places I’d never imagined would be fired up by some of my ideas or findings. Much of my work is conducted in teams, and a related sense of professional accomplishment is the way in which meaningful collaboration can yield enriched insights through healthy contestation, friction and partnerships that can never be achieved when working solely on one’s own – but also the sense of deep satisfaction when one’s own contributions are valued by  

Dr Charishma Ratnam

Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

What made you decide to pursue a career in research?  

 Honestly, I never intended to pursue a career in research, but after completing an Honours research project, I found a real passion for developing interesting methods to produce knowledge that tackles complex problems. I have since worked with a number of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants to understand their experiences in the places they (re)settle and I have integrated novel methods to do so. I don’t claim to solve the problems that these groups face, of course, but I am passionate about providing a platform that amplifies their voices, stories, and experiences in Australia and abroad. 

Which woman do you look up to the most, and why?  

There are so many women in my personal and professional life that I look up to. My mum and sister are two formative figures in my life. I am also privileged to be mentored by a number of fantastic women – they have really guided me through my research career and I am grateful to them for their counsel. 

What advice would you give to aspiring female researchers?  

My advice to aspiring female researchers would be to seek support from senior female researchers. My experience is that these researchers are more than willing to share their experiences of working in academia and help as you move through your own career.  

Associate Professor Holly High

ARC Future Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation 

What made you decide to pursue a career in research?   

I’m not sure I ever made a conscious decision to have a career in research. It was more like “well, let’s see how far I can go along doing this before someone tells me to stop.” Over the years, I have had a few road bumps—heavy teaching loads at various points, taking on too much service, having kids and difficulties getting over to Laos—but so far I have not had to give up research. Not entirely, not yet anyway.  

Why is it vital that we #EmbraceEquity in social sciences and humanities research?   

It is good to hear people are moving away from talking about “equality” towards “equity”. The idea of equality always seemed to be set up for failure, because no one really believed that people are or even should be equal in the sense of “the same”. If women and men, black and white, old and young, rich and poor really related to one another as if there were no significant differences of note between any of us, or that difference did not matter, that would not be justice. Actually, it sounds like a scenario from a dystopian science-fiction movie! Like the confusion between being “race blind” and “anti-racist”: I’d definitely prefer to be anti-racist than race blind. Who would want to live in a world where we pretend that no difference ever mattered? It is like a kind of voluntary ignorance. I think equity is a promising direction to go in, so far as it starts with acknowledging the importance of difference. 

Which woman do you look up to the most, and why?   

I get most of my inspiration from ordinary people. I don’t believe in individual genius: I believe that great ideas and great moments come from great conversations. I think the truly great understandings are the ones that grow between people and groups in innumerable small encounters, men and women alike. 

How has equity informed your research?   

To be honest it does not come into my research much. Not in an explicit way, anyway. I suppose I am influenced by those strands of anthropology, which run back for over a century now, where anthropologists have argued (with varying degrees of success/persuasiveness/consistency) for the value of listening to a diversity of voices. So I spend a lot of time translating Lao thought into English and thinking about how ideas circulating in Laos resonate with those from my own background, because I think it is important to have as much diversity available as possible as we address the (many) problems the world currently faces. I hope to contribute to that in a very small way by keeping the conversation open between Lao and English language scholarship.  

What advice would you give to aspiring female researchers?    

OK if this advice is for an aspiring female researcher who is essentially a young Ayn Rand or Pauline Hanson, then my advice is to please consider a career in cardboard manufacturing. It is a very worthy career and there is a skills shortage in that sector. But I am assuming from your question I am meant to imagine talking to someone—a female researcher—in whom I see a great deal of positive potential. In that case, I would say: A research career is tough in so many ways, but it can also be great fun. The worst moments may be when you suffer gender-based discrimination from another woman. Don’t assume that those who fought for justice in their own generation won’t shut the gate hurriedly behind them. As you are a decent person, then I assume that at some point—looking at it all—you will feel like throwing in the towel: there is nothing wrong with that! There is plenty of good life to be lived outside the academy. Research is a vocation, not a cult. Follow your heart. Stay or go. But either way, please believe deeply that you and your contributions are valuable. You are not truly free if you don’t have a deep trust that you will be welcomed wherever you go. 

What is your greatest professional accomplishment so far?   

Can I leave that for future generations to decide? I think that is more in keeping with what I wrote above. But if you want to know which of my works I am most proud of right now, I would have to say the work I have done so far on my Future Fellowship at ADI. This grant has been an incredible opportunity to bring together a whole bunch of interesting people and different strands of my thought. I have not experienced anything like this—like the synergies and collaborations— previously in my career. I am so deeply pleased that Australia offers this scheme and I was one of the lucky ones to be able to run a Future Fellowship at ADI.