Feminist agency with/in the Australian education policy arena
Critical reflections on power, subjectivity and change
Maria Delaney
delaneymt@gmail.com
This study proposes that feminist agency is a critical issue for progressing social justice, and
explores the agency of 25 feminists through their narratives of engagement in the policy
work of Education Queensland over the past 30 years.
Ozga (1990) speaks of ‘the need to bring together structural, macro-level analysis of
education systems and education policies and micro-level investigation, especially that
which takes account of people’s perceptions and experiences’ (p. 359). To this end the study
employs an ethnographic approach and applies the lens of feminist poststructuralism and
concepts and ideas about power, knowledge, discourse and subjectivity to examine the
agency of participants and reveal understandings, practices and opportunities for
enablement. The backdrop is their strategic engagement with the different social, political
and economic agendas that have been mobilised over time, privileging particular discourses
and constraining and excluding others (Kenway, 1990; Taylor, 2003).
In the late 80s and early 90s, following State neglect of equity during a long period of
conservative government, Queensland, for a time, was particularly strategic in leveraging
available Commonwealth policies and funding for action on gender and social justice
(Lingard, 1983, 1990c). Since that period an increasingly regressive socio-political climate,
with the rise of conservative neoliberal politics and an anti-feminist backlash, has featured
stymieing of the agency of feminist bureaucrats (Franzway, 1986; Connell, 1987; Franzway,
Court & Connell, 1989; Sawer, 1990; Yeatman, 1990; Eistenstein, 1996; Blackmore, 2006,
2011b). Against this backdrop, the study asks not what happened, but it asks how? What
was it that enabled these people? What factors and practices make a difference? The
overarching questions which this study seeks to answer are articulated thus:
How can feminist agency be re/generated in the Australian education policy arena?

What discourses and practices have constrained or enabled feminist agency with/in
Education Queensland?

How can enabling understandings and practices be cultivated?