A researcher into family violence at UNSW Canberra, Sophie Yates (pictured), has been awarded the first Rosemary O’Leary Prize for outstanding scholarship relating to women in public administration.
Dr Yates, a postdoctoral researcher, won the award for her article, Power, Process, Plumbing: Big G and Small g Gender in Victoria’s Family Violence Policy Subsystem.
The work was published last year in the Australian Journal of Public Administration.
Receiving the award at the International Research Society for Public Management conference dinner in Wellington, New Zealand, Dr Yates said that it was an honour to be the first recipient of the prize.
“This article is part of a collaborative special issue on gender, power and evidence-based policy aimed at implementing feminist principles in the editorial process as well as the research, so it is wonderful to have that work acknowledged,” Dr Yates said.
She asked people who worked in fields related to family violence what they meant when they said “gender”, and found a wide variety of definitions.
“Gender is a complicated concept. It is one word with many meanings that can change depending on who you are talking to,” Dr Yates said.
“This is concerning because…if practitioners don’t have a consistent understanding of foundational concepts like gender, this has implications for how well they can communicate and work together.”
She said a process-based approach to gender was more useful for understanding and responding to family violence than a narrow, category-based view.
The Rosemary O’Leary Prize is awarded to a person of any gender identity who submitted the best article on the topic of women in public administration published in the previous year.
