Subjectivity in Women’s Learning: A Case for Participatory Inquiry.

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A participatory research model collected stories of the experiences and most pressing problems of mothers on welfare. Over 35 African American, biracial, and Anglo women from an urban community who received cash assistance in a midwestern, largely rural state participated in small group discussions at a job readiness program. An interactive narrative approach created a safe environment where women would be listened to, taken into account, and validated in their past experiences, current circumstances, and feelings. Focuses were issues of intersubjectivity as women interact across differences, across different positionalities and social locations of race, class, gender, and sexuality while sharing “common experiences” as they recognize themselves in others. The following themes were identified in their stories: concepts of wearing masks to seem other than one is, creating space for one another to speak, need for emergent discussion topics from women’s interests and concerns, and crossing borders from one social location to another with its inherent internal conflict. The reflective dialogue and collaborative storytelling, where one story triggers memory or reflection of another, presented women opportunities to make sense of the oppression, subordination, shaming, triumphs, and relentless drudgery of poverty. The most important issues to them were as follows: mothers on welfare having rights as well as responsibilities; conflicting roles of single mother, worker, and student/trainee; and ways in which women on welfare are pawns of the larger social system.