Embodied values, consciousness, choices : evolution of values in women's lives - a case study

  • Monika G. Gaede

Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis

Abstract

What role do values play in professional women's lives with regard to their sense of self, their consciousness, and their perceived choices in the gender dynamics of social relations? This study investigates the evolution of values over a lifetime, their nature, dynamic and role in women's identity formation in the family setting. How might the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) have influenced the participants' new choices and gender relations, their conditioned beliefs about self-in-the-world and their conscious worldviews? A sample of twelve women born between 1937 and 1948 was interviewed in-depth about the values they grew up with, if and how their values changed during the time of the WLM, what they are valuing now in their midlife and what they see as important for their future. Three frameworks influenced this study. Ken Wilber's integral framework of All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) provided insight into the spectrum of consciousness. Spiral Dynamics (SD) gave an interpretation of the communal dimension of how values cluster into historically defined worldviews. The Australian Values Inventory (AVI), a Personal Development Profile, was used in this study to analyse the current values of the participants. Coming from an eco-feminist perspective, I used a case study approach in conjunction with the standardised AVI instrument. During the research process a wholarchical perspective of what I call Soul Purpose Ecology (SPE) emerged with its Wholarchical Dynamic Analysis (WDAnalysis), which I have used to interpret the data. The findings in this case study propose a soul-centred embodied ethics as prevention, healing and reorganisation of a threatened world.
Date of Award2006
Original languageEnglish

Keywords

  • values
  • women's rights
  • feminism

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