…:::jamieleigh:::…

i have finished “part a” of my mini documentary!

for my oral history project, i chose to research the broad topic of gender as it applies to the life histories of women. i wanted to interview various women of differing age ranges in order to analyse and compare the results within the context of feminist theory as it applies to historical realism. i felt that the interviews had a uniqueness to them as I wanted to interview mother daughter pairs at the same time, adding to the dynamic of the story telling.

there were many pitfalls during the whole process, but on the whole i am very enthusiastic about the results. this 9 minute excerpt of the oral histories shows the four final narrators; my paternal grandmother May and her daughter Rosemary (my aunt) along with my maternal grandmother Joyce and her daughter Joni (my mother).

Each mother speaks about her birth, childhood, women’s work and the choices that were available to them. i have called this ‘part a’ as i still have much valuable footage and each woman has expressed a keen interest in continuing to record these oral histories as a family project.

when analysing the histories that were shared by each of the women, i have chosen to take an intersectional theoretical approach rather than a strictly feminist perspective. as you will see, many different socially and culturally constructed categories interact on multiple levels and manifest as inequality in these women’s lives.