No abstract

Recent research has documented the rise of neoliberal and postfeminist sensibilities within young women’s sense-making and accounting activities in western countries – exemplified by the image of the “top girl”. Yet workplaces remain structured by male power and patriarchal norms. In this qualitative focus group study conducted in Auckland, New Zealand, we investigated how young professional women negotiate the contradictions between the “top girl” mode and gendered workplaces in their accounts of workplace difficulties. Our aim was to explore the affective dimension of participants’ identity struggles and to discuss possible implications for thinking about young professional women’s experiences of emotional distress. We identified shared narratives about how to “survive”, and suggest the imperatives bound up in them can be thought of as lessons that women learn to get by at work. In addition to reinforcing the status quo, they represent the negotiation of inherently conflictual professional identities, which places a considerable emotional strain on women.

While the analysis of depression narratives has become increasingly common practice within critical mental health research, this work rarely investigates how these accounts intersect with particular social identities. The recent emergence of the ‘top girl’ identity, a new cultural slot on offer for young women, is underpinned by the rise of neoliberal and post-feminist discourses in the Western world. To explore whether this new feminine subjectivity is indeed taken up by young women and how it shapes their experience of depression, we conducted in-depth interviews with 13 young professional women in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Based on a dialogical approach to theorising and researching subjectivity, we identified repetitive inter-relations between different voices-of-the-self and the voices of depression. The most pervasive pattern in the sample consists of what we have termed demanding voices associated with the ‘top girl’ position, which construct depression as an individual deficit thereby discouraging young women from exploring the sociocultural origins of their distress. In contrast, resistant voices emphasise relationality and a (re)connection with meaningful values and, therefore, seem to be productive for individual recovery.

This article is based on a qualitative investigation of contemporary female subjectivities at the intersection of two particular identities: being a “young professional woman” and “depressed.” Thirteen women working in both private and public sector roles in two major cities in Aotearoa New Zealand participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Employing a practice-based approach to analysis, my aim was to explore whether participants’ accounts are inflected by what cultural scholars call the “top girl” or “can-do girl” ideal and the implications for “recovering” from depression. I identified five identity practices which constitute the subject position of the “ideal depressed self” who (a) delivers no matter what, (b) puts on a brave face (particularly at work), (c) treats her depression medically, (d) looks after herself, and (e) works toward becoming more positive. A discussion of the discursive underpinnings, in particular, neoliberal and postfeminist rhetoric, highlights the harmful effects of this individualizing perspective.

This paper represents part of a study into what determines the action taken by individuals in distress. More specifically we were concerned to elucidate why some people attempt to find relief by seeking support and guidance from an appropriate agency, while others resort to self-aggressive behaviour. Two groups of subjects have been investigated, one consisting of certain clients seeking help from the Telephone Samaritans organization, while the other comprises patients who had engaged in acts generally described as ‘attempted suicide’ but better termed ‘parasuicide’ (Kreitman et al., 1969) or ‘deliberate self-poisoning or self-injury’ (Kessel, 1965).