Abstract
This paper reports on a doctoral study which investigated why women are absent in positions of leadership within the Australian sugar industry's agri-political group CANE-GROWERS. Its purpose is to confront and unsettle the explanation that this is a result of 'the Italians' in the industry. The paper begins by highlighting the pervasiveness of this claim and the way in which it was so often presented during the research as a known and unproblematic truth. Following this, I draw on feminist post-structural theory to offer three challenges to the claim that it is because of 'the Italians' that men dominate decision-making positions in the sugar industry. These are: a singular Italian culture does not exist; constructions of being Italian are not fixed or absolute; and a range of possibilities exist for negotiating, resisting and transcending notions of what it means to be an Italian wife/woman/daughter. This discussion reveals the usefulness of feminist post-structural theory for avoiding monolithic and homogeneous constructions of identity.
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