Susan Maushart

Dr Susan Maushart was born in New York and migrated to Australia in 1985. She holds a Ph.D in Communication Arts and Science from New York University.

Her impressive and varied experience includes a directorship with the Moore River Project in Western Australia, which resulted in the publication of Sort of a Place Like Home. The book, based on oral and archival history, presents an intimate and vivid picture of Aboriginal experience in the early 1900s in the Moore River settlement (later depicted in the film Beyond the Rabbit Proof Fence). The book won a Festival Award for Literature at the Adelaide Festival in 1994.

Both Maushart’s second and third books, The Mask of Motherhood and Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women, were published internationally and to widespread acclaim. Susan’s most recent book is What Women Want Next.

Susan writes a weekly column for the Weekend Australian magazine and lives in Perth.

Books by Susan Maushart

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  Sort of a Place Like Home

  Maushart makes extensive and imaginative use of oral sources and hitherto unseen documents, painting a vivid and intimate picture of the life experience of Moore River Native Settlement.

  Adelaide Festival Award 1994

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  Mask of Motherhood

  When a woman becomes a mother, her relationships, her professional identity and her sense of self will never be the same again. The fact is, the presence of children does not simply add to the lives of their parents, it transforms them completely.

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  Wifework

  Husbands and wives may say they are committed to equality. Yet, whether employed or not, wives still perform an astounding share of the physical, emotional and organisational labour in marriage — everything from housework to ‘sex work’. Wifework is lucid, funny, provocative and inspirational. Every woman will recognise its passionate message — and every man may have to.

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  What Women Want Next

  What Women Want Next is a guide for the perplexed of both genders. Susan Maushart unsheathes her notorious wit and unerring sense of style on the knotty question of feminine fulfilment in a postfeminist world. What do women want from love and sex, marriage and motherhood, friends, family and career?

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