Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy: Higher Education, Gender and Intersectionality

353 Pages·2019·2.95 MB·English

by  Gail Crimmins

Palgrave Studies
in Gender and Education
Strategies for
Resisting Sexism
in the Academy
Higher Education,
Gender and Intersectionality
Editor
Gail Crimmins
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
Series Editor
Yvette Taylor
School of Education
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, UK
This Series aims to provide a comprehensive space for an increasingly
diverse and complex area of interdisciplinary social science research: gen-
der and education. Because the field of women and gender studies is
developing rapidly and becoming ‘internationalised’ – as are traditional
social science disciplines such as sociology, educational studies, social
geography, and so on – there is a greater need for this dynamic, global
Series that plots emerging definitions and debates and monitors critical
complexities of gender and education. This Series has an explicitly femi-
nist approach and orientation and attends to key theoretical and method-
ological debates, ensuring a continued conversation and relevance within
the well-established, inter-disciplinary field of gender and education.
The Series combines renewed and revitalised feminist research meth-
ods and theories with emergent and salient public policy issues. These
include pre-compulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘early years’
and ‘lifelong’ education; educational (dis)engagements of pupils, stu-
dents and staff; trajectories and intersectional inequalities includ-
ing race, class, sexuality, age and disability; policy and practice across
educational landscapes; diversity and difference, including institu-
tional (schools, colleges, universities), locational and embodied (in
‘teacher’–‘learner’ positions); varied global activism in and beyond the
classroom and the ‘public university’; educational technologies and
transitions and the (ir)relevance of (in)formal educational settings;
and emergent educational mainstreams and margins. In using a criti-
cal approach to gender and education, the Series recognises the impor-
tance of probing beyond the boundaries of specific territorial-legislative
domains in order to develop a more international, intersectional focus.
In addressing varied conceptual and methodological questions, the
Series combines an intersectional focus on competing – and sometimes
colliding – strands of educational provisioning and equality and ‘diver-
sity’, and provides insightful reflections on the continuing critical shift
of gender and feminism within (and beyond) the academy.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14626
Gail Crimmins
Editor
Strategies for
Resisting Sexism
in the Academy
Higher Education, Gender
and Intersectionality
Editor
Gail Crimmins
School of Communication
and Creative Industries
University of the Sunshine Coast
Maroochydore, QLD, Australia
ISSN 2524-6445 ISSN 2524-6453 (electronic)
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
ISBN 978-3-030-04851-8 ISBN 978-3-030-04852-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04852-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965226
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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To the women in academia and beyond who take a stand against sexism
in all its guises and disguises, and to the resisters who have come before
and on whose shoulders we stand, this book is dedicated to you.
And to you, for sharing our resistance.
Acknowledgements
I fully acknowledge and offer my deepest gratitude to the authors of this
work, for their generosity, collegiality, smarts and strength. Their com-
mitment to supporting O/other women [academics] is both sustaining
and humbling.
I thank also the activists and writers whose work we build on and
redesign to resist ever-changing form/s of sexism and intersectional struc-
tural barriers prevalent in the contemporary academy. We stand with you.
I acknowledge Kristel Alla. Kristel—you are ever-competent and
patient, and I hope the academy opens a special place for you soon.
I thank also the consistently excellent editorial team at Palgrave, espe-
cially Eleanor Christie and Becky Wyde, for carefully guiding this book.
Finally, I thank my family: My parents for bringing me up to know
that there is no-one greater nor no-one lesser; to the girl whose hair and
heart cannot be tamed (stay wild Eadie); to Will for his understanding
of what is right, and kind; and for Dave for standing with me, always.
vii
Praise for Strategies for Resisting Sexism
in the Academy
“This collection is at once bold and brilliant, profoundly original and
cutting-edge because it does much more than just fill an important
gap in scholarship concerning the complexity and extent of sexual ine-
quality in academia, and the multiple ways in which sexism impacts
upon women academics, it advances direct action for all those who
work towards gender e/quality. Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the
Academy brings to the fore institutional, political, practical, pedagogi-
cal, onto-epistemological and methodological issues and uniquely con-
ceptualises engagements with intersectionality, community, space, place,
and practice and it does so affirmatively. It challenges the ways in which
the neo-liberal climate of universities exacerbate masculinist, patriarchal
practices, and generate gendered discrimination. This unique and inter-
national collection also offers judiciously chosen rich and diverse case
studies of strategies of feminist resistance to sexism and gender inequal-
ity. This is an absolute must read (and action) for all who move within
the academy and beyond.”
—Pam Burnard, Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations,
University of Cambridge, UK
ix
x Praise for Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy
“Resisting Sexism in the Academy offers practical strategies and tools for
individuals, organizations, and institutions to support active resistance
and disruption of patriarchy, sexism, and gender inequality in higher
education. A major contribution of the volume is the attention on sexist
policy in higher education. While the individual acts of resistance can
and have induced change, systematic change comes from dismantling
policies that uphold gender inequality in higher education. The collec-
tive cases and individual narratives from around the world chronicle
women’s active ways of knowing and resisting to create a better academy
for future generations.”
––Tamara Bertrand Jones, Associate Professor,
Florida State University, USA
“This edited collection confronts persistent challenges in higher edu-
cation related to sexist and gendered practices. It provides insight into
routine operations of the academy and in a refreshing approach, much
needed strategies aimed at identifying and deliberately resisting every-
day sexist practices and commonplace examples of gender inequality.
The book is characterised by its focus on resistance, action and the sig-
nificance of intersectionality, including matters related to ethnicity,
class/caste, sexual orientation, and particular patterns of work. It is a
call to action backed by practical strategies aimed at moving closer to
achieving gender equality in all dimensions.”
––Sue Grieshaber, Professor of Education, Director of Research,
La Trobe University, Australia
“This book illuminates the challenges faced by women while simulta-
neously highlighting women’s pre-emptive responses to the obstacles
they face in the academy. These global references to position, power,
and the undoing of these structures which impede women’s navigation
of higher education is both enlightening and motivational. Though
all of the chapters stand to inform the means through which sexism
in the Academy can be addressed, of particularly significant value are
the chapters which guide women in shifting the typical paradigms to
allow for truth telling and invocation of uplift of the experience and
wisdom of women in the context of Feminisms. Chapters like Lipton
Praise for Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy xi
and Crimmins’ New Bottles for New Wine: Recipes on Arts-Based Research
Practice as a Form of Feminist Resistance and Moxnes’ Working Across/
Within/Through Academic Conventions of Writing a Ph.D.: The Risks of
Daring to Write a Feminist Thesis not only provoke systemic thought and
change, but provide models for other women to join in the resistance. It
is certainly time to ‘pivot the center’! Brava.”
—Professor Denise Davis-Maye, Alabama State University, USA