Surviving the Academy: Feminist Perspectives

177 Pages·1998·2.68 MB·English

by  Danusia Malina

Surviving the Academy
Feminist Perspectives
This book is dedicated to Scott; and not dedicated to Jack and
Charlotte
Surviving the Academy
Feminist Perspectives
Edited by Danusia Malina and Sian Maslin-
Prothero
UK Falmer Press, 1 Gunpowder Square, London, EC4A 3DE
USA Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc., 325 Chestnut Street, 8th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106
© D.Malina and S.Maslin-Prothero, 1998
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
First published in 1998
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Jacket design by Caroline Archer
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Contents
Foreword Rosalind Edwards vii
Introduction 1
Section 1: Power: Challenging Care in Higher Education 7
Chapter 1 Women in Higher Education: The Gap between Corporate Rhetoric 9
and the Reality of Experience
Pamela Cotterill and Ruth L.Waterhouse
Chapter 2 From Earthquake Zone to Firm Ground: Challenging the Ideology of 19
Heterosexism in Health and Social Work
LesleyAnne Ezelle and Lindsay Hill
Chapter 3 Surviving the Institution: Working as a Visually Disabled Lecturer in 33
Higher Education
Sally French
Chapter 4 Women, Social Work and Academia 43
Lena Dominelli
Section 2: Maternalism in the Academy 55
Chapter 5 Mixing Motherhood and Academia— A Lethal Cocktail 57
Carol Munn-Giddings
Chapter 6 ‘All in a Day’s Work’: Gendered Care Work in Higher Education 69
Tina Barnes-Powell and Gayle Letherby
Chapter 7 Refusing to be Typecast: The Changing Secretarial Role in Higher 77
Education Administration
Sandra Wilkins
Chapter 8 Incorporation or Alienation? Resisting the Gendered Discourses of 89
Academic Appraisal
Robyn Thomas
vi
Section 3: Collective Action: Standing Still or Moving Forward? 1 01
Chapter 9 Creating Space: The Development of a Feminist Research Group 1 03
Avril Butler
Chapter 10 Women and Collective Action: The Role of the Trade Union in 1 13
Academic Life
Ann J.Kettle
Chapter 11 Who Goes There, Friend or Foe? Black Women, White Women and 1 23
Friendships in Academia
Sonia Thompson
Chapter 12 Uneven Developments— Women’s Studies in Higher Education in 1 37
the 1990s
Gabriele Griffin
Chapter 13 Coming Clean: On Being Feminist Editors 1 47
Danusia Malinaand Sian Maslin-Prothero
Notes on Contributors 1 57
Index 1 61
Foreword
The roots of this volume lie in the 1996 Women in Higher Education Network (WHEN)
conference. Why, about a century after women first fought for entry to higher education,
is it still necessary for women to ‘speak our place(s)’?
In the case of the student population overall, the situation looks quite good numerically.
The proportion of women UK undergraduates is roughly equivalent to the proportion of
women in the population as a whole. However, women students are still under-represented
in the physical science and engineering disciplines, and for the majority on education and
language courses. Thus there is a considerable gender divide, with women students still
concentrated in what have been considered traditionally ‘female’ subject areas (Department
for Education, 1994; Universities Statistical Record, 1994).
The situation for those who teach these women students is unsatisfactory. In no
disciplinary areas do the number of women academic staff outnumber those of men, even
in those areas where women form the majority of students. Moreover, the distribution of
women academics across the hierarchy of grades is remarkably skewed; women form the
vast majority of contract researchers and a small minority of senior lecturers and professors.
Overall, where institutional and managerial academic power is, women are not. Where
employment is insecure, low status and poorly paid, women are.
When it comes to difference between women academics, it is difficult for us to say much
about the combined effects of gender, ethnicity and class. While statistics are now collected
on students’ ethnic origins, there are no official figures on the number of black women
academics. And while we supposedly know about students’ class backgrounds from statistics
collected on their (mainly) fathers’ occupations, once women get an academic post they
automatically become classified as middle-class, even though from autobiographical
accounts we know they do not feel it (Mahoney and Zmroczek, 1997; Walkerdine and
Lucey, 1989). Questions of sexuality and disability, as well as the place of non-academic
women in the higher education system, such as domestic and clerical workers, are also
major silences in official statistics.
Unless we adopt a purely liberal equal opportunities agenda, however, we have to ask
what difference it would make if the diversity of women were equally represented in all
disciplinary areas and across the academic hierarchy? The entry of women as numerical
individuals onto the higher education scene does not necessarily shift the academic
knowledge-making project, or the exercise of academic power, as masculinist-defined
activities.
viii
There is now a relatively considerable body of feminist work that has unpacked the
assumptions behind traditional academic knowledge-making (including, Aptheker, 1989;
Belenkey et al., 1986; Rose, 1994; Smith, 1987; Spender, 1981). A boundary has been
supposedly objective, detached and neutral academic ways of knowing (characteristically
posed as masculine attributes) and detailed, subjective and emotional ways of knowing
(characteristically posed as feminine attributes). Some feminist thinkers have worked
towards an integration of the two ways of knowing theoretically (including those referenced
above). They have melded subjectivity and objectivity, love and science, dailyness and
generality, self and others, and process and effect, in an attempt to break down the
patriarchal binaries and hierarchical bases of academic knowledge. Some of these simple
attempts have been inspired by investigations of the experiences of women as students in
higher education. The impact of such work, though, has been negligible outside feminist
circles. This way of reconceptualizing the knowledge-making process seems to be both a
personal and political threat to those wedded to masculinist thought—amongst whom
women can be found.
For those women academics who have broken through the ‘glass ceiling’ and taken on
a managerial role, there is the question of the exercise of academic power. This poses
particular problems if they are feminists who wish to work in cooperative and women-
friendly ways. Women with power in academia have to exercise it in a culture which has
been shaped predominantly by men, and which latterly has been concerned with measuring
inputs and outputs, quality assessments, and competition between departments and
institutions. Few of the recent developments in higher education are conducive to feminist
ways of operating (Morley, 1995; Skeggs, 1995), and feminist academics may find
themselves uneasily fluctuating between patriarchal and feminist modes of management.
Thus, questions about women in higher education concern more than how many women
are in what positions, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate. The authors discuss
a range of issues affecting a diversity of women in higher education—their roles and practices
at different levels, in a variety of disciplinary areas—and explore the creation of spaces for
dialogue and cooperation.
Ultimately, women and feminism in the academy—as elsewhere—is about finding
another starting point for our understandings and theorizing, and our practices. The WHEN
conference and this volume provide two of the spaces for a diversity of women to speak
their concerns, and to raise questions about their place(s) in higher education.
Rosalind Edwards
Reader in Social Policy
Social Sciences Research Centre
South Bank University
References
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ix
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