Feminist Critical Policy Analysis II : A Post-Secondary Education Perspective

Feminist Critical Policy Analysis II

Education Policy Perspectives General Editor:

Ivor Goodson, Professor of Education, Warner Graduate School, University of Rochester, USA; Chair in Education, University of East Anglia, UK

Education policy analysis has long been a neglected area in the UK and, to an extent, in the USA and Australia. The result has been a profound gap between the study of education and the formulation of education policy. For practitioners, such a lack of analysis of new policy initiatives has worrying implications, particularly at a time of such policy flux and change. Education policy has, in recent years, been a matter for intense political debate—the political and public interest in the working of the system has come at the same time as the breaking of the consensus on education policy by the New Right. As never before, political parties and pressure groups differ in their articulated policies and prescriptions for the education sector. Critical thinking about these developments is clearly imperative. All those working within the system also need information on policy-making, policy implementation and effective day-to-day operation. Pressure on schools from government, education authorities and parents has generated an enormous need for knowledge among those on the receiving end of educational policies. This Falmer Press series aims to fill the academic gap, to reflect the politicalization of education, and to provide the practitioners with the analysis for informed implementation of policies that they will need. It offers studies in broad areas of policy studies, with a particular focus on the following areas: school organization and improvement; critical social analysis; policy studies and evaluation; and education and training.

Feminist Critical Policy Analysis II: A Perspective from Post-secondary Education Edited by

Catherine Marshall

The Falmer Press (A member of the Taylor & Francis Group) London • Washington, D.C.

UK Falmer Press, 1 Gunpowder Square, London, EC4A 3DE USA Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007 © C.Marshall 1997 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 1997 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-97880-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0 7507 0654 6 cased ISBN 0 7507 0655 4 paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available on request Jacket design by Caroline Archer Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Preface

ix

1 Policy Analysis for Postsecondary Education: Feminist and Critical Perspectives Estela Mara Bensimon and Catherine Marshall Part I: The Legitimized Formal Policy Arena 2 Women Managing for Diversity in a Postmodern World Rosemary Deem and Jenny Ozga 3 Simply Not Good Chaps: Unravelling Gender Equity in a South African University Melanie Walker 4 Affirmative Action and the Status of Women in the Academy Judith S.Glazer 5 Legitimacy Maintenance: The Politics of Women’s Studies Catherine Marshall, Jean O’Barr and Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin Part II: The Politics of Silence and Ambiguity 6 Reframing Research, Informing Policy: Another View of Women in the Mathematics/Science Pipeline Frances K.Stage 7 Enough is Never Enough: Women’s Work in Academe Sandra Acker and Grace Feuerverger 8 Lesbian Existence and the Challenge to Normative Constructions of the Academy Estela Mara Bensimon

1

21

23 38

56 70 88

90

110 128

Part III: New Politics, New Policy 9 School Identities and Subject Positions: Building a Feminist Policy within Schools for Adults Geert ten Dam 10 Feminist Thinking in the Classroom Right Now bell hooks 11 From Margin to Marginality: A Feminist in a PE Classroom Robyn S.Lock 12 Feminist Pedagogy Theory in Higher Education: Reflections on Power and Authority Carmen Luke

143

146

159 163 172

Notes on Contributors

193

Index

197

Acknowledgments

The editor and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce articles: ‘Enough is never enough: Women’s work in academe’, by Sandra Acker. A version of this chapter appeared in a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education. Reprinted with permission. ‘Lesbian existence and the challenge to normative constructions of the academy’, by Estela Bensimon. Reprinted from Journal of Education, Boston University School of Education (1992) 174, 3, with permission from The Trustees of Boston University (copyright holder) and the author. ‘Feminist thinking in the classroom right now’, by bell hooks. Reprinted from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks, by permission of the publisher, Routledge, New York. ‘Teminist pedagogy and the politics of authority’, by Carmen Luke. Reprinted from Educational Theory (1996), with permission from the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and the Editor, Nicholas C.Burbules.

Dedication

To the thousands I’ve taught over decades, like Tammy and Beth, eighth-grade students in the 1970s. Beth earned good grades and wanted to be an astronaut; Tammy was in the low track and had learned to get by being seductive and sweet. I’ve wondered whether my teaching them US History, with asides on women’s suffrage and Rosa Parks as a symbol in the Civil Rights movement and projects documenting the portrayal of women on television and advertising made any difference. This book intends to make a bigger difference.

Preface

Can the chair of the Senate Education Committee fathom the critical theorist’s lecture on schooling and democratic practice? Will the board selecting the new chancellor understand the implications of the feminist critique of bureaucracy and leadership? Will the new chancellor work with the senator who has raised those critiques to change the curriculum for training and certifying teachers and administrators so educators will work more for social justice? Will commissions making recommendations to support women in science and math find ways to understand the experience of women students and faculty? What kinds of analyses will gain policy attention for the non-participants-those who have received messages that they do not belong, that the education system does not really want their kind? Will those conducting the study of teacher incentive systems or funding for extracurricular activities include insights focusing on effects on women and girls? The purpose of Feminist Critical Policy Analysis II: A Perspective from Post-secondary Education is to move us closer to being able to say ‘yes’. Policy researchers and analysts have gained and retained legitimacy by focusing on the problems and methods identified by powerful people. Those with a different focus are silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed, coopted, put on the back burner, assigned responsibilities with no training, budget, personnel or time, or otherwise ignored. Policies-authoritative agreements among powerful people about how things should behave been made without a feminist critical glance. These two volumes focus on those areas of silence, on the policy issues at the fringe and on the kinds of policy analysis methods, findings and recommendations that will disrupt but will also open possibilities. The two volumes identify theories and tools for dismantling and replacing the politics, theories and modes of policy analysis that built ‘the master’s house’. The individual chapters illustrate how and why to expand policy questions and policy analysis methods to incorporate critical and feminist lenses, demonstrating the promise of politics, analyses and policymaking that thoughtfully and thoroughly works to uncover any source of oppression, domination or marginalization and to create policies to meet the lived realities, needs, aspirations and values of women and girls and others kept on the margin. The volumes name and develop a new field: Feminist Critical Policy Analysis. The promise of this field lies in its incorporation of perspectives that ‘write against the grain’: the feminist, critical stance, with policy analysis that includes methods for focusing on the cultural values bases of policies; deconstruction of policy documents; analysis of a policy intention and its potential effects, such as Affirmative Action and Title IX; studies of the micropolitical, for example, the dynamics of a school board task force on sexual harassment, a tenure system’s effect on women academics, or the role of girls’ access to

computers in the implementation of computer policies; and analyses of policies, programs and political stances that do focus on neglected needs in schooling. Policymakers and analysts need to pause in order to recognize how issues of gender, the needs of particular groups like the urban poor, women and nondominant nationalities are left out of education policy analyses. In order to connect effectively, women need to take a hard look at the structures and arenas of policy. By presenting literatures, methods and examples, these books name the field: feminist critical policy analysis leaps at the challenge. The challenge emerged from a cavernous silence at the American Educational Research Association. Background: I was asked, several years ago, to write a chapter on ‘The future: Challenging theories and methods’ for the Politics of Education Yearbook. In the crowded AERA symposium celebrating and presenting the Yearbook, the symbolic silence of the discussant and the audience reaction to our presentation ‘Rethinking the public and private spheres: Feminist and cultural studies perspectives on the politics of education’ (Marshall and Anderson, 1995) helped me see how unfamiliar and scary the feminist agenda must be to politics of education and public administration professors, policy analysts and political scientists. We were challenging not only their views of literatures, policy arenas and issues, and modes of analysis, but also their power to dominate a field, their work environments and perhaps their personal relationships! Similarly, as I wandered through and beyond familiar liberal texts (including my own) on ways to make education systems more equitable, studies of women’s and girls’ experiences in education and feminist literatures, I saw a need to connect and to weave those understandings with the realities of power and politics. ‘We must always think political when we think educational’ (Apple, 1994:350). ‘Critical feminist consultant-that’s an oxymoron’, Gary Anderson and I concluded; we had drawn a blank trying to figure out which directors, deans, school boards or legislators would hire us to tell them how they were being oppressive. We also had fun trying to figure out what critical feminist consultants would wear. Although these volumes provide examples of what the feminist critical policy analyst can do, they may not provide a fashion guide. The world of the legislators, lobbyists and analysts I met in state capitals—their days, their careers, and their agendas-are foreign to feminists concerned with widening the canon, with feminist pedagogy, with women’s feeling undervalued on university faculties, with girls’ turning away from math and science. In turn, the world and words of critical theorists, women’s studies scholars, feminist poststructuralists, are foreign, and often offensive (in all senses of the word) to those who fit well into the policy world, those who think of bottom lines and tangible outcomes, and those whose careers depend upon their managing to garner support from voters and powerful groups. Policy analysis can be the communication device between the worlds of policymakers and those of critical and feminist scholars. My tasks, conceptualizing and creating these volumes, were supported by an international network, enabling me to include analyses from six different countries, from all levels of education systems, from new as well as experienced scholars, with chapters ranging from the microintereactions of identity politics to the macro-arena analyses of major education reform documents. Special thanks to Sandra Acker, Yvonna Lincoln, Sheila Slaughter, Carmen Luke and Estela Bensimon for providing insights and

connections for the postsecondary world and to the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane for the fellowship that cemented my connections to gender equity policy analysis internationally. A range of individuals provided assistance in finding good authors: thanks to Gaby Weiner, Lynda Stone, Jean Patterson, Cindy Gerstl-Pepin, Kerstin Carlson-LeFloch, Linda Grant and John Schopler for insights, reactions, edits and connections. Finally, taking off from Lorde’s provocative statement, The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’ (1984:112), these two volumes analyze what goes on in the master’s house (Part I, The Legitimized Formal Policy Arena) and how the master’s tools keep women’s needs silent and off-agenda (Part II, The Politics of Silence and Ambiguity). The volumes also contribute to fashioning new tools (Part III, New Politics, New Policy) by presenting cases where women’s values and needs were heard amid discussions of feminist, postpositivist and critical policy analysis.

References

APPLE, M. (1994) ‘Texts and contexts: The state and gender in educational policy’, Curriculum Inquiry, 24(3), pp. 349–59. LORDE, A. (1984) Sister Outsider, Freedom, CA, Crossing Press. MARSHALL, C. and ANDERSON, G. (1995) ‘Rethinking the private and public spheres: Feminist and cultural studies perspectives on the politics of education’, in SCRIBNER, J. and LAYTON, D. (Eds) The Study of Educational Politics, London, Falmer Press.

Catherine Marshall Chapel Hill, NC August, 1996

Chapter 1 Policy Analysis for Postsecondary Education: Feminist and Critical Perspectives Estela Mara Bensimon and Catherine Marshall Rummaging through a long-forgotten manila folder labeled Feminism, Sexism, Women we came across headlines such as: ‘Citing Sexism, Stanford Doctor Quits’ (Leatherman, 1991), ‘Walking Out on the Boys’ (Leatherman, 1992), ‘ZRage in a Tenured Position’, ‘A Leading Feminist Literary Critic Quits Post at Columbia, Citing “Impossible” Atmosphere’ (Heller, 1992), ‘Woman who took on Harvard Law School over Tenure Denial sees “Vindication”’ (Leatherman, 1993). These were stories about three female professors and their experiences in institutions and departments that are predominantly male in their faculty composition. The three professors are Frances Conley, the brain surgeon who quit her tenured professorship at Stanford Medical School after 25 years there because she wanted to protest what she described as a ‘hostile environment’ for women;1 Carolyn Heilbrun, the holder of an endowed chair, past president of the Modern Language Association, a leading feminist literary critic, who unexpectedly submitted her resignation after 32 years in Columbia University’s English department; and Clara Dalton who received a settlement of $260,000 after filing a complaint of sex-discrimination when she was denied tenure by Harvard Law School (Heller, 1992; Leatherman, 1991; Leatherman, 1993). The cases of Conley and Heilbrun, both of whom were tenured full professors with long academic careers, call attention to the particular ways in which universities can be unwelcoming to women, even after they have successfully completed the rites of the tenure passage. The experience of Dalton, whose work is in critical legal theories, calls attention to the difficulties women academics have in being accepted by mostly male peers as scholars, particularly when their work falls into a school of thought considered controversial. Dalton was denied tenure despite positive evaluations of her work by 12 external reviewers and only two negative reviews. Heilbrun’s comments about her decision to leave Columbia University describe academic life in a masculinist culture. ‘It’s like a marriage ending, sad, exhausting-and infuriating because Columbia will continue to be run by male professors who behave like little boys saying this is our secret treehouse club, no girls allowed”’ (Leatherman, 1993). Heilbrun’s comments were met with disbelief by her male colleagues, which is not surprising because the hostile environment she perceived is not a concrete thing or act but rather the cumulative effect of inequities which by themselves might appear insignificant but in combination can make women academics feel alien, exhausted and defeated. Among the inequities that

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Heilbrun experienced were denial of tenure to feminist scholars she supported and denial of admission to graduate applicants who specifically applied to study with Heilbrun. Several of Heilbrun’s colleagues interviewed by a New York Times reporter were unsure of her first name, referring to her as Carol, Karla, and Caroline; several of her colleagues pointed out that she is married to a highly successful man and thus never needed to work, meaning that unlike theirs her career was a hobby; that she violated collegial norms by revealing confidential information about tenure committees; and the chair of the department, a much younger man, said of her, ‘I truly respect Carolyn… I found her a very maternal figure…’ (Matthews, 1992). The premise of this book is that the theories and methods of conventional policy analysis are biased and therefore incapable of understanding the cases of the Heilbrun’s, Conley’s, and Dalton’s and the other thousands of women professors, students and staff as resulting from structures, norms, practices, values and culture that are gendered. Conventional policy studies in postsecondary education assume that academic structures, processes and practices are gender blind. The lack of attention to gender, both as conceptual category and analytical lens, means that the differential experience of women and male academics is attributed to individual differences rather than to the consequences of a male ordered world (Scott, 1988). From a conventional view, the stories of these three women would appear as unconnected individual cases; whereas from a feminist perspective they represent a pattern of institutionalized sexism. From a conventional policy view, the specific situations creating Heilbrun’s, Conley’s and Dalton’s problems can be identified and corrected. In contrast, from a feminist perspective, policy solutions are sought from a focus on transforming the organizational context, not just remediating the individual case. Women’s Place in Postsecondary Education: An Invisible Majority Even though women have constituted a majority of students in postsecondary education since 1979, earning more than half of all associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees, and more than one-third of all doctorates (Touchton and Davis, 1991), higher education as a field of study has overlooked almost entirely women’s roles as shapers and interpreters of the academy (Glazer, Bensimon and Townsend, 1993). Despite the strong presence of women in the student body, men outnumber women in positions of power, making the academy a world run by men. Nationally, about 88 per cent of presidents, provosts and chancellors are male, as are 87 per cent of full professors and 77 per cent of the trustees (Kolodny, 1993). Women who want to ‘join the procession of educated men’ (Woolf, 1966) continue to face a variety of obstacles related to their gender, yet, with the exception of the work of women scholars, in the great majority of research studies women are either invisible or they exist only in comparison to men. Despite a substantial policy-oriented literature on such topics as student retention, faculty productivity, leadership and administration of higher education, faculty careers, organizational change, resource allocation, teaching and learning and student outcomes, gender is not only rarely treated as a conceptual or analytical category, frequently it is completely overlooked. When gender is acknowledged it is usually treated as a demographic characteristic, thus, when reference is made to women, it is in comparison to men. From such studies we

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have learned that female academics are less productive than male academics, that females move up the academic career ladder much more slowly than males, that women have heavier teaching loads than males, that women earn less than their male colleagues, etc. What is missing from postsecondary education is women-centered policy analysis. This chapter provides the theoretical and methodological tools to produce policy analysis that redresses this absence. In order to provide a stage for the rest of the book, our purpose in this chapter is to answer two questions we anticipate will be in the minds of readers: 1) How do you read policy studies from a feminist perspective? And 2) How do you conduct feminist policy studies? The remainder of this chapter introduces the theoretical foundations underpinning feminist and critical theories, followed by a feminist critique of conventional policy analysis. Next we discuss selected studies whose conceptual design, analysis and interpretive methods exemplify feminist critical policy studies.2 What Makes a Theory Feminist and Critical? Even though we often speak of feminist analysis or feminist theory in the singular the reality is that just as there is not a single theory of policy analysis there is also not a single theory of feminist analysis. To engage in critical feminist analysis it is necessary to have an understanding of the many feminisms, particularly the ideological positions that inform the questions they pose, the decisions made about research design, and most importantly the conclusions they derive and the recommendations they make for change. We wish to make clear that there is considerable variation among the various strands of feminism and we also want to make clear which of these strands represent our definition of feminist critical policy analysis. Liberal feminism. Liberal feminism is a gentle, more politically/socially acceptable perspective, grounded in conceptions of individuals’ civil rights, emphasizing women’s equal access to domains where men dominate, chipping at the glass ceiling, relying on extant structures to make small changes to increase women’s access to schools, professions, legislatures and presidencies (Hawksworth, 1994; Marshall, 1996). The dominant ideology of liberal feminism is the attainment of equality. This perspective is commonly found in studies concerned with the status and achievement of women in positions and fields from which they have been traditionally excluded. The concern is more with equality in the sense of access and opportunity based on merit or credentials as opposed to equality of outcomes. Liberal feminists focus on public and professional life and want to assimilate women into all the levels of higher education and societal structures occupied by men. They seek the opportunity for women to compete for positions without being blocked by sex discrimination, and see higher education as the way for women to obtain the skills and credentials necessary for career success. The justification liberal feminists give for the education of women is based heavily on arguments of social utility (for example material productivity) and freedom of choice for individuals (Glazer, Bensimon and Townsend, 1993:4).

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Cultural feminism. Cultural feminist scholarship comprises works that posit women as different from men because from an early age they are socialized to take on roles associated with the female as mother, caretaker, nurturer, peacemaker, etc. This scholarship posits that women develop differently from men and therefore make judgments and decisions based on principles that give primacy to relationships and that are consistent with an ethic of caring (Belenky et al., 1986; Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Even though liberal and cultural feminisms have contributed to the development of feminist studies and have inspired institutional initiatives to improve the conditions of women in the academy, they also suffer shortcomings that limit the possibilities for social transformation. The liberal stance naively accepts token changes, expecting individual women to persevere in male domains (Marshall, 1996). Cultural feminism ignores that caring and nurturance have been relegated to the private sphere where they are rendered invisible because they are viewed as instinctual to women. In contrast, men’s work has always been associated with the public sphere and, regardless of whether it was manual or mindwork, it has always been viewed as labor that is materially compensated. Thus even though cultural feminism has attempted to elevate ‘women’s ways’ as valuable in the marketplace, (for example, women’s ways of leading are touted as more consultative) it is still the case that in the context of a masculinist organizational culture the emphasis on women’s ways legitimates stereotyping. Power and politics feminisms.3 Power and politics feminisms identify the range of structural, overt and subtle mechanisms through which men retain the power to define and control institutions, policy and women’s activities, options and even their identity. The power of men to manage the social construction of identity, with man at the center, makes women Other; what and who women are can be molded to work in support, for example, of patriarchy in family life and capitalism in the gendered hierarchies of work and professions. Control of legitimation processes determines what is viewed as valid and valuable in language, behavior, life and work goals, and the construction of knowledge. Accordingly, women’s talk is marginalized, women’s art is off-center, women’s sports insignificant. Power and politics feminist scholars view men’s power as pervasive and enduring because it is so solidly entrenched in the rules, activities and language of organized systems such as religion, education, health and law that we are not able to notice its workings. These scholars take Audre Lorde’s sharp pronouncement, ‘The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’ (1984:110) very seriously. For power and politics feminists the challenge is to construct alternative ways of problem-finding and policy analysis in order to transform organized systems to be responsive to differences. In contrast, for liberal feminists the challenge is to help women assimilate into the structures, values and norms of these systems. The major difference between the liberal and power and politics feminist stand-point is that the former is a strategy of accommodation whereas the latter is a strategy of transformation. The authors in this volume write from a variety of perspectives, including standpoint theory (see Chapter 8 by Estela Mara Bensimon), poststructuralist theory (see Chapter 12 by Carmen Luke), black feminist theory (see Chapter 10 by bell hooks). However, despite having different preferences for conceptual frameworks the common thread across these works is that they share the intellectual and political agenda of power

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and politics feminism: to conduct rigorous research on women and the academy in order to transform it. Postpositivist feminisms. Postpositivist feminisms, such as poststructuralism, post colonial, focus on the tremendous power men have derived by having always controlled language and the meaning system. Male dominance of language and meaning has enabled them to construct reality—history, knowledge and laws—from their vantage point and make it look as if theirs were the view from everywhere. Postpositivist feminists reject the concept of universals and posit instead a theory based on the analysis of differences, local context, specificity, for example, gender and race, and historicity (Barrett and Phillips, 1992). Postpositivist feminists use theories of ‘language, subjectivity, social processes and institutions to understand existing power relations and to identify areas and strategies for change’ (Weedon, 1987:40–1). The theories that make up postpositivism ‘can analyze the workings of patriarchy in all its manifestations—ideological, institutional, organizational, subjective—accounting not only for continuities but also for change over time’ (Scott, 1988:33). Critical theory. By illuminating the relationship between power and culture and the ideologies, knowledges and language, critical theorists have demonstrated how education, despite professing liberal values such as equal opportunity, nevertheless maintains systems, such as pedagogical approaches and curriculum content, that marginalize people, primarily on the basis of race and social class. (Ironically, critical theorists often ignore the intermix of class oppressions with sexism and racism.)4 Feminists have appropriated the analytical lenses of critical theory to understand how domination occurs in the intersection along lines of sex, race, sexual orientation and class. hooks notes ‘sexism has always been a political stance’ which ‘informs the construction of masculinity for men of all races and classes’ (1990:59). As important, critical feminists reject Marxist determinism and explore how individuals resist oppression and negotiate their identities actively. Combining Feminist, Critical and Policy Analysis Power and politics as well as postpositivist feminist analyses are critical, but they add the focus on women. Accordingly, in feminist critical analysis there is a recognition of how patriarchy is manifest in the control of women’s identities, including the identification of women with the private sphere, for example, portrayals of women academics as terrific teachers and unproductive researchers, and men with the public sphere. Feminist critical analysts view conventional policy studies methods as the products of disciplinary traditions that are androcentric and therefore reject them as the master’s tools. Consistent with the feminist project of reconstructing the disciplines to include the missing voices of the Other(s), critical feminist analysts consciously incorporate into their studies gender as well as race, class, sexual orientation or other signifiers that are implicated in the construction of identities. What, then, is feminist critical policy analysis? Borrowing from Patti Lather, we would say, ‘very simply, to do feminist research is to put the social construction of gender at the center of one’s inquiry…feminist researchers see gender as a basic organizing principle which profoundly shapes/mediates the conditions of our lives’ (1991:71). We see the project of feminist critical analysis as being twofold: 1) to critique

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or deconstruct conventional theories and explanations and reveal the gender biases (as well as racial, sexual, social class biases) inherent in commonly accepted theories, constructs, methodologies and concepts; and 2) to conduct analysis that is feminist both in its theoretical and methodological orientations. It involves reading policy studies with a critical awareness of how androcentrism is embedded in the disciplines, theories of knowledge and research designs that are foundational to conventional policy analysis and which ostensibly are neutral and neutered. Accordingly, feminist policy analysis involves the critique of knowledge gained from mainstream educational policy studies as well as the design of feminist educational policy studies. In this chapter we discuss both aspects of feminist policy analysis—critique and design—and provide examples drawn from postsecondary education studies. In the next section we provide a critique of conventional policy analyses as androcentric. What Makes Conventional Policy Analysis Androcentric? Conventional policy studies represent the master’s tool in that they are primarily a mechanism for powerholders to find cost effective ways to pursue their goals (Ball, 1990; Scheurich, 1994). To discern the master’s tools we need to deconstruct the concepts, problems, subjects and interpretations that formulate policy studies. For even though gender may appear to be absent or irrelevant, ultimately the decisions that emerge from such studies do have gendered consequences. As has been pointed out, ‘the notion of androcentrism suggests that assumptions, concepts, beliefs, arguments, theories, methods, laws, policies and institutions may all be “gendered”’ (Hawkesworth, 1994:105). Posing the woman question is central to uncovering androcentric origins in theories and interpretations. To pose the woman question means determining to what extent conceptual frameworks, research designs, methodologies and the interpretation of findings fail ‘to take into account the experiences and values that seem more typical of women than of men’ (Bartlett, 1990:837). The woman question pushes us to consider how the epistemological and ontological bases of conceptual frameworks may misrepresent the experiences of women thereby distorting our specific knowledge of phenomena—leadership, management, organization theory—as gender-encompassing (Bensimon, 1991). By posing the woman question, Bensimon documents the androcentric roots of organizational frames that are commonly used to understand how academic organizations function and suggests that the axioms of these frames (bureaucratic, collegial, political and symbolic) are more compatible with men’s experience and understanding of leadership than women’s. Typically androcentrism can be detected in the assumptions that undergird conventional policy analysis: An implicit belief in a singular or universal concept of truth. Sandra Harding (1986) points out that the belief in a universal subject found in patriarchal theories have the effect of policing thought by assuming that the problems of some are in fact the problems of humankind. This assumption is commonplace in postsecondary education studies where the influence of ‘academic man’ is perpetuated by the use of he as the generic term for professor or in the reference to faculty as a class of people, undifferentiated, disembodied and sexless. Ahistorical and decontextualized. It is not unusual for policy analysis to proceed as if subjects were without history and had the same relationship to their social environment.

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A major contribution of feminist scholarship has been their challenge of the conventional assumption that their is a correspondence between persons and their environments. By positing that women often live and work in social environments that oppose them (Westkott, 1985), feminist scholars put into question results of studies that attribute differences between women and men to individual characteristics. In postsecondary research there is ample documentation of the different rates of success between male and female academics; however, these studies rarely address the effects of a male dominant context on women’s productivity. For example, the fact that women faculty give birth and raise children is not taken into account in studies of faculty productivity (Finkel and Olswang, 1996). Similarly, the six-year probationary period is a product of an era when men were free to pursue their academic careers while their wives took care of the home and children. Conventional policy studies rarely question the incompatibility between the biological and tenure clocks or recommend a more flexible probationary period (Finkel and Olswang, 1996).5 Assumption of objectivity and observer-neutrality. Conventional policy analysis assumes that everyone sees the same thing (Pateman and Gross, 1986). In contrast, feminist scholars insist that the observer’s gender, race, social class and sexuality influence what research questions are asked, what is viewed as meriting analysis and how results are interpreted. For feminist scholars, knowledge that claims to be objective is really the ideology derived from the experiences and interests of privileged men (Harding, 1986; Hawkesworth, 1994). Evaluating women on the basis of male norms. Even conventional policy analysis is androcentric when it includes women and their experiences as the focus but utilizes male norms to interpret them. Barbara Townsend (1993), after having reviewed 772 articles published in the three principal journals of postsecondary education during selected time periods in the 1960s through the 1980s, found only 30 studies that actually focused on women or addressed topics of concern to women. She also found that, even when documenting discrimination, most of the articles relied on male norms and values as the analytical and interpretive standard applied to women. Consequently, women often appeared as the source of the problem, and the solution is for them to become more like men. Townsend points out that these articles ‘tend to project a world in which women must be better than men to succeed (compensatory scholarship) or one in which women’s problems are emphasized, e.g., their experiences with sexual harassment, hiring and salary inequities (bifocal scholarship)’ (1993:35). Conventional, positivist, androcentric policy analysis do serve dominants, those who have positions allowing them to define the problems for public arena discourse and decide which problems to declare irrelevant or not on the agenda. However, the severe limitations of such studies are becoming more obvious as more women enter the academy and begin to question the status quo. To sum up, the combination of power and politics and postpositivist feminism with critical theory expands the policy arena and policy studies in areas that have been neglected. These perspectives enable us to notice details that we overlooked in our past readings of policy studies such as the micro-interactions at meetings and their meaning; the use of language; the negotiation for identity. These perspectives also help us see a policy community as an abstract entity when in fact it is a collection of professionals and

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advocates whose values and biases define who should be involved in the policy arena and whose interests should be taken into account in the formulation of policy. Conducting Feminist Critical Policy Analysis In addition to providing the tools of critique needed to dismantle the master’s house feminist critical policy analysis is increasingly informing the design of studies. First, we offer a caveat: there is a misperception among those who are not knowledgeable of feminist theories that any work that focuses on women or issues that concern women is feminist (Townsend, 1993). An analysis of the demographic trends in graduate schools might highlight women’s status but not be feminist. On the other hand, if the study’s data were analyzed in connection to historically-embedded policy assumptions that structure universities around males, with a critique of the assumptions of current policies and programs, and presented an activist/ advocacy stance for remaking institutional practices to be responsive to women, then it would be feminist critical analysis. An example of the difference between policy studies about women versus feminist policy studies is provided in Chapter 6, ‘Reframing research, informing policy analysis: Another view of women in the mathematics/science pipeline’ where Frances Stage revisits one of her previous studies and re-envisions the findings and recommendations from a feminist critical perspective. In the original study, Stage and a colleague focused on the status of women aspiring to doctoral degrees in mathematics. In re-envisioning the original study from a feminist and critical perspective, Stage says, ‘In retrospect, as I review our chapter I see that our recommendations focused primarily on the students themselves and were reactive in nature. Rather than suggesting change within a part of the higher education system that is not working, we limited our remarks to those [recommendations] that might be most acceptable in academe’ (Chapter 6:105). For a study to be viewed as feminist critical policy analysis it is not sufficient to include women, it must include all aspects of each element discussed below: It poses gender as a fundamental category. Harding notes that ‘gender is a fundamental category within which meaning and value are assigned to everything in the world, a way of organizing human social relations’(1986:57). Acker refers to gender as ‘patterned, socially produced, distinctions between female and male, feminine and masculine’(1992:250). When gender is viewed as a fundamental category, the researcher is more alert to the various ways in which gender structures experiences, relationships, processes, practices and outcomes. Thus feminist researchers have done extensive work to expose the gendering that goes on both in gender-explicit and gender-neutral practices, in organizational processes that advantage men and disadvantage women, and in practices that are patterned in terms of stereotypical male and female roles (Acker, 1992). Feminist scholarship has been particularly helpful in pointing out that genderedness is not always overt and identifiable, such as sexist jokes as part of the culture of the workplace, but that in fact it is often ‘deeply hidden in organizational processes and decisions that appear to have nothing to do with gender’ (Acker, 1992:251–2). For example, in ‘Retrenchment in the 1980s: The politics of prestige and gender’, Sheila Slaughter’s (1993) research on retrenchment shows that retrenched fields were those with the greatest presence of women faculty and students. In ‘Total quality management in the

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academy: A rebellious reading’, Bensimon employs poststructuralist feminism to gender TQM, a popular corporate management approach that is now also the rage with academic administrators (1995). It is concerned with the analysis of differences, local context, specificity (such as gender and race), and historicity (Barrett and Phillips, 1992). Feminist analysts assert that, in order for women to have a subject status that is equal to men’s, women’s difference must be recognized (Irigaray, 1993) rather than suppressed. This is in direct contradistinction with the assumption that gender blindness is a prerequisite for achieving equality between men and women. It declares false the widely held belief that gender blindness—the claim that the professor’s sex is invisible-constitutes equal treatment for female and male academics. It declares that gender equity and a nonsexist academic workplace cannot be attained unless conscious attention is given to women’s individuality as well as to relations between women and men. The eradication of overt and covert discrimination against women requires critical and gender-based appraisals of academic structures, practices and policies as well as the elimination of language and interactions that create overtly hostile, patronizing or indifferent workplaces for women (Tierney and Bensimon, 1996). Blindness to gender is, for example, what causes women faculty who are pregnant to feel aberrant. It is also what causes most institutions to lack maternity leave policies. The data of feminist theory is the lived experience of women. ‘One distinctive feature of feminist research is that it generates its problematic from the perspective of women’s experience. It also uses these experiences as a significant indicator of the “reality” against which hypotheses are tested’ (Harding, 1987:7). The goal of the investigation is to answer questions and provide explanations about phenomena that women want and need rather than to answer the questions framed by men or by male controlled institutions. Further, the gender, race, class and cultural biases of the inquirer are assumed to be a part of the research and are subject to the same critical inquiry. The goal is to transform institutions. Feminist analysis questions the purpose of the academy’s structures, practices and values in order to do away with or reform those that disadvantage women and others. Conventional policy analysis approaches gender in relation to access and equity. The central question is why do women fare less well than men in their performance as professors, students, academic accomplishments, representation in positions of power, etc. Conceptually, the most grievous flaw of conventional policy analysis is that discrimination is posited as excluding women from participating in structures thought to be acceptable (Perreault, 1993). The goal of feminist policy analysis is to change institutions not to add women. Whereas conventional policy analysis problematizes women (blame-the-victim approach), feminist policy analysis problematizes taken-for-granted practices such as the tenure system, making the probationary tenure period seven years, and the like (an investigate-and-fix-the-institution approach). It is an interventionist strategy. The aim of feminist critical scholarship is to dismantle systems of power and replace them with more preferable ones (Pateman, 1986). Thus unlike conventional policy analysis where there is a pretension to neutrality and objectivity, feminist policy analysis is openly political and change-oriented. As a series of strategic interventions into patriarchal texts, feminist theory does not simply aim to reveal what is ‘wrong’ with, or false about,

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patriarchal theories—to replacing one ‘truth’ with another. It aims to render patriarchal systems and presumptions unable to function, unable to retain their dominance and power. It aims to make clear how such dominance has been possible; and to make it no longer viable (Gross, 1986:197). What Has Been Learned from Feminist Critical Policy Studies? What makes feminist critical analysis compelling? Why should scholars of postsecondary education employ such analysis? Although the number of postsecondary education studies that adopt a feminist critical perspective is very small, they have been instructive in revealing what previously had gone unnoticed. From these studies we have a better understanding of: • the academy as a patriarchal organization; • the constrained assumptions in equity policy in the academy; • the academic processes that reproduce gender inequities between men and women professors and students; • the gendered consequences of neutral practices. The Academy as a Patriarchal Organization Feminist scholars of higher education depict the academy as a patriarchal organization in that male dominance is institutionalized throughout the system. They challenge the notion that women, when they enter the academy as students and professionals, are entering a ‘sexually neutral world of “disinterested” and “universal perspectives”’ (Rich, 1993:123). The US university, according to Moore and Sagaria, in its origins and as it exists today, ‘is deeply imbued with patriarchal ideology’ (1993:236). The ideology translates into political choices, skewing knowledge bases, curricula, policy and practices. The maintenance of this patriarchal ideology is made possible by coalitions of men in positions of power to determine ‘who is chosen to study, who is chosen to teach and to do research, and what are the subjects most valued for research and instruction’ (1993:236). Citing classical works on the academy and the professoriate by prominent social scientists such as Blau, 1973; Bowen and Shuster, 1986; Jencks and Reisman, 1968; Wilson, 1979, they observe ‘This male-defined culture and its ideology are so profound that most writers have been unaware of its existence or have not found it troubling’ (1993:233). This blindness or resistance is explained, first, in recognizing that facets of organizational cultures become constitutional—creating mind-sets and logics which frame and filter thinking, action, even feeling (Sarason, 1982). It is explained, too, using Kuhn’s notion of resistance to paradigm shifts (Kuhn, 1970). Patriarchal ideology is also maintained through the control of scholarly journals, which are ‘embedded with male bias in the selection of editors and in the matter and method of scholarship published in their volumes’ (Moore and Sagaria, 1993:236). Content analyses of journals dedicated to the scholarship of higher education reveal that they have very little to say about women in general and rarely present studies that are grounded in feminist theory. Two separate studies found a paucity of articles on women:

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the few articles with a focus on women could be classified into compensatory literature where women are presented as having to compensate for something they lack or into bifocal literature where male norms are employed to determine how men and women compare (Townsend, 1993; Twombly, 1993). The problem with this literature is that they depict women as passive subjects, with no critique of the metanarrative of male-as-norm and women-as-other, and no sense of agency (women creating their own ways) or resistance to androcentric norms, political choices and institutional arrangements. Thus, they encourage and buttress policy solutions to help women overcome their deficits, leaving the patriarchal structures intact (for a fuller discussion of this problem see Chapter 6, by Stage). To explain the underrepresentation of women in the professoriate, compensatoryoriented research focuses on women’s not being socialized to be as careeroriented and ambitious as men as well as to their being responsible for child-rearing and other domestic duties which intrude into scholarly activities (Park, 1996). While feminist scholars do not dispute that these factors represent serious barriers to women academics, they maintain that ‘focusing exclusively on such external factors may lead us to overlook the ways in which sexism is embedded in the structures, norms, and policies of the university itself’ (Park, 1996:47). The Constrained Equity Policies in the Academy Luce Irigaray maintains that ‘In order to obtain subjective status equivalent to that of men, women must therefore gain recognition for their difference’ (1993:46). In the arena of policy analysis what this would mean is that unifying labels such as faculty, student, socialization, tenure, etc. would have to be redefined on the basis of particular subjectivities such as women faculty, black women administrators, Latina students, etc. Feminist policy analysis shows that the practice of universalizing concepts, as is customary in conventional policy analysis, defeats the intended purposes of affirmative action and equal access. Possibly one of the most important contributions of feminist policy analysis is that of showing that men are considerably more able to fit into the academic system as presently organized whereas for women fitting in depends on their ability and willingness to become more like men. Policymakers, policies and programs in the academy embed that androcentric assumption uncritically; so do the women, often, as they unwittingly collude, trying to succeed in institutions built with men in mind. Whether forceful policy is formulated affecting gender relations is a choice made within a gender regime. Recognizing the institutional and state patterns where power and policy and structures intertwine with gender is a crucial first step. As Apple says, ‘Gender and its regulation is not just an afterthought in state policy…what concerns us most here—education—[is] to see the role of the state in gender politics even when it is not overtly discussed in official documents’ (Apple, 1994:356). Studies of the policies formulated for gender equity (like Glazer’s Chapter 4, this volume) reveal ineffective implementation and offer insights for constructing ‘less domesticated and tamed’ policies and programs (Marshall, 1996). Pay inequities persist but we understand how they are created and why there has been limited success in closing the gap (Hagedorn, 1996). Male dominance on trustee boards, non-enforcement of Title IX, the abandonment of affirmative action, and the failure to assign financial and

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other resources to support gender-equity initiatives provide evidence that gender-equity policy is often token, symbolic (Marshall, 1996; Sadker and Sadker, 1994; Stromquist’s Chapter 3 in Volume I). From a conventional policy perspective inequities are viewed as gender-neutral and can be easily explained as the consequences of the academic market, i.e., ‘you have to pay people according to market demands’ or academic governance, i.e., ‘change takes time’ or the supply pool, ‘there just aren’t any women to hire/promot…’ In contrast, feminist critical explanations emerge from gender/power analysis of the policy assumptions that impede change or legitimize inequities. (For example, universities paying professors of English literature, education, engineering and business by market demands systematically advantages males and disadvantages women.) Similarly, in the field of education women are disadvantaged by the practice o0f paying higher salaries to former school administrators who join the professoriate (without a research track record) than to women who have played by the rules of the game, i.e., engaged in research and publications. Universities’ policies on sexual harassment for the most part focus on students. In ‘Betrayed by the academy’ (1996) Dey, Korn and Sax refocus on women faculty, identifying incidence and effects of sexual harassment on women’s careers, showing how a national survey, framed with questions grounded in women’s experience, can elicit more than surface data. For example, exploring whether one’s field and its gender balance influences incidence of harassment, they found, ‘although female-dominated health-related fields have a low reported rate of harassment, education—which also has a tendency to be female-dominated—has a relatively high rate (18.3 per cent)’ (1996:161). Notwithstanding the authors’ mistaken assumption that education is a female-dominated field (women predominate in the student body but not in the faculty, hence women are no more powerful) the incidence of sexual harassment they report is very alarming. The Reproduction of Gender Inequities Problem definition frames and drives the search for solutions. Policy studies and recommendations often frame ‘the woman problem’ as one of too few women; therefore the solution is to increase the number, thus improving the representation. Undeniably, adding more women particularly in positions of power should be a priority; however, we must also recognize that the mere presence of more women will not make much of a difference as long as most continue to go through college ‘essentially uneducated about the dominant and dominating ideology and practice of patriarchy to which they have been subjected’ (Moore and Sagaria, 1993:236). Relatedly, Holland and Eisenhart in a study of the role of colleges in the reproductions of patriarchy concluded that ‘despite the visibility of affirmative action programs and the women’s movement, the conditions that promote women’s acceptance of patriarchy have not been substantially altered’ (1993:306). These conditions include a peer-group culture that encourages and reinforces attractiveness and romantic relationships as primary sources of affirmation. Although the authors admit that the schools contribute to the creation of a patriarchal system they suggest that the influence of peer relations is much greater. In great part the invisibility of women in the curriculum contributes to women students’ lack of consciousness about patriarchy and how they uphold traditional gender roles that are denigrating (Rich, 1993).

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The Gendered Consequences of Neutral Practices The project of feminist policy analysis in education is to disable patriarchy primarily through the research strategy of gendering everyday practices and traditions through which academic culture is created and recreated. Feminist policy analysts, rather than accepting such practices and traditions as inviolate elements of academic culture, have engaged in a systematic deconstruction. One of the primary contributions of feminist analysis has been in the area of academic socialization through studies of women graduate students and women professors which dispel the widely held belief that socialization is gender blind. Typically socialization is understood as the initiation of prospective members to the culture of the institution, department and profession. Studies of graduate students in professional schools have documented the socialization processes involved in becoming a member of the medical or legal professions; studies of faculty have focused on the processes of moving from untenured assistant professor to a tenured senior professor. The literature on student and professorial socialization is voluminous and the great majority of it treats socialization as practices and rituals that newcomers must experience in order to become full-fledged members of a group. Becoming socialized or failing to do so is attributed to the individual. Consequently, in the literature on postsecondary education we will find explanations for college dropouts as the individual’s failure to engage in activities that facilitate academic and social integration. Similarly, explanations for the denial of tenure focus on the individual’s failure to engage in activities that facilitate research productivity. Feminist policy analysis maintains that the relations between men and women at the department and institutional levels create different socialization experiences for women and men. Feminist studies of women faculty (Aisenberg and Harrington, 1988; Clark and Corcoran, 1986; Turner and Thompson, 1993) report that female graduate students and beginning faculty are frequently not part of professional and social circles where newcomers learn about the nonacademic aspects of being a professor such as how to negotiate salary, travel funds, release time and equipment. Similarly, studies report that when women enter the academy as tenure track faculty they often continue to remain outside the social and professional networks and are thus less likely to know the unstated criteria that senior faculty use in making decisions about tenure and promotion. From a conventional perspective studies of the professoriate tend to look at why women are less successful than men in obtaining tenure and proceed to look for reasons in differences in productivity, effort, uses of time, work habits, etc. Feminist scholars approach the problem differently in that rather than asking why women fail to become socialized and integrated into the academic culture, they focus instead on documenting how seemingly neutral structures and policies contribute to the accumulation of advantage by males (usually white) and the accumulation of disadvantage by women. For example, in their study of women academics, Clark and Corcoran (1986) put gender at the center of their research by asking: ‘What experiences have women had in the anticipatory socialization and the entry stages of a career that have gender salience?’ ‘How were sponsorship processes (advising, mentoring, collegiality) experienced by these women? What processes of accumulating advantages or disadvantages affected career progress and satisfaction for these women? Did these women perceive sex-based discrimination relative to educational preparation and employment processes, review

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procedures, assignments, rewards, and recognition?’ (1986:400). Acker and Feuerverger’s Chapter 7 in this volume provides further insight into subtle aspects of reward systems. In ‘Administrative promotion: The structuring of opportunity within a university’, Sagaria and Johnsrud, like Clark and Corcoran, document how supposedly neutral and gender blind practices produce different results in the promotion of men and women administrators. Their study reveals that building an administrative career requires continuous upward mobility and that men were more likely to be sponsored for administrative promotions for internal vacancies. They point out, ‘individuals are sponsored or matched to a position through a process in which they are not systematically or openly evaluated for their merits for filling a position’ (1992:208). Based on their findings, they recommend that the practice of sponsorship of internal candidates be reshaped to promote affirmative action, for instance, by designating an internal candidate as ‘under consideration only when such designation serves the goals of diversity’ (1992:209). They also point out that promotion practices that protect internal candidates from external competition disadvantages women and minorities because so few are in positions from which they can be promoted. In ‘Research, teaching, and service: Why shouldn’t women’s work count?’ Shelley Park frames the problem of academic success for women as an institutional problem; rather than asking why women do less well, she asks how might the criteria for determining tenure contribute to differential patterns of success for men and women. She states: This article examines one way institutionalized sexism operates in the university setting by examining the gender roles and gender hierarchies implicit in (allegedly gender-neutral) university tenure and promotion policies. Current working assumptions regarding 1) what constitutes good research, teaching, and service and 2) the relative importance of each of these endeavors reflect and perpetuate masculine values and practices, thus preventing the professional advancement of female faculty both individually and collectively (1996:47). Park’s premise is that there is a gendered division of labor in the academy ‘wherein research is implicitly deemed “men’s work” and is explicitly valued, whereas teaching and service are characterized as “women’s work” and explicitly devalued’ (1996:47). Citing the findings of studies that show women spend more time on teaching and service activities than men, Park argues that the rank ordering of research, teaching and service disproportionately disadvantages women. Specifically, in line with feminist analyses of the gendered symbolism that characterizes the public/ private dichotomy, Park argues that research, the most valued indicator of academic performance, symbolizes mindwork which historically has been viewed as men’s (paid/rewarded) work in a public place of employment whereas teaching and service symbolize nurturing activities which historically have been viewed as women’s (unpaid/unrewarded) work in the privacy of the home. In an article aptly titled, ‘Becoming gentlemen: Women’s experiences at one ivy league school’ Guinier, Fine and Balin (1994) focuses on socialization as a process that

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disadvantages women in that success depends on their ability to behave more like men. Based in their study of women students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, they report three findings: 1) Despite identical entry-level credentials, by the end of their first year in law school, men are three times more likely than women to be in the top 10 per cent of their law school class (p. 3); 2) even though first-year female law students exhibit more socially conscious attitudes than males by the third year, females’ attitudes and aspirations are more like the men’s; 3) a large number of women feel alienated by the way the Socratic method is used in large classroom instruction and have lower participation in classroom discussions than males. From a conventional policy perspective these findings might inspire compensatory strategies to help women be better socialized to the norms and values of law school. For example, assertiveness training might be viewed as a solution to women’s discomfort with the Socratic method. However, these authors interpret their results from a feminist perspective and focus on the structure of law school as the cause for the academic differences between women and men. They conclude that gender neutral practices in the law school are shown to have ‘insidious effects of gender stratification in law school “socialization”’ (Guinier et al., 1994:98) and that it will not be sufficient to ‘add women’ but rather that there is dire need for a’reinvention of law school, and a fundamental change in its teaching practices, institutional policies, and social organization’ (1994:100). The studies we have discussed illuminate the elements of feminist policy analysis described earlier and demonstrate that expanding our definitions of policy and our view of the policy arena with feminist and critical perspectives, along with the use of gendering as a policy analysis strategy, reveals biases in practices that otherwise would be invisible. The Tools of Feminist Critical Policy Analysis6 Policy agendas have been constrained; gender questions and answers have been limited; higher educational journals with studies such as those in this volume are just now emerging. If reality is socially constructed and knowledge is culturally and historically determined, if politics and policy are enacted in micro-interaction as well as trustees’ meetings and formal reports, if we critique the patriarchally constrained policy arrangements in higher education—then what methodologies and theories can be used? Feminist, critical, postmodern and poststructural theories and cultural views of policy arenas demand new agenda-framing. Connecting postpositivist policy analysis with the feminist theories emphasizing analysis of power and politics does provide new ways of framing policy agendas for postsecondary education, and new policy analysis methodologies are emerging. Cost benefit analyses are less relevant than the microanalytic, sociolinguistic, ethnographic methodologies. Surveys are thrown away when it is clear that their questions, their Likert scales, etc., derive from theories that exclude women or that do not show an awareness of the genderedness inherent in social structures. Blue Ribbon Committee Reports and reform-minded documents go back to the drawing board when they make recommendations that benefit only an elite or that protect institutional stability and sacrifice programs that benefit marginalized groups, for example, restructuring strategies

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that result in the elimination of programs that have women as their primary beneficiaries. Thus, for every policy analysis and evaluation, the feminist critical analyst asks about every policy formulation; who benefits, who loses and how do females fare? Is the issue obviously about women (for example, should student medical insurance pay for abortions) or less obviously so (should the college raise the ceiling on the number of nontenure track faculty?). Until now, with our defining feminist critical policy analysis, such demanding questions were not on the agenda. Post-positivist policy analysis examines power brokers’ biases, contests over conceptions of goals and decisions, with an array of interests, problem definitions and mechanisms for change (DeLeon, 1994; Kelly and Maynard-Mooney, 1993; Stone, 1988). Interpretive policy analysis identifies the normative stances, the assumptions and judgments about the political condition that does not meet a standard. The analyst clarifies the ‘intentions and self-understandings of the agents involved’ and reconstructs the ‘practical reasoning’ (Jennings, 1983). Narrative policy analysis uses stories to uncover ‘the empirical, bureaucratic, legal, and political merits [that are] unknown or not agreed on’ (Roe, 1989:251) and identifies the better story. The analyst recognizes asymmetries and ‘differential access to economic and political power’ of stakeholders (Roe, 1989:266). Ultimately, we need to construct a feminist theory of the state to explain the maintenance of gender regimes in the academy and other institutions. We need womencentered theories to develop strategies for change, theories that integrate gender issues with the realities of power and politics (Bowles and Klein, 1983; MacKinnon, 1982). The master’s tools must be cast aside, in favor of discourse bringing into question all things that were common senses, structured and assumed, from male-female difference to male norms of leadership and power. A feminist theory of politics of education would assist in framing questions, policies and change strategies never seen before. All that is needed is the political choice to pursue these agendas. Notes 1 Frances Conley withdrew her resignation after she was persuaded by the university and her colleagues that changes would be made to improve the environment for female medical students and professors. 2 See Chapter 1 of Volume I for a more complete discussion of these points. 3 We use this term to encompass the feminisms that focus on the deeply embedded cultural, political, economic and institutional power that maintains and reproduces patriarchy, including: Marxist, socialist, existentialist, poststructuralist, postmodern and radical (see Tong, 1989 and Weiler, 1988 for further nuances). 4 This is probably due to their grounding in Marxism and abstract theoretical discourse written by white males. 5 A tenured and prominent woman full professor, on being passed over for an endowed chair, said to one of us: ‘I just know they think of me as not serious because I have a young child.’ So the incompatibility probably affects more than just tenure processes. 6 For a more in-depth discussion of methodologies see Volume I, Chapter 1, called ‘Dismantling and reconstructing policy analysis’ by Catherine Marshall.

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HARDING, S. (Ed) (1987) Feminism and Methodology, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. HAWKESWORTH, M. (1994) ‘Policy studies within a feminist frame’, Policy Sciences, 27, pp. 97–118. HELLER, S. (May 2, 1992) ‘A leading feminist literary critic quits post at Columbia, citing “impossible” atmosphere’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, A13–14. HOLLAND, D.C. and EISENHART, M.A. (1993) ‘Moments of discontent: University women and the gender status quo’, in GLAZER, J.S., BENSIMON, E.M. and TOWNSEND, B.K. (Eds) Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, Needham, MA, Ginn Press, pp. 293–310. HOOKS, B. (1990) Yearnings, Boston, MA, South End Press. IRIGARAY, L. (1993) Je, Tu, Nours: Toward a Culture of Difference, New York, Routledge. JENCKS, C. and RIESMAN, D. (1968) The Academic Revolution, Garden City, NY, Anchor Books. JENNINGS, B. (1983) ‘Interpretive social science and policy analysis’, in CALLAHAN, D. and JENNINGS, B. (Ed) Ethics, the Social Sciences and Policy Analysis, New York, Plenum Press. KELLY, M. and MAYNARD-MOODY, S. (1993) ‘Policy analysis in the post-positivist era: Engaging stakeholders in evaluating the economic development districts program’, Public Administration Review, 53(2), pp. 135–42. KOLODNY, A. (1993) ‘Raising standards while lowering anxieties: Rethinking the promotion and tenure process’, unpublished paper,pp.1–26. KUHN, T.S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (2nd Ed) Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. LATHER, P. (1991) Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern, New York, Routledge. LEATHERMAN, C. (September 18, 1991) ‘Stanford neurosurgeon decides to remain at university but sees continuing struggle against sex discrimination’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, A19. LEATHERMAN, C. (October 6, 1993) ‘Woman who took on Harvard Law School over tenure denial sees “Vindication”’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, A19–20. LORDE, A. (1984) ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’, in LORDE, A., Sister Outsider, Freedom, CA, Crossing Press. MAcKiNNON, C. (1982) ‘Feminism, Marxism, method and the state’, in KEOHANE, N., ROSALDO, M.Z. and GELPI, B.C. (Eds) Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–30. MARSHALL, C. (1996) ‘Undomesticated gender policy’, in BANK, B.J. and HALL, P.M. (Eds) Gender, Equity and Schooling, New York, Garland Publishing Co. MATTHEWS, A. (1992) ‘Rage in a Tenured Position’, New York Times Magazine. MOORE, K.M. and SAGARIA, M.D. (1993) ‘The situation of a women in research universities in the United States: Within the circles of power’, in GLAZER, J.S., BENSIMON, E.M. and TOWNSEND, B.K. (Eds), Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, Needham, MA, Ginn Press, pp. 227–40. NODDINGS, N. (1984) Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, New York, Teachers College Press. PARK, S.M. (1996) ‘Research, teaching, and service: Why shouldn’t women’s work count?’, Journal of Higher Education, 67(1), pp. 46–84. PATEMAN, C. (1986) ‘The theoretical subversiveness of feminism’, in PATEMAN, C. and GROSS, E. (Eds) Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory, Boston, MA, Northeastern, pp. 1–10. PATEMAN, C. and GROSS, E. (Eds) (1986) Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory, Boston, Northeastern University Press.

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PERREAULT, G. (1993) ‘Contemporary feminist perspectives on women in higher education’, in GLAZER, J.S., BENSIMON, E.M. and TOWNSEND, B.K. (Eds) Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, 3–21, Needham, MA, Ginn Press, pp. 3–21. RICH, A. (1993) ‘Toward a woman-centered university’, in GLAZER, J.S., BENSIMON, E.M. and TOWNSEND, B.K. (Eds) Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, Needham, MA, Ginn Press, pp. 121–34. ROE, E.M. (1989) ‘Narrative analysis for the policy analyst: A case study of the 1980–1982 medfly controversy in California’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 8(2), pp. 251–73. SADKER, M. and SADKER, D. (1994) Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons. SAGARIA, M.D. and JOHNSRUD, L.K. (1992) ‘Administrative promotion: The structuring of opportunity within a university’, The Review of Higher Education, 51(2), pp. 191–211. SARASON, S. (1982) The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (2nd Ed) Boston, MA, Allyn & Bacon. SCHEURICH, J.J. (1994) ‘Policy archeology: A new policy studies methodology’, Education Policy, 9(4), pp. 297–316. SLAUGHTER, S. (1993) ‘Retrenchment in the 1980s: The politics of prestige and gender’, Journal of Higher Education, 64(3), pp. 250–82. SCOTT, JOAN W. (1988) ‘Deconstruction equality-versus-difference: Or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism’, Feminists Studies, 14(1), pp. 33–50. STONE, D. (1988) Policy Paradox and Political Reason, Glenview, IL, Scott, Foresman and Co. TIERNEY, W.G. and BENSIMON, E.M. (1996) Promotion and Tenure Community and Socialization in Academe, New York, Suny Press. TOUCHTON, J.G. and DAVIS, L. (1991) Fact Book on Women in Higher Education, New York, American Council on Education and Macmillan Publishing. TONG, R. (1989) Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, Boulder, CO, Westview Press. TOWNSEND, B.K. (1993) ‘Feminist scholarship in core higher education journals’, The Review of Higher Education, 17(1), pp.21–41. TWOMBLY, S. (1993) ‘What we know about women in community colleges: An examination of the literature using feminist phase theory’, Journal of Higher Education, 64(2), pp. 186–210. TURNER, C.S. and THOMPSON, J.R. (1993) ‘Socializing women doctoral students: Minority and majority experiences’, The Review of Higher Education, 16(3), pp. 355–70. WEEDON, C. (1987) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell. WEILER, K. (1988) Women Teaching for Change: Gender, Class, and Power, South Hadley, MA, Bergin and Garvey Publishers, Inc. WESTKOTT, M. (1985) ‘Feminist criticism of the social sciences’, in RICH, S.L. and PHILLIPS, A. (Eds) Women’s Experience and Education, Harvard Educational Review, Reprint Series, No. 17, pp. 149–57. WILSON, L. (1979) American Academics: Then and Now, New York, Oxford University Press. WOOLF, V. (1966) Three Guineas, New York, Harcourt Brace.

Part I The Legitimized Formal Policy Arena

Those who own the means of enunciation are in a position to appropriate the dominant truth claims for their own purposes (Ferguson, 1984:174). Policies and programs to eliminate sexist practices, formulated and implemented through top official orders, courts and senates, are part of institutional cultures permeated with gendered ideologies and power relations. The ensuing four chapters put these policies and programs through feminist and critical scrutiny, demonstrating strategies and struggles to move higher education institutions away from their origins as institutions for the advancement of elite white male knowledge and privilege. What happens when women attain top positions in universities? Can they function free from stress and tensions over sexuality, free to experiment with facilitative leadership? In Chapter 2, Deem and Ozga’s research elicits from women in academic management their sense of becoming ‘colluded selves’, showing how university administration is a site where male power is reproduced, in ‘Women managing for diversity in a postmodern world’. Moving to South Africa, Chapter 3 adds to the primeval soup of policy deliberations the complication of maneuvering gender equity policies through formal committees still recovering from dismantling apartheid. In South Africa, national liberation has taken clear precedence over women’s rights, and while women’s rights have dealt with women’s triple oppression as women, wives and workers, race and class oppression was often seen as separate. ‘Simply not good chaps’ uses policy discourse analysis and interviews, uncovering the silencing and suppression of women’s advancement as white and colored males’ voices now combine, to the detriment of African men and all women. Chapter 4, ‘Affirmative action and the status of women’, assesses the evolution and outcomes from university women’s commissions and identifies the strategies for ensuring that system changing policy will be toothless: circumlocution around rhetoric about

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gender neutrality, making enforcement dependent upon the indulgence of men in power; keeping decentralized decisionmaking; overworking the women with enforcement duties. For a more empowering view, Chapter 5’s interview with Dr Jean O’Barr demonstrates ways to exercise leadership within the extant system to support women’s studies programs, with particular insights for articulating purpose and for demonstrating how an expanded canon enhances humanity. Reference FERGUSON, K.E. (1984) The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy, Philadelphia, PA, The Temple University Press.

Chapter 2 Women Managing for Diversity in a Postmodern World Rosemary Deem and Jenny Ozga Introduction This chapter is based on exploratory research analysing the values, experiences and practices of women academics who occupy academic management roles in a variety of higher education institutions in the UK. The backdrop to the study is a period of rapid, uncertain and externally imposed policy changes in UK higher education, including declining public funding, demands for greater public accountability with respect to research and teaching activities, pressures for enhanced efficiency and intensification in working practices, worsening staff to student ratios and considerable diversification in the curricula and the purposes of higher education. The global context of such developments includes worldwide constraints on public expenditures, increased economic competition between western countries and the Pacific rim, and a move from centrally-managed to market-led economies. Though our research is situated within a particular higher education system, many of the issues we raise are applicable to women higher education managers elsewhere. However, we are not making an essentialist argument about women: we are acutely aware of differences between the women we interviewed, and do not contend that all of their experiences are attributable to gender. Furthermore, drawing on Stanley’s distinction between research that is about them and research that is about us, we see ourselves as neither detached from our research nor positioned outside of it (Stanley, 1995). It is as much about us as it is about the women whom we have interviewed; without our own experiences as feminist managers in higher education we would never have undertaken this research. Why Research Feminist Academics? The 18 women in our purposive sample, whom Jocey Quinn and we contacted in early 1996 by means of telephone, e-mail or face-to-face interviews, were selected because they were either sympathetic to feminist values or committed to beliefs and ideas associated with equal opportunities for women. We suggest that feminist managers are more likely to be aware of gendered organizational cultures and more committed to making higher education equitable than academic managers in general. At a later stage of our research, we plan to interview a wider sample of academic managers, including men.

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We are aware that not all women managers in higher education hold feminist values (values which cover a wide spectrum of views about women and gender relations), and that those who do are likely to be clustered in non-science disciplines. Nevertheless, we have a particular interest in what Yeatman and Watson have called the femocrats, feminists working in public sector funded organizations (Watson, 1992; Yeatman, 1990). Yeatman and Watson have confined their analyses to feminists working in federal state bureaucracies. However, such analyses are equally applicable to women working in large educational organizations such as universities. Higher education institutions across the western world are in a process of transition from pre-bureaucratic or semi-bureaucratic organizations to organizational forms more in accordance with a globalized world (Kenway, 1994a; 1994b), market-driven economies, and the conditions of late or post-modernity. These conditions include uncertainty, ambiguity, reflexivity and cultural relativism (Giddens, 1990; Harvey, 1990). New organizational forms and cultures have considerable implications for higher education; along with Itzin and Newman (1995), we believe that culture is ‘a key site in which issues of power and identity are enmeshed and in which male power is reproduced’ (Itzin and Newman, 1995:5). Studying the experiences of feminist academic managers in higher education offers an interesting illustration of these processes in a policy context of considerable fluidity and uncertainty. The Policy Context—Higher Education in the UK UK higher education is funded through three Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCE in England, SHEFC in Scotland and HEFCW in Wales) and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI). The former division between the more vocationally-oriented polytechnics and the more academically-focused universities no longer exists. The polytechnics became independent corporations in 1989 and universities in 1994. The management and governance structures of the ex-polytechnics (now called new universities) differ considerably from those of the established or old universities. Senior academic managers in the new universities tend to specialize in management, while managers in the old universities often combine administration with teaching and research. There is also a third variety of higher education institution, the colleges of HE, most of which still rely on a university to accredit their degrees. All three have boards of lay governors, whose activities and public accountability have recently been a focus of enquiry by the governmentappointed Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life. Despite the widespread introduction of equal opportunities policies in higher education (Farish, McPake, Powney and Weiner, 1995), women have not been notably more successful in reaching senior posts in higher education than in other sectors of the labor market (Hansard Society, 1990; 1996). Most of the 103 UK universities are headed by male vice chancellors or chief executives. In 1995 there were six women holding such posts, with women comprising 23 per cent of all university career-grade lecturers and 5 per cent of all professors (Hansard Society, 1996). Whether or not the recent policy reforms in UK higher education have reduced the autonomy of universities and academics is still under debate (Eustace, 1994; McNay,

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1995; Tapper and Salter, 1995). There is more agreement about other changes. As Tapper and Salter note: The current relationship between the state and the universities can best be described as an attempt on the part of the Government to create a managed market: financed mainly by public money, the universities retain control of their own affairs while operating within centrally defined and regulated parameters that are managed by the Funding Councils (Tapper and Salter, 1995:66). The financial parameters include annual efficiency savings, restrictions on borrowing, reduced tuition fee levels for non-science subjects, and a massive reduction in capital expenditure funds for 1996/7. The financial stringencies have been accompanied by quality assessment of both teaching and research. This, in addition to the overall assessment of organizational and quality assurance structures run by the Higher Education Quality Council, has provided greater public visibility of what universities do. League tables of research assessment grades and teaching quality assessment scores are regularly published in the national press. There is as yet no systematic research which examines gender issues in relation to these new forms of accountability. It is possible that the effects of the assessment of research, with heavy emphasis on grants and publications, have a significant gender dimension to them (Evans, 1995) and that more women than men are involved in directing their energies towards teaching and teaching quality. As Skeggs has noted, students may also have different expectations of women academics as compared with their male counterparts (Skeggs, 1995). Yet at the same time, there are also pressures to minimize the visibility of gendered household divisions of labor in higher education. Though our respondents included women without children, mothers and women with a variety of other dependents, most made little mention of their lives and responsibilities outside their jobs. As well as financial and accountability pressures, the UK higher education system has also experienced a growth in the proportion of young people entering higher education, from 14 per cent of school leavers in 1986 to 31 per cent in 1993. A period of rapid growth was then followed by a virtual standstill in additional recruitment of home undergraduates (UK domiciled students), with financial penalties for overshooting and undershooting targets. Initially the former polytechnics recruited large numbers of students in order to capture more resources, at a time when they had no baseline research funding. Now those institutions are faced with massified higher education, a rapidly declining unit of teaching resource, and intense competition for research resources. This competition is heavily weighted in favour of the established universities. The student body has undoubtedly become more diverse than previously, with women now forming 48 per cent of the home undergraduate student population, though heavily concentrated in teacher and nurse education, librarianship, humanities and social studies (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 1995). In other respects diversity has been slower to develop. Only 3.8 per cent of home students self-reported as having a disability in 1994. Ethnic monitoring has only recently been introduced and is not yet fully reliable, but seems to show a considerable underrepresentation of many minority ethnic groups. Some

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55.5 per cent of black students are women and black students are more likely to study part-time than their white peers (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 1995). Social diversity is also threatened by widespread student poverty. Student growth has also been accompanied by changes to the organization of teaching. These changes include modularization, in which schemes of study are split into menus of short courses, and semesterization, a shift from three short terms a year to two longer semesters. Such changes, where implemented, have caused considerable upheaval for both students and academics, and have added to the uncertainties and ambiguities faced by academic managers. It is likely that in the future, more rather than fewer differences between institutions will emerge, with elite institutions focusing heavily on research and graduate teaching, some universities combining research and teaching, and a larger number concentrating on teaching only. Feminist Academic Managers Some excellent research and writing already exists on feminist academics (Acker, 1994; Maher and Thompson Tereault, 1994; Morley and Walsh, 1995). However, much of it focuses on teaching and research; where it touches on management issues, it often takes the form of an autobiographical account (David, 1989; Deem, 1996; Evans, 1995). There is little systematic research on women managers and their management practices in educational settings (Adler, Laney and Packer, 1993; Limerick and Lingard, 1995), though it is now clear that the scarcity of women in such positions does not result from a differential distribution of management capacity between men and women. Rather, a variety of interacting factors affect women’s promotion to and success in management posts. Obstacles include women’s reluctance to engage in an activity seen as masculine or macho, widely held stereotypes of women managers (Evetts, 1994), and judgments about their academic competencies (Maher and Thompson Tereault, 1994). In addition, there is a growing recognition that many management paradigms are themselves gendered (Korabik and Ayman, 1989; Smyth, 1989; Tanton, 1994). Finally, though feminist analyses which link gendered organizational cultures to women’s experiences as workers and managers are beginning to develop, these have not always examined cultures in educational settings (Acker, 1992; Cockburn, 1991; Itzin and Newman, 1995; Wolffensperger, 1991). In our research we have tried to document and analyse the perceptions and experiences of feminist women academics who have taken on management roles, either temporarily or permanently, at levels ranging from department headships to deans, pro-vice chancellor and chief executive roles. Of 18 women interviewed, 15 obtained their management role via internal election or promotion rather than by external appointment and most were undertaking their roles on a fixed-term basis. Our interviewees perceived senior university managers, often men, to have been more influential than internal or external networks of women in selecting them for their role, though the latter often provided important support systems once a management role had been assumed. Although most women interviewed operated in systems that included both specialist and generalist management roles, a majority found themselves in generalist roles, with a significant minority also trying to retain a high research profile. All our interviewees

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worked in teams, and although the majority of these were male dominated, six women worked mainly with other women. Asked how they perceived management cultures in their current institutions, seven said hierarchical, five collegial, and four thought theirs a mix of hierarchical at the top of the institution and collegial at the base. Only two women explicitly said that they thought the predominant management ethos was macho and the reasons given for this—early morning meetings, toughness and long working hours—are not necessarily any more strongly linked to gender factors than to organizational overload and ways of resolving difficult management problems. Asked where power lay in their institutions, few thought it lay with themselves: five said it lay with the Vice Chancellor or Chief Executive and 11 said it lay with the senior management team. We were interested in finding out about what the women in our sample saw as their own management strengths and the kinds of pressures they were working under. There was some consensus around strengths, including having a clear vision or set of priorities about what needed to be done; stamina, persistence and commitment; collaborative and consultative styles; a lack of concern for personal status; and finally, being able to do many different things at once. Some of these have previously been identified in research on women managers (Adler et al., 1993; Blackmore and Kenway, 1993; Marshall, 1994; Shakeshaft, 1987; Smyth, 1989; Tanton, 1994). However, it is very difficult to untangle gender influences from those connected to individual careers, particular management roles and the characteristics of different institutions. There was evidence in our sample of high stress levels and considerable pressure in women’s work lives, including long working hours (usually over 11 hours per day), operating to short deadlines, dealing with conflicting demands and having a sense of powerlessness. However, few saw pressure only as negative and most also emphasized their enjoyment of a wide range of responsibilities and challenges. Women Managers as Cultural Change Agents The many policy changes to UK higher education affect almost all aspects of that system—organizational, financial, pedagogic, curricular—and one of the underlying intentions of recent policies has been to bring about radical changes in the cultures and values of those working in higher education. Alongside other publicly-funded institutions, universities are being encouraged to move away from collegial, professionally-oriented regimes, which have been producer-dominated, towards more business-oriented cultures, which place greater emphasis on competitiveness, quasimarkets, performance indicators, efficiency gains and the needs of consumers (Keat and Abercrombie, 1991; Le Grand and Bartlett, 1993). Our data suggest that there are discernible differences between the existing cultures of established universities, former polytechnics and colleges of higher education, which condition the changes possible and also shape the extent of resistances. Thus, whereas old universities and colleges still retain elements of collegiality, the ex-polytechnics are much more bureaucratic. However, just as organizational features are changing, so too are the jobs of academics and managers of academics. What it means to be an academic is already the subject of considerable research (Altbach, 1995; Becher, 1989; Fulton, 1994) and some investigation has also been carried out on the management of academics

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(Middlehurst, 1993). However, little of this research pays attention to gender relations and identities. The women academic managers in our study (alongside their male peers) have among many other responsibilities the task of managing cultural change. In addition to their personal agendas for change, for example, equity initiatives, they must respond to institutionally driven changes and changes required by external agencies. All the women we interviewed were aware of these different aspects of change and saw it as their responsibility to make them all happen in ways that were open, collegial and collaborative, though there was clear recognition of the need to take unpleasant decisions when required. Only two interviewees thought women may not be tough enough to do this; the rest thought that the capacity to be ‘firm but fair’ (as several expressed it) was one of women managers’ defining characteristics. Obviously, the capacity to introduce, shape or resist changes also depends on the seniority of the post and the support or otherwise of colleagues, as well as on other cultural features of particular institutions. Feminist women’s ideas about the most appropriate forms of organizational change, with emphasis on equity, trust, negotiation and collaboration, are not necessarily those advocated by other colleagues. This can mean that women managers find themselves constantly challenging deeply-held ideas and assumptions, whether these are about gender or not. Gender-related assumptions may include Cockburn’s notion of an unwritten sexual contract that operates in organizations and house-holds, representing ‘the understanding men have historically entered into with one another concerning women…[In the] “workplace clause”…men guarantee each other rights over women in paid employment and in the organisations in which they work’ (Cockburn, 1991:62). Even if we dispute the existence of such a contract, all but three women interviewed perceived that their gender identities in some way influenced how their performances were judged. This was particularly so for those whose identities were not conventionally feminine: ‘I terrify lots of people, I’m very big, noisy and bossy, eff1 and blind a lot and wear outrageous clothes’ (dean, old university); ‘I’m not a mother and I’m not a heterosexual… I’m more visible than men, large with blond hair’ (departmental head of research, college of higher education). Some women recognized that though their gender was not always helpful, it had also been an advantage in settings where women had not previously done certain senior management jobs: ‘I suppose I got [the job] on the basis of my previous administrative/managerial experience…other women have been supportive…helping to create a climate where not [ever] having a woman PVC became more difficult’ (senior management team member, old university). It was also suggested by one woman that a relative absence of female role models at a senior level in universities actually made it easier for women to define their own styles and approaches: ‘the fact that there is no stereotype of a woman [in this job] means that I have a lot of freedom to do things the way I want to’ (senior management team member, old university). Thus cultural change takes many different forms and actually being a woman manager is part of that process of change, though perhaps not quite what policy reformers intended.

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Organizational and Managerial Cultures Fit for Women? We have pointed to some differences between higher educational organizations, but we also need to ask whether particular organizational forms favour the challenging of gender boundaries and equity barriers. The notion that organizations automatically change if more women are clustered at senior levels (Kanter, 1977) is increasingly questioned. As one interviewee said, ‘In general I find women more supportive although there are many who seem to be of the “pull up the ladder” variety once they have achieved.’ There is still disagreement about how and where women fit into different kinds of organizations. Whereas Pringle contends that sexuality is an important aspect of the pleasure both women and men gain from working in organizations (Pringle, 1989), Adkins argues that sexuality in employment plays a more negative role in women’s jobs than in men’s (Adkins, 1995). Others question whether women can ever fit into traditional organizations (Ferguson, 1984; Ramsay and Parker, 1992). Newman suggests that traditional organizational cultures in public sector organizations are a mix of administrative and professional discourses, with an emphasis on unequal, conventional familial notions of gender roles (Newman, 1995). Traditional organizational cultures include both gender hierarchies in jobs, in which women occupy lower grades and job tiers than men, and gender-typing of jobs. Gender-typing in higher education is evident in the division between secretarial, catering and cleaning staff and academics, and in the gender-typed differences between female and male academics in different academic disciplines. Several institutions from which our interviewees came resembled the traditional model. Newman argues that a very different set of cultural values and practices exists in competitive organizations, where the removal of bureaucratic constraints and the introduction of quasi-markets has led to cultures which focus on short-term targets, see people as costs rather than assets, and have a ‘macho cowboy regime’ (Newman, 1995:16). Informal hierarchies develop around the jobs ‘seen to be most sexy—those linked to dynamic thrusting entrepreneurialism’ (1995:17). These networks do not exclude women, but women who are not seen as tough may lose out. Newman sees the culture as heterosexualized, though women who can play the male games are treated as sisters of the ‘lads’. Competitive cultures were mostly mentioned by interviewees from the former polytechnic sector. By contrast, Newman suggests there is more space for women in what she calls ‘transformative’ organizational cultures, where there is greater emphasis on the longer term, the worth of people, leadership as communication and vision and the need to empower staff. Women’s communication and people skills make them particularly appropriate for this culture. Newman warns, however, that male power may still persist underground, despite beliefs that difference has been eliminated. Though Newman’s traditional organization corresponds closely to old universities, and the competitive model to ex-polytechnics, some interviewees perceived these two cultures to be intermingled. The transformative model did not figure in any response, though many interviewees felt they possessed the kinds of people and process skills that are valued in such organizations but which may be used to impose external changes, including new

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regulatory and disciplinary regimes, on the staff. Here we might part company with Newman and suggest that ‘new managerialism’ (Clarke, Cochrane and McLaughlin, 1994) may be an inseparable part of competitive cultures rather than transformative ones (Deem, Brehony and Heath, 1995; Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe, 1995). Issues about sexuality in organizational cultures were mentioned by few respondents, though sexuality is clearly an issue which feminist organizational scholars should not ignore (Adkins, 1995). Though lesbian women in our sample were more likely to emphasize sexuality than heterosexual women, sexuality was not necessarily seen as a greater problem for lesbians than for heterosexual women. As one woman said, ‘Since being a lesbian I feel relaxed from the sexual politics that I had to engage with at work before.’ Issues related to sexuality, for both heterosexual and lesbian women, often remain somewhat invisible in organizations, only to emerge in unanticipated circumstances, as, for example, when women members of committees are quizzed by male colleagues about their personal circumstances, including whether they have children. The kinds of managerial strengths identified by our interviewees—consultation, fairness, collaboration, concern for people as well as tasks—did not always mesh well with the predominant managerial discourses thought to exist in institutions. Comments included: ‘It’s hierarchical…seat of the pants stuff’ (deputy head of research, former polytechnic); ‘very male—early morning meetings, long hours, residentials’ (senior management team member, former polytechnic); ‘unprofessional, short term, goes for easiest options’ (department head, old university); ‘strong emphasis on line management and hierarchical model of executive responsibilities’ (assistant dean, college of higher education). Contradictions and ambiguities were recognized: ‘consensual/collegial traditions with centrist/managerial tendencies’ (member of senior management team, old university). There were also some who were determined to alter organizational cultures and managerial regimes which did not fit their own image: ‘the management regime has already changed a fair amount since I arrived and I am in the business of changing it more. It was already fairly flat at senior level but I want to make it work better’ (senior management team member, old university). Clearly the degree of fit between women managers, particular organizational cultures and management regimes is dynamic rather than static and is something to which feminist managers make a considerable contribution. Diversity, Equity and Equal Opportunities Policies All of our interviewees professed some belief in policies directed at achieving greater equity in organizations concerned with education. Though all of the represented institutions had such policies, seven women suggested that staff and students in their organization were not particularly committed to implementing them. The successes and failures of such initiatives in higher education have already been extensively researched (Farish et al., 1995; Webb and Liff, 1988), but not always with much attention to organizational cultures. Equity initiatives have been an important vehicle for encouraging the increased recruitment of women academics to managerial positions in higher education. However, the spirit that informed equal opportunities initiatives is being severely challenged by

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new managerialism, which emphasizes diversity rather than equity (Clarke et al., 1994) and the introduction of competitive cultures into higher education. These involve marketdriven diversity of funding sources and purposes, greater responsiveness to employers’ demands, and government campaigns for reduced public spending. The management skills needed to operate in the marketplace may reflect new values (competitiveness, entrepreneurialism, action) not present in traditional organizations (Newman, 1995). Whereas the concepts of equity and equal opportunities imply an underlying concept of social justice for all and active endeavours to achieve this (Deem, Brehony and Hemmings, 1992), the notion of diversity invokes the existence of difference and variety without any necessary commitment to action or redistributive social justice. As we saw earlier, the UK student population is beginning to display more diversity but the same is not true for academics. Without the continuance of equity policies it is unlikely that the latter problem will be addressed; nor will greater diversity in student access be matched by attention to equitable outcomes. Many of our interviewees said that maintaining equal opportunities policies was a major priority for them, though several pointed out financial and other pressures which militated against this, including the temptation to try to attract more affluent students and to use informal male networks to recruit academic staff as the research performance stakes are raised. A number of other threats to equal opportunities policies were perceived: ‘there’s complacency about the lack of black students’; ‘I sense a backlash, even from students’; ‘we currently exploit low waged staff, part timers, etc’. On the other hand institutional supports for the maintenance of equity policies were also apparent: ‘the Vice Chancellor and Personnel are committed’; ‘it’s part of our marketing strategy though better on disability than race or gender’; ‘signed up to Opportunity 2000 [a national initiative aimed at promoting more women]’. The severest tests of competitive cultures and market-led education systems for such commitments have perhaps yet to emerge. Not least, it will be interesting to see whether student poverty turns out to have gendered dimensions which reduce women students’ participation. However, paradoxically, as salaries in the higher education sector fall relative to other professional occupations, there may be a greater feminization of certain sections of the academic profession. Womanaging Education—Transforming, Coping or Collusion? Women as Coping Managers Some writers argue that the greater feminization of management in public sector jobs, severe public spending constraints, and demands for increased commitment and improved performance on behalf of professional workers are combining to make women managers prime targets for carrying the burden of transformation, for coping rather than managing (Davies, 1992). Davies’ view is supported by Shaw’s (1996) research on pace of life, which suggests that it is women who are most acutely aware of intensification of their lives and work. However, there are two caveats here. First, research on femocrats in Australia has suggested that when feminists become involved in senior posts in bureaucracies, there is no predictable range of outcomes (Watson, 1992; Yeatman, 1990).

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Second, feminists are beginning to realize that pessimistic analyses of women’s situations not only assume similarity rather than diversity but also miss opportunities for pleasure, enjoyment, creativity and transformations (Blackmore, Kenway, Willis and Rennie, 1994; Itzin and Newman, 1995; Kenway, Willis, Blackmore and Rennie, 1994; Pringle, 1989). So, while there are elements of our research data which support views about high stress levels, intensification of pace of life and coping styles of management, there is also abundant evidence that stress is socially constructed and may be positive as well as negative, and that coping is not necessarily a good description of how feminist women academic managers do their jobs. Pressure, Hard Work and Social Isolation The evidence from women managers presented in our chapter can be interpreted in a number of different ways. On the one hand, there is a picture of an education sector under pressure, having made the transition from an elite to a mass form. That transition is far from complete, and under the label of diversity new hierarchies of esteem are emerging and old ones are consolidated. As Johnson has noted for English education as a whole, there is an historical tendency to reinvent tripartite divisions (Johnson, 1989). On the other hand, there was considerable emphasis among our interviewees about the need to be competent across a broad range of areas of activity (research and teaching as well as administration), and to demonstrate expertise in areas like finance where there is still a stereotypical assumption of women’s ignorance or incapacity. Succeeding in trouncing such stereotypes is evidence of women’s capacity to succeed as managers. However, we also found indications of emotional pressure and isolation. Despite the adoption of team-based work forms by most of the respondents’ organizations, our respondents reported a sense of exclusion from male networks and a sense of fairly solitary, unsupported work existences: ‘The university doesn’t have many senior women…there’s a tendency for one or two of us to get asked to sit on committees. Sometimes it causes problems because some men don’t know how to relate to you…they are prickly and can’t engage in small talk with you after meetings…it’s difficult to feel part of the camaraderie’ (department head, old university). There are also problems caused by different management styles adopted by women and men: ‘Many women in management want to encourage involvement, make the best of everything, but boys want to play their games and don’t like it when you draw attention to that… Male management is very unhappy with criticism or critique, and it gets very defensive and sneery’ (associate dean, former polytechnic). This material gives some sense of the emotional pressure felt by some women managers. These women feel a need to demonstrate competence and all the characteristics of masculine, rational management in order to counteract inappropriate or hostile assumptions about women managers. In addition, the baggage of feminism and the experience of being female combine to produce further pressure on women managers that may not be present for their male colleagues.

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Women in Management—Empowering Others or Being Exploited? As Grundy has pointed out, sustained commitment to feminism in a woman manager calls for the use of power to empower others, negotiation of agreed institutional goals and processes and a relationship to justice and equity and facilitative leadership (Grundy, 1993). Feminist beliefs provide strength and motivation, but commitment to such goals can also increase stress. Certainly some of our respondents perceive immense scope for the use of their management strengths in the new policy and organizational contexts of higher education. But perhaps these same strengths can be exploited and manipulated in order to make externally imposed changes seem more palatable to staff and students? Blackmore points out that ‘women’s “propensity” for more democratic modes of decisionmaking, their emotional management skills derived out of their familial and pedagogical experiences, and their emphasis on curriculum and student welfare is an exploitable resource for new styles of management’ (Blackmore, 1995:49). This view was not, however, widely shared by our respondents. Yeatman’s study of the changing Australian state (1990) takes as one of its themes the tensions facing femocrats, that is, women whose career position is a consequence of representing feminist interests in a formal way within public sector bureaucracies. She contends that ‘the claims of the new social movements…are symbolically coralled as those of “the disadvantaged groups”. Femocrats have participated in these agendas of symbolic pacification, but they are also positioned to contest them’ (Yeatman, 1990:xii). She finds a considerable gender dimension to ‘people and process’ oriented management: The current emphasis on financial accountability management is one which disarms all who advocate, and may benefit from, the process and people style. The former, which is thoroughly masculine in cultural style and orientation, may succeed even in removing most of the resources on which equal opportunity…units at present depend… The people and process orientation is progressive, but it must remain a very fragile…management style unless it is connected up to a substantive grounding and development of the values behind it (Yeatman, 1990:27). Some of our respondents indicated that they were trying to make such connections and in so doing, were contributing to the empowerment of other staff. The Colluded and Ambivalent Self? We have found an interesting comparator for our data in studies of management in private sector institutions (Casey, 1995). In her analysis of the impact of new managerialism on the workforce of a multi-national corporation, Casey points out that traditional work forms offered the possibility of dissent, conflict and solidarity, including the fostering of an identity as a public servant, or expert, within an alienating bureaucracy. The new work regimes, she argues, are more like patriarchal family structures with their all-encompassing but apparently benign and inclusive structures and processes. Casey labels one response to these regimes as the ‘colluded self’. This response is compliant, dependent on the company, ambitious, manipulable and visibly dedicated. The colluded self experiences little discontinuity between work life and other

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life and is characterized by compulsive optimism. This is an extreme example of the dangers of the new managerialism, which may use the co-optive elements of women managers’ careers to produce collusion and potential denial of any feminist practice. More common in Casey’s findings were examples of managers, both women and men, who were trapped by ambivalence about the new processes and discourses. This sense of ambivalence comes through in some of our interviews but as with the colluded self notion, we need to be wary of interpreting others’ accounts in a way that they might not find acceptable or appropriate to them, even if this means that claims of interpretive validity take precedence over claims of theoretical validity (Maxwell, 1992). On that basis, we have evidence of women who are coping but under conditions of considerable pressure and stress, women who are in the act of transforming their institutions and women who feel ambivalent about the changes in higher education but also identify strongly with their organizations. Whether any of them are colluded selves, we leave our readers to judge. Conclusion Preliminary analysis of our research data has produced a complex picture of feminist academics acting as managers in higher education, a picture which admits both optimistic and pessimistic readings. Feminists do not always achieve the feminist goals that helped them to strive to enter managerial posts (Watson, 1992) and they may implement strategies which are contradictory or have unexpected outcomes. Those women managers determined to develop and retain diversity and equity in their institutions may find either that achieving diversity and equity is impossible or that diversity and equity are more a function of the market than of social justice. However, the possibility also exists that some will succeed in achieving at least some of their goals, since the ambivalence and uncertainty of higher education’s postmodern new times may assist them. So too may the greater fluidity of power in organizational cultures marked by new managerialism and competitiveness, despite other more problematic features of those cultures for many women. Yet it is also difficult to avoid altogether the impression of a particular, gendered engagement that is inherently ambivalent and uncertain, though also reflective and reflexive. On what do we base this conclusion? First, it should be noted that the creation of a core and peripheral workforce is still in process in UK universities and the gendered nature of that division is becoming more marked. Women managers are having to implement this strategy, which may run contrary to their principles. We have already noted the tension between economically-driven management and the people and process approach. In the current climate, women managers may find themselves using the people and process approach to make palatable the human costs of doing more for less. Thus any coincidence of women’s strengths as managers, the predominant organizational cultures in higher education and the processes upheld by new managerial discourses must be viewed critically. The apparent connections may become ties that bind the women managers to their institutions, thereby contributing to the surface amelioration of the unacceptable.

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Like the femocrats in state bureaucracies, feminist academics who become managers in higher education still face many challenges to their aspirations and values, as well as to their sanity and health. Yet if they were not there at all in the hierarchies of our higher education institutions then many of the battles that feminists have fought would already have been conceded. Acknowledgments We would like to offer particular thanks to all the women who agreed to be interviewed and to Jocey Quinn for her skill in talking to many of them over the phone. Also thanks to our many women friends who have provided our own support networks, in the face of our own managing tasks, and helped to make it possible for us to continue to be researchers as well as academic managers. Note 1 A term for using swear words and obscenities.

References ACKER, J. (1992) ‘Gendering organisational theory’, in MILLS, A. and TANCRED, P. (Eds) Gendering Organisational Analysis, London, Sage. ACKER, S. (1994) Gendered Education, Buckingham, Open University Press. ADKINS, L. (1995) Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market, Buckingham, Open University Press. ADLER, S., LANEY, J. and PACKER, M. (1993) Managing Women, Buckingham, Open University Press. ALTBACH, P. (Ed) (1995) The International Academic Profession, Princeton, NJ, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. BLACKMORE, G., KENWAY, J., WILLIS, S. and RENNIE, L. (1994) ‘What’s working for girls? The reception of gender equity policy in two Australian schools’, in MARSHALL, C. (Eds) The New Politics of Race and Gender, London, Falmer Press, pp. 183–202. BLACKMORE, J. (1995) ‘Breaking out from the masculinist policies of education’, in LIMERICK, B. and LINGARD, B. (Eds) Gender and Changing Educational Management, Sydney, Hodder. BLACKMORE, J. and KENWAY, J. (Ed) (1993) Gender Matters in Educational Administration and Policy, London, Falmer Press. CASEY, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society after Industrialism, London, Routledge. CLARKE, J., COCHRANE, A. and MCLAUGHLIN, E. (Ed) (1994) Managing Social Policy, London, Sage. COCKBURN, C. (1991) In the Way of Women, London, Macmillan. DAVID, M. (1989) ‘Prima donna inter pares? Women in academic management’, in ACKER, S. (Eds) Teachers, Gender and Careers, London, Falmer Press, pp. 203–15. DAVIES, C. (1992) ‘Gender, history and management style in nursing; towards a theoretical synthesis’, in SAVAGE, M. and WITZ, A. (Eds) Gender and Bureaucracy, Oxford, Blackwells. DEEM, R. (1996) ‘Border territories: A journey through sociology, education and women’s studies’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17(1), pp. 5–19.

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DEEM, R., BREHONY, K. and HEMMINGS, S. (1992) ‘Social justice, social divisions and the governing of schools’, in GILL, D. and MAYOR, B. (Eds) Racism and Education: Structures and Strategies, London, Sage, pp. 208–25. DEEM, R., BREHONY, K.J. and HEATH, S. (1995) Active Citizenship and the Governing of Schools, Buckingham, Open University Press. EUSTACE, R. (1994) ‘University Autonomy; the ‘80s and after’, Higher Education Quarterly, 48(2), pp. 86–285. EVANS, M. (1995) ‘Ivory towers: Life in the mind’, in MORLEY, L. and WALSHE, V. (Eds) Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change, London, Taylor and Francis, pp. 73–85. EVETTS, J. (1994) Becoming a Secondary Headteacher, London, Cassell. FARISH, M., McPAKE, J., POWNEY, J. and WEINER, G. (1995) Equal Opportunities in Colleges and Universities, Buckingham, Open University Press. FERGUSON, K. (1984) The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy,Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press. FULTON, O. (1994) ‘Remote and ineffectual dons? The academic profession at the end of the twentieth century’, Inaugural lecture, Lancaster University. GEWIRTZ, S., BALL, S. and BOWE, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education, Buckingham, Open University Press. GIDDENS, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity. GRUNDY, S. (1993) ‘Educational leadership as emancipatory praxis’, in KENWAY, J. and BLACKMORE, J. (Eds) Gender Matters in Educational Administration and Policy, London, Falmer Press. HANSARD SOCIETY (1990) Women at the Top, London, Hansard Society. HANSARD SOCIETY (1996) Women on Top: Progress over Five Years, London, Hansard Society. HARVEY, D. (1990) The Condition of Post Modernity, Oxford, Blackwells. HIGHER EDUCATION STATISTICS AGENCY (1995) Data Report on 1994 Student Survey, HESA. ITZIN, C. and NEWMAN, J. (Ed) (1995) Gender, Culture and Organisational Change, London, Routledge. JOHNSON, R. (1989) ‘Thatcherism and English education’, History of Education, 18(2), pp. 99– 122. KANTER, R.M. (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation, New York, Basic Books. KEAT, R. and ABERCROMBIE, N. (1991) Enterprise Culture, London, Routledge. KENWAY, J. (1994a) ‘New education in the new times’, Journal of Education Policy, 9(4), pp. 317–33. KENWAY, J. (Ed) (1994b) Economising Education: The Post-Fordist Directions, Victoria, Deakin University Press. KENWAY, J., WILLIS, S., BLACKMORE, J. and RENNIE, L. (1994) ‘Making “hope practical” rather than “despair convincing”: Feminist post structuralism, gender reform and educational change’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15(2), pp. 187–210. KORABIK, K. and AYMAN, R. (1989) ‘Should women managers have to act like men?’, Journal of Management Development, 8(6), pp. 23–32. LE GRAND, J. and BARTLETT, W. (Ed) (1993) Quasi-markets and Social Policy, London, Macmillan. LIMERICK, B. and LINGARD, B. (1995) Gender and Changing Educational Management, Australian Council for Educational Administration. MAHER, F. and THOMPSON TEREAULT, M.K. (1994) The Feminist Classroom, New York, Basic Books. MARSHALL, C. (1994) The New Politics of Race and Gender, London, Falmer. MAXWELL, J. (1992) ‘Understanding and validity in qualitative research’, Harvard Educational Review, 62(3, Fall), pp. 279–300.

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McNAY, I. (1995) ‘From the collegial academy to corporate enterprise; the changing cultures of universities’, in SCHULLER, T. (Eds) The Changing University, Buckingham, Open University, pp. 105–15. MIDDLEHURST, R. (1993) Leading Academics, Buckingham, Open University Press. MORLEY, L. and WALSH, V. (Ed) (1995) Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change, London, Taylor and Francis. NEWMAN, J. (1995) ‘Gender and cultural change’, inITZIN, C. and NEWMAN, J. (Eds) Gender, Culture and Organisational Change, London, Routledge, pp. 11–29. PRINGLE, R. (1989) Secretaries Talk, London, Verso. RAMSAY, K., and PARKER, M. (1992) ‘Gender, bureaucracy and organisational culture’, in SAVAGE, M. and WITZ, A. (Eds) Gender and Bureaucracy, Oxford, Blackwells. SHAKESHAFT, C. (1987) Women in Educational Administration, Newbury Park, CA, Sage. SHAW, J. (1996) Why the Rush, London, Routledge. SKEGGS, B. (1995) ‘Women’s studies in Britain in the 1990s: Entitlement cultures and institutional constraints’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 18(4), pp. 475–85. SMYTH, J. (Ed) (1989) Critical Perspectives on Educational Management, London, Falmer Press. STANLEY, L. (1995) ‘My mother’s voice’, in MoRLEy, L. and WALSH, V. (Eds) Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change, London, Taylor and Francis. TANTON, M. (Ed) (1994) Women in Management: A Developing Presence, London, Routledge. TAPPER, T.R. and SALTER, B.G. (1995) The changing idea of university autonomy’, Studies in Higher Education, 20(1), pp. 59–71. WATSON, S. (1992) ‘Femocratic Feminisms’, in SAVAGE, M. and WITZ, A. (Eds) Gender and Bureaucracy, Oxford, Blackwells. WEBB, J. and LIFF, S. (1988) ‘Play the white man: The social construction of fairness and competition in equal opportunity policies’, Sociological Review, 36(3), pp. 532–51. WOLFFENSPERGER, J. (1991) ‘Engendered structure: Giddens and the conceptualisation of gender’, in DAVIS, K., LEIJENAAR, M. and OLDERSMA, J. (Eds) The Gender of Power, London, Sage. YEATMAN, A. (1990) Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats, Sydney, Allen and Unwin.

Chapter 3 Simply Not Good Chaps: Unravelling Gender Equity in a South African University Melanie Walker The brutal truth, which some white men might well find difficult to accept, is that the inclusion of black people and women in the decisionmaking structures of universities will raise standards, not lower them (Brenda Gourlay, Vice-Chancellor, University of Natal, and first female Vice-Chancellor in South Africa, UN Focus, 1994). Gender and South African Society This chapter focuses on the making and the implementation of a gender equity policy at a historically black South African University1, and the impact of this policy on academic women in particular. Importantly, any policy is constructed within a particular social, political and historical context and prevailing lines of power; the forces that make for inequalities in South Africa lie within, but also without the educational terrain. Universities in South Africa, no less than elsewhere in the world, do not stand apart from mass social relations, in particular the subordination of women to men. Instead, universities are deeply imbued with the norms and values of a society structured through difference and hierarchies of gender, race, ethnicity and class, so that institutional cultures are marked by cumulative customs, rituals, symbols and practices, established over time by the dominant white male social group. Thus universities produce and reproduce practices of exclusion, although the specifics of local contexts also shape the particular trajectory of such exclusion. Gender inequalities in South Africa differ somewhat from other Third World countries in that girls’ entry into and participation in both schooling and undergraduate studies in higher education are comparable with that of advanced industrial countries (IPET, 1994). Unlike girls in some of these countries, however, subject choices at school still reflect the dominant expectations of girls’ future role in the home and family. Not surprisingly, women’s and girls’ career directions and participation in the labor market are still gender specific, with women concentrated in low-skilled and low-status work (Wolpe, 1994). The exceptions are teaching and nursing, although more women are entering the fields of law and medicine than previously. Indeed, it would be fair to say that patriarchal relations and gender stereotyping continue to shape social relations and practices in all South African cultures (Ramphele, 1995).

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It is also important to note that political struggles in South Africa have been inimical to the emergence of a feminist movement. Women’s liberation was seen as secondary to the more urgent task of national liberation, certainly until the late 1980s (Wolpe, 1994). A majority among women who suffer from the triple oppression of being wives, blacks2 and workers has been particularly critical of western feminism. These women equate western feminism with white women and see it as irrelevant or worse, exploitative of black women’s lives and stories. What is at issue is that white women have until very recently been part of a privileged dominant elite and have been placed in positions of social power over black men and women, even though they have been allocated a passive, compliant identity in relation to white men. Not only will the lives of white women have been differently shaped by gender, but the experiences of gender oppression by African women are likely to be qualitatively different from those of Indian and colored women. Thus our gendered experiences are always affected by our racial and class identities, and this in turn will have effects for gender policies. The centrality of race in the making of South African social experience means that we are all complicit, consciously or otherwise, in sustaining the idea of race. Even though legislation has erased the most public effects of racialized discourse, ‘the polarizing logic of apartheid is deeply imprinted on our psyches and is evident even in our most antiracist moments’ (Soudien, 1995:2). Race and ethnicity should be further framed by the emerging contestations over difference: some would argue that old apartheid ethnic identities are being retraced and reinscribed, and race used to mobilize. Still others would say that these South African identities are neither inherently reactionary nor liberatory, so that the possibility exists to build links between expressions of ethnic identity and a liberatory inclusive politics that aspires to a genuine nonracism. At issue here is that these patterns of racial privilege and exclusion will also have effects for gender equity. Gender and South African Universities In our universities, all academic women are marginalized; we are all Other academics (Acker, 1994), whose professional identities are constructed in terms of a taken-forgranted white middle-class male norm. The exclusion of women from certain academic identities, and the silences around the construction of these same identities according to white male norms, is deeply embedded in the university system of South Africa. Copied from the colonial masters, this system is ironically captured in Virginia Woolf’s description of her own experience of the structure and culture of Cambridge University in the 1920s: I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me… I was actually at the door which leads to the library itself. I must have opened it for

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instantly there issued…a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction (1929/1994:10–12). Now of course, we are all fellows of our own universities, we may now well walk where we will (but not after dark), even if we must endure the male gaze as we traverse our campuses. We may even use the libraries, and a few (very few) of us are professors.3 But in Woolf s terms, we are both locked out of certain identities and locked in to others. It may even be that academic women will have to use as well as transform the master’s tools. According to old African traditions, ‘once you’ve been conquered, you submit yourself to the norms and the rules of your conqueror, and you master those rules so you can conquer again’ (Cawe Mahlati, head of a regional broadcasting authority, quoted in the Mail and Guardian, 15–21 March, 1995). But the difficulty then lies in not becoming honorary men, or one of the boys, even as we try not to reveal our vulnerabilities in the bear pit. How then might we develop strategies to subvert male hegemonic power through the production of alternative meanings and practices that position women and men in less oppressive and more participatory and collective social relations? In universities, how do we achieve this without demonizing potential male allies? As Mamphela Ramphele, the first African woman to be appointed ViceChancellor of a South African university, has noted: As a Black woman, I have often found myself in the company of ‘ unconscious’ White South African men where I am treated as ‘one of the boys’ or as representative of the ‘other’. It is not malicious treatment, but rather a combination of naivete and fear of the unknown. It is not easy to face an uncertain future without the comfort of a familiar symbolic framework (1994:94). Consequently, says Ramphele, we need new transgressive symbols so that blacks and women have symbols of success to which they can relate. Also, the history of blacks and women must be strongly represented, and the silence replaced by statements which reflect their own reality. In the case study which follows, I will trace patterns of power, of speaking over silence, and of the allocation of values (Rizvi, 1985, quoted in Marshall, 1991), as well as struggles over whose version of reality counts, through the making and impact of a gender equity policy. In this, I construct neither a history nor a traditional policy case study, but draw eclectically on university documents, relevant publications, interviews with selected senior women academics, and my own insider4 status as a female academic at the institution. Such traces constitute thus a kind of archeology (Foucault, 1977) in which critical moments and vignettes are excavated to illuminate and explore the ‘minutiae and complexities’ of turning policy into practice (Farish et al., 1995:99).

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Theorizing Policy My account is informed by the understanding that policies, as Ball (1993) argues, are made and implemented within existing lines of power and patterns of inequality: ‘the policy, its context, its interpreters and implementers all have histories’ (Ball, 1993:11). Further, policy ‘is not exterior to inequalities, although it may change them, it is also affected, inflected and deflected by them’ (Ball, 1993:12). Thus problems of policy must be understood in particular contexts, contexts both enabling and constraining of policy subjects: policies do not normally tell you what to do; they create circumstances in which the range of options available in deciding what to do are narrowed or changed… Thus, the enactment of texts relies on things like commitment, understanding, capability, resources. Practical limitations, cooperation and (importantly) intertextual compatibility (Ball, 1993:12– 13). The point here is that policy ‘texts’ (Ball, 1993) are saturated by power and produced through compromise and contestation, so that one cannot predict from policy documents how they will be taken up or read in context. Nor are contexts static; as Ball notes they shift and change as key interpreters and shapers of policy move on to be replaced by different actors, possibly representing different interests, so that one has a situation of ‘interpretations of interpretations’ (Rizvi and Kemmis, 1987, quoted in Ball, 1993:11). Ball further argues that policy constructs its own discourse or truth (for example, an equity discourse and a regime of truth that women should benefit from affirmative action), shaping what can be said or done and by whom. We ‘take up positions constructed for us within policies’ (Ball, 1993:14), and the policies circumscribe discursive conditions of possibility; voice is redistributed as a previously subjugated discourse shifts from the margins to the center. Moreover, our responses will be shaped by ‘discursive circumstances that we cannot, or perhaps do not, think about’ (1993:15), that is by the discourses available to us. For example, many men will uncritically support social constructions of merit that benefit typical male career trajectories and so disadvantage women candidates for posts (see Heward, 1994). This is not necessarily done deliberately (although it may be), but because these men do not have the language or experiences to make a discourse of non-sexism available to them. Finally, prevailing social, educational and institutional structures and relations of power will ensure that only certain voices carry authority and hence are heard when it comes to distributing social goods and outcomes.

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A Case of Gender Equity at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) Framing the Context A few key things need to be borne in mind about UWC. It was never intended by the apartheid state to do more than produce bureaucrats, preachers and teachers, and hence its intellectual identity as a site of knowledge production is fragile. This has had effects for institutional and individual confidence. White men have always controlled senior positions, and academic women are located in the lower ranks where teaching loads are heaviest and hardest, and resources most scarce. UWC was established in 1960 as an ethnic university for people classified by the apartheid state as ‘colored’ (of ‘mixed race’). It was built literally in the bush, on the sandy windswept Cape Flats, about 20 kilometers north of the city of Cape Town. From its inception it was shunned and scorned by colored academics and white liberals, and attended under protest by most of its students. Faculties were dominated by conservative white Afrikaners, and in the first ten years only three appointments were made of colored staff, all at junior levels. The first direct challenge to the university administration came in 1970 when students protested against the formal dress code. Thereafter protests escalated, supported by a rising tide of opposition in the country as a whole. By 1975 the first colored rector had been appointed. In 1982 the University Council officially committed UWC to a new mission statement and the development of Third World communities in Southern Africa. UWC now constructed a new and radical identity for itself as a people’s university, under the charismatic leadership of Jakes Gerwel, a colored working-class organic intellectual (Gramsci, 1971) who served as rector from 1987 to 1994. In his inaugural address, Gerwel declared that UWC was consciously aiming to be ‘the intellectual home of the left’ (IDASA, 1995). In defiance of segregatory state policy, admissions were opened to allow access to anyone who met the statutory minimum entrance requirements, and from 1987 large numbers of African students began to stream to UWC. By 1995 student numbers had more than doubled to 14,653, with African students making up 49.3 per cent of the student body and women 53.2 per cent (colored students comprised 44.7 per cent). This defiance was a remarkable shift, as President Mandela noted in his speech at the inauguration of UWC’s newest Rector: The nation drew inspiration from its defiant transformation of itself from an apartheid ethnic institution into a proud national asset; from its concrete and manifest concern for the poor, for women and rural communities, and from its readiness to grapple with the kind of problems that a free and democratic South Africa was to deal with later (Weekend Argus, 14 April 1996). Foregrounding Gender

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Moves to place gender at the forefront of equity debates and practices at UWC as part of this struggle for democracy can be traced back to a grassroots initiative by activist groups of campus women. Gerwel championed these women when he took up the position of rector in 1987, both from a principled and a pragmatic position, given that international funders were increasingly keen to fund gender-related projects. While the grassroots thrust was, and continued to be important, the support of the rector was crucial in that he actively supported and encouraged the process, creating space for debate and policy development within formal structures. Gerwel called on women to form a commission and to make recommendations concerning gender-related conditions of service, in particular as they affected women employees. The Women’s Commission was formally constituted in 1987 and it immediately proceeded to draft a document listing all of the blatantly sexist employment practices at UWC. One of the women from the original group, Karen Chubb, reminded those present of how things had been when she spoke at the official launch in 1994 of the Gender Equity Unit: We really had two types of humans on campus then: those in higher academic positions (professors, senior lecturers and the like) had beards and other appendages. They made all the decisions and were called breadwinners. Only breadwinners were thought to live in houses for which they got subsidies (Women’s Bulletin, January 1996). Not only did female staff not receive housing subsidies, they were not entitled to paid maternity leave. Women academics either had to use precious sabbatical leave, thereby foregoing opportunities for research and writing, or time the birth of their babies with remarkable precision. Again, Karen Chubb speaking at the Gender Equity launch, commented: At least one of our colleagues actually went into labour in her office, and was rushed to hospital just in time. After the birth, indignant students phoned her in the maternity ward, complaining that she was not available for her consultation periods (Women’s Bulletin, January 1996)! Within two years, through negotiations with the Human Resources Committee, the personnel manager, the vice-rector and the finance registrar, the Commission obtained a maternity benefits agreement, a housing subsidy for married women, and a pre-school for children of UWC staff. In addition, the Commission secured the right of women to act as chief examination invigilators, from which they had been previously excluded on the spurious grounds that they were unable to carry heavy scripts! According to UWC’s first Gender Equity Officer, who had been part of the Commission from the beginning, women used Gerwel’s new construction of UWC as ‘the intellectual home of the left’ to their advantage, often prefacing claims and arguments with ‘if this is the home of the left…’, and using mockery to underscore their point when women were overlooked: ‘the intellectual home of the leftovers’ (personal communication, October 1994). In 1991 a proposal was submitted to the Human Resources Committee that successfully challenged gender discrimination inherent in the Pensions Act. Also in that

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year, the Commission organized a campus-wide meeting in response to requests from women to talk about the more subtle forms of discrimination they were experiencing with regards to promotion, staff development, job interviews and conditions of leave. At this point the work of the Commission began to articulate with the Women Studies Group (WSG), also established in 1987 to address issues concerning women in all spheres of university life. The main purpose of this group was to find ways of raising gender issues and gender studies in the context of the struggle for democracy in South Africa. They faced a considerable battle. At that time, gender politics was characterized as bourgeois and divisive in the wider struggle against apartheid. Posters advertising meetings were torn down and meetings sabotaged in various ways. Nonetheless the WSG was successful in generating an awareness of gender issues on campus, holding regular public debates on sexual harassment, rape, abortion and women’s rights, and also organizing celebrations of National and International Women’s Day. The Gender Policy and Programme of Action Task Group In April 1991, the only two female members of the Senate Academic Planning Committee responded to a lengthy document on research development drafted by the new Dean of Research. They resolutely challenged the male-dominated committee about the invisibility of women in this document in particular, and more broadly, in executive committees. They argued that the only way to change the current position of women in research (or rather the absence thereof) was to begin to challenge the masculinist environment at the university, rather than adding women in, or expressing pious hopes. They proposed that efforts should be made to actively recruit women into decisionmaking structures, to develop curricula in women and gender, and to embed this in a gender policy and a non-sexist language policy for UWC. Thus the Gender Policy and Programme of Action Task Group was established as a subcommittee of the Senate Academic Planning Committee. The Task Group had a number of working assumptions. It adopted the concept of gender in recognition of the need for changes in the attitudes of men and women in order to improve the position of women; it recognized that gender equity needed to be located within broader equity struggles, for example, against racism; and, it defined its rationale as turning on: an acceptance by Senate Academic Planning that a major intervention is needed at UWC to move the institution towards non-sexist practices. These will challenge deeply entrenched attitudes and patterns of behavior as well as ways of thinking, teaching and researching, all of which reinforce male domination in nearly all spheres of university life (Senate Academic Planning Committee Task Group Subcommittee). The Task Group had two primary objectives: the first was to set the terms of reference for a permanent Senate/Council standing committee on gender issues. The second task was to appoint a gender equity officer to coordinate gender activities on campus. The working group also initiated projects for the development of nonsexist language.

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A Gender Policy, March 1992 A UWC Gender Policy grounded in democratic and social justice values was accepted by Senate on 3 March 1992, thereby moving the equity discourse from the margins to the center, and on paper at least, making space for women to be heard and to benefit materially. The policy text notes that ‘a genuinely democratic society requires a positive affirmation of the rights of all members of that society’, and therefore ‘we affirm the need to remove institutional discriminatory practices which threaten the ideals for which we have struggled for so long…’Gender equity was seen as a’critical component of these ideals’; therefore UWC ‘commits itself to a programme of positive action towards the achievement of the liberation of women on our campus’; and ‘to take active steps to eliminate discrimination against women in all aspects of the university’s work’, including a ‘reevaluation of what constitutes ability and achievement’. The document notes that, ‘It is the policy of the university actively to promote and encourage the progress of women in order to achieve equality with men in academic work, in staffing and in the decisionmaking structures of the University.’ Structurally the work of the Gender Equity Officer is supported by a Senate Committee whose members comprise the rector, the registrar, the gender officer, the gender research officer, four elected senate members, two council members, two students and two members from the workers’ union. After the policy had been approved by Senate all staff on campus were sent a copy, prefaced by two statements, one of which noted that the policy had been passed; the second noted this question for all of us: ‘What are the implications of the Gender Policy for our daily practices?’ Policy Impact There have been significant gains and some progress in implementing the policy. In January 1993, with generous funding from the Ford Foundation, Rhoda Kadalie, an established colored academic with high political credibility, was appointed as the first Gender Equity Officer. She was provided with research and administrative support and given access to all university committee structures, as well as to statistical data. The work of the Gender Equity Unit (GEU) has been pivotal in continuing the work of the earlier Task Group and the WSG. Thus the GEU has been very active in running gender awareness and affirmative action programmes and workshops for staff and students. By December 1994, the Senate had approved a nonsexist language policy. A researcher was appointed to compile an ongoing statistical database of the workforce. A concerted campaign by the Gender Officer has also significantly overhauled procedures and policies around sexual harassment and rape cases involving students. Sentences have been standardized and strengthened to include expulsion, and the names of offenders are now published. The greater consistency in sentencing and the harsher punishment meted out has resulted in an increase of cases brought to the disciplinary court. The GEU has also spearheaded the integration of women’s studies into campus courses. In 1994 an honors course on Women and Development was offered by the Institute for Social Development. In 1995 a new combined honors/masters degree in women’s studies was established, and the first winter school took place, offering short community-oriented courses in women’s studies. In addition, an international exchange

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programme run by the GEU develops UWC women academics through links with universities in the United States and Utrecht. The Gender Equity Officer also sits on a number of strategic committees, including the Senate Appointments Committee, which scrutinizes all decisions made by faculty appointment committees and interviews candidates for chairs, and the Human Resources Committee, which is responsible for the appointment and promotion of all non-academic staff. Achieving a racial and gender balance in the academic staff has been difficult, however, especially in the face of severe resource constraints for a university which currently has a student: staff ratio of 30:1. UWC was starved of funds by the old apartheid regime, and the new government faces myriad demands on its education funds from schools; thus, little new money is available for UWC to reduce this ratio and create new posts to expand its faculty. Nonetheless, there have been some limited gains. In 1992 there was not a single female professor in the Arts Faculty, which then comprised 50 per cent of the students; and overall there were only three women professors5. By 1995 the academic staff (permanent and contract) comprised: males

395 African

47

Indian

3

colored

190

white

155

females

342 African

16

Indian

2

colored

206

white

118

But white men still dominated the senior ranks; out of 100 professors and associate professors, 92 were male, and of these 64 were white men. Out of 131 senior lecturers, 99 were male, including 45 white men. Nonetheless, a small group of women have been promoted to senior positions: • 1992: one colored and one Indian woman promoted to associate professor and two new women professors appointed (one white, one African); • 1993: two white women promoted to associate professor; • 1994: two women offered chairs but declined to take up the positions; • 1995: three more women, one white and two colored became associate professors, and one colored woman appointed as a full professor. However, in 1995 the administration was still entirely male, as were all faculty deans, and overall women were still concentrated at the lower rungs.

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Moreover, the equity discourse of the 1992 Gender Policy had been somewhat qualified, perhaps not surprising in view of UWC’s apartheid history and its domination by mediocre white Afrikaner academics (see Gwala, 1988). Thus Gerwel’s support for gender equity was not at the expense of excellence or standards: ‘In appointing our staff our first duty is to enhance the intellectual quality of the university. But we must also attend to social empowerment, to careful development’ (quoted in the Financial Mail, February 1993). Thus, a collision between a discourse of equity and one of intellectual quality becomes likely, as UWC works to strengthen itself as a university, as much as to transform its staffing patterns. Further Policy Development It has also been necessary to draft a supporting policy elaborating the criteria for promotion and appointment. As (Farish et al., 1995) point out, publishing a gender equity policy does not mark the end of the equal opportunities process but the beginning of a cycle of raising awareness and eventually policy review and revision. Thus, they suggest that policy documents represent only one stage in a cyclical process, ‘or more accurately a spiral’ (Farish et al., 1995:121) of developing equity policies and practices. By early 1996 a policy document had been drafted by a working group which included two women, and which now stated that: senior academic appointments are drawn disproportionately from a minority of the population at large. To alter this to bring about equitable employment opportunities to all sectors of the population will in the long run enlarge the pool from which appointments are made, and hence will enrich rather than impoverish intellectual activity (Draft policy of the Affirmative Action Working Group, Senate Academic Planning Committee, UWC). Nonetheless, this document again qualifies its powerful equity discourse by noting that UWC ‘is first and foremost an institution for intellectual work…’ (Draft policy of the Affirmative Action Working Group, Senate Academic Planning Committee, UWC). Still, the draft policy also recognizes the need for ‘an institutional culture sensitive to issues of discrimination and disadvantage’ and goes on to provide some (limited) concrete suggestions, such as including women on all appointments committees. It also makes clear that the beneficiaries of ‘affirmative action’ are to be ‘Black people and women’ (Draft policy of the Affirmative Action Working Group, Senate Academic Planning Committee, UWC). Women Are Simply Not ‘Good Chaps’: Beyond Access and Awareness Once again, however, this recognition of the constraining and enabling effects of the institutional culture requires more than a rhetorical nod. It is precisely in the arena of institutional culture and dominant male values and practices that the Gender Policy unravels. The gains for academic women have proved to be rather more ambiguous than the policy document might lead one to expect.

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There are clear signals of difficulties which the policy in itself cannot solve. As Ball (1993) has reminded us, policies do not tell us what to do, they only frame the broad parameters within which we might take up new positions. This is complicated by the fact that despite the removal of overt sexist practices, a deeply sedimented gendered ideology continues to permeate the institutional culture and wider social relations of this and other South African universities. This institutional culture remains a major challenge to equity for academic women precisely because it is seldom articulated and acknowledged; its very invisibility creates and perpetuates the circles of privilege and access to information which are also critical to success. In effect, one has to belong to be able to know it. But outsiders cannot belong, as a woman academic from a neighboring university explains: I think they [men] really make an effort, but there isn’t the same ease. They can’t very well say to a woman student come and have a drink at the club after work, let’s go and watch cricket… I mean I sometimes feel left out of things in the tea room. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be young and black or a woman and to hang out there. And it’s doing those sorts of things with masters and doctorate students that lays the foundation for access to the department later on (quoted in Equal Opportunity Research Project, 1993:50). Thus, more than opening up access to the previously excluded is required. The point is that overt sexist behavior towards academic women is easier to pin down and even to challenge than the intangibles, the clubbiness that reinforces a feeling that men belong and women do not, that women disturb the rhythm somehow in a department which had been all male in the past. If women then do not conform to the stereotypical scripts of these men they are regarded as aggressive. The critical point is that the issue is less one of formal discrimination (thus in a Senate appointments committee a dean can state: ‘Knowledge has no color’, and nobody will state outright that a candidate is not suitable because she is a woman); it is far more subtle than that. The culture is embedded in whom is consulted, whom is talked to over tea, who gets to help draw up agendas for departmental meetings and funding proposals, who gets to recommend people for posts, and who is invited or encouraged to apply. Senior Women There are very few women in senior academic positions at UWC, even in the wake of the gender policy. Of course this is not surprising as women need to be mentored through the ranks as it were, and eligible women cannot easily be produced at short notice. Still, one would then look for evidence that such development processes are underway, together with visible shifts in the institutional culture; such evidence is scanty at best. What is even more surprising is the recent hostility and protracted opposition of male colleagues to the appointment of a suitable colored woman candidate for a senior position. Moreover, male academics too often revert to the standard response: ‘We tried hard to find appropriate black and/or women candidates but could not.’

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Besides, management and senior positions are based on the assumption that people in those positions will have a support network, put simply, a wife who will take care of domestic obligations. If however, you are trying to juggle domestic demands, child care and a husband then coping with the added pressure of a senior position can be really difficult. As Sandra Acker points out: ‘productivity, even merit is no guarantee of success, but a (say) 60 hour [a week] man with a 70 hour housewife to back him up is off to a running start compared with everyone else’ (1994:127). As she further notes, women, ‘while keeping up with family, teaching and research, have less time and energy for committee work and image-enhancing departmental activities’ (1994:67). Committee Processes Women at UWC have also spoken about the way in which committee processes act to silence and exclude them, even where equity policies exist. Men continue to insert themselves with authority and confidence, strutting under the bright privilege of their life stories while women stagger silently beneath the grey weight of theirs. Adult men simply take up more space personally and publicly than do women; indeed central to the development of male gender identity is the importance of body sense and space (Lock and Minarik, 1997). What then happens in meetings is that women apologize when they speak, compress what they have to say or say it quickly so that they take as little space and time as possible. As a woman academic told me: there’s a male way of taking space which I think many women feel less easily able to do, with exceptions…there’s a kind of male speak also which has to do with ways of expressing oneself in very confident definite terms… I’ve at times said something in a particular way and a male colleague will come in and say exactly the same thing in a much more forceful argumentative way and people will respond very differently to that than they might have to my perhaps slightly tentative way (personal communication, October 1994). Thus even with an equity policy in place, I and others have found it necessary to fight vigorously for the interests of women in the Senate Appointments Committee and elsewhere. Of course having a gender equity discourse makes available new positions and a struggle over the distribution of academic goods in ways that might otherwise not have been possible; what the policy does not do, however, is predict an outcome, or close off contestation over implementing equity. Contestation Three examples will suffice to illustrate Ball’s (1993) point that policies enter patterns of power relations, rather than changing them in some linear manner. In the first instance a woman academic recounts her support for the promotion of a good female candidate:

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I had done my homework thoroughly, reading through all the CVs. I had never heard of this woman before and the faculty did not motivate her case, they did not know who she was either! The dean had not done his homework and they in fact undermined her by saying that she just sits in the lab and we don’t know who she is. Yet there was one of the most powerful CVs of anybody in the Science Faculty, never mind a ‘home grown’ woman scientist, and in one of the hard sciences too; she is in a very competitive arena, and I became totally obsessed in the meeting and fought very hard for her. But I almost got the sense that maybe the level of my support for her might have put some people off because they might have said, ‘oh she is pushing another woman’ (personal communication, October 1994). In the second case a vacant senior lectureship had arisen in a department and two internal candidates had applied for it. The one candidate was a colored woman with a good PhD from a British university, a respectable list of publications and considerable experience. The other candidate, a white male immigrant, was equally well qualified but with fewer publications and less experience. The faculty argued strongly that the male candidate should be promoted; the head of department felt that the woman academic was ‘not ready’. Vigorous opposition from the tiny handful of women in the committee, who tenaciously challenged the faculty decision and refused to be put off, led to it being overturned. In the third instance, a Senate meeting was asked to consider the composition of a new Accelerated Promotions Committee and a proposal that the gender officer be part of the committee. The response was astonishing (see also Walker, in press). Male academics accused the female proposer of implying that men on committees were biased against women; surely one woman on the committee would be sufficient; why should it be the Gender Officer? The point missed by indignant male speakers was that the absence of women on senior committees meant that the only way to ensure that gender issues were structurally addressed in this committee was by the membership of the gender officer. A small group of women won this battle if not the war, for each contest must be fought and refought, and women win the day as individuals rather than as a social group. Such engagements generate their own forms of exclusion as the women who take up the cudgels are in turn constructed as strident, threatening and aggressive because they no longer behave in the deferential and accommodating ways with which men (and some women) feel comfortable. As one woman academic put it: men are unable to withstand too much pushing by assertive women at the edges of gendered relations because that makes the man snap and he has to break his own rules for how a ‘gentleman’ behaves towards a ‘lady’. I think at some level he finds it very hard to forgive her because she’s damaged his whole sense of identity (personal communication, November 1994).

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Interviews What is also often overlooked is that there cannot be equity when women and black candidates for jobs are interviewed by mostly male and/or white committees. The candidate is then immediately constructed as, indeed looks and sounds like, an outsider. Women being interviewed for chairs confront the impossible—in the minds of most of the committee members, female and professor are incompatible identities. The experience itself can be deeply intimidating, leaving candidates wondering how they will fit in, as they confront sets of assumptions about merit shaped by white men. For example, one such assumption is that allowance should certainly be made for children in evaluating a woman’s career path in comparison to a male candidate. But this may be done in a rather mechanistic way, allowing the equivalent of one or two years per child as if the impact of children does not leak into women’s professional lives over several years, especially in those countries where women still carry the bulk of domestic and child care responsibilities. We take for granted what are in fact socially constructed and hence value-laden terms—a normal career path, merit, even professor. Saturated Lives Implementing gender equity has been further complicated by race equity and the manipulation of ethnicity. At times the issue becomes one of race versus gender, rather than race and gender, exacerbated by tensions between African and colored students6 and what is constructed as ‘the colored issue’ among faculty. Black and White Men At the faculty level, the black and white issue is reflected in uneasy working relations between those in power, colored and white men, and resentment by black men towards white women who advance. At issue here is that, according to Connell, certain masculinities become hegemonic and others do not. This hegemonic masculinity: is always constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women. The interplay between different forms of masculinity is an important part of how a patriarchal social order works (1987:183). At UWC the hegemonic masculinity is white, male, middle-class, English-speaking and educated at British or historically white South African universities. In the past it would have turned on being white and Afrikaans-speaking, so hegemonic masculinity has been reconstructed and no doubt will be again. Moreover, black academic men will have had to acquire their academic identities within paradigms constructed by white men and within/against white norms, themselves contesting white male domination of South African universities.

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Thus colored and African men, like women, will have experienced exclusion, having been trained under apartheid also to be reproducers and consumers, not makers of knowledge. Colored professors and deans are likely to come from lowermiddle class or working-class backgrounds and to be first generation scholars; many will be UWC graduates. They may well appear less articulate compared to their white counterparts. Black and colored scholars can simultaneously demonstrate their resentment of this articulation deficit and use it to their advantage; for example, an Afrikaans-speaking colored dean might apparently apologize for his lack of fluency in English to excuse the ‘fumbling’ way he has presented an argument. What he is really highlighting is the language issue, so that English speakers are constructed as the outsiders, and what he masks is his capacity to deliver rapier sharp thrusts, now from the high moral ground. Nonetheless, at the level of senior committee, white English-speaking men are seen to be unfairly advantaged, are seen to have and hold access to power with regard to knowledge production, and are seen to speak with greater authority, confidence and competence. This works to silence non-hegemonic men, just as it works to silence women. At issue here is our apartheid history, which means that there can be no takenfor-granted or easy collective identity for male academics. Black and White Women Yet we cannot assume a sisterhood of academic women at UWC. Instead, a kind of underground discourse fuels suspicion between black and white women as we fix and categorize each other as colored, Indian, African, or white liberal. And we believe that we know what these labels signify. The point to bear in mind in exploring policy and its effects in one institution is that women have been divided by differences in their access to power and privilege in a racially stratified society. White women are seen to have had the advantages of better schooling and universities, and the easy taken-for-granted privileges that came with being white in South Africa. Moreover, many black women have come to deeply resent their university education at apartheid institutions staffed by mediocre conservative academics, and have become angry for the education they might have had when they are exposed to colleagues from more privileged institutions. Even this is not without its complications, however. As a woman academic suggested, black middle-class women themselves arguably now comprise an elite: I think that in many ways black middle-class people are politically and economically powerful but also a relatively small group which has found itself in a growing privileged position over the years… I think you will find that most young black women in this university have come from fairly middle-class backgrounds and would have benefitted from a reasonably good schooling and in most cases quite a solid university training. And then for me the issue is what are their claims on educational disadvantagement that puts them in a position that is markedly different from white women… I think it’s also difficult to respond in a generalized way that ‘we’ve been involved in struggle issues and the white women haven’t’, because that’s very varied as well (personal communication, October 1994).

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Backlash Still, if women do not find ways to forge alliances across our differences, we may well find ourselves outsiders in academe for rather longer than we care to imagine. And, as bell hooks reminds us, white women cannot ask or expect that black women do the work of changing their consciousness, ‘We cannot do the work [for white people], yet this often seems to be what is asked of us’ (1989:118). A critical issue for all women academics, however one makes meaning of renewed ethnic identities, is that women are likely yet again to be left behind as colored men contest power with white men, and African men look to spaces to advance African interests against colored and white men. Women are then seen to be the direct competitors for resources. As one senior African male academic said in a committee meeting, ‘There is a tension between black males and white females. If you affirm women the beneficiaries will be white women and the black: white ratio will not shift, and vice versa the gender balance will not change.’ That perceptions are not always matched by the evidence is not the issue. Men have continued to be promoted in equal or greater numbers than women, and these were white and colored men, not Africans. Thus, overall women remain in a weak position relative to men in the academy, even if not all men are equally powerful in relation to each other. Indeed there has been something of a male backlash against women being promoted, according to the Gender Equity Officer: The power block amongst the men has changed because in the past they were all white men, now they are black [colored] men, and some of the colored men have been the most vocal opponents of promotions for women. In fact they formed a cohort against gender advocacy work on campus because they knew we were fighting for more women, regardless of color, to be appointed…it is always historically the case that when you give power to black men they exclude women, whether white or black (personal communication, October 1994). Concluding Remarks Yet women also cannot continue to appropriate victim status. As Rhoda Kadalie has emphasized, women must ‘seize the moment’, ‘insist on due recognition’, and ‘know how to deliver if they want appropriate rights and power’ (quoted in IDASA, 1995:106). Equity policies help in redrawing the lines of power and pushing at the edges of sedimented practices, but they cannot guarantee personal success (Ramphele, 1995). Moreover, women and blacks need to develop an equity discourse which makes it clear that affirmative action is a policy and a strategy; it is extremely disabling to label individuals as ‘affirmative action appointments’, forgetting that white middle-class men have monopolized all the career breaks in the past. What is clear is that the gender policy is only a beginning—we have tended to view it as an end, and have underestimated the resilience of the male-dominated institutional culture, and the effects of post-1994 racial and ethnic politics. At issue is that ‘the policy process can never be perceived as complete or finished: each new horizon and equality

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agenda item will inevitably lead to a fresh policy process’ (Farish et al., 1995:179). What we now need is a continual cycle of policy review and revision, including constant attempts to prise open dominant values and lines of power if women are not to remain outsiders, mere camp followers on the margins of South African academe. Notes 1 UWC is regarded as a historically black university (HBU), that is, it was set up by the apartheid state as part of a deliberate policy to segregate higher education after 1959, and to locate black students in their own ethnic universities. The code HBU is used to mark the patterns of disadvantage of these universities, compared to historically white institutions. 2 Racial terminology is somewhat fraught in South Africa. In the 1970s and 1980s the term black was used in the democratic movement to refer to all oppressed groups (African, colored and Indian) and was an explicit rejection of apartheid-created ethnic identities. More recently these ethnic terms have been revived to capture particular identities and experiences, at the risk, I think, of reconstructing racialized subjects. The term black is now most often used to refer only to Africans. 3 South Africa follows British terminology; thus a professor holds a chair, and an associate professor holds a promotion post equivalent to that of reader in Britain. 4 I am white and middle-class. I joined UWC in 1991, and in 1993 was promoted to associate professor, making me a beneficiary of affirmative action. I spent two years on six Senate Committees and am thus familiar with these committee processes and practices. 5 Nationally, serious gender inequalities also exist. In 1989, women comprised 61 per cent of junior lecturers, 44 per cent of lecturers, 22 per cent of senior lecturers, 17 per cent of associate professors, and 5 per cent of professors (quoted in Ramphele, 1994:98). 6 One colored senior lecturer and former activist provides this comment on student divisions: ‘When I first came to UWC last year I was astounded by the lack of social interaction between these two groups… I noticed how ‘naturally’ blacks and coloreds sat on opposite sides in my lecture rooms…(quoted in the Cape Times, 22 February 1996). The UWC context should also be framed by regional political developments which saw the Western Cape Province return the only National Party dominated regional government in 1994. Given that coloreds comprise a majority in the province, this social group is accorded praise or blame, depending on where one stands, for this state of affairs.

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HEWARD, C. (1994) ‘Academic snakes and merit ladders: Reconceptualising the “Glass Ceiling”’, Gender and Education, 6(3), pp. 249–62. HOOKS, B. (1989) Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Boston, South End Press. IDASA (1995) Making Affirmative Action Work: A South African Guide, Rondebosch, Institute for Democracy in South Africa. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING (IPET) (1994) A Plan for Gender Equity and Training (unpublished report). LOCK, R. and MINARIK, L. (1997) ‘Gender equity in an elementary classroom: The power of praxis in action research’, in HOLLINGSWORTH, S. (Ed) International Action Research and Educational Reform, London, Falmer Press. MARSHALL, C. (1991) ‘Educational policy dilemmas: Can we have control and quality and choice and democracy and equity?’, in BORMAN, K.M. and SWAMI, P. (Eds) Contemporary Issues in US Education, Norwood, Ablex Publishing Corporation. RAMPHELE, M. (1994) ‘Equity: Reality factors and their implications’, in KAPLAN, B. (Ed) Changing by Degrees?, Rondebosch, University of Cape Town Press. RAMPHELE, M. (1995) The Affirmative Action Handbook: Towards an Equity Framework, Cape Town, IDASA. RIZVI, F. (1985) ‘Multiculturalism and beyond: A critical policy analysis’, Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. RIZVI, F. and KEMMIS, S. (1987) ‘???’, in BALL, S., Dilemmas of Reform, Geelong, Australia, Deakin Institute for Studies in Education. SOUDIEN, C. (1995) ‘Apartheid and education: Coping with difference in South Africa’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, 18–22 April, 1995. WALKER, M. (1997) ‘Women in the academy: Ambiguity and complexity in a South African University’, Gender and Education. WOLPE, A.M. (1995) ‘Non-sexism: Rhetoric or reality?’, in JACKLIN, H. and KRUSS, G. (Eds) Realizing Change, Kenwyn, Juta. WOOLF, V. (1929/1994) A Room of One’s Own, Hammersmith, Flamingo.

Chapter 4 Affirmative Action and the Status of Women in the Academy Judith S.Glazer Affirmative action policies are under attack and while criticism of these policies is not new, the nature of the debate has shifted from implementation to termination.1 The university has become a prime target for dismantling affirmative action as is evidenced by recent events at the University of California. The resolution approved by its Board of Regents on July 20, 1995, calling for the elimination by 1997 of race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as criteria for admission, hiring and contracting on its nine campuses, provides a blueprint of the conflict that looms ahead.2 The position of women, including women of color, will be directly affected by its outcome. In announcing the resolution, the governor proclaimed that: ‘Merit, not the color of one’s skin or gender, should be [public officials’] guiding principle’.3 While the primary target of the debate has focused on preferential admissions policies for minorities within the nine-campus system, it is clear from the wording of the resolution that women will be affected. The University of Texas Law School has also been barred by a panel of federal judges from using race as a factor in admissions. This decision is now being appealed, and, as Hacker (1996:21) points out, will give the Supreme Court the chance to revisit its 1978 Bakke decision, a 5–4 ruling that enabled the University of California at Davis Medical School to maintain a minority admissions policy. This chapter is concerned with the extent to which affirmative action has benefited women in the academy in the past three decades. I begin with a brief discussion of feminist policy analysis and its application to affirmative action. In the next two sections, I discuss the response of American universities to affirmative action, focusing on the role and effectiveness of campus commissions on the status of women as one strategy for improving women’s position in higher education. I conclude with some observations about the implications for women in the academy of efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs. This chapter is based on research I conducted in 1995 and early 1996. It was conducted in two phases: site visits to selected campuses with long commitments to improving women’s status and the collection and analyses of recent commission documents and reports from a variety of sources. Throughout the chapter, I place women at the center of my inquiry, questioning assumptions about the role of the state and its institutions in eliminating sex discrimination and advancing women’s position.

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Feminist Theory and Feminist Policy Analysis Theories of feminism and more recently models of feminist research advocate the importance of women’s perspectives in assessing higher education and creating more inclusive systems. In 1991, I observed that the women’s rights movement that had originated in tandem with the civil rights movement and was rooted in liberal values and belief systems had begun to take a more critical turn (Glazer, 1991). The advent of a conservative political agenda during the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s combined with a growing skepticism in western intellectual thought influenced feminist scholars to look more critically at all ideologies, including their own, to reject the fragmentation that women experience in attempting to integrate their personal and professional lives, and to challenge the binary oppositions, ‘in language, law, and other socially constituting systems, oppositions which privilege one presence—male, rationality, objectivity—and marginalize its opposite—female, irrationality, subjectivity’ (Bartlett, 1993:561). Five years after making these observations, the conservative discourse has become more insistent, moving rapidly from policy reform and modification to policy dismantling and termination. Postmodern feminists seek to deconstruct the policy process to reveal ‘the hidden gender bias of a wide range of laws and assumptions’ (1993:561). Policy scientists define termination as the adjustment of policies and programs that those in power determine have become redundant and unworkable and their replacement with another set of expectations and demands, triggering political contests that are different from those surrounding policy adoption and initiation (Bardach, 1976; Brewer, 1978).4 Lasswell originated the concept of termination as one of seven ‘power outcomes’ in government decisionmaking (1956), but policymakers paid little attention to this idea during a period of rapid growth. By the mid-1970s, policy analysts were calling termination a series of fine tunings predicated on individual and organizational recognition of an imbalance between the political system and its relative domain in responding to new issues (deLeon, 1978) or a cyclical phase to eliminate dysfunctional or outmoded policies that had become part of the problem they were intended to solve (May and Wildavsky, 1978). Feminist policy analysts reject the dominant view of male policy scientists that decisions regarding the continuation or termination of governmental policies should be based on such neutral evaluation criteria as resource management, cost effectiveness and organizational fit. They emphasize the importance of asking the woman question in conducting critical feminist policy analyses of government policies, a method designed ‘to identify the gender implications of rules and practices that might otherwise seem neutral or objective…’ (Bartlett, 1993:551). The work of Bartlett and other feminist legal scholars is particularly relevant in discussing affirmative action which is now being used as a wedge issue to divide white women and people of color. They reject the liberal feminist view that women can gain sex equality through their assimilation into alienating institutional structures. They adopt a more activist view of feminists as agents of transformational change. In asserting the need for redefining sex equality as the basis for a feminist jurisprudence, MacKinnon comments on the problems women encounter in a legal system based on sex inequality:

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Gender neutrality is the male standard. The special protection rule is the female standard. Masculinity or maleness is the referent for both. Approaching sex discrimination in this way, as if sex questions were difference questions and equality questions were sameness questions, merely provides two ways for the law to hold women to a male standard and to call that sex equality (MacKinnon, 1989:221). Williams comments on another aspect of sex discrimination law, which she terms equality’s riddle, dealing with the impact of women’s challenges to pregnancy rules under Title VII on their status and opportunity in the paid workforce. This issue is particularly important for women faculty, whose childbearing and tenure-track years often run simultaneously and for whom stop-the-clock policies are more often granted on a discretionary basis. She observes that the goal of the feminist legal movement has been twofold:’ to break down the legal barriers that restrict each sex to its predefined role and create a hierarchy based on gender’ and ‘to squeeze the male tilt out of a purportedly neutral legal structure and thus substitute genuine for merely formal gender neutrality’ (Williams, 1993:131). Becker problematizes the formal equality standard, viewing it as capable of effecting only limited change in an unresponsive legislative process and suggesting in her title that sexual equality awaits a Prince Charming who is unlikely to arrive, given the conservative mood of the Supreme Court and the fact that women have ‘conflicting interests and visions of equality’ (Becker, 1993:234). Radical feminists view universities as gendered hierarchies and question the basic premises of its policies and programs based on sex, age, color, class and other distinctions. They argue that ‘feminist principles and liberal policies of equal opportunity are incompatible since liberalism is fundamentally patriarchal in theory and practice, despite the lip-service paid to women’s rights and some of the benefits gained by women’ (Coppock, Haydon and Richter, 1995:48). Adherents of this perspective reject the reverse discrimination argument advanced by opponents of affirmative action as a patriarchal construct that seeks to perpetuate and reify historical male dominance in university organizations. Drawing on the larger debate concerning the relationship between ‘legal norms and gender hierarchies’, Rhode (1991:1736) links women’s problems and those of other subordinated groups. She argues that institutions conceive sex disparities too narrowly, seldom focusing on ‘the intersection of gender with other patterns of subordination such as class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation’, reinforcing attitudes that deny their existence and fortifying ‘the illusion that collective problems have been resolved’ (1991:1734). She urges feminists to expand their definition of what she calls the ‘noproblem’ problem in a society that views gender inequality as natural and to build support ‘for the broader social initiatives that the problem in fact requires’ (1991:1736). Women in higher education are caught in a dilemma, largely excluded from full participation based on their perceived difference, and included with the expectation that they will adapt to existing institutional norms and accommodate their differences. The idea of femalefriendly policies and programs is not taken into consideration either by laws or the policies they produce, and certainly not by the leadership in male-dominated institutions. Rhode argues persuasively that when institutions condone a ‘self-perpetuating cycle of devaluation in which equality in formal rights masks inequality in daily experience’, they

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support separate-but-equal world views of women’s role and status (for example, that women are more likely to work part-time, take extended leaves, and place lower priority on advancement) without looking at the root causes of employment segregation and stratification, or alternatively, when they define equality in formal rather than substantive terms without demanding that equal access guarantees equal treatment and equal outcomes (1991:1768). Eisenstein also rejects the liberal standard of equality for masking race and sex discrimination, marginalizing women and minorities, and reinforcing the ‘standard of white heterosexual maleness’. In an essay on ‘the myth of post-racism’, she explores how anti-government discourse was institutionalized by the late 1980s ‘through a racialized discourse that piggybacked women’s issues along with it’, substituting individual rights for equal opportunity and making the dismantling of affirmative action ‘the centerpiece of this process’ (1994:40). She contends that gender hierarchies continue to thwart women’s progress, and calls for a race-conscious feminist politics that critiques existing power relations. From a feminist perspective, attempts to achieve gender equity are governed by established power relations. Women, who are largely powerless within the university organization, must rely on male leadership to bring about substantive changes in their situation. It is the official discourse of that leadership, articulated by governing boards and presidents, that form the basis for state and institutional intervention in policies affecting women’s role and status. Affirmative Action in Historical Perspective The development of affirmative action policy is a textbook case of policy incrementalism. It originated in the labor movement as a clause in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, meaning that employers would be required to cease discriminatory practices against union members or organizers and take affirmative action on behalf of victims of discrimination (Skrentny, 1996). It was adopted as a civil rights initiative by President John Kennedy in 1961 in Executive Order 10925, calling on federal contractors to ‘take affirmative action to ensure that the applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin’ (Skrentny, 1996:7). It would take another decade and the threat of legal action by feminists for sex to be added to the list of protected classes that were covered by affirmative action statutes and executive orders. The symbiotic growth of the civil rights and women’s movements between 1965 and 1970 brought new pressure on two presidents who were ideologically polar opposites—Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon—to include women as a protected class in federal affirmative action policies. Hacker speculates that Nixon’s support of affirmative action was calculated to benefit African Americans at the same time as it inflamed blue collar workers, bringing them into the Republican camp and that ‘Republicans are still betting that affirmative action will stir racial resentments in their favor’ (1996:21). Four sets of statutes and executive orders were of particular interest to women: 1) the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the first sex discrimination legislation enacted, requiring equal pay for equal work regardless of sex; 2) Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting sex discrimination in all federally assisted education programs in both public and private institutions receiving federal monies through grants, loans or contracts and

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also extending coverage to executive, administrative and professional employees; 3) Executive Order 11246, banning discrimination in employment by all employers with federal contracts, and requiring the development of affirmative action programs by all federal contractors and subcontractors with contracts more than $100,000 and with 100 or more employees; and 4) Title VII, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, which forbade discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or sex in any term, condition or privilege of employment, including sexual harassment. This law was amended in March, 1972 to include all public and private educational institutions as well as state and local governments and it applied to all employers, public or private, whether or not they received any federal funds (Vetter, 1994:3). These statutes and executive orders gave sweeping powers to the federal government in monitoring the progress of all colleges and universities in achieving ‘nondiscrimination on the basis of sex, race and ethnic origin’ in all of its programs and activities. As a consequence, equal opportunity legislation became a means of categorizing professionals, not as individuals, but as members of a racial, ethnic or gender group (Stimpson, 1993). State and municipal regulations were modeled on the federal statutes, energizing women to form caucuses and organizations, pursue recourse in the courts, and monitor women’s progress in the public sphere (Sandler, 1980:2). Expectations were high that change would be immediate, pervasive and far-reaching. The University Response From the outset, ‘passions, ideologies, strong opinions and established interests’ permeated the advent of affirmative action on university campuses (Carnegie Council on Policy Studies, 1975). Two factors in particular mobilized universities into action. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 necessitated copious reporting requirements based on workforce and utilization analyses of salary, benefits and advancement policies for all categories of employees and paving the way for legal action for noncompliance. The federal government filed more than 500 complaints against colleges and universities by 1973 (Stimpson, 1993:8). Women’s rights activists began their own campus-based investigations of admissions, employment and benefits policies and took collective legal action against discriminatory policies and practices in their institutions; by 1973, 1600 individual cases were filed with the EEOC, 45 per cent involving sex discrimination, 39 per cent race and ethnic discrimination, 12 per cent multiple allegations, and 4 per cent religious discrimination (Stimpson, 1993:8). The educational establishment complained vigorously that federal regulations were costly, cumbersome, unreasonable and intrusive. At the same time, presidents responded by appointing affirmative action/equal opportunity officers to review existing policies, draft goals and timetables for admissions and employment, and ascertain that they were in compliance with the new regulations. Public posting of vacancies, affirmative action advertising, review of employment policies, initiation of recruitment and scholarship programs, and other strategies were implemented. Questions were raised about granting preferential treatment to women and minorities solely on the basis of their membership in a protected group, the conflict between faculty governance and federal regulatory policy,

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and the impact of goals and timetables and whether these were really quotas, and the charge that equality of individual opportunity was leading to ‘a policy of group results’ (Carnegie Council, 1975). Proponents of affirmative action in higher education based their support on three arguments: compensating disadvantaged groups for prior discrimination; correcting current inequities by increasing the proportional representation of women and minorities; and enriching the institution through cultural and gender diversity (Francis, 1993; Tierney, 1996). Opponents, on the other hand, claimed that its primary use was political, a means of legitimizing reverse discrimination, mainly against white Anglo males, encouraging preferential treatment in admissions and hiring, and perpetuating the myth of female and minority inferiority. At first, universities perceived affirmative action as a temporary, remedial measure that would be met through adherence to regulatory requirements and the implementation of nondiscriminatory policies and practices. However, it soon became apparent that salary, employment and tenure policies were construed by the federal government as grossly inadequate in meeting the test of equality and opportunity and that further steps would be needed to eliminate sex and race discrimination. Institutional sources of criticism related to the high cost of compliance due to onerous reporting and auditing requirements, allegations of reverse discrimination against white males, and the incompatibility between equal opportunity and merit in hiring, promotion and tenure (Gray and Schafer, 1981). Gray and Schafer (1981:351) observed that decisions on faculty status were still subject to ‘cronyism, the old-boy network, stereotyping, hiring men on potential and women on accomplishment’ practices that did not end with the passage of anti-discrimination statutes and the issuance of executive orders. They speculated that written affirmative action plans had become pro forma exercises, unread and unacted upon by federal regulators and warned that unless reforms were instituted, the demise of equal opportunity was entirely possible. Four years later, the chair of Committee W asserted that ‘academe has a long way to go to achieve the ideal of sex equity in faculty employment’ (Gray, 1985:40). She cited four related concerns: adverse judicial decisions on class certification, burden of proof, comparability of work and the use of statistics; continuing judicial deference to the educational establishment; the high psychic and financial costs of pursuing an individual or class action suit, making legal redress an empty dream for most faculty women; and the unlikelihood of legislative remedies or rigorous action from the EEOC. Women, she asserted, would be better served by reforming from within (Gray, 1985:40). The Campus Commission on the Status of Women The campus commission on the status of women was one mechanism that research universities, in particular, adopted as a means of addressing women’s demands and demonstrating their good faith efforts. I use the term commission generically to refer to task forces, committees and other entities sharing similar functions, i.e., to assess and recommend women’s increased representation and improved status within a given institution. In seeking to determine the extent of women’s progress in the past two decades, I have focused my attention on these commissions to measure their effectiveness in advancing women’s interests. Undoubtedly, other mechanisms occur through human

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resources and equal opportunity offices, collective bargaining units, women’s studies programs and university policies. Conceptualized within a liberal feminist framework, the women’s commission had three related purposes: to demonstrate administrative support for the improvement of women’s status, to give women a collective voice on campus, and to serve as a sounding board for women’s concerns. It originated in the 1960s as a response to the contemporary women’s movement, the passage of equal employment statutes and executive orders, and the promise that sex and race discrimination would carry severe penalties. Their growth followed the establishment by Kennedy of a President’s Commission on the Status of Women and of various state commissions throughout the 1960s. These politically inspired federal and state commissions gave women’s rights activists unprecedented access to federal and state agencies and national and state platforms from which to publicize their agenda (Beuchler, 1990). They soon became advocacy organizations to break down barriers between the public and private sectors and to lobby for sex equity legislation and ratification of an Equal Rights Amendment. By 1968, student and faculty activism played a significant role in the establishment of campus commissions to represent women’s interests. Individual and class action lawsuits accelerated the change process and by 1970 colleges and universities responded by taking steps to increase the numbers of women on their campuses and to improve their professional standing. Equal opportunity and equal access became the twin mantras of the decade. The campus commission was a liberal feminist approach used by research universities, in particular, in addressing women’s demands and demonstrating good faith efforts toward their advancement. At the University of Michigan, for example, the president appointed a Commission on Women in 1970 as a direct result of a class action complaint filed by women faculty and professional staff under Executive Order 11246. In this case, the federal government investigated and found the university guilty of’ blatant sex discrimination’, withholding research funds until the administration acted to redress the gender imbalance. Similar actions occurred at other major universities, leading to the formation of commissions on women and workforce and utilization analyses. By the mid-seventies, the ability of first-wave commissions to influence the university agenda for gender equity began to decline. Women interviewees, several of whom were now in leadership positions on their campuses offered several reasons: 1) the appointment of affirmative action/equal opportunity officers, reporting directly to the president, becoming his spokesperson, and, in many instances, acting in a legal capacity to adjudicate grievances and complaints; 2) the advent of women’s studies programs as the focus of feminist intellectual activity, providing a new and alternate source of energy for academic women faculty and students; 3) the decline of campus activism paralleling the shrinking academic labor market, diminution of career advancement options, and the unionization of faculty and staff; and 4) the backlash against women in a time of diminishing resources and conflicting priorities as evidenced in reports of the chilly climate on campus for women students, women faculty and women administrators (Sandler and Hall, 1986) and the difficulties being encountered by women of color.

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The Commission Strategy The confluence of internal changes and external events motivated universities to reconstitute their commitment to women’s concerns as the eighties came to a close. Women were then 53 per cent of all students but only 13 per cent of tenured full professors and 11 per cent of college presidents. While some problems had been resolved, several systemic issues resisted easy solutions: salary inequities, women’s underrepresentation in scientific and professional fields, the resilience of the glass ceiling for women administrators, women’s predominance on the lowest rungs of the ladder, and the differential treatment of women of color. In 1989, spurred on by the ACE Commission on Women in Higher Education (Shavlik, Touchton, and Pearson, 1989) as well as by growing recognition that the pipeline was not working, and pressures from minority students for a more visible commitment to campus diversity, presidents and governing boards formed committees, task forces and commissions to conduct needs analyses, collect data and set priorities for collective action. A major role of commissions in the nineties became the generation of statistical and anecdotal data on women’s status and proposals for increasing their participation, correcting past inequities and addressing emerging issues. Women’s Commissions in the 1990s More than two decades have now elapsed since the advent of affirmative action in higher education. Telephone, on-line, and in-person communications provided interesting insights into the current status of women’s commissions and their prospects for the future. These interviews and conversations were supplemented with analyses of documents and reports of commission activities and demographic data. Three questions in particular provided the substance for my research. What is their current role? Have they made a difference? How do they view their future prospects in the current political climate? Commissions have several practical functions: clarifying issues, setting priorities, collecting data, making recommendations, monitoring activities and serving as a sounding board and early warning system for the president. In institutions with wellestablished commissions, fiscal support and access to the highest levels of the administration, it is possible to influence the policy agenda. However, commissions are not risk-takers, priorities are set within a narrow band of acceptability and much of what is seen as progressive must be perceived as compatible with mainstream male values. For example, there is still a great deal of tokenism at the upper levels of university administration and therefore, women have limited access to the areas of finance, academic administration and other policy-making positions. Women’s ability to attain full professorships, major grants, named chairs, presidencies and other forms of recognition and status is largely dependent on the indulgence of males in positions of power and influence. The commission strategy illustrates the president’s role as change agent and the impact of differences in leadership styles. Commissions gained their viability from

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presidents who are generally male and are unlikely to step outside the mainstream in conceptualizing commissions or in giving them space within the organization. On the other hand, they do demonstrate the limitations that the role of university governance plays in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions. While the president can foster a more inclusive campus environment through his or her ability to generate resources and draw public attention to the issues, it is also true that deference must be paid to faculty and deans in making personnel decisions. Administrative appointments and promotions also tend to remain decentralized, making male dominance a self-fulfilling prophecy. Commission staffs are small, some are ad hoc arrangements that self-destruct after conducting their study and presenting their recommendations, others are members of statewide consortia that report to a central office rather than the campus president. Some reports are analogous to master plans; they are issued and disseminated to a select group of trusted individuals within the university community, their recommendations are evaluated for cost effectiveness and consensus purposes, some discussion is held with the concerned parties, and depending on the compatibility of the recommendations with the goals of the administration, some proposals get implemented. Women’s voices are rather muted and assertive women may find themselves being silenced by colleagues who recognize the risks in rocking the boat. The anecdotal data I collected in my interviews underscore the resistance of universities to change and the subtle discriminatory practices that continue to thwart women’s full participation. One workload issue, for example, concerns service demands on junior women faculty. A commission member observed that Junior women faculty are caught in a double bind. Although service is given very little weight in tenure and promotion decisions, women and minorities will not be given adequate consideration if search committees, promotion and tenure committees and executive commitees consist exclusively of white men. Because the vast majority of our faculty are white men, to have a woman and a minority on every committee grossly overworks women, particularly at the assistant and associate professor levels.5 Access to institutional data varies considerably, however, and is largely dependent on the good will of the administration or on state policies governing release of this information, making it difficult to assess the extent of their effectiveness in removing gender-related pay inequities. Concern about reverse discrimination charges led one research university to engage in some rather interesting circumlocutions as they sought to rationalize genderneutral equal opportunity policies and to equate gender equity and merit. The 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (Zimbler, 1994) shows quite graphically that gender-neutral adjustments are ineffective routes to gender equity. For example, in fall 1992, the mean basic salary for female faculty in all program areas was 72.3 per cent of male faculty salaries. This disparity increased with rank and program status, for example, women full professors in professional programs (business, education and health sciences) earned 69.5 per cent of their male colleagues while women full professors in arts and sciences earned an average of 87.1 per cent of males. The disparity in mean total income for men and women faculty was more pronounced: 69.2 per cent in

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all program areas, from 61.8 per cent for full professors in professional programs to 81.7 per cent for ‘other program areas’ (agriculture, communications, home economics, library science, theology and interdisciplinary studies). Despite their increased participation as faculty and administrators, barriers continue to deter women’s full acceptance and, as commission data show, the numbers of tenured women faculty, academic administrators and university leaders continue to lag behind men at all levels and in all institutional categories. The data that preoccupy women’s commissions reflect the national picture. By 1993–94, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (Snyder and Hoffman, 1994), women students were 55.7 per cent of all undergraduates and 56.4 per cent of all graduate students including 40.2 per cent of all first-professional degree candidates. However, women accounted for only 31.5 per cent of all full-time instructional faculty compared to 68.5 per cent for men. The disproportionate number of male faculty is more pronounced at the full professor rank and in prestige fields. Even after two decades of affirmative action, women are still only 15.6 per cent of full professors compared to 84.4 per cent for men. The situation in California is being mirrored in other states, and more than one commission director commented on legislative rumblings in their states for a ban on affirmative action. ‘Each institution and each board of regents has its own priorities’, one staff person told me. ‘When our state system was established, we had a democratic governor. Now we have a republican governor and the regents, whom he has appointed, seem more concerned with restructuring and downsizing than with diversity. We have to wait and see how much weight will be given to the women’ s recommendations.’ In the final analysis, the institutional culture of most universities and colleges is not compatible with the needs and concerns of women in academia. Universities supporting commissions varied in size, prestige, mission and geographic location. However, the recurrent themes of the findings and recommendations issued by their women’s commissions demonstrated strikingly similar concerns. More than two decades after affirmative action was enacted, women at prestigious universities cited the need for the administration to create a campus culture of support for women faculty, women mid-level administrators, women clerical staff and women graduate students. Some of the specific recommendations running through a number of reports related to salary equity (still an issue on many campuses), recruitment and tenure-track appointments in all-male departments, promotion and appointment of women into administrative leadership positions to counteract the ever-prevalent tokenism, and policies that facilitate women’s combined family-work roles including mandatory stop-the-clock tenure policies and child care provisions. When viewed from a feminist perspective, the underlying assumption of commission recommendations that new policies will solve old problems fails to recognize that basic attitudinal changes are needed to create female-friendly university systems. Rather than assert that women are more likely to work part-time than to earn tenure-track appointments, to teach more and publish less, to obtain their doctorates in the humanities rather than the hard sciences, to remain single or childless, to leave rather than remain at the university, to be assistant and associate administrators rather than in leadership positions, it would be appropriate to determine what it is about institutional structures that make them more compatible with men’s lives.

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When I asked one director to assess the effectiveness of her commission, she responded that a recent changing of the guard at the presidential level now meant she would report to a vice president instead. This change in leadership made it difficult for her to ascertain how much had been accomplished other than the easy things which she listed as family medical leave (now covered through federal legislation), flextime, campus child care, sexual harassment and campus security policies. She observed, The tough issues haven’t been resolved. By this I mean promoting women into positions of authority, closing the salary gap, increasing the number of tenured women, recruiting and retaining women administrators, and doing more for junior faculty.’ The slowness of changing the status quo is evident in the comments of another informant: ‘There are explained differences between fields but unexplained differences due to gender.’ While commission members view their roles as ‘advocacy, monitoring, vigilance, prodding, meeting periodically with the president and the provost, sometimes together, sometimes separately, publicizing data, making recommendations’, they speculate that ‘the extent to which clearly articulated institutional commitments fight with our political reality is an important question.’ Site visits and in-person interviews document the persistence of problems in departments and professional schools that have been traditionally male-dominated, i.e., science, technology, business, law and medicine. They also substantiate the predominance of women faculty in assistant professor, part-time and non-tenure track positions, and in feminized low status fields. They reveal invisible barriers to women’s full participation that are not evident in the national data but come to light from conversations about organizational culture and campus climate. Although the dearth of women faculty, including women of color, is often attributed to a nationwide shortage of qualified women in specialized fields, the anecdotal data raise questions about the accuracy of these beliefs. The low percentage of women faculty at the pinnacle of the profession should be an important warning signal that not enough has changed. Women continue to struggle for acceptance and success as they attempt to overcome inaccurate assumptions about their special needs. In a time of diminishing resources and conflicting priorities, gender equity remains an elusive goal. Conclusions The role of the commission has been largely symbolic, articulating a commitment to gender equity for women. The metaphorical significance of the millennium contributes added urgency to the message they disseminate within the university community regarding the need to affirm and respond to women’s increasing participation as students and faculty by creating a transformative campus culture. However, as Tierney observes, the recent judicial ruling in the Hopwood case rejects the three premises on which affirmative action has been based: compensation, correction and diversification, arguing that ‘specific, rather than general discrimination must be proved’ (1996:27). Gender becomes the ‘no-problem’ problem in this decision, not mentioned but implicit in the rejection by the court of race and ethnicity as valid criteria for admission to the University of Texas Law School. As Rhode argues, the intersection of gender with other patterns of subordination reinforces attitudes that denies their existence and strengthens the illusion that collective problems are resolved (1991:1735). Although universities

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proclaim their continued commitment to affirmative action, if the Supreme Court upholds the Hopwood ruling, the rationale for commissions and other strategies to strengthen women’s role and status in the university will be called into question. The retreat from goals, timetables and other accoutrements of affirmative action presents universities and commissions with potentially vexatious obstacles, making their work more difficult and their future role problematic. Campus commissions provide a perspective on the university and its effectiveness in addressing women’s concerns. In the first decade of affirmative action, pressure from the federal government triggered a flurry of activity on the part of universities and women became the main beneficiaries of these changes. However, major setbacks occurred in the 1980s as universities shifted their attention to retrenchment and restructuring and affirmative action mandates came under attack. Now in the 1990s, affirmative action is being perceived as dysfunctional, outmoded, and most recently, unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution. Incremental change is rejected as an inadequate solution and dismantling and termination are proposed. Proponents of affirmative action acknowledge that even if affirmative action survives, ‘it will be no more than a vestige of its former self’ (Hacker, 1996:28). Women, who are now the majority of students and whose numbers are increasing in the professoriate, need to make their voices heard in this debate and to assume a central role in the policy process, building on the lessons of commission activism as transformative agents of change. Notes 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York City, April 12, 1996. 2 The resolution approved by the Board of Regents laid the groundwork to circulate petitions for the California Civil Rights Initiative, to be placed on the ballot in November 1996. CCRI asked voters to approve an extension of the ban on affirmative action to all state agencies and institutions and used similar language to federal equal opportunity statutes in affirming that: The state will not use race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group in the operation of the state’s system of public employment, education, or public contracting.’ 3 Letter from Governor Wilson to Mr Howard Leach, Chairman, University of California Board of Regents, June 1, 1995. 4 See J.S.Glazer (1984) for a case study of the termination of free tuition policy at the City University of New York in 1976. 5 This quotation and the quotations on pages 123 through 125 are excerpted from transcripts of personal interviews conducted with administrators and faculty in the course of site visits to research universities during 1995. By prior agreement, the identity of these informants remains confidential.

References BARDACH, E. (1976) ‘Policy termination as a political process’, Policy Sciences, 7, pp. 123–31. BARTLETT, K.T. (1993) ‘Feminist legal methods’, in WEISBERG, D.K. (Ed) Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, pp. 550–71.

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BECKER, M.E. (1993) ‘Prince charming: Abstract equality’, in WEISBERG, D.K. (Ed) Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, pp. 221–36. BEUCHLER, S.M. (1990) Women’ s Movements in the United States: Women’s Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. BREWER, G. (1978) ‘Termination: Hard choices—harder questions’, Public Administration Review, 33, pp. 338–51. CARNEGIE COUNCIL ON POLICY STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION (1975) Making Afirmative Action Work in Higher Education: An Analysis of Institutional and Federal Policies and Recommendations, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass. COPPOCK, V., HAYDON, D. and RICHTER, I. (1995) The Illusions of ‘Post-feminism’: New Women, Old Myths, London, Routledge. DELEON, P. (1978) ‘Public policy termination—An end and a beginning’, Policy Analysis, 4, pp. 369–92. EISENSTEIN, Z.R. (1994) ‘United States politics and the myth of “post-racism”’, The Color of Gender: Reimaging Democracy, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, pp. 39–69. FRANCIS, L.L. (1993) ‘In defense of affirmative action’, in CAHN, S.M. (Ed) Affirmative Action and the University: A Philosophical Inquiry, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, pp. 9– 47. GLAZER, J.S. (1991) ‘Feminism and professionalism in teaching and educational administration’, Educational Administration Quarterly, 27(3), pp. 321–42. GLAZER, J.S. (1984) ‘Terminating entrenched policies in educational institutions: A case history of free tuition’, The Review of Higher Education, 7(2), pp. 159–73. GRAY, M.W. (1985) ‘Resisting sex discrimination against faculty women’, Academe, 71, pp. 33– 41. GRAY, M.W. and SCHAFER, A.T. (1981) ‘Guidelines for equality: A proposal’, Academe, 67, pp. 351–3. HACKER, A. (1996) ‘Goodbye to affirmative action?’, The New York Review of Books, XLIII(12), July 11, pp. 21, 24–9. LASSWELL, H.D. (1956) The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis, College Park, MD, University of Maryland Press. MACKINNON, C. (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. MAY, J. and WILDAVSKY, A. (1978) The Policy Cycle, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage. RHODE, D.L. (1991) ‘The “no-problem” problem: Feminist challenges and cultural change’, Yale Law Journal 100, pp. 1731–93. SANDLER, B.R. (1980) ‘Women on campus: A ten-year retrospect’, On Campus With Women, 26, Washington, DC, Association of American Colleges, pp. 2, 3. SANDLER, B.R. and HALL, R. (1986) ‘The campus climate revisited: Chilly for women faculty, administrators, and students’, in GLAZER, J.S., BENSIMON, E.M. and TOWNSEND, B.K. (Eds) Needham Heights, MA, Ginn Press, pp. 175–204. SHAVLIK, D.L., TOUCHTON, J.F. and PEARSON, C.R. (1989) The New Agenda of Women in Higher Education: A Report of the ACE Commission on Women in Higher Education, Washington, DC, American Council on Education. SKRENTNY, J.D. (1996) The Ironies of Affirmative Action; Politics, Culture, and Justice in America, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. SNYDER, T.D. and HOFFMAN, C. (1994) Digest of Educational Statistics, Washington, DC, Government Printing Office. STIMPSON, C.R. (1993) ‘Has affirmative action gone astray?’, Thought and Action, VIII, 2, pp. 5–26. TIERNEY, W.G. (1996) The Parameters of Affirmative Action: Equity and Excellence in the Academy, Los Angeles, CA, Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis.

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VETTER, B. (1994) Professional Women and Minorities: A Total Resource Data Compendium, Washington, DC, Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. WILLIAMS, W.W. (1993) ‘Equality’s riddle: Pregnancy and the equal treatment/special treatment debate’, in WEISBERG, D.K. (Ed) Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, pp. 128–55. ZIMBLER, L.J. (1994) Faculty and Instructional Staff: Who Are They and What Do They Do? 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, Washington, DC, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Chapter 5 Legitimacy Maintenance: The Politics of Women’s Studies Catherine Marshall, Jean O’Barr and Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin The following interview1 reads like excerpts from an administrator’s journal, showing how the personal is political, with Jean speaking on issues like managing a program: ‘[I use my] ability to tell when the bureaucracy was just being bureaucratic and when it was being actively misogynist’ and interdisciplinary knowledge: ‘I’ve observed: the more abstract or quantitative a field, the less likely it is to take gender into account’ We decided that a focused interview would be better for eliciting the dynamics of women’s studies than a traditional article. So Catherine, Jean and Cindy conferred over questions and themes, then convened over wine, cheese and a tape recorder at Jean’s home. It was a cool July evening, Catherine and Cindy knew they had found the right house: the clues—the house with an elegant rose garden and a car parked in the driveway with ‘Uppity Older Women’ on the bumper-sticker. Jean sat in her favorite, rather tiny rocking chair and provided stories and analyses. The two seasoned academics engaged in an intimate discussion of the political nature of women’s studies, while the doctoral student recorded the nuances. What follows provides a leader/founder/insider’s explanation of the evolving contributions, interdisciplinary intertwinings, and politics of women’s studies over almost the past 30 years.2,3 The Evolution of Women’s Studies M: Tell me about yourself—who you are, the work that you’ve done, and how you came to be involved in women’s studies. O: My position has been typical in some ways and it has been atypical in others. When I finished my PhD in political science there was literally no written scholarship on women. I had had one female professor in graduate school. I had never analyzed women in any way. When I went to Africa for two years of field work (1967–9), I was researching party organizations and I was trying to figure out how the local populace was responding to nationalist initiatives. I was passionately interested in Julius Nyerere and I was fascinated with socialism. I wanted to understand how people were responding to that, so I did a comparative study in two villages. In one of the villages it turned out that the women were very active. So I wrote this up without understanding its meaning-as if it were just a fact, as if to say the ‘tall people’. I didn’t see the women as representing more than just another category. The minute I got back to the United States in 1970, it was clear to me that this meant something more than I had understood originally. It was the late sixties

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when higher education was expanding; women were earning PhDs but were not trained to study women, although many of us stumbled on it. I didn’t have any training to make connections between what I had studied and what I had observed. A lot of people in the first generation of women’s studies leaders had formal training with no gender component but, then, because of life experiences, started to make connections. So I focused part of my dissertation on the African women. That was long before I thought about women’s studies, though I was thinking about women in politics. A lot of people were thinking about women in their disciplines but not in interdisciplinary ways. M: Was there something called women’s studies then? O: The first courses in women’s studies were in 1969 at the University of San Diego and at Cornell University. Women students on those campuses demanded to know about women and they organized collective courses. Such courses were rarely taught by one person alone and they were usually done as an overload. The courses resembled a parade of visitors: some community activists, a few people who studied literature, maybe a historian or a psychologist. Later, the National Women’s Studies Association was founded. Signs, as a journal of women’s studies was founded in 1975. So I would say in the midseventies the field formalized: courses, associations, journals. Programs grew up. M: And what were you doing in the 1970s? Did you come to Duke for a position in administration? O: No! (laughs) I moved here, as many women did in 1969, with my husband. We both had PhDs, but he had a job, I just didn’t think about it. It’s amazing to me now. I taught one course in political science at Duke. Things clicked for me. I thought, what am I going to do? I was hired at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) for two years as a visiting assistant professor. Then, after that, I came to Duke as an administrator to run the continuing education program, a re-entry program for women. I spent my first professional years thinking about the needs of adult women in higher education but not yet about the subject of women in the curriculum. It didn’t take very long, listening to those adult women, to realize how ill-suited the curriculum was to their questions and concerns. I started getting interested in women’s studies by about 1973 or 1974 when I saw that the women who were re-entering needed more from their courses. M: And what were some of those early questions? O: One woman in particular articulated those questions for me. She was going to be an English major. I can still hear her voice. She told me that she was determined to get her degree. I was talking with her about her strategies. I thought she would answer that her husband was doing ‘x’ or she had found child care or her mother had decided to pay her tuition. She said,’ Well, I read just a little Virginia Woolf every night; I know it’s not literature’, a comment that she’d heard in class, ‘but that gets me through.’ I realized that what she was reading in class was not speaking to her experience nor were questions being asked that might have made sense for her. The questions that she was dealing with—about what she should do, what marriage was about, what her identity was, and how she satisfied her desire and all sort of things—were not being in any way addressed. M: I’m sure it was one of those crystallizing moments.

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O: Yes. Then I quickly started getting interested in the emerging scholarship and what we were teaching about women. I taught in 1974 or 1975, what I later learned was the first course on Third World women at an American university! I knew about Africa, I had researched African women, so I started studying women within political science. It wasn’t really until the eighties that women’s studies was articulated fully as being problem-centered, with a methodology of its own, and a distinctive pedagogy. M: What were some of the issues that were going on nationally as you saw women’s studies becoming its own discipline? O: In the seventies there was a debate about how long we would need to have women’s studies. When would the situation be corrected? And another question that was posed pitted the study of women against the traditional disciplines. Either you studied women or you studied history; either you studied women or you studied economics. Little attention went to the possibility that one would influence the other and that you needed the space to study women apart from disciplines. There was a lot of ‘it’ll be over soon’ and a lot of debate about where women’s studies or a discipline should have priority. Although the debates about women’s studies being political or politicized were there, they reasserted themselves somewhat later and were linked with multiculturalism and general debates about higher education in the 1990s. M: What are some of the things about women’s studies that are unique in terms of the methodologies, pedagogies and operations? O: I think the main thing that makes women’s studies unique is that it owns a political agenda. It says right up front, ‘You know we’ve been looking at this problem and only studying it from a partial point of view, usually a male point of view, or an upper-class point of view, etc.’ It starts with the idea that inquiry has not been comprehensive or inclusive and then tries to work in a corrective fashion. It doesn’t hide from its politics; it’s committed to social change. Practitioners of women’s studies are always trying to make the picture fuller. Opponents are always saying more information means we’ll have to leave out some of the old, whereas a women’s studies, feminist perspective would say, ‘More information will help us reformulate the old, not necessarily leave it out’ Owning its political agenda, seeing wholeness as better than partiality, and not framing questions in terms of binary choices are what has made it distinctive. M: What is the classroom like? O: I think that the women’s studies classroom is also different. In a classroom where the subject is women, you almost always have changed authority relationships because the students have experiences of being female or of observing femaleness. They want to add what they know experientially to whatever you are presenting theoretically. Different strategies are used that let student voices, ideas and experiences become part of the data that get analyzed. I want to be very cautious here and say I’m not thinking at all about changing classrooms into therapy groups. I don’t think that’s the point. In a women’s studies classroom you talk directly about the process of creating knowledge in addition to the process of transmitting and receiving knowledge. M: How do you establish a legitimacy for this way of questing for knowledge? It is quite different when you do not command a certain type of authority, giving a place for what students bring to the classroom, and that whole business about women’s studies having a political stance that’s up front. Those pedagogical issues are very risky.

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O: Oh, I think they are risky. I’ve thought a lot about change in higher education curricula over the last 100 or 150 years. One of the things I try to do is contextualize women’s studies. I try to think, for example, about the introduction of applied agriculture in the state universities before the turn of the twentieth century. Faced with the model of European research universities, opposed in some ways to more applied form of education, questions like ‘what should we do about tobacco crops?’ were considered less important. I think about how American literature entered the field which was, of course, British literature. I think about the elimination of the study of the Bible as a requirement in all colleges and universities. Thinking about how the curriculum changes leads me to say it almost always changes as a result of external political forces. Let me back up and say I came into women’s studies in 1983 having been an administrator in a university for 13 years. I think one of my strengths was the ability to tell when the bureaucracy was just being bureaucratic and when it was actually being actively misogynist. I think there is a difference. You know the Registrar delights in order. He does not readily accept things that upset the system. Well, initially cross-listed women’s studies courses upset the registration system. The Registrar would feel the same about international studies courses. The issue is not with women but with change. So I think I had a perspective about curriculum change in general and about the ways in which women’s studies was additionally threatening. M: Let’s shift now to how women’s studies fits in the context of the different kinds of things that have been done over the years in universities to address what’s going on with women in higher education, ranging from anti-discrimination laws to re-entering women to criteria for tenure reviews to sexual harassment, etc. How is women’s studies different from affirmative action or a wage equity policy? O: All programs for women on campus share a common agenda because they are trying to give women more opportunities or more control over the opportunities they have. But women’s studies is an academic enterprise about creating knowledge. Affirmative action is about policymaking. You can use knowledge generated in women’s studies to think about affirmative action. The goal is to be mutually reinforcing. Sometimes people have a difficult time thinking that women’s issues in higher education can have multiple dimensions. For example, Duke’s Women’s Center is a support service in the division of Student Affairs and I’m the head of Women’s Studies in Academic Affairs and those are different units pursuing distinct but supporting agendas. Policy initiatives like affirmative action or salary equity come from the study of women. They are meant to rectify working conditions or enhance employment conditions for people in the university, whereas women’s studies is about the study of women and women’s centers are about support, primarily for students. Another important set of actors are the professional caucuses of women within universities (that lobby and pressure for changes in policy), task forces and initiatives behind Sexual Assault Prevention. I think in the late seventies and early eighties most campuses had at most one or two venues for women. You could have a women’s center and a strong affirmative action office and no women’s studies program, or you could have a

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women’s studies program but no women’s center and no group dealing with sexual harassment. I remember so many students coming to me with rape and assault stories in the mideighties before we had a women’s center or a sexual assault prevention coordinator. Now I hardly ever hear those stories. People don’t come to women’s studies to solve those problems these days. By the late 1990s there are multiple places for women’s multiple needs. They can be mutually reinforcing. We need to add three more categories. There are now centers for women of color that undertake both research and advocacy. There are about a hundred research centers on women which are often separate from women’s studies programs. And there are about 200 curriculum integration projects which are occasionally separate from women’s studies. Administrators sometimes set up curriculum integration projects to bring the feminist scholarship into the disciplines and avoid creating a women’s studies program. M: How do you explain that? That sounds very powerful. O: It can be powerful. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Different schools take different strategies. Some of them use their women’s studies program to do curriculum integration and others attempt curriculum integration programs instead of women’s studies. Research centers tend to draw particularly on the social sciences, have community links, are thematic in focus, and are often not involved in teaching. For instance, there is a research center on women in government and public policy; they do a lot with welfare rights and other policy issues. Another works on women’s health issues and run several clinics where they both do research and deliver health care to women. One interesting thing to notice—and there is no scholarship on this at all—is how the various units on a campus coordinate with each other. When I do program evaluations on other campuses, I am stunned to see how antagonistic the relationships sometimes are because the units feel they’re competing for resources and attention. I’ve learned that unless each unit actually assigns a person for liaison and cooperation with the others, there is little communication. The danger is that the units compete instead of cooperating. M: Given that you’ve stated that all of these groups have the same political goals, it would stand to reason that they would want cooperation. Are the universities structured to support it? O: No! Units that deal with women often report to different places in the hierarchy. I’ll use what I know about the University of Michigan to illustrate a common problem. There is a center for the education of women, a long standing re-entry program, which also does research and houses the women in science initiatives. They report to the Provost. The women’s studies program reports to the Dean of Literature, Sciences and Arts. There is also a new research institute where they will focus on working with the School of Journalism to supply background information for reporting on women’s issues, as well as other kinds of research; they report to the Dean of the Graduate School. The heads of these units—not the women heading the programs-are in competition with each other for resources. So even though they have the same agenda, it’s very hard to maintain cooperation in a hierarchical structure where the power is divided and units have to compete for resources.

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M: This all started with me asking about the kind of positions you’ve held. Tell me about being editor of the women’s studies journal Signs. O: I served as editor from 1985–1990. It was an interesting opportunity to look across disciplinary boundaries to see where knowledge was growing. I became much more familiar with developments in the humanities and in philosophy than I would have ever been as someone trained in the behavioral sciences. M: As you have watched the evolution of women’s studies—how have relationships with other fields helped or hampered its development? Are there particular disciplines that were supportive from the beginning, others that might have joined later, or were there any that were particularly resistant? O: In the beginning of feminist scholarship, or what we called in Signs the new scholarship on women, social sciences were big contributors because they were studying women’s behavior. There was a lot of relevant scholarship in psychology, sociology and women’s history. Literature was an important partner as works by women were recovered. There were few women philosophers and yet the caucus for women in philosophy is one of the oldest. I think they would agree, though, that they haven’t influenced the discipline of philosophy as a whole in the way historians have influenced their discipline. I think this has to do with the paradigms that structure the disciplines. The more abstract or the more quantitative a field, the less likely it is to take gender into account.4 I think that teachers and researchers deal with human complexity or messiness in one of two ways. Some immerse themselves in complexity. I think that’s what historians do. They want to see all the possible nuances. Other people deal with complex human situations by trying to abstract the essence, to get away from its messiness. I think that’s what rational-choice people do in the social sciences these days. They just don’t want to deal with difference, so they try to find a common core and eliminate it. I talked to a faculty colleague two weeks ago who’s studying violence and television. I asked him to participate in a conference panel. He called me back and said that his work was not related to gender. M: What? O: I was at a loss for words. I just said, ‘Oh, thanks’ and hung up. I am going to try to understand what his conceptualization of the relationship between television and violence is that wouldn’t lead him to think about gender. I wasn’t even asking him to talk; I was suggesting that students in his class might participate in the workshop because I thought some of them would be interested. I think he’s probably eliminated messiness, i.e., gender. I think the move to economic modeling in the social sciences represents the move away from messiness, and I think that work in history, cultural anthropology and cultural studies moves toward complexity. M: So disciplines like history, sociology, cultural anthropology have facilitated the study of women? O: Yes, but of course there are divisions within those disciplines. Within sociology there are many demographers or economic rational-choice people who wouldn’t look at complicated gender issues and there are social psychologists who would. It’s a different kind of divide. It isn’t just disciplinary, but it also is dependent on your choice of methodologies within a discipline.

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M: We’ve talked about the politics of women’s studies in this country. How does the US compare to other countries’ women’s studies programs? O: In Latin America, Asia and Africa, governments and international agencies often have set up women’s research institutes to work on economic development and legal issues. They are frequently affiliated with but, autonomous from, the university. Those places rarely do any teaching. Their legitimacy comes from a concern for the economic and legal status of women, sometimes agricultural development/ international aid/ecology issues, or sexuality/pregnancy/maternal health kinds of concerns, something that an international agency or government is addressing. In continental Europe, there has not been a great deal of scholarship on women in the major universities. Curricula are tied to a fixed set of written exams which do not allow for the inclusion of women’s studies knowledge. They have few if any explicitly feminist scholars. But the European Community has long sponsored commissions on women that have done an enormous amount of research that supports feminist scholars. Canadian, Australian, and to some extent British universities, which have more flexible curricula, have been extremely active in the newer schools in setting up women’s studies programs. Japan is perhaps more like England in the extent to which a number of the new universities, especially a couple of the women’s universities, have done a fair amount with women’s studies. It has been easier to introduce women’s studies into universities that have flexible elective systems, as opposed to ones based on the continental model, with its system of required exams and set courses. Most former colonial countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have European University systems. In comparison to other countries, the US does not have many free-standing research institutes on women. Instead, we have research grants that are conducted through universities. Since the grants are connected to individual faculty members who teach courses, the information works its way into the curriculum more quickly than the research in free-standing institutes. The Micropolitics of Women’s Studies M: I would imagine that the saga of women’s studies development is replete with stories about the ‘micropolitics of feminist power’, a term which I borrowed from the foreword of your book Feminism in Action.5 Specifically, I wanted to ask you about some of your experiences leading and managing women’s studies. What have you done to insure that your program received adequate personnel and budget and was placed in the center of the curriculum and not off in the margin. Presenting a persuasive rationale, positioning women’s studies and yourself successfully, must have been difficult. O: As I look at colleagues in other schools and universities, I am struck with how useful it is to have administered something else before you administer women’s studies. It is a little more fraught than being the chair of the sociology department. Nobody really thinks that sociology shouldn’t exist, although you will compete with your peers for resources. My previous administrative experience gave me some insight into when an

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attack is really about women or fear of women’s advancement, etc., and when it’s just about competition for resources or fear of change, i.e., just a basic power struggle. M: What are some of the cues? O: (laughs) Well, usually you can reverse the situation and imagine yourself as another peer of the person who’s opposing you, and then you can ask yourself, ‘Would the scenario work in the same way?’ M: Like the chair of sociology? O: Yes. I would say to myself, ‘Is the chair of sociology acting towards me as he or she might towards the chair of cultural anthropology?’ Now sometimes it’s just being female that draws attention, not necessarily advocating feminism. That’s another piece of this. So that’s one question you can always ask yourself. I think that for a lot of liberal men in the academy, the notion that they haven’t been paying attention to gender as part of their ‘liberal knapsack’ is very disturbing. (M laughs) They don’t like to think that they might have missed something. Advocating for women’s studies often reminds people of their shortcomings and that’s a problem. Nobody likes to have their faults pointed out to them. M: Michelle Fine points to what she has called a systematic fear of naming. Her definition includes practices that stimulate critical discourses concerning resources. It seems essential, but scary, for anyone like you who must question the standing economic and social arrangements to support your program.6 How do you balance the need to push that critical conversation with the need to ‘butter up’? I still get friendly advice like, ‘you can attract more bees with honey’. What happens when feminists, advocates for women’s studies, lay on the charm—does that gain better support? How do you explain that to less patient feminists? O: I think about it in a somewhat different way. Let’s continue with the fictional chair of sociology for a minute. People who feel entitled to the power they have believe themselves to be serving the institutional mission, whatever that may be. An important step for women’s studies is to situate itself as part of the institutional mission. How do you present a persuasive argument that women’s studies is an integral part of the institution? Sometimes it’s said in terms of a corrective, ‘We didn’t used to be this way. We didn’t used to have women and now we’ve reformed. We’ve been converted. We’ve seen the light’ Sometimes schools have had long traditions of educating women but have not treated them as equal to men. Duke, for instance, admitted women beginning in the 1890s, but it consigned them to second-class status, and it never taught men and women about women. I think the story is different for every school. A women’s studies program has to follow the contours of its home institution. You have to figure out how the women’s studies mission can be articulated as part of the institution’s overall mission. M: So how did you situate women’s studies at Duke? O: I thought a lot about this question before I agreed to take the job. I realized as director of Continuing Education that Duke University had never included adults in its mission. What could I say about women then? It just came to me one day that I could say, ‘Women’s studies is an extension of Duke’s historic commitment to women students but with a contemporary goal, to teach women and men about women.’ Now that’s a fit with the institutional mission. I’m currently working with the director of women’s studies at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. We’re formulating a statement

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for her program that takes Berea’s historic motto about uplifting the people of that area, and saying that women are included in that. It recognizes the strength of mountain women, so we’re working on that as a theme for some of the things that we’re going to do. M: That’s a beautiful illustration of the way in which your previous administrative experience has connected very nicely with your ability to direct women’s studies. O: Your question regarding whether honey attracts more people is related to that. One of the things that is interesting to me is how often people who are opposed to women’s studies talk on and on, and people who are for it also talk on and on. Not much listening happens. Because we live in a world that is designated male and female, people have an enormous number of opinions about maleness and femaleness, hence they have a lot of opinions about women’s studies. At parties people will say something like, ‘I don’t really know anything about economics’ or ‘I don’t understand the politics of recycling.’ But they always seem to have ideas about gender. So people offer all these opinions about women’s studies. Almost any man you talk to about women’s studies will tell you about his wife, daughter, sister or secretary. And you think, ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Everyone’s life includes women. They say, ‘Oh, it’s just too political’, or There is not much to it’, or ‘I really like that you can get into the novels of such and such’, or ‘Did you know that my great-grandmother was a suffragist?’ They say just amazing things. I find that it is not so much using a ‘honey’ approach as it is listening and figuring out what is the basis for their ideas about gender. Once you understand, you can usually work from that to something else. It’s not assuming that everybody has the same opinion and that they all have the same experiential base to their ideas about gender. You go from where they are, to whatever it is you’re trying to get them to, but you have to assume difference at the start and then you have to work with that difference. M: That seems to me to require an incredible amount of tolerance and, as you say, listening skills. O: It does. It requires tolerance, but you get further and you don’t waste as much time. Everybody has some energy around this topic. Some people are just outright opposed to things happening in women’s studies. Some people are indifferent. You have to figure out what they care about and link the study of women to it. M: To their grandmother who was a suffragist? O: Yes, or some concern they have or the humanities or fine arts education, etc. It can be quite varied. I think you do it by understanding where people come from with reference to gender. M: What about people who come to women’s studies with a very activist stance and/or a fairly radical position, are they able to accept the stance that you take? O: That’s hard for a lot of people who would rather ‘Mack truck it’ or run it through with a steam roller. M: (laughs) ‘Just look at what those administrators are doing to our program! Let’s rally support and take action!’ O: Yes, I think it’s hard for people who believe strongly and see things in a certain way to imagine that other people might not see it that way. I try to work with those people in the same way. I don’t care how strong or radical somebody is, I am sure that their father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, boyfriend or coworker is

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someplace else. I think a lot about whether that is manipulative or can be seen that way, but I don’t think it is. Very rarely do people listen carefully to what’s bothering you, and then try to compare it to their own agenda. Perhaps then you could have an honest disagreement. M: Women’s studies have become the center of tensions between the traditional authority of academic men and the radical challenge from academic women. Which are seen as the most legitimate rationales for women’s studies? O: It’s hard for people to argue against wholeness, so I think this is the most successful argument. You can say ‘Well, we’re trying to study the whole human condition’, and who could be against that. A counterargument to wholeness is, ‘but I’ll have to give up something else’, and the answer to that is, when you have a whole perspective, you can ask new questions of your old material. Another set of arguments in opposition often is ‘it’s just political, there’s no substance to it’ I find it easiest to answer that by talking about how all decisions are political. We all make choices based on values. Sometimes, depending on who I’m arguing with and the context, I agree with the person, which is a more therapeutic approach. They say ‘I’m so goddamn angry’, and you say, ‘I’ll bet you are angry. This is a lot of change to incorporate and it’s very hard to redo courses and keep up with all of that knowledge. There really has been an explosion. This is hard work.’ Sometimes just a little sympathy for the difficulty of keeping up with new developments and parallel initiatives like the globalization of curricula, which is challenging for most people, goes a long way to gaining support. M: Let’s talk about the other ways women’s studies works its way into the conversation. O: I listen to what students tell me about what is going on in their classes, and then I try to think of ways that faculty might come in to the process. Most faculty want to do well by their students, so I encourage students to ask a lot of questions in class. A faculty member may well go look something up because a student asked a question, whereas they may not if I ask them. M: You’re doing a lot of ‘bubbling up’ types of strategies as well. Starting from the bottom of the hierarchy? O: Students are very important in the process of making women’s studies work, for if they feel empowered to ask questions and to persevere, they will often do that more effectively than a faculty member’s peers. In some ways, the classroom is a private place between student and teacher, but students talk amongst themselves all the time, and if you listen to what they say, you can help them say things in other classes. M: Administrators and policymakers have bureaucratic processes for measuring a programs’ efficacy which don’t always fit for newer, more experimental, interdisciplinary programs. Looking for concrete outcomes, counting numbers, asking the wrong questions—this can even be used to undermine threatening or controversial programs. Has this happened? How do you handle that? Do you create new ways, like getting beyond the fallacies of measures that simply compare men and women? O: Women’s studies programs have been so involved in arguing theoretical positions that we haven’t done as well making empirical claims about, for example, the job placement rate of women’s studies majors, what percentage go on to graduate school, how women’s studies bolsters other departments’ enrollments. I do publish enrollment statistics and talk about crosslisted courses and our majors and their grade point averages. I try to think about reporting in ways that are acceptable to other people,

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telling them about our 46 majors and minors, the nine who went on to medical school, the three who went to Harvard. That stops the conversation! M: Have you created criteria that were impressive, those that get beyond the traditional ones like graduation rates and employment? O: I’ve usually made the quantitative claims in traditional terms, to show merit and excellence. What I want to illustrate is how women’s studies speaks to the institutions’ values. I talk about the high number of our graduates who go on to PhD programs, something Duke has been concerned about. M: We seldom talk about it, but space is political, both in concrete terms—rooms and lecture halls—and in terms of freed-up curriculum allowing exploration time beyond the canon-prescribed knowledge. You have some wonderful offices and from the outside it looks like you’re very well set up. I wonder how you accomplished all that? O: Financially speaking, we are in relatively good shape because of our fund-rasing efforts with alumnae/i. Duke was not directing funding appeals to its women graduates in the 1980s, and we came along at a time when that appeal worked. We’re very fortunate in that sense. In micropolitics terms, I did have one other insight as I was thinking about this a decade ago. At one level, administrators are often seeking just to contain or satisfy faculty and students. They really don’t have to ultimately pay attention to them because their bosses are alumnae/i and trustees, people external to the institution. If you can get those people interested in your project, you have a way to influence administrators. Everyone expects me to be interested in women’s studies, but they don’t expect when they’re out on the road to hear a parent say ‘I’ve been very impressed with the women’s studies program, tell me a little more.’ They have to hear it from the people that they don’t expect to hear it from, and who have some power over them in certain ways. I think that women’s studies needs allies among parents and alumnae/i, and there are feminist allies in these groups. You have to build bridges or connections to multiple constituencies, because people need to hear things several times. They don’t get it the first time. M: I can see that you didn’t just study political science abstractly. O: That insight about multiple influences is a fundamental insight into American politics. You have to hear the message several times, so when it has several carriers— newspaper, a flyer, a poster, your cousin told you, a talk show—it starts to look better. M: Do you think there is anything special about you as an administrator? O: I think there are a lot of people like me in the world of women’s studies, as there are in the academy. I do think that I’m different from many people in the sense that I am interested in social justice and institutional change. I don’t just do this because I don’t have anything else to do or as an escape from something else. I do it because of a fundamental commitment. It’s not just a game. I am interested in women having more opportunities and in men becoming more aware of the privilege they’ve inherited. M: Id like to ask about feminist men, because I’ve discovered that most of those I have talked to are from a liberal feminist background. Is that enough when we need to work with them in transforming institutions? O: Women have lived experiences, which by sharing or by studying they begin to understand, to theorize and to use as a base. Men very often don’t have that experience, or they haven’t allowed themselves to observe it in women around them. So the first and easiest thing is to think about how to level the playing field and make

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things equal for everybody, and that seems like it might fix the problem. Other men from a more radical bent assume that some sort of grand revolutionary change will automatically make everything better, including gender inequities. Neither one of those things is true, I think. If you study the history and the dynamics of women who resist oppression, you see that it takes a lot of individual change and leadership, and also change in institutional and cultural relationships. Your daughter’s anorexia is not just an individual matter but is part of a larger system. I think that what men fail to see most often is the impact of the system on the individual, the ways in which they are implicated. In general, men have greater privilege in patriarchy. They think that individual initiative can do anything, that the rules are ultimately fair and not constructed on the basis of gender. I think that a liberal stance is a good first step, but it only goes so far. I think you have to see power relationships more profoundly, see the way in which power is often gendered and where it is related to class, to race and to sexual orientation or ability. M: When a provost might say to someone like you, ‘Look, we have in place all of these policies, we have women’s centers, we have a women’s studies program, so the problem is pretty well taken care of’, how do you respond? O: First, you have data to argue with. Often you figure out a piece of the problem to work on. But a lot of the questions that you have asked have been from the standpoint of defending women’s studies. That is often the way it comes across. I think one of the most important strategies is not to allow yourself to get on the defensive. That does not necessarily mean taking the offensive, but rather assuming an interrogative position, not to defend, but to question. When someone says, ‘It’s taken care of’ I would ask, ‘What’s your evidence that it is taken care of, what do you mean when you say that?’ If the answer is something like, ‘Well, the women seem happy here’, then I can ask, ‘What are the attrition rates of males vs. females?’ M: An interrogative position is not an attack… O: That’s right. I don’t know the answers, but the questions are fairly straightforward. My favorite question, which has never been answered, is what’s the data on support of our graduate students? The national data are very clear: Women are teaching assistants and men are research assistants, across all fields. Women work more hours for the same amount of money than men do and they don’t get the mentorship or the prestige in publications that come out of the research relationships. That’s a difference, but we don’t have any data on that at Duke. Asking why is a more effective micropolitical strategy than simply defending your own position. M: One of my missions, both generally and in this book, is to help feminists see the connection between studying women’s lives and looking at political dynamics, institutions and power systems. It’s not just understanding the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, but understanding her social and political context. Also the other way around, I want policy analysts and decisionmakers to recognize that gender can be part of every issue. It strikes me that there’s all this energy that needs to be channeled so that people can make those connections. O: I’m not sure how you get decisionmakers in any realm to pay attention to women, except that somebody has to ask them to think about consequences and how women figure into that. If the answer is ‘just like men’, you have to say ‘maybe, maybe not’ and then probe a little deeper. I was thinking about all of this debate surrounding

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teenage pregnancy, about which I don’t know a great deal. But feminist researchers have known for almost a decade that unmarried teenage mothers often have had sex with men older than themselves. In other words, teenage boys do not impregnate teenage girls—teenage girls are impregnated by older men. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the last year or so there’s been a little flurry of public attention related to this. Most of the men that father these children are five to ten years older than the girls. The difference in age is quite noteworthy. This brings up an important policy question that doesn’t get asked, ‘How do girls say no in power relationships like that?’ That’s very different from telling your 15-year-old boyfriend, ‘No’. M: Hearing facts like that raises the question of the power dynamic involved. Teenage motherhood is no longer just about a young sexually promiscuous girl making stupid decisions on Saturday night. O: Right, it might be Sunday afternoon and a member of the extended family who takes advantage of his familiarity. If you don’t think about power, I don’t think you can think about gender, because gender relationships are power relationships. I think that’s a very important lens through which to look at things. The Goals and Dilemmas in the Content of Women’s Studies M: How can women’s studies maintain a balance between its need to applaud and promote famous firsts among women achievers while at the same time remaining accessible and open to the daily realities of all kinds of women, not just Eleanor Roosevelt but women who take in laundry, while at the same time grappling with important social issues? O: In an anthology I’m editing now, we have an excerpt from Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel who composed 450 works in her life yet she published only two and wrote often about how she wasn’t really a composer. I want to complicate the question of ‘greats’. Let’s just say for the moment that among women composers Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel is a ‘great’. We could take one strategy of women’s studies and point to the quality of her compositions, expose that her brother stole some of them, and thus argue that she’s a great composer. When we probe deeper into her story, though, we find that it’s quite complicated. She hid what she could do and denied it. She then becomes much more like ordinary women who deny their talents but don’t have the opportunity to leave behind a legacy. To me, we can’t just do ‘greats’. We are grappling with how to investigate the lives of ordinary women for which we have fewer records. You have to figure out some ingenious strategies for uncovering women’s experience. My colleagues in various disciplines do that all the time. They ask questions of their material to get at what the women were/are doing and thinking, and what effects they had. I always tell my students that women have always been 50 per cent of the population, so they must have been doing something; the question is ‘What?’ I also tell them that reproducing daily life enables social life to go on. If somebody didn’t pack the lunch, do the laundry and raise the children, other things wouldn’t get done. So I think we’re learning how to look at all women and see differences as well as similarities across class and race.

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M: What are some concrete strategies that women’s studies has used to make sure that it is inclusive and encompasses age, race, sexual orientation and lifestyle differences? There’s the criticism of women’s studies as being a middle-class intellectual elite. O: I won’t disagree with that. Most ideology and social thought has come from privileged classes who have the means to distribute them. That’s not particular to women. When the women’s movement and women’s studies began, the goals seemed fairly simple. They had to do with equity or inclusion or fairness. As we’ve seen the complexity of problems unfold, the goals have accordingly become more complex, so it isn’t as simple as one single view, and goals can be contradictory. Getting women into the professions has not changed the professions as much as many of the people working to open them up hoped it would. One goal, getting women into the professions, has not necessarily led to a second goal, such as changing the level of care. The goals of professional women are highly contingent on the poorly paid labor of working-class women who take care of their children. These are two interesting, in the short term irreconcilable, goals. Wealthy women exploiting poor women to take care of their children, although not necessarily a new historical phenomenon, poses a compromising situation. M: So when you go out and solicit money from alumnae/i, how do you help people recognize those troublesome issues? O: That’s a very important question. We try to use our resources to educate the next generation about those very issues, to raise those questions. I could not say, ‘I will only take your money if you raise the pay of your Dominican housemaid’, because it’s not my place to do so, but we certainly can teach a course, as we did last semester, on sex and work that looks directly at these issues. Direct influences may be better, but you can’t always have them. It’s a process, not an event. M: How do you think women’s studies has contributed to social change? Earlier you said women’s studies could inform policies like Affirmative Action. O: Sometimes it’s activists who are more responsible for changes. Sometimes they are enabled to see because women’s studies has influenced them in other ways. They know there is a history to an issue, and they know there is a lot of writing about health care from a woman’s perspective; that encourages an activist bent. I know someone on a hospital board in Detroit who has been deeply influenced by women’s studies and has been adamant about women’s health services. Congressional action led to legislation on medical education a couple of years ago that requires medical schools to incorporate 14 points about women’s health into the curriculum. That was the result of Patricia Schroeder and other women legislators insisting that there be standards for women’s health in national policy. Knowledge and activism work in different ways, but they can work in tandem. Multiple influences come together, and scholarship on women has created an interesting climate. Assessment and the Future M: In one episode of the television show Murphy Brown, she went back to her college to receive an honorary degree and was surprised to learn that women’s studies students are not at all interested in who she is, are really interested in their own personal stuff

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and have no sense of the struggles that went on before them. I have students who view Title IX’s passage as ancient history. What can women’s studies do with these kinds of gaps and with assertions that the feminist movement is dead, or that the women’s movement has attained its goals so special programs are no longer needed? O: It’s perhaps inevitable, as women’s studies is nearing 30, the typical sociological age for a generation, that there would be these generational discussions. There are a number of books out now, such as Rose Glickman’s (1993) Young Feminists, and The Conversation Begins by Christina Looper (1996) and her daughter Christina Baker Kline, in which mothers and daughters describe the impact of feminism. There’s an Elizabeth DeBold (1993) book called The Mother-Daughter Revolution, another book called Young Women, Listen Up. Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker’s daughter, is also writing a book. There’s a lot of writing coming from this generation. The main thing I understand younger women to say, feel, and see, is that they have come into the world with a set of assumptions about equity, openness, and what they’ll be able to do. For people born after 1975, legislation and policies were in place, and that’s just the way the world was. There was a tremor throughout the country when the Republicans first started talking about repealing legal abortion. The idea that something that people have could be taken away struck many young women. Many of us who are of the first generation of this wave of feminism have devoted ourselves to it often at great personal cost. I think a lot of our daughters or students are not fueled in the same way. They believe that there are more options out there, as there are indeed. I don’t think young people in their late teens or early 20s have to go through what my colleagues and I went through or approach these issues in the same way. Each generation has its own set of experiences. I heard endlessly about how formative the Depression was for my parents. It made me want to go outside and throw a $100 bill up in the air just to be foolish. I try to remember that when people say, ‘they don’t appreciate us’. I don’t expect young feminists to look at it in the same way. I’ve been watching the differences in our students. In our Women’s Studies program, we have always asked students to write statements at graduation about what women’s studies has meant to them. In the first years, in the eighties, they all wrote about the marvel of knowing about women. Then in the early nineties there was a lot of talk about finding a voice to articulate the things they learned. But last year and this year, I’ve seen them talk about using the tools of women’s studies in their chosen occupation. They say things like ‘with a women’s studies background, I will be able to be a better physician attending to the needs of women.’ Their focus is on applying knowledge. Student views have seemed to evolve from a focus on new knowledge to finding their voice to using knowledge as a tool. They actually talk about women’s studies perspectives as an analytic tool! They know how knowledge gets created. They know what the gaps are, or they know how to look for gaps, silences or absences. This focus on applying knowledge as a tool is very different from just concentrating on finding the gaps, which I think the earlier generation did. M: You know the question that was asked 30 years ago, ‘How do you know when you are no longer needed?’ What would the world have to be like for women’s studies to be irrelevant? What is the future for women’s studies? O: Women’s studies people are so busy doing that they tend not to reflect on their own evolution as a discipline. I think that we don’t imagine the future enough. We’re much

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better on problems and troubles, and strategies and solutions. I think most feminists are interested in policies that allow people greater flexibility in their jobs so that men and women can share the domestic load, that’s one goal. Another is that feminists and women’s studies scholars are very concerned about the growing disparity between rich and poor. There is a women’s budget project developing, the focus of which is to try to understand the role women play in the economy and what the economy does to women. The project is concerned with finding out how we might organize not just our interpersonal lives but our communal lives to be fair to everybody. I think that when you understand gender oppression, you understand other kinds of oppressions. So I think that people are looking for balance on a personal level and some way to work toward the greater communal good. There is a lot of evidence of this in electoral politics in terms of issues that women vote on and what women legislators do. They actually do differ from men irrespective of party affiliation. That’s what the gender gap is in current presidential politics. I’m not saying that all women agree with women’s studies scholars, but I think women’s studies scholars hope to envision a better personal and communal world. That is their level of vision. I don’t think there is an intermediate vision, though there are many microvisions. We know that we’d like ‘x’ in the curriculum or ‘y’ in some other place, and I think we’d like to be more connected to things political and everyday. The specialization of knowledge in the academy is a problem for some feminist scholars, many of whom wish they were more connected to women’s lives. M: Do you ever think that your job or program will no longer be necessary ? O: I would love to see the day. It’s hard for me to imagine that we will ever achieve the kind of equity that would render women’s studies obsolete. The history of women protesting is as old as the written record, so it’s hard for me to imagine that we won’t always need a space to bring up these questions. M: Women’s studies often seems to be put on the defensive. Would you like to offer a way of positioning women’s studies politically so that it is not perceived in that way? O: Women’s studies is at its best—feminist scholarship is at its best—when it’s speaking for itself and feels enabled to explain something, not in response to criticism, but in its own right. Women’s studies is most powerful when it’s trying to propose new ways of looking at things, solving problems, or looking at an issue and not just responding to criticisms which are constructed by somebody else. For example, asking questions such as ‘What would make girl children not go underground at 11?’ and ‘How can a young mother best balance her relationships with children and desire for independence or work?’ That’s the positive part of women’s studies for me. Notes 1 Nancy Rosebaugh, long-term women’s studies staff member at Duke University, contributed significantly to the final written version of the interview. 2 O means Jean O’Barr is speaking; M stands for Catherine Marshall. 3 For further discussions and a wider context see, for example:

De Groot, J. and Maynard, M. (1993) Women’ s Studies in the 1990s: Doing Things Differently? New York, NY, St Martin’s Press.

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Griffin, G. (1992) Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue, Pasadena, CA, Trilogy Books. Luebke, B.F. and Reilly, M.E. (1995) Women’s Studies Graduates: The First Generation: The First Generation, New York, Teachers College Press. Morley, L. (1995) The micropolitics of women’s studies’, in Maynard, M. and Purvis, J. (Eds) (Hetero)sexual Politics, London, Taylor and Francis. Musil, C.M. (Ed) (1992) The Courage to Question: Women’s Studies and Student Learning, Washington, DC, Association of American Colleges. O’Barr, J. (1994) Feminism in Action, Chapel Hill, NC, The University of North Carolina Press. 4 O’Barr made these points elsewhere, saying:

When (academic work) is done under the women’s studies rubric, the activitiesare different in at least two aspects. First, women’s studies is by definition aninterdisciplinary endeavor and all of those who participate in it learn to talkacross the jargon and paradigms of their disciplines…often a personally painfuland politically tricky endeavor… Secon…feminist scholarship insists thatnew subjects be investigated (for example, studying violence against women)and that old disciplines be revised (for example, including the work of womenauthors, artists, performers). Feminist scholars have been responsible for significant shifts in disciplinary theory (for example, feminist literary criticism).(In Davidson, C. and Wagner-Martin, L. (Eds) The Oxford Companion ofWomen’s Writing in the United States (1995) New York, Oxford UniversityPress, pages 939–41). 5 Luecker, K. (1994) Foreword in O’Barr, J. Feminism in Action, Chapel Hill, NC, The University of North Carolina Press, p. xi. 6 Fine, M. (1991) Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban High School, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press.

References DEBOLD, E. (1993) The Mother-Daughter Revolution: From Betrayal to Power, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Publication. GLICKMAN, R.L. (1993) Daughters of Feminists, New York, St Martin’s Press. LOOPER, C.L. (1996) The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk About Living Feminism, New York, Bantam Books.

Part II The Politics of Silence and Ambiguity

Women have had the power of naming stolen from us. We have not been free to use our own power to name ourselves, the world, or God (Mary Daly, 1973:8). It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head (Sally Kempton, 1989:20). Virginia Woolf, and many before and after her, persevered in the university despite the silent but loud, clear but ambiguous messages that she was unwelcome and unsuited. Although we no longer have eminent scientists lecturing that women will lose their fertility by pursuing an intellectual life, the climate is still chilly for women in postsecondary education. The three chapters in this section present research revealing the subtle cultural controls that cause discomfort or drive women out of university life— often without any overt cruelty or violation of law. Frances Stage’s Chapter 6, ‘Reframing research, informing policy…’ focuses on young women students who major in math yet drop out. Policy-makers have paid attention to girls’ and women’s underachievement in math and science. Research, arguments and lobbying for funding for programs and policies to support women’s access to economy-enhancing careers in technology and engineering—with math and science as the building blocks—have been appealing. But the most useful twist in this chapter is Stage’s explication of the difference between mainstream policy recommendations and feminist critical policy analysis. In her chapter, Stage reanalyzes research she has previously published in a mainstream journal, this time from a feminist and critical stance, resulting in quite a different set of policy recommendations. Now that policies exist to prevent sex discrimination, are women faculty thriving? Two chapters provide answers to this question—a question that few policymakers are asking The feminist theoretical frame presents expanded deeper questions about the

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intersection of public lives—of formal meetings, work requirements and policies, and the aspects of life relegated to the private sphere—emotion, sexuality, sense of identity, community, family, relationships, the need to feel valued. Acker and Feuerverger’s research describe the malaise that continues as women search for the university supports and rewards that would help them feel as if the university were a learning community, one that valued and promoted the relationship-building work they do. Chapter 8, ‘Lesbian existence and the challenge to normative constructions of the academy’ demonstrates how the experiences of lesbians in universities ‘outs’ the unstated policies mandating heterosexuality and a male narrative of what women should be like. The chapter usefully displays the master’s toolbox trick of using that publicprivate dichotomy to discard responsibility for inequalities—declaring them as ‘privatesphere’—not part of what formal institutions and policies must address—thus allowing the dominant power arrangements to discriminate at will. In this strategy, the marginalized may not complain—their discomfort, their sense that they must create passable identities—are labelled as personal and private problems. Thus, lesbians, other marginalized groups, other women, are explained away: ‘Oh, she has such a chip on her shoulder’, or ‘She really needs to keep her private problems out of the workplace’. In power relationships, superordinates ‘can organize the relationship, structure conditions for interaction, define the culture, mandate forms of deference and demeanor, control use of time and space, differentially extract benefits, and disperse risks and costs’ (Hall, 1992:5) References DALY, M. (1973) Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, Boston, Beacon Press. HALL, P.M. (1992) ‘Policy as the transformation of intentions: Producing program from statute’, Paper presented at the Sociology of Education refereed roundtables, Pittsburgh, American Sociological Association Annual Meetings, August. KEMPTON, S. (1989) In Quotable Women: A Collection of Shared Thoughts, Philadelphia, PA, The Running Press, p. 20. JORDAN, J. (1979) ‘Metarhetoric’, in RICH, A., On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978, New York, W.W.Norton and Co.

Chapter 6 Reframing Research, Informing Policy: Another View of Women in the Mathematics/Science Pipeline Frances K.Stage In writing this chapter I had several purposes. One, I wanted to briefly outline the evolution of studies of students (and particularly women) in the mathematics/ science pipeline. Next I suggest that taking a feminist but noncritical perspective does not necessarily illuminate the subject fully. To support that argument I briefly present the results of a study with a colleague conducted and analyzed from a feminist perspective. Next I reanalyze the data from a critical feminist perspective hoping that the research might be used to transform our ways of framing issues and policies affecting women. Finally, I suggest that others might find reanalysis of research useful, even as an exercise in reflexive research (Lather, 1991)—particularly with respect to conclusions drawn. Introduction Research on college students, particularly focusing on women and nontraditional students, has expanded rapidly in the course of a decade. Added to that work has been a particular focus on women in what is called the mathematics/science pipeline (Berryman, 1983; Chipman and Thomas, 1987; Hilton and Lee, 1988; Lane, 1990; Maple and Stage, 1991; Oakes, 1990; Rossiter, 1978, 1982; Stage and Maple, 1996; Ware and Lee, 1988; Widnall, 1988).1 Education policymakers, government agencies and philanthropic foundations support this research as well as programs to encourage students and particularly women and minorities to major and persist in science and mathematics majors (Davis et al., 1996). Several reasons exist for the increased focus on women in these majors. First, historically women have been underrepresented among scientists and mathematicians. In 1995 women earned approximately 31 per cent of the doctorates awarded in the sciences and engineering, up from 26 per cent in 1986. In mathematics and computer sciences women earned approximately 20 per cent of the degrees, up from 15 per cent in 1985 (National Science Foundation, 1996). The number of women preparing for careers in the hard sciences, particularly academic careers, is low (Widnall, 1988) with relatively few women making the transition from graduate student to faculty at research-oriented universities (Etaugh, 1984; McMillan, 1986; Stage and Maple, 1996). The example of excellent, satisfied, established women scientists teaching, conducting research and contributing service is vital for the continued progress of women scientists in academia

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(Dresselhaus, 1984). They are powerful role models, counselors and advocates for students and for junior women faculty (Dresselhaus, 1984; Perucci, 1984). The relative percentages of women choosing to major in mathematics and scientific fields has increased significantly since 1970 (Ware and Lee, 1988; Lane, 1990). However, Green (1989) points out that the percentage of women planning to major in the sciences actually fell from 8.8 per cent to 5.1 per cent (total numbers of students, male and female is declining). In 1991–92 women earned 41 per cent of bachelors degrees in mathematics, 38 per cent of master’s degrees, and 21 per cent of doctoral degrees (Earned, 1994). In contrast, women earned nearly half of the mathematics education doctoral degrees in 1990 (Digest, 1992). Additionally, of new doctorates in mathematics, women were only 24 per cent of the new hires in academic departments (31 per cent of new hires in research institutes) (Annual, 1993). These figures (as well as their historical predecessors) demonstrate that despite over a decade of funding and focus on access, change is slow. Second, women who initially choose mathematics and science majors are more likely to switch out of those majors and into a nonscience major. Equally prepared women defect from mathematics and science at a higher rate than men, particularly in the early years of their undergraduate careers (Oakes, 1990). Additionally, Seymour and Hewitt (1994) found that college GPAs of women who switch out of science and mathematics are, on average, higher and not substantially different than those who do not switch. Further, women who switch have higher GPAs than men who switch. Third, because western society values technical skills, mathematics serves as a gatekeeper to careers that are provided economic advantages over nontechnical ones (Maple and Stage, 1991; Stage and Kloosterman, 1995; Stage and Maple, 1996). Those majors that are mathematics based are routinely among the highest in terms of starting salaries for new graduates. Thus women are systematically deprived of the economic opportunities that accompany acquisition of mathematics and science skills. Studies of Women in the MathematicslScience Pipeline Research on college students has evolved from conventional through transformational perspectives2 (Stage, 1990; Stage and Anaya, 1996). Studies conducted prior to 1960 largely focused on men’s experiences, often at elite institutions, and most often, generalized research results to all college students, male and female, at any kind of institution. Research focusing on the experiences of women students during the same time period went largely ignored and uncited. After 1960 gender became more important particularly in quantitative studies. First it was employed as merely a correlative or causal variable. Later gender was employed as a blocking factor to separate men from women when comparing constellations of characteristics and experiences leading to satisfaction, achievement or other successes. These approaches to data analysis ignore the fact that causal aspects of women’s experience might include factors that were unimportant or nonexistent in men’s experiences. Along the continuum of research on students in the mathematics/science pipeline most studies are concentrated in the conventional perspective.3 Those that might be described as transformational are fewer in number and rarely address broader social issues. A need

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exists for research on the experience of women at all levels in the science and mathematics pipeline. Recently, a colleague and I decided to address this need. A Conventional Study of Graduate Women We published a study of graduate women who had originally enrolled as PhD students in mathematics, but had switched fields to work on a doctorate in education (Stage and Maple, 1996). We chose the research topic out of a combination of personal and professional interests. I left the mathematics/science pipeline after earning a master’s degree in mathematics. For several years I taught college level mathematics at the beginning through advanced calculus levels before returning to begin work on a PhD in higher education. Sue Maple has focused on the socialization and enculturation of graduate and professional students. We began our research with several assumptions: 1) it is desirable to have women in the mathematics pipeline as role models; 2) women who leave the pipeline leave a career goal unfulfilled; 3) women’s lower levels of participation leads to economic differences in salaries earned; and 4) through understanding we could possibly help more students, both male and female, stay in the pipeline. These assumptions fit well with prevailing literature in higher education (Davis et al., 1996; Maple and Stage, 1991). The Study Our study had three objectives: 1) to examine and describe factors relating to respondents’ participation in the mathematics pipeline; 2) to examine and describe perceptions and experiences of women students and their relationship to the subject of mathematics; and 3) to examine and describe the relationship between women’s perceptions of mathematics and perceptions of themselves within that discipline. Our primary sources of data were interviews with seven American-born women students at a large midwestern research university. In each case the respondents had successfully completed a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.4 While all were enrolled in doctoral programs, their graduate histories varied. One woman had entered a graduate program in psychometrics and was working on an educational psychology degree during the time of our study. A second, as a young woman, had attempted to enroll in a master’s program in mathematics and, despite her qualifications, was diverted to a master’s in teaching; at the time of our study she was enrolled in the doctoral program in mathematics education. One woman entered a doctoral program in mathematics after earning her bachelor’s degree, but after a year, switched to the doctoral program in mathematics education. Three women enrolled for from one to three semester’s of master’s level work in mathematics before changing majors and earning a master’s in mathematics teaching; at the time of our study one of these was enrolled in curriculum and instruction and two in mathematics education for their doctoral work. Finally, one woman earned a master’s degree in mathematics, and after more than a year in the PhD program in mathematics ultimately switched to the doctoral program in mathematics education (see Stage and Maple [1996] for detailed descriptions of the women).

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Each respondent participated in two interviews averaging approximately two hours for a total of 28 hours of interviews. We used a conceptual framework to guide interpretation of the responses, however, we wanted respondents to define their own experiences. Therefore, open-ended interviews were used to collect the data and we analyzed it following the narrative approach (Bruner, 1987; Eisner, 1991; Merriam, 1988). Direct questions about gender issues were not asked during the course of the interviews. However, if the topic had not come up during either session, at the end of the final interview we asked, ‘Do you think your perceptions about mathematics were influenced by the fact that you are a woman? Do you think that your experiences would have been different or that you would have perceived things differently if you had been a man?’ Each respondent also completed timelines of significant events for their education, work, and personal lives.5 Those interviewed were all white, middle or upper-middle class Americans. As women doctoral students in mathematics, their experiences were likely to shed insights on others’ work in similarly adverse situations, although it is likely that their observations and experiences differed from ethnic minority students, first generation college attenders and international students. Also, all had enrolled in doctoral study in the school of education after their math department experiences and all had voluntarily participated in the study. Women who left graduate mathematics and moved to other fields of study, or left academe altogether might have different perspectives. We used basic concepts described in our literature review to organize themes described in the women’s narratives: participation in the mathematics/science pipeline, conceptualizations of the subject of mathematics, and respondent’s relationships to mathematics as a discipline. The narratives, as they emerged, took the women (and us as vicarious learners) on an almost thematically ordered regression of self from their discipline of choice. The main finding was a pattern of success changing to discouraging, competitive, excluding environments. Most of the women described an interest and aptitude in mathematics that began in early childhood and was often fostered by parents and or interested teachers. Most could name a particular person or persons responsible for their consideration of a mathematics major. Without this individual mentoring they likely would not have made it into the pipeline. For all respondents, that initial interest and aptitude continued so that undergraduate college mathematics courses were described variously as challenging, fun, creative and puzzle solving. All the women, however, related negative experiences regarding their undergraduate work in mathematics. Some of those had to do with peer relationships, such as competitiveness or failure to be taken seriously by male classmates. Others described isolation of the subject from other areas of interest and from the realities of everyday life. In many cases, faculty relationships were less than ideal. A few women spoke of their reluctance to visit male faculty during office hours and of relying only on peers for advice. Although most had begun the major not wanting to teach, none had a clear view of what else one might do with mathematics, and mathematics faculty seemed unable to help them with career decisions. In reflecting on entry into graduate study, each respondent had at least one memorable negative experience to relate that stood out for them in their decision to leave mathematics or to choose education for their graduate work. Some respondents reported being treated differently from male doctoral students. Upon entering graduate studies,

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one was directed into a mathematics education program although she was qualified for the mathematics program. More than half described graduate courses (at a large research institution) where faculty did not bother to learn students’ names and kept themselves as distant as possible from students. Most narratives described enjoyment of early experiences involving group efforts in mathematics and fondly depicted experiences with students and teachers working cooperatively on problems. By the time they reached graduate study, only one woman described a class where group effort was expected and encouraged by the professor. Additionally, the nature of the mathematician, the generalization or stereotype the women created from their impressions and experiences did not match their own self perceptions in other ways. Several of the respondents spoke of a perceived conflict between mathematics as a profession and other roles such as parent, community member and significant other, that influenced their decision to leave the mathematics department. These negative experiences, combined with the difficulties and stresses of graduate course work, were sufficient to steer students from their goals of attaining graduate degrees in mathematics. Finally, we contrasted our study with Maple’s (1994) descriptions of experiences of successful doctoral women in the hard sciences. Maple’s respondents expressed fewer problems with their relationship to science as a subject or the connection of science to the world around them. Did the women in Maple’s study have differing and possibly more realistic views of the nature of study in the sciences? Perhaps the issues we raised were characteristic of the specifically abstract nature of mathematics. Most of the women in Maple’s study were committed to teaching, but their interest in research was strong. The possibility exists that some of our respondents did not possess the intellectual capability nor the stamina to complete a PhD in mathematics. Two of them spoke particularly of difficulties with the material and of inordinate amounts of time spent on classwork. However, other narratives described highly successful classroom experiences where the women were often at the top of their respective classes. Nevertheless, they decided that mathematics, with its seemingly total absorption of one’s life, was not for them. Our Recommendations Although our study focused only on women in the mathematics pipeline, we believed it possible that the narratives we described would resemble those of others whose participation is needed in the hard science fields, ethnic minority students of both genders, and men who leave these fields. We hoped that the results of our study might be used to retain more diverse students in mathematics particularly, but the other sciences as well. We used our four main assumptions (described above) to frame recommendations. It is desirable to have women in the mathematics pipeline as role models. Our study echoed suggestions of others that mentors and role models are important in college laboratories and classrooms to broaden students’ views of lifestyle, temperament and intellectual approaches of mathematicians to their discipline. Because men sometimes played key functions in women’s development in the mathematics pipeline and in the absence of significant numbers of women, we concluded that men must be relied on for mentoring and even role modeling. We acknowledged a shortage that currently prevents a critical mass of women faculty to be hired in mathematics. We suggested that some needs

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might be met by inviting visiting women mathematicians and scientists as scholars in residence or as guest lecturers. During the course of those visits meetings specifically for women graduate students could be scheduled to talk specifically about professional development and lifestyle issues. Women who leave the pipeline leave a career goal unfulfilled. Because the women lacked information about what they could do with a mathematics degree, we suggested that they be provided information about available career options, so that they could see possibilities for themselves in mathematics other than tenure track faculty at a research university. With better career counseling, ideally before critical career decision points, women in the sample would have entered mathematics with a greater awareness of professional options. We recommended counseling ideally for college juniors who are mathematics majors as well as for students upon entry to graduate school. Women’ s lower levels of participation lead to economic differences in salaries earned. This assumption was unexamined within the context of the study. The women were still completing doctoral study, as were most of their colleagues who had remained within mathematics education. (At the university in question, mathematics doctoral candidates serving as research associates earn approximately 30 per cent more than education students in similar positions.) Additionally, graduates with mathematics based majors are frequently among the highest paid in annual reports of salaries earned by new graduates (Davis et al., 1996). Through understanding we may be able to help more students, both male and female, stay in the pipeline. We thought that graduate students would benefit from greater awareness of their precarious positions. We suggested that support networks and study groups (encouraged by faculty and administrators) might search for solutions, share information and provide support in difficult times. We also recommended the possible admission of cohorts of students, that would more naturally provide group support for students throughout their graduate study. Finally, simple measures such as prescribing the courses to be taken during the first year so that students have consistent contact with one another might prove useful. Our obvious advice for universities and colleges was that they make every effort to recruit and retain underrepresented faculty in the mathematics and sciences within their research ranks. In the meantime, mentoring networks could be established for underrepresented students that included tenured underrepresented faculty in all science and mathematics fields. Critiquing the Recommendations In retrospect, as I review our chapter I see that our recommendations focused primarily on the students themselves and were reactive in nature. Rather than suggesting change within a part of the higher education system that is not working, we limited our remarks to those that might be most acceptable to those in academe. Additionally, our recommendations beg the question of how long it will take for an adequate supply of women professors and scientists to fill vast needs. Although we achieved a goal of raising awareness of the conditions of graduate study in mathematics, unwittingly, through our advice, we did nothing but perpetrate those conditions.

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Reframing with a Critical Stance As we conducted our study we sometimes doubted the wisdom of counseling women into study in the hard sciences without special preparation. From the narratives of this study, often enthusiastic, intelligent students turned away from their favorite discipline, mathematics. However, our uneasy feelings about women and the hardships they might face did not translate well into suggestions for academic departments and universities. We focused our recommendations (above) on small and local efforts. Our original research was conducted from a feminist perspective, viewing women’s experiences as source and subject of research problems, providing women with useful and helpful explanations of these problems, and with the researcher in a relationship with the researched, ‘in the same critical plane’ (Harding, 1987:11). However, a more critical and transformative or critical reframing would provide deeper insights into the political and social structures impeding the women’s success. A feminist perspective seeks the implications of gender as a social cultural structure and seeks the personal implications of the political as well as the political implications of the personal (Fox-Keller, 1985, 1990).6 Moving beyond probabilities and toward possibilities, allows us to make recommendations and descriptions that envision elimination of the kinds of oppressions that might occur in mathematics departments. More recent conceptualizations of the nature of feminist analysis, particularly related to policy, require suggestions that change situations rather than merely add women (Bensimon, Chapter 8 in this volume). As in other feminist work criticized by Bensimon, our solutions merely focused on helping women overcome the obstacles that are thrown before them. We interpreted the problem as one of socialization and devised clever ways for women to function within a dysfunctional situation. We made suggestions that would help them be more effective within the academic department as is, rather than focus on the norms and climate of the academic department itself that is inhospitable to women (Johnsrud and Des Jarlais, 1994). Marshall (1996) describes our approach to policy analysis as ‘domesticated’. Our suggestions followed the safe and tried and true ways that I was taught in graduate school. Since boys will be boys, girls must be more like boys or devise other ways to function alongside them. In seeking solutions, we also sought to avoid conflict and to avoid making our colleagues feel uncomfortable. Marshall urges that feminist writers assume an ‘undomesticated’ approach in their policy recommendations. Similarly, Lather’s (1984, 1991) view of feminist analysis requires us to take an alternate world view, politicize women, expand the struggle against oppression and propose reformulations of relationships. In reconsidering our descriptions and recommendations, I see that we took an individualist or liberal feminist approach to our work. In our analysis and our recommendations, we held ourselves to depictions and arguments that support equal treatment of women within the status quo of science departments as they exist today. In rereading the data as well as the conclusions of our study, I see that we might have considered an expanded view. By limiting our suggestions to those events that are likely to happen, perhaps we shortchanged women in mathematics. Embedded within our early descriptions were issues that we did not see. Here I work to transcend our initial restricted view and to provide recommendations that might shape policy differently—

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recommendations that confront issues critically, alter existing structures, and that seek to address resistance to those recommendations in advance (Lather, 1984; 1991).7 In our initial analysis, narratives of the respondents were grouped around emergent themes used to represent women’s career paths. We grouped themes generally according to whether they represented participation in the pipeline, their relationships to the subject of mathematics, and differences between themselves and the culture of mathematics. Through the women’s voices we provided descriptions of their participation in the mathematics/science pipeline, of their relationships to the subject of mathematics, and of growing awareness of difference between themselves and mathematics as a career. Narratives of their experiences provided examples for the themes. Below I revisit our perspectives and our analysis to provide a transformational view. A Transformational View Often, useful research and policy recommendations require a search beyond the obvious. Less obvious are the ‘in place’ structures and policies of the mathematics departments described that limited these women’s (and likely many others’) access to education. Participation in the mathematics/science pipeline. Our observations on early educational and family backgrounds of the respondents led us to recommendations to hire more women as role models. Most of the women talked about the importance of a parent in their initial choice of major. One respondent’s mother had majored in mathematics, a second respondent’s father had devoted time solving mathematical puzzles with her and had insisted that she enroll in calculus when guidance counselors had deemed it unnecessary. Others discussed the importance of mentoring or examples set by faculty in their high schools. So, we related such mentoring by family members to Fowler’s (1986) study of the lives of great women mathematicians; within family mentoring was both common and key. Researchers report gender differences in expectations communicated to high school students by their parents (Hossler and Stage, 1992; Rayman and Brett, 1993) and by their teachers (Seymour and Hewitt, 1994). Now, incorporating a critical perspective, I wonder how many equally talented young women were not encouraged or worse, discouraged by friends and family to enter mathematics and the sciences. At the opposite pole from mentoring were contrasting stories of those (including high school teachers) who made sexist remarks and left students feeling inadequate in mathematics but whose negative influences were eventually overcome.8 Recommendations taking into account the power of these social/cultural forces would demand that high school teachers of both genders and parents evaluate their patterns of encouragement. Altering the contrasting expectations communicated to males and females means not just avoiding negative comments but proactively encouraging women and challenging gender-based conceptions about who should participate in mathematics and science fields. We suggested that more women be hired and that cohorts of students be admitted who might then serve as support and advisors to one another. Again, these recommendations skirt the issues and focus on advice that relies on women to correct their own problems. Mere implementation of our original recommendations would allow current faculty to continue to shirk their duties to mentor and counsel students. We also suggested that mathematics students be provided with career counseling to provide them with wider

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views for possible applications of their study. Universities could begin to provide greater rewards for mentoring and advising students. Additionally, they could establish mechanisms that provide avenues for complaints and appeals based on faculty neglect or misbehavior. Concerning their undergraduate college years, several respondents related stories of mentors who provided guidance, encouragement and friendship. Those mentors were more often male than female (unsurprising given the preponderance of men among mathematics faculty). For one woman, the presence of a female mentor was of particular importance. Kate: in that department, there was only one woman PhD mathematician …before my bachelor’s degree… She has been a tremendous support all of the way through. A finding, that most of the women had no idea what they might do with their college degree in mathematics other than teach or become an actuary (none of them knew what an actuary did), we attributed to a lack of good advising. Jennifer: I didn’t know what you do with a math degree…I talked to my roommate, I’m sure, and I talked to my folks. But I don’t recall ever going to professors and talking to them. I: Why not? J: I have no idea… I didn’t go to office hours much; I didn’t go to professors for help much. When I needed help, I’d go to my roommate. And if she couldn’t give it to me, then we would go to office hours together; but we rarely did office hours. In her second interview, Jennifer reflects on undergraduate women visiting faculty during office hours: J:Frequently, they don’t want to go to office hours, because they are just kind of leery of this man… If you have a very friendly…person. And you have a 19-year-old woman…it doesn’t matter if he says something—or does something—it’s just the fact that she is a little leery… I think it is a problem, by-and-large, faculties are predominantly male; and it makes it a little more difficult for the female then to go and talk to him… Jennifer was not alone in her reluctance as an undergraduate to visit male faculty during office hours. Women’s access to advising was restricted because of the uncomfortable male faculty/female student relationship. Jennifer was lucky enough to have a roommate who was also a mathematics major. Few women are as fortunate. And women’s success should not rest on such luck. Faculty could institute weekly group workshops associated with specific classes that afforded office-hour opportunities for students to interact with professors. Relationship to the subject of mathematics. Possibly the most lamentable aspect of our study was the finding that intelligent women who were once excited and enthusiastic about the study of mathematics were gradually culled from the field. Students knew what was expected of them in class and were able to perform those tasks. However, their views

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and expectations regarding the mathematics culture seemed to be a source of dissatisfaction and disassociation. A critical lens with a view that the powerful institutional forces embedded in math teaching may be constructed around male professors, demanded a new look at our data. The new question might be, ‘how can women’s views of math enhance disciplinary views’ rather than ‘what is missing in these women’ or ‘what manageable add-on can make up for women’s deficits?’ Respondents had described their initial relationships to the subject of mathematics in sometimes playful, and often fond terms. Some described class subject matter and assignments as a series of puzzles. Their satisfaction with the solutions of mathematics’ increasingly difficult puzzles attracted them. Terry: I liked it because it made me think; and there were a lot of things in high school that didn’t take too much thought for me to do… I liked it because it was something that I could sit down and… sometimes it would take a long time to do a problem, especially when I got into college… I remember when I was taking differential equations, all of our tests were take home, and we’d have a week to do them. And I’d work on these problems, and work, and work and work… Sometimes Id wake up in the night and I’d think of it. This is how it’s supposed to be done’, and Id write it down. So I found that really challenging, and I liked it … So I decided…to be a math major. For some women however the same characteristics that drew them to mathematics as a game began to turn them away. The increasingly narrow focus of the upper levels of mathematics became unsatisfying. All but one woman described a growing frustration with the seeming lack of connection of mathematics with the world surrounding them. Mathematics began to seem an endless series of puzzles that could be solved if enough time or effort was invested. Sometimes solving problems did not even seem to lead to the learning of mathematics, but merely represented the results of that investment of extensive time and effort. Solutions bore little relationship to others’ learning of mathematics, social issues or the people in their own lives other than professors or fellow mathematics students. Mary: if I wanted to spend 40 hours a week in a career, I not only want to enjoy it myself, I want to feel like I’m helping society be a better place to live. And pure mathematics, to me, I don’t see how it’s going to help the world be a better place… It seems selfish to me, just to sit in an office and be a mathematician because I think it’s fun, but it’s not like it would help anybody else… Topology is not used in the real world. But see, ironically, I enjoy the field of topology. I enjoy studying topology as this part time hobby thing… I took a 400-level topology course here… I just loved it. It was just the right amount of intensity. So it is fun, but to do it all the time…it sort of is like a crossword puzzle. No one would begrudge someone spending half an hour on a crossword puzzle every night because it’s fun. But if someone did crossword puzzles 30 hours or 40 hours a week, you’d say, is something wrong with you? There’s more to life than doing crossword puzzles. That’s sort of how I see mathematics.

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Mary’s frustration with mathematics’ lack of connection to everyday reality was echoed by the other women in the study. Parker (Chapter 10, Volume I) writes of the masculine nature of science that is presented, even in elementary schools. For example, the endorsement of the scientific method conveys the pursuit of a disinterested objective knowledge. Salner (1985) suggests that women, as a result of their psychological development, are less likely than men to believe in the superiority of empirical science and its methodology and are more comfortable with, or possibly in need of, intellectual tools that do not require them to dissemble their sense of identity from its natural or social context. Women in graduate school could be disadvantaged by traditional emphases on empirical science with its dominant ideology, Salner goes on to urge that educational organizations move from the mere acceptance of women in their midsts to acceptance of the feminine as an abstract but essential ingredient in the development of knowledge. From a critical feminist stance we would stress the need for an approach within classrooms and graduate programs that connects the abstract concepts of mathematics to some of the more relevant applications. The data shows a clear pattern that most of these women remained convinced that an abstract problem, however brilliantly solved, was relatively unimportant when compared with some of the real world issues surrounding them. Difference between themselves and the culture of the discipline. Again, our recommendations here centered around the need for women mentors and role models— even to the extent of incorporating visiting scholars and lecturers in the socialization of women students. Our idea was to expose the women to ‘other ways of being mathematicians’. Fox-Keller (1985), Harding (1992), and Parker (Chapter 10, Volume I) write about the ways in which our conception of science and mathematics is entwined with conceptions of masculinity. Women’s judgment (Gilligan, 1982) and orientation to work (Harding, 1989; Keller, 1984) often differ from those of men. Moving beyond our initial suggestions that focus on the obvious importance of women mentors and models to the possibility of men also serving as models, we must now add to those recommendations. In our initial recommendations we suggested cohort group admissions of women or minority students. Additionally, we suggested that incoming students could be counseled into the same two or three classes for their first two terms in order to facilitate group interaction. However, our recommendations ignored the fact that current faculty in academic departments should have a responsibility to welcome and get to know their new graduate students. Additionally, if we wait for the eventual hiring of women faculty, they will bear the unfair burden of mentoring and counseling all students. Pedagogical approaches could be changed to value relationships, teamwork and cooperative rather than competitive relationships. Finally, treating women and men equally would be a good start—often our respondents were treated differently from their fellow students. Mechanisms for reporting differential treatment and provision of administrative sanctions for professors who neglect their students might be a first step. One returning woman student, was required to have her professors report regularly to her advisor on her class progress. A second respondent, just out of her undergraduate degree, applied for a graduate degree program in mathematics. She was telephoned by the department chair’s wife and asked if she might prefer a degree in mathematics education

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where she could have a fellowship rather than in mathematics that would require her to teach. She complied, but wonders whether she would have made that decision today. In general, students viewed mathematicians negatively: Jennifer: this was a joke in the department…among the graduate students in the department ‘getting your PhD in mathematics means spending your life in a closet with a light and a desk…isolation’. All respondents spoke of expectations on the part of faculty about doctoral study in mathematics that involved extensive time commitments and few interests outside the mathematics department. Needless to say, judgments by mathematics faculty and other graduate students about the way individuals spend their personal time are both inappropriate and unnecessary. During the graduate experience in mathematics at the master’s or the doctoral level, all these women were somehow convinced that a PhD in mathematics was not what they wanted. Just one graduate course convinced Ellen that mathematics was not for her: E: Yes. So I applied for and got an NSF grant… I really loved getting back into math again, but this time it was a whole different experience… To this professor, we were nonentities and so it was like, ‘I’m not sure I like this.’ They spent their time in their little office all by themselves working out theory. And in order to have the time and the money to do this, they appeared before a class for as short a time as possible and presented something to them. They didn’t even discuss, they presented, because there was really no discussion. We held all questions until he finished and then the AI took over. And he would leave… The professor’s cold approach and impersonal style angered Ellen and despite her high achievement, she was turned away from mathematics: E: What I felt it was, was the mathematician created something in basically his own space. I did not get the feeling at all that women had a place in this world… I did not fit…part of me says, ‘I’m going to prove to you that I do belong.’ But it was always like proving I was going to ace this exam or this course just to show you that I can do it. It was very much a spirit of competitiveness, you have to prove yourself, and… I aced the course, but it was a real empty feeling basically. It was like I’m not sure the professor—he never saw the grades. The AI figured everything out. We knew that. And it was at that point that I…decided I don’t belong in this field. Other students turned away from mathematics more gradually after an accumulation of disappointments and dissatisfactions. Two students talked about competitiveness among students; at least three talked about the very small number of graduate students who passed qualifying exams. Others knew students who talked of checking out books on class topics from the library and keeping them all semester so that classmates could not use them. Kate discussed competitiveness:

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K: I didn’t feel like I wanted this bad enough to put up with that. With what I considered to be non-support and the constant having to go after things myself. I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that anymore. I didn’t want to study math so bad that I was willing to put up with everything else. Three women spoke of an apparent incompatibility between the life of a doctoral student in mathematics or of a mathematician and personal goals that might have included marriage, or a family, or other aspects of a life outside mathematics. Mary contrasts her own priorities with those of a fellow mathematics doctoral student who had resigned himself to three years of absence from his young family while completing his degree. M: If…my marriage was suffering because of this PhD program, I would quit right now… I feel very strongly about that…in wrestling with having to leave the math department…in taking with this graduate student who said, ‘I’m not going to see my kids for 3 years, my wife is doing all the raising of the kids.’ That caused me to think what kind of parent do I want to be? How important is this to me? Do I want to be like that?…seeing bad marriages and bad relationships because people have been so preoccupied with their career, their degree, that I’m becoming stronger, saying, ‘I don’t want to be like that’ Like the women in our study Gilligan (1982) described the typical female personality as one that defines itself in relation to other people. Kramer and Melchior (1990) found that young women thought more about role choices and the synthesis of family and work roles than did young men. They speculated that socialization differences between females and males might account for such differences. If the topic had not already arisen, each respondent, at the close of the second interview, was asked to reflect on the relationship of being a woman and their experiences within mathematics. Some interesting comments resulted. Jennifer believed that advice for men and women entering graduate work in mathematics would be the same. She also believed that not having women faculty was a critical lack in her personal experience. J: Oh, I don’t think that I would have a different message for women than I would have for men…it’s a problem not having more female faculty… I think that for undergraduates…women have more difficulty establishing a relationship with a man, they are more uncomfortable with a man than they would be with a woman faculty. And Mary’s comments: M: when I applied to graduate school, I would have [said], ‘Women and men can do math the same.’ and now, believe it or not, I’m actually starting to question that…I think it has to do with sort of this preference kind of thing: how could a woman focus her life on this abstract stuff, not dealing with people? I see women as very personal, peopleoriented. And I know that’s very sexist… Society has nurtured men to go off in corners and play with their erector sets and solve problems and be independent thinkers and that kind of thing. And women have been

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taught to talk up a storm and be very social and care about other people…we are thrown into graduate school and asked to sort of think like a man, be like a man … And I don’t think that it has to be that way either. Olsen, Maple, and Stage (1995) explored the relationships between professional role interests and satisfactions, expectations and overall job satisfaction of faculty at a major research university. In some areas where differences were expected, women were similar to men, particularly in regard in research as opposed to teaching and service. Perhaps, one might posit, the interests, learning styles and temperaments of women who persisted in the hard science fields are similar to the men currently occupying positions in those fields. But must women be like men, imitate men’s behaviors and attitudes, in order to be successful in the hard sciences? Mary continues: M: I think math in classes, why can’t you have more group problems? I took a math class where the professor actually assigned us to work in groups… I loved it! I took the sequel too…math does not have to be the way it is, where you go off and just do it by yourself…men are teaching it and men are in the classes… It’s not going to be a social kind of thing. My husband hates working in a group… And if you have men like him, he’s going to…be a professor someday, and he’s going to structure his classes where everybody goes off by themselves and they do it. More than one student who had attended the same graduate institution reported that generally the faculty never bothered to learn the names of the graduate students in their classes; until they passed their qualifying exams, students were not considered seriously. Another student thought that the faculty did not waste energy on any student not considered serious. Kate described the isolation of her graduate experience and attempts by herself and other doctoral students to make the experience more positive for other women. K: When I first came, of course, I didn’t know anybody; so, there is no network…and the math faculty are not very good at creating one for you…not having a support system… Maybe if…they had sufficient women in that department to find two or three key women friends, that might help… Support systems take a long time. You can’t just walk into one. In the meantime, you can feel pretty scared, and pretty isolated when you are doing it…at the end, there were two or three of us women grad students who tried to seek out the women…incoming olders…or…who were coming from these little bitsy colleges. We’d take them under our wing and say, ‘Let’s all have lunch together, one day a week; or let’s all go out to dinner, or see a movie.’ Here you can fall through the cracks so fast it’s not even funny; and nobody will even know that you fell through. Nobody will ever know! You could…commit suicide and nobody would know it for days…I think it’s a cold place because they do not know who you are and you don’t know who they are. Establishing, or getting to know each other, is not a simple process. I don’t know that…anyone can adequately prepare you for that when you come. They could make an attempt to be a little more inviting and a little warmer…

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Kate goes on to say that with the establishment of a support group things began to get better. However, by that time she had already psychologically withdrawn from the department and was working toward transfer into mathematics education. Discussion The suggestions we made in our earlier analysis (Stage and Maple, 1996) might help some women who are encountering equally dismal experiences in science departments. However, we can and should go further. Why were we reluctant to make more useful recommendations? Possibly we wished to avoid the emotion and the controversy of this taboo topic (see Hollingsworth, Chapter 9, Volume I). We wanted to be nice—as we were socialized—so that our colleagues would listen to us, read our work, and publish our articles and reward our efforts (Marshall, 1996). Revisiting our research and moving from a feminist viewpoint to a transformational or critical perspective, we add a recognition of the culturally and politically embedded structures that limit our ability to see data. Here I seek a view that moves beyond unseated norms and unquestioned practices (Marshall, 1996). We can make suggestions for immediate change rather than those that rely on evolution and other women’s eventual successes to change the culture of these academic departments. Some literature suggests that women in general differ from men in their orientations to do research, teaching, and service. While the Olsen et al., (1995) study found that women university professors, in general, shared with their male counterparts values emphasizing research scholarship and publication, in interviews they talked of a sense of disconnectedness from their academic departments. Often they were not included in lunch groups or after work drinks or other important venues for communication. The failures of those academic departments to include faculty women in their socialization most likely extends to treatment of women graduate students as well. Some authors have focused on socialization of graduate students within academic departments as key to retaining students (Louis and Turner, 1991) as well as mentoring future faculty (Kirk and Todd-Mancillas, 1991). Socialization can be viewed as a way of actively incorporating graduate students into the culture of a department. Women in particular are more often sensitive to support features of their graduate school environments (Hartnett, 1981; Stansbury, 1986) and rate those support features higher when they had female major professors (Schroeder and Mynatt, 1993). Understanding more about such attempts at socialization might prove useful to those hoping to improve the persistence of women in science” and mathematics fields. Some researchers speculate that high levels of self-esteem might provide an individual with resilience that allows them to withstand threats to that esteem or to career decisions they have made (Josephs, Larrick, Steele and Nisbett, 1992; Steele, Spencer and Lynch, 1993). Women science majors tend to select themselves out despite higher grades than men who remain (Seymour and Hewitt, 1994). Further, on average women’s self-esteem at the undergraduate level diminishes (the exception is women at all women’s colleges) while men’s self-esteem grows (Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991; Stage and Anaya, 1996). Further study might include both successful and unsuccessful students. More detailed

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information, including narratives of people who are successful in their pursuit of hard science doctorates and research faculty positions is needed (Widnall, 1988). Bleier (1987) writes of the natural sciences as perhaps the last of the research disciplines to feel the impact of critical feminist scholarship. Certainly other disciplines and professions have learned (with much struggle) that men’s ways of being physicians, attorneys, cabinet level secretaries and university presidents are not the only ways. In the Olsen et al., (1995) study, successful women university professors resembled men. Perhaps in the future, successful mathematicians and scientists will be more representative of people in general. Current laissez-faire university administration policies tend to forgive idiosyncrasies of academic departments. Differential behaviors on the part of faculty as well as sometimes inhumane treatment of students is often chalked up as part of the unique culture of the sciences. Rather than assuming the traditional slow and passive role of encouraging (or even providing minor incentives) for departments that hire and retain women, administrations could assume more active, aggressive interventions (Marshall, 1996). For example, the administration could track success of students from initial declarations of interest in majors through successive semesters of participation or dropout at undergraduate as well as graduate levels. Interviews with students could provide information about problem professors or problem practices that might be targeted for change. Departments and individuals that succeed in changing could be held as examples for others and provided with rewards such as extra staff lines. Finally, recommendations relying on the slow evolution of large numbers of women into positions as senior level professors and scientists stortchange the women who enter these disciplines now with enthusiasm and fervor. Ample evidence exists that the social climate and attitudes in general affect all women in academe negatively (Acker and Feuerverger, Chapter 7 in this volume; Johnsrud and Des Jarlais, 1994; Maple, 1994; Slaughter, 1993). A system that allows graduate students to flounder for several years until they pass their qualifying examinations, that pits students against one another within class, and that treats women differently than men demands change now. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Sue Maple, my coauthor on the original study, as well as Jillian Kinzie for helpful comments. Notes 1 The term mathematics/science pipeline is described as students’ continued participation in mathematics, science or engineering; achievement in those subjects; and the development of attitudes and interests that lead them to continue to pursue those subjects 2 Conventional research essentially mimics that which has been taught. Research ques— (Berryman, 1983; Chipman and Thomas, 1987; Maple and Stage, 1991; Oakes, 1990). tions stem directly from unanswered portions of an unseen whole and follow deductively from previous research. Transformational research can be characterized by the following features: all students’ experiences are viewed as source and subject of pertinent facts, priorities and

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research problems; the resulting research is to provide useful and helpful explanations of these problems; and the researcher is neither objective nor distanced 3 from those who are the focus of the research (Stage and Anaya, 1996). Tetreault (1985), Townsend (1993), and Twombly (1993) describe similar classifications of research in higher education in general. 4 The women’s graduate experiences in mathematics occurred at a variety of institutions although four of them enrolled in graduate mathematics coursework at their curent institution before changing career paths to pursue a PhD or an EdD in education. 5 In addition to prolonged engagement, we also employed member checking and peer de-tion before changing career paths to pursue a PhD or an EdD in education. briefing to ensure validity of the results (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Miles and Huberman, 1984). 6 Morgen (1989) and others (Stacey, 1993) describe three major orientations of feminism: liberal, radical and socialist. Liberal feminism focuses on social change and the goals of achieving equality of rights and privileges for women. Radical feminists focus on qualities of women that are inherently different from those of men. They believe that society will improve when men become more like women. Socialist feminists believe that differences between men and women are created and perpetuated by male-dominated society. They focus on the elimination of oppression in all its forms whether of gender, race, and class.

Other writers divide feminist perspectives into two views, individualist and relational feminism (Glazer, 1991; Noddings, 1990; Offen, 1988). Individualist feminism (similar to liberal feminism) aims to secure rights and privileges for women equal to those for men. Relational feminism advocates gender sensitivity and emphasizes experience, needs and responsibility. 7 Other researchers have re-examined their work from a feminist perspective. Bensimon (1991), for example, re-examined her conceptions of presidential leadership from an earlier work (Bensimon, 1989). By using a feminist perspective for analysis, she further developed her analysis and described modes of leadership that moved beyond the contemporary frameworks for analysis. Acker (1994) revisited a study of graduate students and their supervisors focusing specifically on the research process. Marshall et al. (1996) used Nodding’s work on caring for a new analysis of a study of administrators’ work. 8 For example, right after college, Mary taught high school mathematics at a girls’ private boarding school. After three years, she had worked her way up to teaching the highest level of mathematics, advanced calculus. At the end of that year, when she told the headmaster she was leaving to pursue a PhD in mathematics, he laughed at her.

References ACKER, S. (1994) Gendered Education: Sociological Reflections on Women, Teaching and Feminism, Buckingham, Open University Press. Annual AMS-IMS-MAA Survey(1993) Providence, RI, American Mathematical Society. BENSIMON, E.M. (1989) ‘The meaning of “good presidential leadership”: A frame analysis’, The Review of Higher Education, 12, pp. 107–23. BENSIMON, E.M. (1991) ‘A feminist re-interpretation of presidents’ definitions of leadership’, Peabody Journal of Education, 66, pp. 143–56. BERRYMAN, S. (1983) Who Will do Science? Minority and Female Attainment of Science and Mathematics Degrees: Trends and Causes, New York, The Rockefeller Foundation.

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BLEIER, R. (1987) ‘Science and belief: A polemic on sex differences research’, in FARNHAM, C. (Ed) The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, pp. 111–30. BRUNER, J. (1987) ‘Life as narrative’, Social Research, 54(1), pp. 11–32. CHIPMAN, S.F. and THOMAS, V.G. (1987) ‘The participation of women and minorities in mathematical, scientific and technical fields’, Review of Research in Higher Education, 14, pp. 387–430. DAVIS, C., GINORIO, A.B., HOLLENSHEAD C.S., LAZARUS, B.B., RAYMAN, P.M. and ASSOCIATES (1996) The Equity Equation: Fostering the Advancement of Women in the Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass Publishers. DIGEST OF EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS (1992) Washington DC: US Dept of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics. DRESSELHAUS, M.S. (1984) ‘Responsibilities of women faculty in engineering school’, in HAAS, V.B. and PERRUCCI, C.C. (Eds) Women in Scientific and Engineering Professions, Ann Arbor, MI, The University of Michigan Press, pp. 128–34. EARNED DEGREES CONFERRED 1991–92 (1994) The Chronicle of Higher Education: Almanac Issue, 40(1), p. 16. EISNER, E.W. (1991) The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of Educational Practice, New York, MacMillan Publishing. ETAUGH, C. (1984) ‘Women faculty and administrators in higher education: Changes in their status since 1972’, Journal of NAWDAC, Fall, pp. 21–5. FOWLER, W. (1986) ‘Early experiences of great men and women mathematicians’, in FOWLER, E. (Ed) Early Experience and the Development of Competence: New Directions for Child Development, 32, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, pp. 87–109. FOX-KELLER, E. (1984) ‘Women and basic research: Respecting the Unexpected’, Technology Review, November/December, pp. 44–7. FOX-KELLER, E. (1985) Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press. FOX-KELLER, E. (1990) Personal remarks, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University, March 29. GILLIGAN, C. (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. GLAZER, J.S. (1991) ‘Feminism and professionalism in teaching and educational administration’, Education Administration Quarterly, 27(3), pp. 321–42. GREEN, K.C. (1989) ‘A profile of undergraduates in the sciences’, American Scientist, 77, pp. 475–80. HARDING, S. (1987) Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. HARDING, S. (1989) ‘Women as creators of knowledge’, American Behavioral Scientist, 32(6), pp. 700–7. HARDING, S. (1992) ‘After the neutrality ideal: Science, politics, and “Strong Objectivity”’, Social Research, 59(2), pp. 567–87. HARTNETT, R.T. (981) ‘Sex differences in the environments of graduate students and faculty’, Research in Higher Education, 14, pp. 211–27. HILTON, T.L. and LEE, V.E. (1988) ‘Student interest and persistence in science: Changes in the educational pipeline in the last decade’, Journal of Higher Education, 59(5), pp. 510–26. HOLLINGSWORTH, S. (1997) ‘Feminist praxis as the basis for teacher education: A critical challenge’, in MARSHALL, C. (Ed) Critical Policy Analysis: Dismantling the Master’s House, Vol. I, London, Falmer Press. HOSSLER, D. and STAGE, F.K. (1992) ‘Family and in-school experience factors’ influences on the post-secondary plans of ninth grade students: A causal model of predisposition to college’, American Educational Research Journal, 29(2), pp. 425–51. JOHNSRUD, L. and DES JARLAIS, C. (1994) ‘Barriers to tenure for women and minorities’, The Review of Higher Education, 17, pp. 335–53.

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JOSEPHS, R.A., LARRICK, R.P.,STEELE, C.M. and NISBETT, R.E. (1992) ‘Protecting the self from the negative consequences of risky decisions’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(1), pp. 26–38. KIRK, D. and TODD-MANCILLAS, W. (1991) ‘Turning points in graduate student socialization: Implications for recruiting future faculty’, The Review of Higher Education, 14(3), pp. 407–22. KRAMER, D.A. and MELCHIOR, J. (1990) ‘Gender, role conflict and the development of relativistic and dialectical thinking’, Sex Roles, 23(9/10), pp. 553–75. LANE, M.J. (1990) Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, Washington, DC, National Science Foundation. LINCOLN, Y.S. and GUBA, E.G. (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage Publications. LATHER, P. (1984) ‘Critical theory, curricular transformation and feminist mainstreaming’, Journal of Education, 166(1), pp. 49–62. LATHER, P. (1991) Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy with/in the Postmodern, New York, Routledge. Louis, K.S. and TURNER, C.S.V. (1991) ‘A program of institutional research on graduate education’, New Directions for Institutional Research: Methods in Institutional Research, 72, pp. 49–64. McMiLLAN, L. (1986) ‘Women flock to graduate school in record numbers, but fewer blacks are entering the pipeline’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 33(2), pp. 1, 25. MAPLE, S.A. (1994) ‘A way of life: Background and experiences of women doctoral students in mathematics and science’, Doctoral dissertation, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University. MAPLE, S.A. and STAGE, F.K. (1991) Influences on the choice of math/science major by gender and ethnicity’, American Educational Research Journal, 28(1), pp. 37–60. MARSHALL, C. (1996) ‘Undomesticated gender policy’, in BANK, B. and HALL, P. (Eds) Gender, Equity and Schooling, New York, Garland Publishing Co, pp. 1–41. MARSHALL, C., ROGERS, D., STEELE, J. and PATTERSON, J. (1996) ‘Caring as career: An alternative model for educational administration’, Educational Administration Quarterly, pp. 271–94. MERRIAM, S.B. (1988) Case Study Research in Education: A Qualitative Approach, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass. MILES, M.B. and HUBERMAN, A.M. (1984) Qualitative Data Analysis: A Sourcebook of New Methods, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage. MORGEN, S. (1989) ‘Making connections: Socialist feminist challenges to Marxist scholarship’, in O’BARR, J. (Ed) Women and a New Academy, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (1996) Selected Data on Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 1995, NSF 96–303, Arlington, VA. NODDINGS, N. (1990) ‘Feminist critiques in the professions’, in CAZDEN, C., Review of Research in Education, No. 16, Washington, DC, American Educational Research Association. OAKES, J. (1990) Lost Talent: The Underparticipation of Women, Minorities and Disabled Persons in Science, Santa Monica, CA, The Rand Corporation. OCHSE, R. (1991) ‘Why there were relatively few eminent women creators’, Journal of Creative Behavior, 25(4), pp. 334–43. OFFEN, K. (1988) ‘Defining feminism: A comparative historical approach’, Signs, 14(1), pp. 119– 57. OLSEN, D., MAPLE, S.A. and STAGE, F.K. (1995) ‘Women and minority job satisfaction: Professional role interests, professional satisfaction, and institutional fit’, Journal of Higher Education, 66(3), pp. 267–93. PARKER, L.H., ‘A model for gender inclusive science: Lessons from feminist scholarship’, in MARSHALL, C. (Ed) Critical Policy Analysis: Dismantling the Master’s House (Vol. I), London, Falmer Press.

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Chapter 7 Enough is Never Enough: Women’s Work in Academe* Sandra Acker and Grace Feuerverger How has increased policy attention and support for women in universities affected their sense of inclusion in the academy and their access to its rewards? What is the experience of women faculty, now that at least some administrators and policymakers have noted the importance of role models for women students, the research on chilly climates, the increased numbers of women graduate and professional school students, and the spread of feminist scholarship and women’s studies? The research reported here is based on indepth interviews with 27 women in Canadian faculties of education. The introductory section raises relevant issues and describes the policy context. After a brief description of the research project from which the data are derived, the main body of this chapter illustrates a phenomenon we call ‘doing good and feeling bad’ with the words of the participants in the study. The subsequent discussion looks at explanations for the findings, while the conclusion points to some additional questions generated by this study. The narratives we draw upon are those of women full and associate professors. Their rank means that they have experienced at least one promotion, and some are highly successful in their fields. One might have expected these women to be very positive about their situation, and indeed, there were some expressions of pleasure and delight. The women were aware that there were many worse jobs one could have. They might enthusiastically describe their research to the interviewer. Several, like Tamara1 and Barbara, said that they loved their field. Others said that they enjoyed teaching. Noreen was particularly enthusiastic: ‘I like teaching; it’s a great joy to me. I love to teach; really I love to teach.’ Zoe followed a long account of how difficult it was to do all the work with this comment: ‘It [the job] has its frustrating moments, but I can’t imagine doing * Portions of this chapter also appear in a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education on The emotions in teaching edited by Jennifer Nias and published by Carfax Publishing Company: Acker, S. and Feuerverger, G. (1996) ‘Doing good and feeling bad: the work of women university teachers’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3). The Journal has given kind permission to use the material in this chapter. We thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education for their financial support, and our research team on the SSHRC project, Carol Baines, Marcia Boyd, Linda Muzzin and Amy Sullivan, for their moral and intellectual support. Our gratitude also goes to the institutions where we conducted interviews and especially to the women who so graciously became our participants.

anything else.’ Some, like Renate, criticized the ethos and leadership of her department, but added that she had wonderful colleagues and lifelong friends. Judith praised the warm and collegial atmosphere of her department in the past. Iris said, ‘I’ve enjoyed being an academic.’ Noreen described a disturbing situation in her department but added that it

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was disturbing precisely because, ‘I’ve been very happy here.’ Kay talked about her various efforts to have ‘fun’, for example, by using her own money to make conferences into vacations. Katherine said, ‘I’m very happy and satisfied doing what I’m doing.’ But balanced against these expressions of pleasure or commitment were also what might be called chilly climate stories. Women, especially those who had been hired in the 1970s or 1980s, spoke of discovering that they had been hired at lower salaries and with fewer resources than comparable men. They had tales of unequal treatment, harassment, lack of support, lack of mentoring, isolation and sometimes outright betrayal. When the women spoke about their contemporary experiences, stories of chilly climate and outright discrimination featured less often, although they had not been completely eradicated. It is likely that a number of changes in academic life over the past 20 years have improved the situation for women faculty in the university. Gertainly their numbers have grown, although representation lags behind that of US counterparts. In Canada, women still make up just over a fifth of full-time academics (Women in PostSecondary Education, 1996), while in the United States, women held almost a third of academic posts in 1995–96 (Not So Bad, 1996:21).2 The basic reference for all equity initiatives in Canada is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, introduced as part of the 1982 Constitution Act. Individuals have the right to equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination ‘based on race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability’ (quoted in Wylie, 1995:55). The major federal legislation that has influenced equity in universities is the Federal Contractors Program (FCP) of 1986. The Federal Contractors Program affects employers with more than 100 employees who wish to receive federal contracts worth $200,000 or more. These employers must take measures to insure that four ‘designated groups’—women, Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities and persons with disabilities—are represented in proportion to their presence in the general work force or relevant segments of it. Canadian universities are also heavily influenced by provincial legislation on human rights, employment equity, pay equity and so forth; by policy statements from professional bodies and faculty associations; by chilly climate reports that have been produced on many campuses; by numerous policies devised by individual universities. Some of these efforts can be quite far-reaching. In the late 1980s, Ontario had a threeyear ‘employment equity incentive fund’ which helped universities hire employment equity coordinators and initiate projects (in return for collection of data on the workforce, review of policies and development of an employment plan to increase equity), as well as a ‘faculty renewal fund’ that set out to increase the number of women in full-time faculty positions, and a pay equity program (Gouncil of Ontario Universities, 1988; Minister of Colleges and Universities, 1989).3 Although there are some affirmations of progress (see Frank, 1996), as well as indicators that recent hiring has favored women in at least some provinces (Drakich et al., 1991; Council of Ontario Universities, 1994), most feminist commentators stress the gap between the equity ideal and actual practice (Drakich et al., 1991; Prentice, 1996; Wylie, 1995). Hiring does not guarantee retention or promotion. There is a growing use of temporary sessional positions rather than new full-time positions. Many universities have been reviewed and regarded as in compliance with the FCP (Update, 1996), but critics see it as weak because of its lack of provisions for enforcement of targets (Drakich et al.,

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1991). Canadian equity legislation came later than its American counterpart. It has certain advantages. Programs that are intended to ameliorate the conditions of persons in disadvantaged groups are protected by the Charter, and thus initiatives that rely on preferential treatment are not subject to the extended legal disputes over reverse discrimination that have occurred in the United States (Wylie, 1995:55). But it has the major disadvantage of coming into being ‘just as the prospects for hiring were undercut by a recessiondriven economy that sharply limited public funding to universities and colleges… compounded by hiring freezes and cutbacks, precipitated by worsening economic conditions and increasingly conservative political policies’ (Wylie, 1995:35). Prentice describes ways in which institutions have subtly resisted equity such as burying reports in committees and underfinancing equity work: ‘It is remarkable how many parttime Equity or Sexual Harassment officers there are across this country’ (1995:8). In general, there is concern about various forms of backlash or resistance, where special treatment for women and other underrepresented groups become reframed as a threat to academic freedom or departmental autonomy (Drakich et.al., 1991; Prentice, 1996).4 Like other Canadian universities, the five universities included in this study had initiated a number of policies intended to increase equity. There were equity or human relations officers and procedures in place for reporting harassment. In some cases the tenure clock could be temporarily stopped for women who had children, and maternity leaves were commonplace. The gradual increase of women in administrative positions meant there were women determined to advocate for other women, and the women in this study acknowledged the support they had through this means. Some of the courses offered in each department reflected feminist scholarship. What was striking in our interviews was not primarily positive sentiments, or even chilly climate stories, but a strong current of discontent focusing on working conditions in the university. Complaints were more often regarded as personal circumstances than as indicators of systemic discrimination against women or the failure of policy initiatives. Jean Baker Miller’s (1976) phrase ‘doing good and feeling bad’ aptly characterized the feelings of the women interviewed. By ‘doing good’ we mean that the women try to reach exceptionally high standards by working hard, even at personal expense, and that they make extensive efforts to support and care for colleagues and students and to be good citizens in their departments. But instead of feeling fulfilled by their accomplishments and their chances to put caring and service into practice, they ‘feel bad’: that is, they have a sense that academic reward system is out of sync with their preferences; that they are working harder than they should; and that they have a disproportionate share of responsibilities for the mundane service side of university work and for the emotional well-being of the students. A possible conclusion is that the various policy developments in the universities have not gone far enough to tackle the question of what counts in academic work. The Study The research reported here is the first phase of a larger study (in progress) of academics in the four professional fields of education, social work, pharmacy and dentistry. Semistructured interviews were conducted in 1995 with 27 women full and associate

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professors in Canadian faculties of education.5 Participants came from five different universities in four provinces. As noted above, all of the interviewees are fairly or very senior in rank. Some also hold or have held in the past administrative positions such as department chair, associate dean, dean or associate vice president. Their ages ranged from late thirties to early sixties, with most in their forties and fifties. Within faculties of education, they represented a number of different curriculum specialties, such as French, art, science, language arts, foundation discipline areas (sociology, history, philosophy) and other fields that stood alone or crossed areas, for example, special education and counselling psychology. Their work might be slanted towards preservice teacher preparation or graduate studies (master’s and/or doctoral level) or be a mixture of both. They came from a range of class, ethnic and regional backgrounds in Canada or elsewhere, and most were white.6 The purpose of the larger study is to address the consequences for academic women of the trend towards feminization of the professions. Numbers of women faculty have risen in recent years, but not to the extent found in the student body. Consequently women academics may be under more pressure to be sponsors and role models, while their own experience remains one of marginality. On the other hand, the increased presence of women, together with the spread of feminist scholarship, may bring about change in the university and ultimately the professions themselves. Through in-depth interviews with academics (both women and men) in four contrasting professional fields at different levels of feminization, we are looking for any indications of greater equity for women academics, signs of a more welcoming workplace ethos, and evidence of feminist impact on scholarship and the curriculum. Participants are asked about their teaching, research and other work responsibilities; experiences with procedures such as hiring, tenure and promotion; feelings of centrality or marginality; and incidents of discrimination or harassment. We also inquire about the ethos or culture of the department and faculty, about the interface of home and work, and about future career plans. Two caveats are in order. First, at present, our data do not allow us to comment directly on the experiences of men in academic life. In later stages of our research project, we shall have comparative data that will enable us to explore the similarities and differences between academic women and men. Second, although we generalize here about women, we do not believe that all women are alike nor that they experience the university climate in precisely identical manner. Yet whatever their differences, they must all come to terms with gendered expectations about women’s work in the academy. We now turn to our findings on what these 27 women understand and feel about that work. Doing Good It was evident that the women academics were highly committed to their jobs. Work seeped into all aspects of their lives. They prided themselves on their capacity for hard work. Work, for them, was not only the pursuit of scholarship, but included a range of supportive responses to colleagues and to students. They were doing well (working hard) and doing good by helping others and being good department citizens.

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Working Hard Many of the women expressed the view that they had high standards or were perfectionists or workaholics. Nadine, for example, said, ‘I guess I’m just a perfectionist. I work really hard.’ Rosanne remarked that in her experience, ‘Some women are such perfectionists that unless the article is just perfect they don’t want to submit it.’ Terri, an associate professor with children in elementary school, was one of the self-proclaimed workaholics and perfectionists. She said her children call her ‘the hurry mom and the work mom’. Terri was one of those who told us of her strategies for getting work done, such as skipping breakfast at a conference to write a book review, or rising early: Three days a week I come in on the 6:30 bus. I’m up at 5:00 and I usually do my e-mail before I leave the house, so it’s…you’re starting to work immediately, and I work all the way. And I get home at 6:00… I [also] work all day Monday and all Friday and I work most weekends and often work in the evenings as well. (Terri) In order to get the dissertation done, I got up at 3:00 in the morning, every morning. Taught [school] full time while I was finishing my dissertation. So I was out by 7:30 in the morning, and in bed by 9:00 at night… And when I was on sabbatical I wrote the outline for the book… I got up at 4:00 in the morning every morning to work on that. (Nadine) Similar statements emphasized how these women worked beyond the call of duty, now or in the past. Like many others, Diana came into university teaching after teaching in schools. She started her university career as a sessional instructor but then became pregnant: At that time, at the university level, there weren’t things like maternity leave and they weren’t very happy that I was pregnant as a full-time sessional, and needing maternity leave. They gave me two weeks off… I came back to teach the eleventh day after my baby was born. Lucille had a parallel story: And I had two more children born in those years as well, when there wasn’t any such thing as maternity leave. So they were both delivered by Caesarean section, and I was back in teaching within three weeks… [I felt] exhausted. But I did it. After her initial years as a sessional instructor, Diana secured a tenure-track position and then went rapidly through the ranks to become a full professor nine years later. When the interviewer suggested that she had progressed quickly, Diana replied, ‘I also worked very hard. I worked very, very hard.’ She elaborated:

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Once I was tenure-track, I have to tell you I would work through my noon hours. I never took a coffee break. I had no downtime for me, personally, because when I got home and picked up my children from child care, or from school, I had to attend to their needs and get organized for the next day. Judith spoke about the hard work involved in holding an administrative position: Often, you work late in the evenings to catch up on stuff you didn’t get done during the day. And you’re still trying to read and keep up in your areas. But probably, for me, the main thing was the mental stress… Always being extra prepared. Knowing that you would have to go the extra mile in order to be heard, to be seen as important, to protect somebody, or be an advocate for someone. And I found that very hard. Very, very, very tiring. And always more and more being expected of you. Caring for Others In general, the women expected themselves to care about and help colleagues, students and sometimes administrators. Those who were themselves administrators had put policies in place to help women be hired or promoted and in general tried to increase open communication. Judith talks about how her leadership style incorporated caring for others: [As an administrator] I spent more time getting to know the individuals. I think I was more honest with them about why things were being done as they were. I shared more information with them. I encouraged a lot of people to apply for scholarships for different kinds of things… I would never say to an individual, you’re teaching so and so… I would negotiate with them… I always tried to read papers that people had written… And that was also very, very much appreciated. Faculty members spoke about helping or mentoring junior colleagues. Several specifically pointed to the way in which untenured professors used them as conduits to have their interests represented: I’ve had at least four or five different people over the course of the last year who have sort of used me as an interface… Fear may be too strong [a word] but certainly they are cautious…because they’re afraid that it will impact negatively when they come up for assessment. (Katherine) Some women faculty told of the support they had received from women colleagues and how they, in turn, supported others:

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I did get moral support from some of my female colleagues and that made all the difference… And I do it now for the newer faculty members. I look over their applications for grants or papers that they’re sending to journals, and such things. I feel it’s a debt that I want to pay. It’s a question of helping one another, having a collegial climate. (Nicole) Colleagues were not the only ones to receive support. Many of the academics spoke about the time, energy and nurturing they provided to students: I guess that grad students that I work with directly, as supervisor, I guess they feel that I mentor them too. Because I do take their work quite seriously. And I guess they end up talking to me about other problems, apart from their academic problems. And I try to be a good listener. (Grace) I tend to hear all the students’ personal hassles and they often are talking to me because they’re scared to go to their male supervisors or whatever. So I’ve got boxes of kleenex, I’m the one that hears about this stuff first … I think as a female you tend to be the shoulder to cry on. (Terri) Many students will show up at my door with a problem and I can’t turn them away. This happens often before my teaching even though I tell them to make an appointment. But they’re in a crisis; how can I say I’m not available? (Olivette) It seems clear that these women see caring for colleagues and students as an integral part of their responsibilities at work. Being Good Citizens The women also described their responsibilities for service in the department or university. Kay commented, ‘I think you’ll find that there are more women serving on committees…all kinds of committees, because they need a woman on the committee.’ Lucille thought that her original appointment years earlier was based on an assumption that she would ‘be the housewife’, that is, take departmental committee and student supervision responsibilities. Even now, she is ‘the person…who can be called on to do whatever needs to be done.’ Noreen believed that her speaking ability gave her a source of influence in her department. She added, ‘I’m very well organized. I chair meetings very well. I think that’s why I’m asked to chair committees because I can get things organized and get things done.’ Terri stressed the ways in which she took on small jobs, such as being the secretary for a committee or writing up the report, and she commented on how she was sometimes the only person to have read the papers to be discussed at a meeting. Echoing the findings of a survey of American academics (Carnegie Foundation, 1990), Terri concluded, ‘I think we [women] are just great department citizens.’

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Feeling Bad As may be evident, these women took a certain pride in their capacity for hard work and in their caring and service activities. Yet negative emotions surfaced frequently. In particular, the women expressed anxieties or distress about: 1) a reward system that worked by constant assessment and yet never allowed one to feel ‘good enough’; 2) an unequal division of labor that left the women believing they were ‘working harder’ than many of the men; 3) an expectation that the women would take a large share of responsibility for student nurturing and departmental ‘housework’. Each of the three themes is discussed in more detail below. Academic Rewards Participants were asked about their experiences with tenure, promotion and other assessment procedures. These questions produced lengthy and heartfelt responses. Promotions were sometimes not granted at the first try. Feedback was frequently inadequate. Each institution had its own procedures and some seemed more mysterious than others. All such procedures involved scrutiny at multiple levels, from the department to the university, with varying amounts of input from outside referees. Stress and anxiety, even physiological reactions, seemed to accompany the tenure and promotion process more often than not. Nicole, now a full professor, recalled her tenure experience: When I look at my male colleagues on the same level as me and I compare myself to them, I see that it is me who was stressed out; I really wiped myself out. I worked like a madwoman. I did it all: In the last five years, for example, I got major grants, I created two new courses, I was on research teams, I wrote many articles for publication. I did it all; it was crazy. I worked so hard. And when I arrived with my dossier, of course there was no question of not getting tenure. My file was full… I had such anxiety about tenure, I was so afraid. It was a visceral, palpable fear inside me. Iris found the move from associate to full professor stressful. She was promoted after her second try. She explained how during her career the rules got changed. She had started in a teacher education program, but as her career progressed the criteria shifted from working with students to getting grants and publishing, ‘So I basically had to start from scratch and be qualified for that promotion again.’ When asked what one needed to do for full professorship, she replied: [Y]ou’re supposed to have, you know, a huge stack of articles in all the prestigious journals, first author of course on all of them. You’re supposed to have x number of grants and graduate students and have this international reputation and be able to choose the people for referees that are going to give you good comments back. So it’s tricky and it takes time

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and sometimes probably people are more concerned with getting promoted than with becoming a good scholar. Iris was not the only woman to comment on the criteria shifting or being too narrow or being ambiguous. What some of the participants found especially difficult was reaching the standard they imagined was good enough: ‘Am I good enough? I’m not good enough. Constantly, not good enough. I constantly feel not good enough… This job makes one feel not good’ (Barbara). It seems that they have to do everything: Nobody else in the real world is saying do everything, in order to be an acceptable professional. Except academe. Academe’s saying, you must do scholarship. You must do service. You must do teaching. And they must all be wonderful. A third, a third, a third. It’s bizarre! (Ruth) At the same time, they believed they should set some limits to their efforts: I just refuse to give myself to my job completely. Even when I was having trouble with tenure, I thought if it means really changing the way I live my life, really changing what I’m doing and what I’m researching and so on, it’s not worth it to me. (Zoe) A few women spoke of positive experiences or consequences and pointed to greater freedom after tenure. Kay said she was now ‘viewing the world differently’ and any research she was doing was ‘for my own fun’. Gisele told a story about how she was belittled by the men for being unprofessional when she wore a ‘pretty orange jacket’. But after tenure, ‘I wore just what I wanted and they had to learn to accept it, that I can be a woman and as effective as a man, but not [be] a man.’ The participants commented not only on tenure and promotion, but also on merit procedures. Merit systems were in place in most of the institutions. Money made available for rewarding merit depended on an annual review and was often a set amount per department to be shared out among members of that department. The systems could also be very complex, with ratings averaged for several categories and then subject to further adjustments from cross-departmental comparisons. These merit systems were universally disliked by the women faculty members. They were regarded as divisive and frequently unfair, giving too much power to gatekeepers. We have to fill out this lengthy form, detailing everything we do. It’s the most horrendous evaluation scheme probably in Canada. Then, the department head, without reading any of your stuff, or attending any of your classes, will give you a grade. (Aline) Sometimes the complaint was that by concentrating on teaching or working with students, women had less time for the all-important publishing and grant-getting necessary for merit, tenure, and promotion. Olivette stated, ‘I invest heavily in teaching and supervision and I’m not satisfied by it because that’s not what’s rewarded in the final

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analysis. The research is.’ Ruth found collaboration not sufficiently acknowledged in the reward system: I collaborate on everything I do… That has been a major issue. [They say] how do we know what you’re doing? Why wouldn’t you do this independently? How do we know you can be an independent scholar?… And that’s a woman’s issue. I think women do collaborate more than men… It’s questioned, and it doesn’t get rewarded. Working Harder What came across vividly was not just that the women worked hard, but that they believed they worked harder, especially in comparison to many of their male colleagues. Zoe claimed, ‘In this faculty, it’s been proven over and over again that it’s the women who do the bulk of the work.’ Asked to explain further, she made a number of points: Well, partly it’s the affirmative action thing. We have to have a woman on every committee and if there are only x number of women around, that means we’re serving on many more committees than the men are. Graduate students come to us all the time because we’re here, because we’re doing work in areas that interest them, because we care about them, because we care about teaching. So we’re just here a lot more and we’re doing a lot more than the men, who tend to focus their interests in terms of writing a book, which gets you a lot more publicity and a lot more gratification in the end. So they disappear. They come in, they put in their hours for teaching, but they’re not around. They’re not up here with their office doors open for students to come by. They’re not available to supervise graduate students. So, when we look at the statistics out of the graduate office, it’s very clear that women are far more active in graduate supervision and all the other areas of graduate work. Lucille touched on similar issues in response to being asked about stress in academic life: Oh yes, I think it’s probably one of the most stressful jobs in the world— if you’re trying to do it. I mean, there are lots of men on campus, and some in my own department, who don’t really try to do it. They sort of teach their classes and they maybe write a paper every couple years, and they do almost nothing in terms of service. And they probably have a very soft job, quite frankly. Olivette did not see that men were negligent so much as it was expected that women would care about their students that compelled women to take a greater share: And it [diminishing financial resources] hits women harder because they are expected to ‘take care’ of the students in a way that men aren’t. I don’t mean to say that men don’t care. But women have to care or they are

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considered failures. And so with the larger load of students, it’s the women who give more of their energy and they become ill. In some cases, such as Terri’s in the present and Diana’s in the past, juggling the competing demands of child care, domestic responsibilities and academic work produced extra strain. Interestingly, many of the married women had husbands who were retired or worked from home, allowing the women to lead a relatively workcentred life. There were comments from older women about their younger colleagues and from some of the younger colleagues themselves that suggested a real, if often hidden, dilemma still existed for women thinking about combining motherhood with academic work: I work six and a half days out of seven and I can’t imagine how other women do this with children. I decided not to have children… I don’t think I could have done a decent job as a mother and as a professor. (Solange) The pressure is really great for the newer professors, and it’s particularly impossible for those who are starting up their families. They suffer from a stress that I think is truly dangerous… They give too much of themselves. (Olivette) Doing Different Work Sometimes it was the gendered division of labor that was seen as unfair. Women thought they had too much responsibility for caring for students and for doing routine work in the department. Although, as we saw earlier, the women believed that they should be caring for others, the results could be disappointing, or at least mixed. Most of the women who spoke of listening to students’ problems or being available for them also referred to problematic consequences. For example, they found that students would become upset when their caring teacher found it necessary to emphasize standards or take a critical stance. Or they might be taken for granted: Sometimes it’s quite insulting. I remember one in particular, this one student who was sort of dry running a thesis proposal, and at one point I said, ‘You really shouldn’t be talking to me, I’m just a [thesis] committee member. You should really be talking to your supervisor about this.’ And she said point blank: ‘Well… I wanted to make sure it was good before I went to him.’ (Terri) Zoe pointed out that not all students gave back as much as they got: Some [graduate] students are great and they just go ahead and do their own thing… But then there are other students and it’s like pulling teeth. I’m constantly meeting with them, I spend hours with them, and they don’t take a single note while I am chatting with them. I lend them books and they come back and they still don’t know what they are doing, and it’s incredibly frustrating because, you know, they want to be spoon-fed.

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And Kay noted laconically, ‘Students crying in your office don’t count for a damn on your CV.’ In some cases, women pointed to specific tasks or expectations that they believed were unfairly allocated to women faculty members. Most common was the expectation that, because of policies intended to promote gender equity, women would have to join more committees. Katherine elaborated: I think any woman that you ask here would probably say that they’re completely overworked because everyone has to be politically correct. So you’re asked to be on twice or three times as many committees as a comparable male would just because they need that female balance. What I didn’t discover until I got promoted to full professor was a lot of them need senior professors. Lucille also had similar experiences, ‘They call on me when they need something, or when they have a particularly nasty job they want done.’ She gave an example of a case where a student had become delusional and was at risk of harming himself and she seemed to be the only person who could step in and take charge. Not without humor, she summarized her roles: So, I mean, this is the way that I feel like I sort of am used: as a departmental resource, like the fire extinguisher… And I’m the shoulder for students to cry on. And I’m the person who can be counted on to teach well. Who can be called on to do whatever needs to be done… I don’t mind, I mean those are things that I would do anyway because they’re what one does. But, certainly, as far as recognition for it, or the rest of that goes, forget it. Terri, too, questioned the cost of women’s dependability: They [the women] won’t impress anybody with their guts, you know, or their presence, but they’ll impress people because they’ve been putting in, you know, 80 hours a week and taking care of everything [because] they’re dependable. And is that a good thing to be? I mean I guess it is, but you know that’s what we’re known for—not for creativity, not for sheer genius, nor for risk taking. Discussion How do we explain these findings? Johnsrud and Des Jarlais make a helpful distinction between two competing perspectives in the research literature on women and minority faculty. One view focuses on the individual and suggests that as relative newcomers to the university, women and ethnic minority faculty need to learn to cope and succeed. The other view emphasizes structure and argues that the university’s ‘norms and climate are conducive to the values, lives and priorities of white men’ (1994:338), thus presenting an

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inhospitable environment to all others and ensuring that policymakers do not hear women’s concerns about ‘doing good and feeling bad’. The first approach would suggest we see the women in our study as particular types of people who self-select into academic work. To some extent the women themselves saw it that way. They would say, ‘I am a perfectionist’, not that the work demands perfectionism. When they complain that they are on too many committees, or that they do more than the average share of teaching, they frequently add that they have only, or mostly, themselves to blame. For example, ‘I’ve done more than the average person in the department but I’ve done it by choice’ (Katherine); ‘I find the workload heavy at the moment but it’s a self-imposed stress’ (Iris); ‘I have a hard time saying no’ (Terri). If we assume that most people will want to feel they have some control over their lives, then it is not strange that women academics will take responsibility for their actions in this way. Nevertheless, when we see themes such as hard work and overwork repeated across the sample, it is just as plausible that there are environmental factors, including norms and policies, that are reinforcing any initial tendencies that the women may have. This argument takes us back to the fact that women are in the minority among faculty and overrepresented in its lower ranks and temporary positions. One way of explaining the hard work and other findings reported here is to see women as feeling like temporary tenants rather than legitimate residents of the academic community: ‘outsiders in the sacred grove’, in Aisenberg and Harrington’s (1988) phrase. Women academics are in many cases still socially and psychologically located on the margins of the institution. Until recently, they have not shared in making the typical university what it is. What, then, has been excluded that would mark a woman-centered university (Rich, 1979)? One line of feminist thought is useful here, one in which the qualities traditionally associated with women such as caring and connectedness are to be rewarded and praised rather than regretted or denied. These arguments derive from what is sometimes called ‘relational feminism’, a body of work associated with Belenky, et al. (1986), Gilligan (1982), and others who identify a certain degree of difference in the ways women and men typically approach ethical decisionmaking, identity development and modes of learning. Nel Noddings (see 1992; 1994) is particularly known for the promotion of caring within teaching as a consciously adopted moral basis for practice. The pervasiveness of the caring discourse in teaching and teacher education and the assumptions behind it have not gone unquestioned (see Acker, 1995; 1995/96). In particular, there is a concern that diversity among women is not sufficiently recognized in the search for women’s ways, and that relational feminists may end up celebrating what amounts to a restricted sphere for women. Although this approach has its shortcomings, it makes sense to see the undercurrent of discontent in our interviews as in part a response to typical academic ways of doing things clashing with ‘the values that are structured into women’s experience—caretaking, nurturance, empathy, connectedness’ (Ferguson, 1984:25). Many of the comments quoted here suggest that the women valued cooperation and caring and disliked the competition and individualized assessment taken for granted by policies inherited from the days when few women worked as university academics. They particularly disliked the rigidities and competitiveness of the tenure, promotion and merit procedures, and thought these procedures failed to reward important types of work, such as helping the ‘students crying in your office’.

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Seeing the women as an outsider group inside the academy leads us to look at ways in which they arrive at their assessments of their situation. Here we can make some use of reference group theory (Merton and Rossi, 1968), which directs us to see judgments of one’s lot in life as relative, depending on the frame of reference or group of comparison. We might have expected these academically successful women, if comparing their lot to women in general, to feel exceptionally privileged. What seems to happen instead is that the women more often compare themselves to male colleagues. Their sense of injustice comes from this comparison. The argument in this chapter has been that the women feel they do a disproportionate share of the caring and service work required to keep their departments functioning and their students happy. Yet institutional practices do not give credit for alternative ways of being an academic. Tenure, promotion and merit criteria remain narrowly focused on research (Park, 1996). Thus the only way to be a successful woman academic seems to be to work harder or do it all. A sense of marginality and vulnerability is not a feeling that can easily be shed, especially when the struggle for a truly egalitarian coexistence within many parts of academe is still ongoing in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The anxiety that results for academics like Olivette and Solange over tenure thus appears not individually but socially produced. The result, according to Louise Morley (1995:116), is ‘coercive creativity’: Like Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights, life in the academy is prolonged with the production of words that please predominantly male assessors, confusing whether women academics write from anxiety or from desire (Morley, 1995:117). Our view is that institutional practices are more to blame for inequities revealed in our study than are personal preferences of the women themselves. What we have tried to give, however, is more than a simple analysis of the university as a patriarchal institution inevitably favoring men. Although the women had stories of discrimination and poor treatment based on gender, many of those stories took place in the past. Contemporary sources of discontent did not always focus on gender per se, and there was some suggestion that (for example) being a woman who refused to conform to expectations, such as showing respect for administrators, was more problematic than simply being a woman. Moreover, as noted earlier, the universities had initiated a number of policies intended to increase equity. Some of the policy measures had unanticipated consequences. The practice of making sure that every university committee had women on it, for example, was often cited as an additional source of extra work for the women, especially those in senior positions. Lighter teaching loads for new faculty (who were often women) and concessions to faculty women who were new mothers seemed to produce some resentment on the part of those, including other women, who were not benefitting from such measures or who had not had concessions made to their needs in the past. In putting the spotlight on institutional policies and practices, we argue that it is time to go beyond simple accusations of a discriminatory climate. Nor are we saying that men are shirking their share of responsibilities as academics, or being selfish in concentrating unduly on their own research. Rather, it is what the university stands for, and what it

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rewards and what it ignores, that is at issue. The disadvantage women encounter is more systemic than it is intentional—though no less problematic for all that. Conclusion The 27 women studied here are working hard and doing well. They are, additionally, doing good, as they go beyond the call of duty, living out commitments to others: their colleagues, their departments, their students. Yet they are so often disappointed with the results. They experience a ‘bifurcated consciousness’ (Smith, 1987); or ‘segmented self (Miller, 1983), or ‘outlaw emotions’ (Jaggar, 1989) as they try to live up to contradictory prescriptions for ‘caring women’ and ‘productive academics’. They see themselves working too hard, with high levels of anxiety, in reward systems that they dislike, and without sufficient recognition for the aspects of the work they care about or have to do. Although self-selection may play a part in producing the anxiety and perfectionism demonstrated by many of these women, we have argued that their outsider status in the academy, combined with narrow institutional criteria for success, result in a situation where they suffer considerable pain. In this conclusion, we would like to point to three areas which our findings suggest need further research and analysis. First, we think that Nel Noddings’ (1992; 1994) attractive concept of caring in the educational setting needs rethinking and reworking to apply to students and teachers in universities. Noddings writes that in a mature relationship, the role of the carer will switch back and forth, but in school teaching, the responsibility for caring must be the teacher’s (Noddings, 1992:107; 1994:174). How, then, should we characterize the teacher-student relationship in higher education? The students are old enough to participate in a mature relationship, yet they are structurally subordinate. Even when denied reciprocal caring, the academic women in our study could not stop caring for the students, or even doing ‘women’s work’ in their departments, partly because it formed their sense of self, but also because the social expectations were so strong. Olivette’s phrase, ‘but women have to care or they are considered failures’, sums it up well. Second, we need to return to the notion of minorities, tokens, or outsiders (Aisenberg and Harrington, 1988; Kanter, 1977). Under what circumstances will such groups compare their situation to the majority group in their own workplace, as we suggested here, for an assessment of their own relative success? In the case we have examined, faculties of education, while women are still in the minority, they are well enough represented to have a set of others with whom they can share their perceptions and develop a shared discourse of relative deprivation. In other cases where women are in the clear majority, such as nursing, or cases where there are very few women, such as some of the science and technology fields, the same conditions for comparison and sharing may not occur. Thus research that looks at different micro-settings needs to take place. Finally, we also need to take into account the rapid changes taking place in the academic workplace. These changes are a complex result of technological, demographic, economic and political factors, and will not be identical from country to country. Yet in many places, academics face retrenchment and cutbacks, requirements for greater accountability, intensification of workloads (Kerlin and Dunlap, 1993; Slaughter, 1993).

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We should be monitoring differential effects of such trends. For example, as more women and students from traditionally underrepresented groups enter the academy, the pressure on faculty from those groups to mentor and support these students increases. If those faculty remain in a minority, themselves outsiders, they will be severely stretched to fulfill all the expectations placed upon them. Moreover, the chances of the university altering its reward systems in the ways we have suggested may become more remote as competition for limited resources intensifies and full time, secure jobs become increasingly scarce. The story is not yet over. Notes 1 All names are pseudonyms. 2 However, women’s representation in United States research universities is similar to the overall Canadian figure (Park, 1996:53). Caution should apply when comparing figures: The United States figures cited in the text are for 1995–96, while the Canadian ones are for 1994 and do not include the province of Quebec or community colleges. Both sets of figures refer to full-time faculty. Readers should also note that the Canadian system is public, rather than a mixture of public and private as in the United States, and thus more homogenous. Lipset writes: The closest American parallels are the state universities’ (1990:140). Also, although it is a big country geographically, it is small in population, and full-time academics number under 40,000 (Statistics Canada, 1994). 3 Further legislation which provided for broader employment equity was repealed by the province’s current conservative government, and the incentive and renewal funds have run their course. As I write, there is talk of weakening pay equity and allowing private universities (see Note 2). 4 Such issues are discussed further in two good collections: Chilly Collective, 1995; Richer and Weir, 1995. 5 Canada is an officially bilingual society. Of the 27 interviews, 22 were conducted in English and five in French. Quotations used here from the French interviews have been translated into English. 6 Very few women of color held positions of associate and full professor in these faculties. Some additional persons of color are in our larger sample; however, it is also the case that these individuals are sometimes reluctant to be interviewed because of fears they will be identifiable. To invent an example, if there were one full professor of dentistry of Native Canadian ancestry in the country, with only 9 dental faculties in Canada, her identity might be difficult to disguise.

References ACKER, S. (1995) ‘Carry on caring: The work of women teachers’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16, pp. 21–36. ACKER, S. (1995/96) ‘Gender and teachers’ work’, in APPLE, M. (Ed) Review of Research in Education, 21, Washington, DC, American Educational Research Association, pp. 99–162. AISENBERG, N. and HARRINGTON, M. (1988) Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove, Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press. BELENKY, M., CLINCHY, B., GOLDBERGER, N. and TARULE, J. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing, New York, Basic Books. CARNEGIE FOUNDATION (1990) ‘Women faculty excel as campus citizens’, Change, 22, pp. 39–43.

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CHILLY COLLECTIVE (Eds) (1995) Breaking Anonymity: The Chilly Climate for Women Faculty, Waterloo, ON, Wilfred Laurier University Press. COUNCIL OF ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES (1988) Employment Equity for Women: A University Handbook, Toronto, COU. COUNCIL OF ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES (1994) Women’s Role in Economic Recovery: A Submission to the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Floyd Laughren, 1994 Pre-budget Consultation Forum, Toronto, COU. DRAKICH, J., SMITH, D., STEWART, P., Fox, B. and GRIFFITH, A. (1991) Status of Women in Ontario Universities: Final Report, 1, Toronto, Ministry of Colleges and Universities. FERGUSON, K. (1984) The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press. FRANK, T. (1996, January) ‘Universities as employers of women’, University Affairs, pp. 10–11. GILLIGAN, C. (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. JAGGAR, A. (1989) ‘Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology’, in JAGGER, A. and BORDO, S. (Eds) Gender/body/knowledge, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, pp. 145–71. JOHNSRUD, L. and DES JARLAIS, C. (1994) ‘Barriers to tenure for women and minorities’, The Review of Higher Education, 17, pp. 335–53. KANTER, R.M. (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation, New York, Basic Books. KERLIN, S. and DIJNLAP, D. (1993) ‘For richer, for poorer: Faculty morale in periods of austerity and retrenchment’, Journal of Higher Education, 64, pp. 348–77. LIPSET, S.M. (1990) ‘Continental divide: The values and institutions of the United States and Canada’, NeW York, Routledge. MERTON, R.K. and Rossi, A.S. (1968) ‘Contributions to the theory of reference group behavior’, in MERTON, R.K., Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, The Free Press, pp. 279– 334. MILLER, J.B. (1976) Toward a New Psychology of Women, Harmondsworth, Penguin. MILLER, J.L. (1983) ‘The resistance of women academics: An autobiographical account’, Journal of Educational Equity and Leadership, 3, pp. 101–9. MINISTER OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (1989) Employment Equity in Postsecondary Institutions, Toronto, Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities. MORLEY, L. (1995) ‘Measuring the muse: Feminism, creativity and career development in higher education’, in MORLEY, L. and WALSH, V. (Eds) Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change, London, Taylor & Francis, pp. 116–30. NODDINGS, N. (1992) The Challenge to Care in Schools, New York, Teachers College Press. NODDINGS, N. (1994) ‘An ethic of caring and its implications for instructional arrangements’, in STONE, L. (Ed) The Education Feminism Reader, New York, Routledge, pp. 171–83. NOT SO BAD: THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE PROFESSION 1995–96 (1996, March-April) Academe, pp. 14–22. PARK, S. (1996) ‘Research, teaching and service: Why shouldn’t women’s work count?’, Journal of Higher Education, 67, pp. 47–84. PRENTICE, S. (1996, April) ‘Addressing and redressing chilly climates in higher education’, Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, Status of Women Supplement, pp. 7–8. RICH, A. (1979) On Lies, Secrets and Silence, New York, Norton. RICHER, S. and WEIR, L. (Eds) (1995) Beyond Political Correctness: Toward the Inclusive University, Toronto, University of Toronto Press. SLAUGHTER, S. (1993) ‘Retrenchment in the 1980s: The politics of prestige and gender’, Journal of Higher Education, 64, pp. 250–82. SMITH, D.E. (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, Milton Keynes, Open University Press. STATISTICS CANADA (1993) Teachers in Universities, 1990–1991, Ottawa, Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.

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STATISTICS CANADA (1994) Education in Canada: A Statistical Review for 1992–1993, Ottawa, Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. UPDATE: FEDERAL CONTRACTORS PROGRAM (1996, April) Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, Status of Women Supplement, p. 10. WOMEN IN POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION (1996, April) Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, Status of Women Supplement, pp. 10–11. WYLIE, A. (1995) ‘The contexts of activism on “climate” issues’, in CHILLY COLLECTIVE (Eds) Breaking Anonymity: The Chilly Climate for Women Faculty, Waterloo, ON, Wilfred Laurier University Press, pp. 29–60.

Chapter 8 Lesbian Existence and the Challenge to Normative Constructions of the Academy* Estela Mara Bensimon Speaker 1: Why do they need everyone to know they are gay? I don’t introduce myself as a heterosexual, why would I want to know their sexual orientation? It’s nobody’s business who you spend time with. Speaker 2: I have no problems working with or being around homosexuals as long as they keep it private, as you would in a normal relationship. When they flaunt their homosexuality they deserve the harassment they get. It is not really a moral problem as long as it is kept private. Speaker 3:I think this [survey] is absurd for faculty… We don’t go around discussing sexual orientation in our offices. I have never had anyone question my sexuality in all my years at [Greenvalley University]. What we feel is unnatural and immoral is our own business and doesn’t impact on anyone else’s right. These statements were made by faculty at Greenvalley University (a pseudonym) in a Spring 1991 survey undertaken to assess the climate for lesbian and gay persons. The connecting theme across the three responses is that being lesbian or gay is 1) a sexual issue and 2) therefore a private and personal matter that has no place in the public sphere of the university. The idea that being lesbian or gay is a private concern that should not be ‘flaunted’ in public is a theme that prevailed in three-quarters of the comments made by the almost 2000 survey respondents. The stance assumed by these individuals is not unusual. The belief that sexual orientation should be kept private is widely shared. According to Jeff Hearn and others most organizations are ‘archives of heterosexuality and heterosexism… Such heterosexual hegemony tends to construct lesbians and gay men as isolated exceptions, so that they and their sexuality come to be seen, by many heterosexuals at least, as private and individual, even as personal “problems”’ (1990:23). The public/private dichotomy provides opponents of homosexuality with a palatable argument: it allows them to appear tolerant, if not liberal, even as they denounce such behavior as unnatural or immoral. * Reprinted from Journal of Education, Boston University School of Education (1992) 174, 3, pp. 98–113, with permission from The Trustees of Boston University (copyright holder) and the author.

Feminist critics and legal scholars have been particularly incisive in challenging the false distinction between public and private spheres. They argue that even though the public/private dichotomy appears to be the ‘view from nowhere’ (Harding, 1991), it is in fact a dualism that is very much rooted in the ideology of patriarchy. For example,

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feminist analysis of the experience of women in the workplace (Ferguson, 1984; Martin, 1990) shows that the public and private spheres are in fact not mutually exclusive. In line with the feminist tradition of critique, I intend to demonstrate that the public and private dichotomy invoked by these ‘straight’ professors obscures inequities experienced by lesbian and gay persons in the public sphere of the academy. The logic that informs the public/private distinction, as expressed by the three speakers, is partial, distorting and perverse. It is partial because, as shown by the first speaker’s comment, the public/private distinction is derived from a vision of the public that takes into account only the reality of the dominant sexual class. It is distorting because, as shown by the second speaker’s comment, it normalizes sexuality as heterosexuality. And it is perverse because, as shown by the third speaker’s comment, the public/private distinction provides a justification for not bringing about change. (I use the term perverse to convey the terrible wrong that is committed when an oppressive situation is made to appear rational.) When people, such as the faculty members I have quoted, speak abstractly about the public and private spheres it is easy to overlook the ‘intimate relation’ of these spheres (Pateman, 1989:123). In this case, airy abstractions make it easy to dismiss concerns arising from a person’s sexual orientation by labeling them private and therefore separate from her/his professional role. Accordingly, the intent of this chapter is to show concretely and vividly what makes the logic behind the public/private dichotomy partial, distorting and perverse. I accomplish this by means of knowledge grounded on the life story (Denzin, 1989; Titon, 1980) of Julia, a faculty member who self-identifies as lesbian. She was interviewed during the spring of 1991 as part of Greenvalley University’s study of the climate for lesbian and gay persons. Julia’s personal account of what her life is like as a lesbian at Greenvalley University challenges the public/private dichotomy. An added advantage of Julia’s story is that from her position as an ‘outsider within’ (Hill Collins, 1986) she provides a vision of the academy and relations within it that are inverse to the view informed by heterosexual privilege (Harding, 1991; Hartsock, 1983). Thus, Julia’s story, in addition to exposing the artificiality of the public/private dichotomy, breaks the silence that contributes to the invisibility of lesbian and gay existences in the academy. Insofar as the chapter focuses exclusively on Julia it is about lesbian existence and should not be assumed to encompass the experience of gay men. Although I conducted interviews with gay men as part of this study, I chose not to include them in this analysis for the following reasons. First, there are significant differences in the experience of lesbian and gay persons that I cannot address within the scope of this research (see Tierney, 1991 for an analysis of the interviews with gay faculty in this study). Second, and of great importance, is that in doing this chapter I was cognizant of Adrienne Rich’s observation that ‘Lesbians have historically been deprived of a political existence through “inclusion” as female versions of male homosexuality. To equate lesbian existence with male homosexuality because each is stigmatized is to erase female reality once again’ (Rich, 1986a:52). Third, because this research relies on standpoint feminist epistemology (Harding, 1986, 1991; Hartsock, 1983) for interpretive direction, I follow Sandra Harding’s directive that inquiry must start from all women’s lives, not simply from the lives of men in the dominant groups or even primarily from the lives of those women who are most

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highly valued by conventional androcentric, white, western, economically advantaged, heterosexist thought (Harding, 1991:249–50). In this chapter Julia’s life story provides a feminist-lesbian standpoint from which to view the effects the public/private logic has on her as a professor. I am cognizant that Julia’s interpretation of her own situation—as well as my interpretation of Julia—is shaped by individual circumstances and by circumstances that are particular to Greenvalley University. I am not suggesting that her experience can be generalized to all lesbian faculty in the academy or that her life provides a complete view of the academy from the perspective of lesbian faculty. Rather, by means of Julia’s story, I provide a view of the academy that for the most part has been repressed, at least within the body of literature that is representative of the study of higher education. Other than a handful of personal accounts (see Kitzinger, 1990) and Adrienne Rich’s (1986b) critical essay Invisibility in Academe, little has been written on the experience of lesbians in the academy. Studies have not considered how the university, as a patriarchal institution that is ideologically and culturally heterosexual, creates a set of circumstances that in effect assume control over the private life of lesbian and gay persons, who therefore experience public academic life in ways that are unimaginable to those who, like the speakers above, enjoy the privileges of heterosexuality. At one level, the silences around lesbian and gay faculty could be attributed to the fact that most studies of higher education tend to search for the forces that bring unity to the academic profession, rather than for those subjective experiences that reveal institutional fragmentation. On a more personal and political level it may be said that the societal taboos and stigmas associated with homosexuality are a strong disincentive against engaging in research from a lesbian/gay-affirming perspective. On this point Anthony D’Augelli comments, ‘Few faculty conduct research on lesbians and gay issues… Other faculty interested in these topics may steer away from public discussions since they fear being considered lesbian or gay, regardless of their actual sexual orientation’ (D’Augelli, 1991:128). This disincentive is especially strong for gay researchers, because the straight researcher can always retreat into the comfort and privileges of her heterosexuality. Additionally, even if one undertakes research such as that presented in this chapter, a major obstacle is that of gaining access to participants. Lesbian/gay faculty tend to be closeted and rightfully fearful that participation in a research project of this nature might reveal their identity. Julia, the woman on whose story I rely to challenge normative constructions of the academy, is very protective of her sexual identity and was quite ambivalent about whether to participate in this project. Even though she has been supportive of the project, she remains, even now, apprehensive about her role within it. The next two sections explain the methodology used in this study. First I describe standpoint feminist epistemology, which provided the interpretive method for making sense of the interview materials. Next I briefly describe the life story as a qualitative method of gathering and organizing data.

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Standpoint Feminist Epistemology as Interpretive Strategy The public/private distinction universalizes sexuality as heterosexuality. It makes those (both men and women) who belong to the dominant sexual class blind to the very specific ways in which they impose invisible and intolerable existences on lesbian faculty. The invisibility of lesbian faculty is maintained by the public/private distinction. To understand the meaning of an invisible existence requires an epistemology that is centered on the situation of the lesbian professor. It calls for an epistemology that is grounded on her interpretation and understanding of the public sphere. It requires an understanding of how a life is constructed within a public sphere that is defined by the institution of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1986a). Standpoint feminist epistemology provides the interpretive framework for counterposing a lesbian-centered reality to the normative—patriarchal and heterosexual—construction of the academy. The point of departure for standpoint feminist epistemology is the idea that knowledge is socially situated. It follows that in order to interpret and understand the situation of a particular group of people, thought has to start from their lives. Essentially, standpoint feminist epistemology urges us to move away from the idea of simply adding the ‘other’ to pre-existing frameworks and directs us to ground knowledge on the particular experience of the people we want to understand. Feminist standpoint theories reject ‘the notion of an “unmediated truth”, arguing that knowledge is mediated by a host of factors related to an individual’s particular position in a determinate sociopolitical formation at a specific point in history’ (Hawkesworth, 1990:131). Accordingly, in this chapter, the way Julia experiences Greenvalley University provides the knowledge for a reality that is oppositional to the taken-forgranted reality of the dominant sexual class. I have tried to describe, not merely Julia’s experiences, but also the reality of Greenvalley University as viewed from her particular situation, which is different from that of heterosexual faculty. The strength and virtue of a lesbian standpoint is that ‘starting thought from the (many different) daily activities of lesbians enables us to see things that might otherwise have been invisible to us, not just about those lives but about heterosexual women’s lives and men’s lives, straight as well as gay’ (Harding, 1991:252). Even though the immediate intention in seeking to take a lesbian standpoint is to situate knowledge in the particular experience of women who are lesbian (thus rejecting the notion that the experience of women is universal regardless of sexual orientation or race or social class), the knowledge produced is significantly not only about lesbians. Viewing the public sphere of Greenvalley University from the lives of those who are in the margins expands the unidimensional and partial story of those situated in the center. It provokes a different understanding of their own situation as well as of the situation they create for others (Harding, 1991). A lesbian standpoint is valuable because it has the capacity to reveal how the vision of the dominant heterosexual class structures the public sphere in ways that can be oppressive for lesbian faculty. The struggles lesbians wage in the process of constructing lives within a public space that is structured by the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality may give rise to a different vision of the academy. Julia’s story and my

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account of her existence at Greenvalley University provide the content to specify how lesbian lives constitute a source of a new and different understanding of the academy, including the patterns of social relations in the public sphere. Life Story as Methodological Framework In this research I rely on life story methodology to present how Julia manages the public side of her life at Greenvalley University. A life story consists of a person-centered ethnography through which researchers attempt ‘to portray lives of ordinary individuals, in cultures and contexts sometimes far removed from the ones they know, with the kind of perceptiveness and detail that transform a stranger we might meet in our personal lives into a friend’ (Langness and Frank, 1981:1). Essentially, by presenting Julia’s life story at Greenvalley University I show a lesbian-structured reality that is unknown to the majority of individuals who make up the Greenvalley academic community. Julia’s life story at Greenvalley was primarily constructed from a two-hour interview and several conversations held afterwards in which we discussed those passages on which I rely to make the point that the public/private distinction is partial, distorting and perverse. Julia read the draft and reacted as to the extent to which it captures her feelings, thoughts and interpretations. At her request I left out background characteristics, such as her discipline, which made her feel too exposed. The interview narrative was left intact. To make sense of Julia’s story I adopted a methodological convention inspired by Norman Denzin’s (1989) methods of interpretive biography. I provide in Julia’s own words a short segment of her life story at Greenvalley and then I turn to feminist standpoint theory as an interpretive strategy to anchor the meaning of the life story segment within the larger cultural context of Greenvalley. Lesbian Existence at Greenvalley University: A Different and Unexamined Experience Greenvalley University, where Julia holds a faculty appointment, is a public research university located in a remote rural area in the Northeast. Julia was interviewed as part of a large-scale institutional project, undertaken by Greenvalley University in the Spring 1991, to assess the climate for lesbian and gay persons. The 20 interviews with lesbian and gay faculty revealed that the university renders the lesbian and gay community invisible and that the university’s manifest disinterest creates an oppressive situation for lesbian and gay faculty. These faculty, unbeknownst to most of their straight colleagues, live lives full of ‘secret fears’ (Greene, 1988). The results of two institution-wide surveys, one for faculty/staff and the other for students, demonstrate that these secret fears are not unwarranted. The faculty/ staff survey was administered to a random sample of 4500 and had a return of 44 per cent. A textual analysis of the written comments provided by 565 of the survey respondents revealed that more than half of the comments were oppositional or hostile toward lesbian and gay persons, while only 27 per cent could be characterized as supportive (LaSalle and Rhoads, 1992). The faculty comments quoted at the beginning of this chapter—

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comments which led me to label the public/private distinction as partial, distorting and perverse—are representative of the less inflammatory negative comments made in the survey. Notably, the faculty/staff survey revealed that 47 per cent among heterosexual faculty and staff and 52 per cent among heterosexual students believe homosexual behavior is immoral. Attitudes such as these translate into a reality that affects in very profound ways the lives and work of lesbian faculty. Although Julia is just starting out on her academic career, her work has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in her discipline. By all indications she should be promoted and tenured in the next couple of years. Greenvalley University, as I show in the sections that follow, places strenuous demands on her, and on the majority of other lesbian and gay persons, to perform carefully orchestrated acts of ‘closetedness’ (Sedgwick, 1990). Managing the Public by Hiding the Private At Greenvalley University, sexuality and sexual identity are viewed as private and personal concerns that are separate from the public act of being a faculty member. Yet heterosexuality is the norm. This situation provides compelling, if not coercive, reasons for Julia to remain silent about being lesbian. To explain how she meets the demands that arise from the assumption of universal heterosexuality, Julia says, ‘I’m not honest. And I do hide who I am from colleagues and students. But I’m not exactly sure what I’m afraid of.’ Because there is so much silence about lesbianism, if Julia’s colleagues were to hear about her fears they might be perplexed, wondering what makes her hide. ‘After all’ they might say, ‘she looks just like everybody else, what’s the big deal.’ Her comment, ‘I’m not exactly sure what I’m afraid of would make her words all the more baffling to her colleagues. To those who see the world exclusively in heterosexual terms and are unconscious of how heterosexually dominant organizations structure the lives of lesbians, Julia’s comment might cause them to judge her as being, possibly, too sensitive? maybe a little paranoid? or, perhaps, too self-consumed? Some of Julia’s colleagues might blame her for her secret fears. They may think, ‘It is not the institution but she who imposes constraints in her life, who chooses to hide.’ Indeed, then, why does Julia hide? What makes her so cautious? This is what she says: What concerns me most right now is my career, I must protect that, and I don’t want to be rejected at the human level, I don’t want negative relationships with the people I work so closely with on a daily basis. I don’t want them to have reasons to dislike me. In my field, it’s a very small world, everyone knows everyone, everyone talks to everyone. Julia’s statement exemplifies the interlocking nature of oppression (Hill Collins, 1986) and the struggle for survival. As an assistant professor who is a woman, lesbian and untenured in an institution that is male- and heterosexual-dominated, Julia is subject to simultaneous sources of oppression that regulate her conduct in the public sphere of

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Greenvalley University. To avoid compromising her career and being deprived of relationships with her colleagues, Julia constructs her life according to the prescribed script of assumed heterosexuality. To derive meaning and understanding from Julia’s comment more fully, I call attention once again to the statement made by the speakers introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Each speaker expressed the belief that as long as sexual orientation is kept private, individual freedom in the public space will not be violated. When these individuals invoke the logic of the public/private distinction to justify the invisibility of lesbian and gay persons in the public space, they speak from a perspective that is confined to their experience within the private and the public as heterosexual beings. Their understanding of freedom, whether in the public or the private sphere, is derived neither from a lived experience that mirrors Julia’s nor from a personal experience that includes Julia as an integral part. Because they neither know what it is like to live a life like Julia’s nor have day-to-day contact with individuals like Julia, they are completely unaware of the oppressive nature of a public sphere that designates someone like Julia an anomaly. It is this very partiality in experience that makes the public/private dichotomy distort reality. It conceals the fact that essential freedoms—in particular the freedom to interact in the public space without having to hide one’s sexual orientation—are systematically granted to the heterosexual faculty member and are just as systematically denied to Julia. In order to survive (not to risk her career, not to be isolated, not to be rejected, not to be seen as abnormal) Julia is conscious, always, of being assessed from and by the vantage point of heterosexuality. To avoid calling attention to herself she has to produce a Julia that does not challenge the heterosexual narrative of normal sexual relations, nor the male narrative of what a woman should be like. Public Dominance of the Private At Greenvalley University, the public imposes itself on the private, even more so than at many other institutions because of its location in an isolated and rural area. Recalling her arrival at Greenvalley University, Julia said, ‘On my first visit here I saw this as a very inhibiting place and that was a very negative thing. I knew from the beginning how conservative it is here.’ And then, searching for confirmation, she asked, ‘Don’t you think it is obvious?’ The isolated and conservative locale of Greenvalley University, where the closest city is several hours away, creates a kind of institutional closure that ‘brings into play a particular, and sometimes very powerful, set of organizational controls over time and space, over sexual time and sexual bodies’ (Hearn et al., 1989:22). The university’s location tightens its grip over the private lives of lesbians, for inside and outside the walls of Greenvalley University there is no ‘clear sexual zoning, territories that are gay and lesbian’ (Hearn et al., 1989:18). For Julia this presents dilemmas that are far removed from the reality of the woman who is heterosexual. For example, even though the university sponsors a Lesbian and Gay Scholarship Lecture Series, Julia hesitates to attend. The public act of going to an event that is so enmeshed with her private being triggers anxieties that are hardly known to the woman professor who, because she knows she is heterosexual, feels perfectly

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comfortable in attending such a lecture. Unlike Julia, the heterosexual professor is not encumbered by the fear of her sexuality becoming suspect. But for Julia it is different: It made me nervous to attend the lectures that were part of the Lesbian and Gay Scholarship Series. Once one of my undergraduate students saw me there, she had been assigned to go to the lecture by another professor. It made me nervous, it is such a repressive place, one senses it, it is so inhibiting. I went home and wondered what she might think and I worried about whether she might tell the others [students] that she saw me. Julia, unlike the student, was not assigned to go to the lecture; she does not have a normal or an official reason for being at the lecture. This realization makes her very uncomfortable. The repressiveness Julia senses has to do with the conservative nature of Greenvalley University and the uncertainty she feels from ‘not knowing who the students in my class really are, what they might be thinking, how they judge me.’ For Julia being lesbian in a heterosexual-dominated organization that she senses as repressive makes her conscious of her sexual oppression and of being assessed on sexual grounds (Hearn et al., 1989). Thus, she responds to the sensed repressiveness by curtailing her interactions in public and by doing what she can to blend in, to pass. Constructing Public Interactions as a Lesbian Professor The public/private dichotomy is also distorting because it reduces lesbianism to sexuality. The logic of the public/private is grounded on the belief that being lesbian is merely an issue of what one chooses to do in private and with whom. But this view is distorting, for it is based on a logic that fails to hear and see what is so obvious and natural for Julia. She says, ‘My life as a lesbian affects my perception of the world in general, likewise being a woman.’ For Julia being lesbian, like being a woman, translates into a particular construction of public life at Greenvalley University that impacts her social relations. She says: Those who are in the closet survive through distance. You listen more than you convey. There are always many walls there. It’s strange because it’s not my style with those who know me, who accept me. I’m used to the walls. They’ve been there for a long time. I’m used to the distances, to not sharing. As to how being a lesbian affects her teaching and scholarship, she says: It is true that my life as a lesbian affects my viewpoint, but I don’t discuss gay themes in class. I’m not ready to, though I could, it is relevant to my field, but I don’t have to. No one asks. If a student would ask point blank, ‘Is so-and-so a lesbian’, Id say yes, but I avoid it. My teachers did, I do too. It has always been avoided.

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The two passages reveal that for Julia, being in an environment that is ideologically and structurally heterosexual translates into a public life that is dominated by premeditated actions intended to conceal from others that very thing—her lesbianism—which is so central to her being. One cannot ignore that Julia, in order not to violate the public demand to keep homosexuality private, restricts her public interactions. To survive in a public sphere that renders those like herself invisible, Julia is careful not to violate the unspoken rules of the public vs. the private. She withholds part of herself from her colleagues and she also withholds truths from her students about the ‘private’ lives of those individuals whose works she teaches. The public/ private distinction forces Julia into concealing those ‘realities’ about herself that challenge the notion of heterosexuality as the only authentic reality. Inequalities Created by the Separation of Public and Private The public/private distinction is perverse because it delegitimizes complaints about inequalities in the public sphere that arise from the personal choices one makes in and about the private sphere (MacKinnon, 1989). The logic underlying the private/ public distinction produces reasoning that goes something like this: lesbian and gay persons have made a personal decision to engage in homosexual behavior; therefore, to complain in public of inequalities derived from their individual and freely made choices undermines the protective intents in the separation between public and private. At Greenvalley University key administrators and trustees used this kind of reasoning to reject demands made by the lesbian and gay communities that the university’s nondiscrimination policy be amended to include sexual orientation.1 As long as sexual orientation is a private matter the university can deny any responsibility to protect gays and lesbians from unfair and unequal treatment. Those who have the power to bring about changes in the public sphere but refrain from doing so in deference to the false public/private separation speak from a position of privilege that does not take into account Julia’s reality. From her perspective, a protective policy is critical because It would be psychologically very beneficial. Not that I expect to benefit in a legal, practical way. But at a psychological level, it would mean a lot. It would be some peace of mind. It’s not that I would do anything so differently, but it would help psychologically. I am who I am, I dress as I dress, I see those I see, I think as I think—things aren’t going to change that way, but I’m going to feel better and I’ll transmit that. But with rejection, I give rejection back. Nothing good comes from rejection. Julia’s statement exposes the perversity of a logic that provides a liberal justification for not intervening—for not acting to make the public sphere more accepting and more affirming of the choices individuals make about their private lives. Such a logic places the onus for change on the individual rather than on the system, ‘distracting attention from the sociopolitical and institutional aspects of lesbian oppression and lesbian threat’ (Kitzinger, 1987:39).

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Silence as Resistance The public/private dichotomy is perverse because it reinforces the inequalities produced by a system where individuals who are not part of the dominant sexual class are seen as abnormal. There are lesbians who react to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ by means of political resistance that is openly expressed in the public sphere—for example, by participating in advocacy groups or by publicly expressing the view of the lesbian and gay community on a given issue at a committee meeting. Julia is not one of these women. Her life consists of one performance after another of the act of ‘closetedness’ Adrienne Rich might say that ‘by retreating into sameness’ Julia has chosen ‘the most passive and debilitating of responses’ (1986a: 24) to the institution of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. Julia, however, might respond that her closetedness constitutes a source of resistance—personal and private, yes, but nonetheless a resistance that is grounded in the refusal to be a victim (Hoagland, 1988). Julia says: I stay hidden because I do not want my colleagues to appreciate me ‘despite’ my being a lesbian. I don’t want to be in a place where they pat themselves on the back for treating me well. It is always that way. They claim that superiority that seems to say, ‘Look how good I am.’ They assume their psychological advantage, even when they treat you well. A condescending air—‘I’ve got that over you.’ As long as we live in a world that says ‘don’t flaunt it’ this will continue. Tone of voice, attitude—I’m very sensitive to these things for they tell me when people are being nice, not to me, but for themselves, to make themselves look and feel good. It’s a completely unequal situation, an unwritten law of power. A condescension that immediately places him or her in a position of power, honoring me with their kindness. And that’s favor I can never return because they are okay, and I am not. In silence Julia finds not only protection but also the only form of resistance that she sees available to her. She uses her silence as a source of power to deprive heterosexuals of the satisfaction that derives from showing understanding and tolerance of the negative other without conceding how their own heterosexual privilege contributes to the structures that make lesbian existence oppressive. Julia’s silence, while not actively helping to dismantle the institution of compulsory heterosexuality, is nevertheless a form of resistance in that the conscious refusal to be viewed as a victim provides her with a sense of agency. Julia’s silence prevents her from falling into what Kathleen Barry conceives as ‘victimism’. She refuses to assume ‘the status of “victim”’ which ‘creates a mindset eliciting pity and sorrow’, ‘denies the woman the integrity of her humanity through the whole experience’, and ‘creates a framework for others to know her not as a person but as a victim’ (1979:45). In silence Julia finds the ‘inner freedom’ which Hannah Arendt called ‘the inward space into which we may escape from external coercion and feel free’ (quoted in Greene, 1988:121; italics in original).

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Discussion Almost three quarters of the survey respondents who provided written comments, like the three professors introduced at the beginning of this paper, justify the invisibility of lesbian and gay persons by means of a logic that perceives the public space as desexualized (degendered as well). This view of the public is based on knowledge derived from the lives of men in the dominant races, classes and cultures (Harding, 1991); it therefore obscures the inequalities that arise within the public space for the professor who is lesbian and a member of the second sex. The public/private logic is persuasive and it has been used effectively to maintain lesbian and gay persons in the closet. In viewing Greenvalley University’s public sphere from the standpoint of Julia’s life I sought to disrupt the discourse sustained by the public/private distinction and show it as partial, distorting and perverse. The knowledge and understanding derived from Julia’s life at Greenvalley University runs counter to the knowledge claims that ground the public/private dichotomy. Her narrative shows that the public space of Greenvalley University, in being structured by the assumption of heterosexuality, forces her into a pattern of living and relating to others that is centered on hiding, on remaining invisible. Because Julia’s story emerges from someone who occupies the ‘borderline’ position (Anzaldua, 1987) of ‘stranger’, or ‘outsider within’ (Hill Collins, 1986) it brings out into the open aspects of academic life that have been omitted from the normative constructions of the profession and the academy. Her account is particularly revealing in that it shows how institutionalized heterosexism and homophobia force Julia to be silent, not to voice felt inequalities for fear of even greater rejection and marginalization. Julia’s account shows that what is assumed to be normal—a public space that is structured exclusively according to the norms of heterosexuality—is in fact abnormal in that it forces her and others like her into unnatural lives to survive. When we look at the institution of compulsory heterosexuality from Julia’s vantage point, we can see the irrationalities it produces. They include a life of dissimulation so as not to breach the public/private distinctions, a fear of rejection, and a concerted effort to wipe out issues having to do with sexual orientation from her lectures even though they may be highly relevant to the subject matter she teaches. Needless to say, the vision of the academy that emerges from Julia’s life is very different from the vision of professors who—like the speakers introduced at the beginning of this chapter—would have us believe that sexual orientation is a private and personal matter, separate from the public space and therefore irrelevant. Julia’s account challenges normative constructions of professorial life in the academy. Julia’s account of her experience within a public space that views her as an anomaly offers us a distinctive analysis and interpretation that is not presently available in conventional discourses of faculty life and the academy. We need to struggle for the vision that emerges from her account.

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Conclusion Nancy Hartsock advocates for the feminist standpoint by pointing out that ‘women’s lives make available a particular and privileged vantage point on male supremacy, a vantage point that can ground a powerful critique of the phallocratic institutions and ideology that constitute the capitalist form of patriarchy’ (1983:231). In a similar manner, it may be said that Julia’s life story as a lesbian professor also provides a particular and privileged vantage point that can ground a powerful critique of the oppressiveness of institutionalized heterosexual discourse within the academy. Julia’s view of the academy, though partial and incomplete, provides the knowledge that can move us toward the development of a lesbian standpoint from which to view and interpret the academy. Such a standpoint is important for three reasons. First, the knowledge derived from Julia’s life takes us to a different level of understanding of the myriad ways in which the institution of compulsory heterosexuality controls the life of lesbian faculty. In particular, looking at the academy through her life makes us aware simultaneously that even though the vision of the academy produced by the public/private dichotomy is partial, distorting and perverse it cannot be dismissed simply as being false (Hartsock, 1983). It is a vision that comes true as long as it forces Julia to structure her life in accordance with heterosexual norms and expectations. Julia’s constant vigilance not to depart from the prescribed script of heterosexuality reveals how very powerful and controlling this vision of the academy can be. Second, the imperative for a lesbian standpoint is made evident by Celia Kitzinger’s observation that ‘The acceptance by most middle-class Western academics of liberal values like that of privacy can make it very difficult seriously to entertain the idea that such values might…serve the interests of the patriarchy in ensuring the continuing oppression of women’ (1987:192). Accounts like Julia’s uncover repressed stories which help us develop a new and different analysis of the academy and life within it. A lesbian standpoint enables us to see that just as Julia’s existence as a faculty member is controlled by structures that render her particular being and reality invisible, all women in the academy struggle to fit in, to become part of structures that are defined by knowledge derived from the experience of the academic man. A lesbian standpoint magnifies—and therefore brings into sharp relief—heterosexual privilege. It provokes an awareness of how privilege is derived from one’s sexual orientation, a privilege which from ‘the perspective of heterosexual women’s lives…appears simply as “the way things are”, perhaps as part of nature’ (Harding, 1991:258). A lesbian standpoint is critical. Not only does it expose the compromises, the premeditated actions, and the performances of closetedness that the institution of compulsory heterosexuality forces on lesbian professors, but it also awakens consciousness about our own and others’ unexamined privileges. And it makes us ask other questions about the system that induces Julia to dissimulate who she is so as to avoid negative relationships with her colleagues and makes her fearful of being rejected at the human level. We have to ask in what ways this system might force others—for example, heterosexual women or people of color—to remain silent about their own

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victimization by sexism or racism, so as not to call attention to their anomaly and be discounted even further. Finally, a lesbian standpoint can be humanizing and transformative. Julia’s story provides a strong directive to take into account that faculty lives are shaped not only by the content of their labor but also by the context within which their labor is carried out. Her story makes it harder for us to examine life in the academy ‘from a perspective of unexamined heterocentricity’ (Rich, 1986a: 24). A lesbian standpoint makes us aware that an institutional context that is ruled by a discourse that renders lesbian faculty invisible is a denial of female agency and therefore disempowering to all women. Acknowledgment I wish to thank Judith Glazer, Yvonna Lincoln, Susan Millar, Anna Neumann, Michael Olivas, and William G.Tierney for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also wish to thank Kelly Ward, graduate assistant at the Center for the Study of Higher Education, The Pennsylvania State University. Note 1 Greenvalley amended its policy of nondiscrimination by including a clause prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation several months after Julia was interviewed. The change was made by the Board of Trustees in response to a report prepared by a committee for lesbian and gay concerns. The report was based on the interviews with faculty and the surveys administered to faculty and students.

References ANZALDUA, G. (1987) Borderlands: The New Mestiza=La Frontera, San Francisco, CA, Spinsters/Aunt Lute Book Company. BARRY, K. (1979) Female Sexual Slavery, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall. D’AuGELLi, A.R. (1991) ‘Lesbians and gay men on campus: Visibility, empowerment, and educational leadership’, Peabody Journal of Education, 66(3), pp, 124–41. DENZIN, N.K. (1989) Interpretive Biography, Newbury Park, CA, Sage. FERGUSON, K.E. (1984) The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy, Philadelphia, Temple University Press. GREENE, M. (1988) The Dialectic of Freedom, New York, Teachers College Press. HARDING, S. (1986) The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. HARDING, S. (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. HARTSOCK, N.C.M. (1983) Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism, Boston, MA, Northeastern University Press. HAWKESWORTH, M.E. (1990) Beyond Oppression: Feminist Theory and Political Strategy, New York, Continuum. HEARN, J., SHEPPARD, D.L., TANCRED-SHERIFF, P. and BURRELL, G. (1990) The Sexuality of Organization, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage. HILL COLLINS, P. (1986) ‘Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought’, Social Problems, 33(6), S14–S32.

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HOAGLAND, S.L. (1988) Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value, Palo Alto, CA, Institute of Lesbian Studies. KITZINGER, C. (1987) The Social Construction of Lesbianism, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage. KITZINGER, C. (1990) ‘Beyond the boundaries: Lesbians in academe’, in LIE, S.S. and O’LEARY, V. (Eds) Storming the Tower: Women in the Academic World, London, Nichols, pp. 163–77. LANGNESS, L.L. and FRANK, G. (1981) Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography, Novato, CA, Chandler & Sharp. LASALLE, L. and RHOADS, R.A. (1992, April) ‘Exploring campus intolerance: A textual analysis of comments concerning lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, San Francisco, CA. MACKINNON, C.A. (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. MARTIN, J. (1990) ‘Deconstructing organizational taboos: The suppression of gender conflict in organizations’, Academy of Management Review, 15, pp. 339–57. PATEMAN, C. (1989) The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press. RICH, A. (1986a) ‘Compulsory heterosexuality’, in Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985, New York, Norton, pp. 23–76. RICH, A. (1986b) ‘Invisibility in academe’, inBlood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979– 1985, New York, Norton, pp. 198–202. SEDGWICK, E.K. (1990) Epistemology of the Closet, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press. TIERNEY, W.G. (1991) ‘Public roles, private lives: Gay faculty in academe’, Unpublished paper. TITON, J.T. (1980) ‘The life story’, Journal of American Folklore, 93, pp. 276–92.

Part III New Politics, New Policy

If the phrase women-centered university sounds outrageous, biased or improbable, we need only try the sound of its opposite, the man-centered university… [When the word ‘man’ is used to describe students striving and intellectual] it is no mere semantic game or trivial accident of language. What we have…is a breeding ground not of humanism but of masculine privilege (Rich, A., 1979:127). When new programs, policies, and practices are constructed with women’s voices and values, the approaches to analysis and evaluation may also need remodelling, as shown in the next chapters. Pressure from the women’s movement in Netherlands led to the governmentsupported Mother’s School. Chapter 9, Geert ten Dam’s analysis of the schools’ operations, ‘School identities and subject positions: Building a feminist policy within schools for adults’, situates the school within historical, economic, ideological and political developments. Those developments provide the backdrop for events around changing ideologies, demographic shifts and identity policies (revolving around race, class and gender). Thus, ten Dam explains the policy outcomes within a wide political context, and avoids a simplistic explanation of the individual participants’ failures and successes. Women’s studies, narrative inquiry and feminist pedagogy empower women and present challenges in postsecondary institutions’ canon. Today women are talking to each other, recovering an oral culture, telling our life-stories, reading aloud to each other the books that have moved and healed us, analyzing the language that has lied about us, reading our own words aloud to each other (Rich, 1979:13). Feminist pedagogy celebrated in Chapter 10 (bell hooks’ ‘Feminist thinking in the

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classroom right now’), challenges students and teachers alike to explore, to connect in personal as well as intellectual ways and to center teaching around a caring ethic. hook’s chapter models defiance of the structures, policies and norms that make teaching a dispense/manage/control/evaluate process. Her chapter’s description of engagement with students, of working against the grain, of teaching transgressively and of engaging the intertwining of racism and sexism, shows one way of making the personal political—her way of acting locally as a step to teaching a joyous labor for freedom, of making the classroom a ‘location of possibility’ (hooks, 1994:207). The chapter explicates the ‘relational norm’ (Stone, 1994:226) for the teacher, although, as Stone says, the ‘pedagogical structuring…systemic, relational, and operational’ (226)—the administrative and policy issues affecting feminist pedagogy are left begging. Is there anyone who has forgotten the power of PE class, or the gym teacher, to tell young people how they should move, what is appropriate for a male or female, how hard to compete, and how valuable they are? In Chapter 11, Robyn Lock describes the struggle to interrupt and reconstruct assumptions in one corner of the university where we prepare the prospective teacher of physical education. ‘From margin to marginality: A feminist in a PE classroom,’ should leave us determined to recognize that, along with studying women in the labor movement in Women’s Studies, we must set a high priority for the university as trainer-of-teachers who would be feminist. In Chapter 12 ‘Feminist pedagogy theory’, Carmen Luke points to realities like the knowledge industry, huge undergraduate classes, credentialling and the limits of goodgirl feminism in order to command that feminist scholars take charge of their own authority and power. To do otherwise, to act as if the feminist classroom is a safe haven, is to reify regimes of legitimation. Contradictions and quandaries emerge, though: can one be a feminist authority figure? If not the selfless, nurturing, good-girl feminist pedagogue, is one a bad girl? Is bad bad? We can be turned aside [from radical action] by the same strategy that has kept us powerless for centuries…divide us from each other… Patriarchy has always split us into virtuous women and whores, mothers and dykes, madonnas and medusas (Rich, 1979). Is a transformed state, a different politics, possible? Must the state be smashed to make a feminist state conceivable, noting that feminist novelists’ utopias, free of patriarchy, are science fiction worlds ‘fundamentally different from our own, such as the hidden world without men in Herland’ (Connell, 1990:537). An alternative is for educators and policy analysts to develop feminist and critical methods for identifying and engaging with expanded policy questions: To become a politics of asking women’s questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women—not a chosen few—shall be honored and validated in every aspect of the culture (Rich, 1979:17).

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References CONNELL, R.W. (1990) ‘The state, gender and sexual politics: Theory and appraisal’, Theory and Society, 19, pp. 507–544. RICH, A. (1979) On Lies, Secrets and Silence, New York, W.W.Norton. HOOKS, B. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, New York, Routledge. STONE, L. (1994) ‘Toward a transformational theory of teaching’, in STONE, L. (Ed) The Education Feminism Reader, New York, Routledge, pp. 221–28.

Chapter 9 School Identities and Subject Positions: Building a Feminist Policy within Schools for Adults Geert ten Dam Introduction The societal meanings attributed to education are the product of political struggle. One of the actors who play a role in this is the government. The development of Dutch government policy on education during the seventies and early eighties was based on the approach that education should function as a means of achieving a more democratic society. An equal opportunities policy was developed and policy objectives on gender equality were formulated. One of the objectives emphasized the fact that girls were lagging behind boys in education. Another, more critical objective included a plea for ‘reappraisal of the feminine’ (see Arends and Volman, 1992). These objectives represented ‘the feminine’ both as a set of skills and values that should be incorporated in education and as a problem, a cause of inequality. From the perspective of feminist discursive theories, policy on gender equality can be interpreted in terms of identity negotiation. Education is a practice in which gender identities are produced. On the one hand, gender is a factor influencing the learning processes of students: both ‘what’ and ‘how’ they learn is related to gender. On the other hand, gender is the outcome of learning processes in schools. Students assume existing gender identities and develop them at an individual level by participating in existing discourses. Even though gender equality, including questions of femininity and masculinity, may be the aim of the government’s educational policy, the politics of identity negotiation does not occur exclusively or primarily at the policy level. Rather, it is a process that occurs predominantly in schools as social institutions. In this chapter I will place the politics of identity negotiation in the context of both the equal opportunities policy of central government and a policy on equal opportunities as developed in a specific school. I will show how the success of a strategy for change is dependent on the extent to which that strategy is rooted in the cultural context of the school in question and the historical and political context at the time. It will be clear that gender reform in schools does not necessarily result in equality between all students. Achieving equality in its widest sense requires that explicit attention be paid to exclusion mechanisms. The case study of the school demonstrates that feminists are not by definition sensitive to processes of exclusion. This chapter presents a case study of a Dutch school for daytime adult education, a school rooted in the policy-context of the seventies and eighties. It is of particular interest

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that the initiative for founding the school came primarily from the women’s movement. I investigated the process through which a feminist policy was constructed within this school, a process that included identity negotiation. I wanted to know whether the school had succeeded in breaking through social inequality and, if so, whether that was reflected in dropout rates. My research focused on how the school’s feminist policy had influenced the subject positions offered by the teachers and the identities of students, in particular those of different groups of women. The first part of the chapter outlines the historical and political context of equal opportunities policy and adult education for women in the Netherlands in the seventies and eighties. This is followed by a brief description of the origins of the adult education school that was the subject of the case study. The next section looks in more detail at the concepts of subject positions and school identities. I will then discuss the main conclusion of the study, the fact that despite policy intentions, gender equality has only partially been achieved. In the final section a plea is made for a broad feminist policy in schools. Such a policy must be aimed at identity politics based on a non-monolithic approach to the category ‘woman’. It must be able to deal with the way categories such as ‘gender’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘age’ are negotiated and lived in schools (Brah, 1994). Equal Opportunities Policy and Schools for Mothers Compared to other European countries and the United States, the Netherlands has been fairly active in pursuing a policy on equal opportunities. This was facilitated by the existence of a strong women’s movement and a government concerned with the conspicuously low level of participation of Dutch women in the labour market. As far as the position of women is concerned, Dutch society can be characterized by the following paradox. On the one hand, the social reality of women in the Netherlands is rather discouraging. Rosi Braidotti calls the general situation of women, in economic and political terms, ‘among the most backward in Europe. In terms of integration in the labour force, state support for child-care and the general professionalization of women, the Netherlands does not stand out as a trend-setter’ (1991:7). The Netherlands is a country of full-time housewives and mothers, a situation that is slowly, and only recently, starting to change. On the other hand, there is an integrated, politically active and intellectually vibrant feminist movement (Braidotti, 1991:7). In 1979 the Dutch Ministry of Education initiated a policy on equal opportunities for girls and boys. Policy objectives on gender equality were formulated as follows (Ministry of Education and Science, 1979): • reduction of factors that hamper freedom of choice, including breaking with traditional sex-stereotyped roles (roldoorbreking); • revaluation of feminine qualities (herwaardering); • an increase in educational opportunities for women to enable them to catch up (achterstanden inhalen). The equal opportunities education policy from the seventies and early eighties was a product of its time. I have already mentioned the position of Dutch women in the labor market and the politically active women’s movement. Moreover, as in many other

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countries (see Arnot, 1991; Kenway et al., 1994) the introduction of an equal opportunities policy was strongly influenced by Labour governments. These governments tried to tackle gender inequality in education by means of central government policy. The Dutch government, for example, published three main policy documents in a relatively short period of time (1979–1985). Moreover, it announced several policy measures, ranging from the development of curriculum materials and financing school projects to research and the organization of conferences and information campaigns. The development of a policy on equal opportunities in education under a Labour regime was also reflected in the efforts of policymakers to maintain a balance between striving for equality and respecting gender difference. This does not mean, however, that educational policy in general was a paragon of emancipation; nor does it imply that specific policy on equal opportunities was formulated effortlessly. Nevertheless, the mere existence of an equal opportunities policy provided a forum for criticism and further reflection on the gender and education issue (ten Dam and Volman, 1995). It was not until the eighties that the policy was increasingly aimed at a specific form of gender equality when, under the influence of Conservative governments, equal opportunities were more or less equated with the participation of women in the labour force. Gender inequality was primarily seen as an economic problem. The opportunities for policymakers to elaborate the initial objective of reappraisal of the feminine, which had to some extent been possible earlier, were considerably reduced. In the seventies and early eighties, adult education moved to the fore of the Dutch equal opportunities education policy, alongside primary education, secondary education and vocational education. Special services for women were created in the adult education system. Both the government and the women’s movement considered adult education for women to be very important. However, their motives for supporting adult education for women in this historical and political context were quite different. While the Dutch government initially acknowledged the importance of adult education for women from the perspective of socio-cultural goals such as selfdevelopment, adult education was increasingly seen as one of the first steps towards participation in the labour force. The women’s movement primarily stressed the importance of adult education for women as a means of combatting subordination, discrimination and oppression. Teaching methods developed by women groups in adult education, like experiential learning, were seen as the axis of consciousness raising. In 1975 the first so-called schools for mothers appeared. The schools provided general secondary education for adult women, in particular full-time housewives and mothers. Unlike most other forms of adult education, the courses were given during the day. These women could attend classes while their children were at school. The curriculum for daytime adult education was decided at the outset. With government accreditation, the schools enjoyed the same status as those providing regular education to teenagers and imposed the same examination requirements. Final examinations took place at the end of the tenth grade in the first schools. Schools in which the final examination was in the eleventh grade and schools for pre-university education were established shortly thereafter. In 1977, women accounted for 94 per cent of enrollment in daytime adult education. This figure had dropped to 87 per cent by 1983, to 83 per cent by 1986, and to 76 per cent by 1990 (CBS, 1984; 1987; 1991). In the late 1980s and early 1990s the original ‘schools

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for mothers’ have now become ‘general’ schools for secondary education for adults. Nowadays the students can be divided into three groups. The largest (and youngest) group consist of ‘drop-outs’ from regular education. A second group consists of students around the age of 30, who have already started their careers but decided to change directions. The third group consists of the original target group: a group of primarily female students above the age of 40 who have not had the chance to study earlier on in life. Although the student population changed and as a result the culture of those schools in particular, the knowledge about the learning processes of older women still remains to some extent. Although other groups of students attended the schools for mothers during the eighties, the majority of those taking advantage of the opportunities for daytime adult education were women. But while tens of thousands of women completed a general course of secondary education during the daytime, many others did not. Throughout their existence, the dropout rate from these schools was high. The establishment of daytime general secondary schools for adults was in most cases due to the efforts of the administration of an evening school for adults or of other types of schools, as well as town councillors. In Amsterdam, however, the school for adults was the result of an initiative by the women’s movement. Under pressure from various women’s groups, the Amsterdam City Council opened an annex to an evening school in 1976, offering all types of secondary education during the day with the exception of vocational training. At the end of its first year this school became independent. In 1982, the aspiration to establish a school for women led to changing the name of the school from the Municipal Day/Evening Combined School for Adults to the Joke Smit Combined School. Joke Smit was a leading Dutch proponent of adult education for women in the feminist movement in the 1970s. The Joke Smit Combined School’s close ties with the women’s movement gave it a special place in daytime adult education. After some initial hesitation, local policymakers adopted the ideology of the Joke Smit Combined School. A characteristic of the equal educational opportunities policy of the 1970s was that education was not only considered from the perspective of improving the opportunities of individual students but also as an instrument for achieving societal change. The Amsterdam alderman responsible for education mentioned this in a speech he gave when the school changed its name: I am delighted with the decision to link the name of Joke Smit with the Municipal Day/Evening Combined School for Adults. This does put a responsibility on the school and its governors. By giving the school her name we are expressing our commitment to the ideals of Joke Smit. It will be an encouragement to us and those who come after us to realize those ideals. Mary must not only get wise1, she must not only have equal opportunities and be given more opportunities in education; more than anything else, education must contribute to creating a society in which the imbalance of power between men and women has been broken. The name of Joke Smit will be our inspiration (special edition of the school newspapers Hoekenest and Wij boven’t IJ, 1982:3). In the next section, I will discuss the theoretical framework of my research and its key concepts, school identities and subject positions. What was most impressive about the

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feminist effort to create a school for women was the focus on the question of identity: how should education be structured and organized so that it is compatible with the experiences and self-image of women while working towards a feminist rearticulation thereof? In other words, what took place at the school was a political struggle over the meanings of female identity and, following on from that, of male identity. Subject Positions and School Identities The images teachers have of their students significantly affect the students’ cognitive and social functioning. They therefore present an important aspect of the issue of gender inequality in education. In 1968 Rosenthal and Jacobson formulated the so-called pygmalion-effect or self-fulfilling prophecy. The expectations that teachers have of students’ achievements are substantiated by the teachers’ behavior towards those students. Years later, this theme was developed from a feminist point of view by Michelle Stanworth (1983). She exposed the expectations of teachers as gendered and investigated the consequences in the classroom. Her main focus was on the way girls experience the classroom environment and on the effect of teachers’ gendered expectations and behavior on the girls’ gender-identity. She concluded that girls are marginalized in schools. For teachers they have no ‘face’. Girls are all too well aware of this. The following comment of one girl has become quite famous: ‘I think he thinks I am pretty mediocre. I think I’m pretty mediocre. He never points me out of the group, or talks to me, or looks at me in particular when he’s talking about things. I’m just a sort of wallpaper person’ (1983:37). Reflecting Stanworth’s study, two comments can be made. First, Stanworth implies that gender-related norms and values are intentionally transferred to girls and boys, who adopt these norms accordingly. Teachers expect girls to be passive, neat and hardworking. Boys on the contrary are perceived as intelligent and creative. Their achievements are evaluated as such. It is assumed that in the interaction processes which take place in the classroom, girls and boys internalize the stereotypes as expressed by teachers. From Stanworth’s point of view, the result of socialization processes in schools is a more or less unequivocal product: feminine girls and masculine boys. At school, however, girls and boys are confronted with several sometimes conflicting discourses on gender and equality. They develop a contingent and specific identity in this context by interpreting and transforming the forms of subjectivity ascribed to them at school. Besides previous learning processes, several systems of meaning play a role in this negotiation, including the prevailing meanings attributed to education, learning, femininity and masculinity outside the school. Gender is not a stable marker; the socially constructed categories of femininity and masculinity interact in complex ways with other categories, such as ethnicity, class and age. Hence, it cannot be assumed that there is a direct relationship between the subject positions offered by the school and the school identities of students (see also Davies, 1989; 1993). Students need to be conceptualized as human agents who give meaning both to their environment and themselves. Meanings attributed to gender are lived in school. Nor do I perceive socialization as a linear process with a fixed and clearly defined outcome, rather as a process full of contradictions and ambivalences, a process that is never actually finished. Learning gender at school should

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be studied as ‘a continuous struggle of meanings’. Identities as ‘the products of socialization’ are precarious, contradictory and constantly in process (Weedon, 1987:33). Second, in keeping with the intellectual climate of the early eighties, Stanworth paid relatively little attention to the process of identity construction in relation to the discursive context of schools. It seems that teachers were engaged in isolated subject-tosubject relationships with their students. Free interactions between individuals, however, are not the case. Both teachers and students encounter situations in which rules already exist. This element is especially emphasized in postmodern theory. Margaret Clark (1989) states that the problem is not a shortage of good intentions on the part of the teachers, but a lack of discourses enabling them to recognize and deal with unequal power relations. The discursive context can vary from one school to the other. Students derive meanings from a specific context in order to give form to their gender identity. Moreover, a discursive context is not inert but open to negotiations. My research was based on the theoretical assumption that the school as a discursive practice plays an active role in the construction of social reality for female and male students and consequently in the production of subjectivity. The question, ‘Did the Joke Smit Combined School succeed in breaking through social inequality?’ can now be more clearly defined within the theoretical framework outlined above: 1 What are the school identities of students in the Joke Smit Combined School and to what extent are gender, age and ethnicity relevant categories? 2 What subject positions within this school are offered to students and to what extent are gender, age and ethnicity relevant categories? 3 Is there a relationship between dropping out of school on the one hand and the extent of divergence between the school identities of female and male students and the subject positions offered to them on the other hand? Semi-structured interviews were used in the research.2 I presupposed that the subject positions offered during the course, as a specific part of the discursive character of the school, were manifested in the images formed by teachers. Although meanings about students, for example, do not originate from individual teachers, teachers do fulfill an important role in the production of meaning and consequently shape the context in which students learn and develop a gender identity. The students and dropouts were asked to report on their perception of themselves as students (school identities), and teachers were asked to report on their conceptions of the students (subject positions). A differentiation was made between a cognitive dimension and a social dimension with regard to the school identities and the subject positions offered. The cognitive dimension relates to the differentiation made between good and bad students from the perspective of their achievements and cognitive abilities. Personality and behavior constitute the social dimension, which is related to the social climate in the classroom. Several facets make up the cognitive dimension: eager to learn/indifferent; conscientious/sloppy; works quickly/works slowly; independent/lacking in independence; go-ahead/indolent; concentrates/easily distracted; understands quickly/understands slowly; thinks logically/intuitive. The social dimension comprises the following facets: polite/impolite;

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reliable/unreliable; tolerant/ aggressive; wait and see attitude/takes the lead; open/closed; fun loving/serious; wants to create a good atmosphere/egocentric; quiet/noisy.3 In spite of the fact that in the theoretical orientation I used, inequality between and within the sexes was linked to processes of production of meaning, the data were collected and analyzed quantitatively. The main reason for this was to facilitate the comparison of teachers and students with each other. I also wanted to clarify dropout rates on the basis of the extent of divergence between the school identities of the students and the subject positions offered by teachers. The next section contains a brief overview of the most important findings. For more detailed information about the analysis of the data and for a more quantitative presentation of the results, see ten Dam (1995). Gender Equality in a Feminist School Culture in the Eighties The research shows that the efforts of the staff of the Joke Smit Combined School to create a school culture that women could relate to and find stimulating, a culture in which they could feel at ease and achieve, have in a sense been successful. Remarkably, the gender of the students was scarcely relevant to the teachers’ conceptions about the cognitive and social functioning of specific groups of students. The subject positions offered were virtually gender-neutral. There is only one gender difference, to the advantage of women: teachers assumed women to be more eager to learn than men.4 This one gender difference is not really related to the actual achievements and ambitions of women. In 1987 Valerie Walkerdine argued that it does not matter whether girls’ achievements are high or not, in the dominant educational discourse teachers interpreted those achievements as ‘not real learning’. When girls do well their achievements are perceived as the result of working hard and following instructions, thereby making them of less value than those of boys whose achievements are ascribed to creativity and insight. Different categories of women, however, have profited in varying degrees from the feminist culture of the school. Teachers reacted most positively to men and especially white women over 25. Compared to older students, younger students were offered cognitive subject positions that were noticeably more negative. They were characterized as being more indifferent, more easily distracted and less conscientious. This result can be interpreted as follows. The younger students in the school did not fit with the discursive context of the school. As they were mostly dropouts from general secondary education, they appeared, for example, not so eager to learn as teachers expected them to be. Their primary interest seemed to be to get their certificates as soon as possible. Moreover, from the perspective of teachers and the original target group of the school, the younger students brought discipline problems to the classroom. It was a growing problem, as during the years that followed more and more youngsters entered the school. (In 1986 about 25 per cent of the students were younger than 25.) Although not statistically significant, black students were offered subject positions that were more negative than those offered to white students. Teachers gave black students lower scores on all the different aspects of the cognitive dimension. This result can also be explained by looking at the characteristics of the group who first entered the school

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and received the political sympathy of the teachers. Those women who formed the original target group were not only relatively old but almost exclusively white. From the mid-eighties an increasing number of black students populated the school (about 10 per cent in 1986). Most of them were young and consequently suffered from the discursive context of the school. But they were also black. In the interviews I conducted, teachers realized that they would probably be accused of racism. It was remarkable how carefully they answered my questions and how they almost constantly said they did not want to stereotype. This was in sharp contrast to the way they presented their perceptions of the cognitive and social functioning of other groups of students, including the younger ones. Nevertheless, a strong tendency could be discerned towards a more negative perception of the cognitive abilities of black students than those of white students. Table 9.1 shows the numerical results of my research. With regard to the students’ school identities, how did they live and negotiate the categories gender, ethnicity and age at school? The research shows that students’ and dropouts’ perceptions of themselves as students differs from teachers’ perceptions of them. Students and

Table 9.1: Subject positions: Mean scores given by teachers for different groups of students Older white women

Older white men

Young white women

Young white men

Young black women5

Young black men

eager to learn/indifferent

1.7

2.1

4.0

4.0

3.7

4.0

conscientious/sloppy

2.7

3.3

4.3

4.6

4.6

5.0

works quickly/works slowly

5.0

4.4

3.6

3.5

4.6

4.6

independent/lacking in independence

3.9

3.6

3.7

3.9

4.4

4.8

go-ahead/indolent

3.1

3.9

4.6

4.5

4.7

4.7

concentrates/easily distracted

3.5

3.1

4.5

4.5

4.8

5.0

understands quickly/ understands slowly

4.6

4.3

3.7

3.7

4.4

4.3

thinks logically/intuitive

5.0

3.6

4.2

3.6

4.6

4.6

polite/impolite

2.3

2.7

3.7

3.8

3.5

3.5

reliable/unreliable

2.7

2.8

4.3

4.2

4.3

4.8

tolerant/aggressive

3.4

3.2

4.0

4.0

4.1

4.2

wait and see attitude/takes the lead

3.6

4.0

4.2

4.2

3.8

4.2

open/closed

3.6

4.1

3.7

3.7

3.9

4.0

fun loving/serious

2.4

2.6

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.5

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wants to create a good atmosphere/egocentric

2.9

3.9

3.9

4.4

3.9

4.0

quiet/noisy

2.7

2.6

4.4

4.6

4.5

4.5

dropouts from the Joke Smit Combined School perceived themselves in a gendered way. While women were more likely to see themselves as open and intuitive students, men were more likely to see themselves as closed and logical. The fact that the school identities of students were gendered is not surprising. It can safely be assumed that virtually all the students were confronted with gender inequality and gender differences outside the school. Consequently, gender-neutral subject positions are also likely to be lived and negotiated in a gendered way. The school identities of students were not only gender-related. There were also significant differences between students and dropouts from different ethnic origins. Black students and black dropouts were more likely to see themselves as open, polite and having a wait and see attitude; white students and white dropouts on the other hand more often saw themselves as closed, impolite and taking the lead. Finally, regarding age, relatively more students and dropouts aged 25 and older saw themselves as being eager to learn, go-ahead, conscientious, serious and able to concentrate than younger students and dropouts. The latter saw themselves as disinterested, indolent, easily distracted, sloppy and fun loving. The subject positions offered within a school and the way in which students live and negotiate them in terms of school identities are not without consequences. Images materialize in the school careers of students. There was a clear relationship between dropout rates on the one hand and subject positions and school identities on the other. For dropouts (mainly young and black), as compared to students who completed their course of study, there was a greater divergence, in a negative sense, between their perceptions of themselves as students and the subject positions offered by teachers. Neither the school identities nor the subject positions offered by teachers explain by themselves why students dropped out (ten Dam, 1995); only the divergence between school identities and subject positions offers such an explanation. In other words, social inequality in education is primarily a problem of compatibility. In the context of the development of their own identity, are students able to relate to the discourse offered by a school and are they stimulated by it? Identity Negotiation and Learning Environment In this article I have focused on the way gender differences are shaped by divergent discursive educational practices. Meanings of femininity and masculinity are constructed in education, both at the level of social meanings and at the level of the individual. Associations are constantly made between subjects, skills, knowledge, etc. and the concepts of femininity and masculinity. Educational practices and discourses assign meaning to femininity and masculinity along all sorts of axes including age, ethnicity, social class and sexuality. Before returning to the historical and political context in which the politics of identity negotiations took place, I would like to emphasize that the

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meanings of femininity and masculinity as presented in this article should not be interpreted as essential characteristics of adult students. The results of my research do not tell a new, true story about women. They are social constructions which are by definition, temporary and restricted by location. At another time in another place, different answers might well have been given to my questions. The school I investigated was rooted in both the equal educational opportunities policy of the seventies and early eighties and in the women’s movement. That policy initially focused on greater equality in terms of opportunities to learn and develop. It was compatible with the notion that education is an instrument for creating a more democratic society. In the eighties, however, this was already rapidly being superseded by a perception of education as a means of equipping students for optimum participation in the labour market. Adult education for women in particular was seen in the perspective of equal opportunities by central and local government. This policy was developed under Labour governments and influenced by a strong women’s movement that saw the opportunity for adult women and housewives to go back to school as one of their key aims. For the women’s movement, the increasing importance of the labour market, however, was second to the political aim of ‘consciousness raising’. The Joke Smit Combined School occupied a special place in daytime adult education. This school was more closely tied to and influenced by the discourses of the women’s movement of the late seventies and eighties than other schools. The cultural climate of the mid-eighties offered teachers a discourse that enabled them to recognize and deal with unequal gender relations. There was an ongoing discussion in this school on how adult education can adequately accommodate the needs of women. In the terminology of postmodern feminism, it can be argued that new images and meanings of femininity and masculinity were presented in the school. That the subject positions offered in the school are gender-neutral but at the same time age- and ethnicity-biased becomes understandable in this discursive context. After all, the group that received the political sympathy of the teachers, and on which they focused their efforts, were white and relatively old. They were predominantly full-time mothers and housewives who, when their children had started school, wanted to go back to school themselves. The Joke Smit Combined School offered teachers a discourse that did not presuppose that these women’s learning problems resulted from insufficient learning ability, wrong attitudes or the like. Rather, the teachers considered learning environment to be of paramount importance to the students’ achievements. From the outset, every effort was made to accommodate the needs of the original group of women attending the school. School times were altered, child care was provided, teachers endeavored to take into account the experiences of these women outside of school in their teaching programs, and experiential learning was used as a teaching method. Facilities such as homework classes and adjustments in course content were intended to teach older women how to study. These efforts were not made for other groups of women and for men, only for the original target group. The teachers did not consider it be unimportant to accommodate the needs of all students, but a discursive context comparable to the discourse on gender inequality was lacking in the seventies and early eighties in the Netherlands. Government policy on equal opportunities in education only paid special attention to the position of migrant girls and women in the late 1980s. The same is true of the Dutch women’s movement. In

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contrast to countries like the USA and the UK, women of color were scarcely a political issue until then. The discursive practice of the Joke Smit Combined School manifested itself in the positive and stimulating subject positions offered to the group of women who attended the school in the initial years. From the perspective of feminist policy, however, it is important to be aware of unintentional side-effects: the exclusion of other groups of students, in particular young and black students, female and male. In order to explore a feminist policy within schools for adults that incorporates gender as being lived in a multiplicity of ways, it is necessary to look at the phenomenon of images in more detail. On the one hand, images are constructed by underlying values such as equal opportunities and subjective social norms; how do teachers perceive, for example, particular goals within a school culture? (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Yet on the other hand, the actual confrontation between teachers and learners, for example in the classroom, influences the construction of images as well (Huismans, 1987). Thus, while the existing discourses are an important source in the construction of subject positions and school identities, the material learning environment plays a significant role as well. (The latter is of course also affected by existing discourses but cannot be reduced to these discourses.) In this chapter I have primarily paid attention to the discourses about gender equality in education in the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s. I will now make a few remarks on the role of the material learning environment. From educational practices, we know that not being able to relate subject matter to the personal experience of learners and not being able to take individual differences into account may be the cause of learning difficulties. Especially learners from a different cultural background may not understand the subject matter; they may drop out or tend to disturb classroom practices. Teachers’ interpretations of these reactions influence the subject positions they offer. In general, the subject positions offered by teachers to students from a ‘different’ cultural background are more negative than those offered to groups of learners whose cultural background is reflected in the curriculum and subject matter. Students derive the meanings on which they base their school identity from this background. In turn, the resulting subject positions and school identities influence the classroom interactions between teachers and different groups of students. The circle is then complete. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that this approach, comprising the problem of subject positions, school identities and especially the divergence between them outlined above, facilitates discussion of the research results with the teachers in question. During my discussions with them, they kept discussing differences at an abstract level and at times became angry. They interpreted the results presented as an accusation of discrimination. However, focusing on the material ground of subject positions and school identities gave an opening for reflecting together on how to develop strategies for change. Notes 1 This is a a reference to a well-known campaign for equal opportunities for adult women by the women’s movement, It was called ‘Get wise, Mary!’ 2 Fifty-six students, 45 dropouts and 27 teachers participated in the research. The teachers were selected by means of a random sample of teachers at the school. Students and dropouts were selected by means of a sample of the two groups stratified according to gender, ethnicity and

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age. The black participants all originally came from Surinam or the Antilles. They are the most highly represented ethnic minority in the school. 3 The school identities and subject positions were measured on sixteen 7-point scales. Teachers, students and dropouts were first asked to describe successful students and unsuccessful students with the help of the same research instrument. It was then possible to determine to what extent they considered the characteristics attributed to the students to be positive or negative. 4 I have only given those results that are statistically significant. 5 Of the eight groups identified, two groups scarcely existed at the school for adult education in question, namely older black women and older black men. The majority of teachers made use of the answer ‘don’t know’ for these two groups and they were therefore omitted from the analysis.

References ARENDS, J. and VOLMAN, M. (1992) ‘A comparison of different policies: Equal opportunities in education in the Netherlands and the policy of the Inner London Education Authority’, Gender and Education, 4, pp. 57–66. ARNOT, M. (1991) ‘Equality and democracy: A decade of struggle over education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12, pp. 447–66. BRAIDOTTI, R. (1991) ‘Introduction: Dutch treats and other strangers’, in HERMSEN, J.J. and VAN LENNING, A. (Eds) Sharing the Difference, London, Routledge, pp. 1–16. BRAH, A. (1994) ‘“Race” and “Culture” in the gendering of labour markets: South Asian young Muslim women on the labour market’, in AFSHAR, H. and MAYNARD, M. (Eds) The Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions, London, Taylor and Francis. CENTRAAL BUREAU VOOR DE STATISTIEK (1984, 1987, 1991) Statistiek voor vwo, havo, mavo 1982/1983–1985/1986–1989/1990; scholen, leerlingen en examens. [Statistics on Preuniversity Education, Senior General Secondary Education, Junior General Secondary Education; Schools, Pupils and Examinations.] Den Haag, CBS/Staatsuitgeverij. CLARK, M. (1989) ‘Anastasia is a normal developer because she is unique’, Oxford Review of Education, 15, pp. 243–56. DAVIES, B. (1989) ‘The discursive production of the male/female dualism in school settings’, Oxford Review of Education, 15(3), pp. 229–41. DAVIES, B. (1993) Shards of Glass: Children Reading and Writing Beyond Gendered Identities, Sydney, Allen and Unwin. FISHBEIN, M. and AJZEN, J. (1975) Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behaviour, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley. HUISMANS, S.E. (1987) Voorlichting over de toekomst en waarden [Information about the Future and Values], Amsterdam, VU Uitgeverij. KENWAY, J., WILLIS, S., BLACKMORE, J. and RENNIE, L. (1994) ‘Making “hope practical” rather than “despair convincing”: Feminist post-structuralism, gender reform and education change’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15, pp. 187–210. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (1979) Schets van een beleid voor emancipatie in onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek. [Outline of a Policy on Equal Opportunities in Education and Research], Den Haag, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen/ Staatsuitgeverij. TEN DAM, G. (1995) ‘Dropout from adult education’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 14(1), pp. 51–63. TEN DAM, G. and VOLMAN, M. (1995) ‘Feminist research and educational policy’, Journal of Education Policy, 10(2), pp. 209–20.

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TEN DAM, G., VAN ECK, E. and VOLMAN, M. (forthcoming) ‘Research programmes on gender and education: Results and conceptualizations’, European Journal of Educational Research. ROSENTHAL, R. and JACOBSON, L. (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Special edition of the school-newspapers Hoekenest and Wij boven’t IJ, 1982, p. 3. STANWORTH, M. (1983) Gender and Schooling, London, Hutchinson. WALKERDINE, V. (1987) ‘Femininity as performance’, Oxford Review of Education, 15, pp. 267–70. (Also published in STONE, L. (1994) (Ed) The Education Feminism Reader, New York/London, Routledge, pp. 57–69). WEEDON, C. (1987) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, Oxford, Blackwell.

Chapter 10 Feminist Thinking in the Classroom Right Now* bell hooks Teaching women’s studies classes for more than ten years, I’ve seen exciting changes. Right now teachers and students face new challenges in the feminist classroom. Our students are no longer necessarily already committed to or interested in feminist politics (which means we are not just sharing the ‘good news’ with the converted). They are no longer predominantly white or female. They are no longer solely citizens of the United States. When I was a young graduate student teaching feminist courses, I taught them in Black Studies. At that time, women’s studies programs were not ready to accept a focus on race and gender. Any curriculum focusing specifically on black women was seen as suspect, and no one was yet using the catchall phrase ‘women of color’. In those days, the students in my feminist classrooms were almost all black. They were fundamentally skeptical about the importance of feminist thinking or feminist movement to any discussion of race and racism, to any analysis of black experience and black liberation struggle. Over time, that skepticism has deepened. Black students, female and male, continually interrogate this issue. Whether in the classroom or while giving a public lecture, I am continually asked whether or not black concern with the struggle to end racism precludes involvement with feminist movement. ‘Don’t you think black women, as a race, are more oppressed than women?’ ‘Isn’t the women’s movement really for white women?’ or ‘Haven’t black women always been liberated?’ tend to be the norm. Striving to answer questions like these has led to shifts in my ways of thinking and writing. As a feminist teacher, theorist and activist, I am deeply committed to black liberation struggle and want to play a major role in re-articulating the theoretical politics of this movement so that the issue of gender will be addressed and feminist struggle to end sexism will be considered a necessary component of our revolutionary agenda. Commitment to feminist politics and black liberation struggle means that I must be able to confront issues of race and gender in a black context, providing meaningful answers to problematic questions as well as appropriate accessible ways to communicate them. The feminist classroom and lecture hall that I am speaking in most often today is rarely all black. Though the politically progressive clamor is for diversity, there is little realistic understanding of the ways feminist scholars must change ways of seeing, talking and thinking if we are to speak to the various audiences, the different subjects who may be present in one location. How many feminist scholars can respond effectively when * Reprinted from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks, by permission of the publisher, Routledge, New York, pp. 111–18.

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faced with a racially and ethnically diverse audience who may not share similar class backgrounds, language, levels of understanding, communication skills and concerns? As a black woman professor in the feminist classroom teaching women’s studies classes, these issues surface daily for me. My joint appointment in English, African American Studies and Women’s Studies as well as other disciplines usually means that I teach courses from a feminist standpoint, but that are not listed specifically as women’s studies courses. Students may take a course on black women writers without expecting that the material will be approached from a feminist perspective. This is why I make a distinction between the feminist classroom and a women’s studies course. In a feminist classroom, especially a women’s studies course, the black student, who has had no previous background in feminist studies, usually finds that she or he is in a class that is predominantly white (often attended by a majority of outspoken young, white, radical feminists, many of whom link this politic to issues of gay rights). Unfamiliarity with the issues may lead black students to feel at a disadvantage both academically and culturally (they may not be accustomed to public discussions of sexual practice). If a black student acknowledges that he or she is not familiar with the work of Audre Lorde and the rest of the class gasps as though this is unthinkable and reprehensible, that gasp evokes the sense that feminism is really a private cult whose members are usually white. Such black students may feel estranged and alienated in the class. Furthermore, their skepticism about the relevance of feminism may be regarded contemptuously by fellow students. Their relentless efforts to link all discussions of gender with race may be seen by white students as deflecting attention away from feminist concerns and thus contested. Suddenly, the feminist classroom is no longer a safe haven, the way many women’s studies students imagine it will be, but is instead a site of conflict, tensions and sometimes ongoing hostility. Confronting one another across differences means that we must change ideas about how we learn; rather than fearing conflict we have to find ways to use it as a catalyst for new thinking, for growth. Black students often bring this positive sense of challenge, of rigorous inquiry to feminist studies. Teachers (many of whom are white) who find it difficult to address diverse responses may be as threatened by the perspectives of black students as their classmates. Unfortunately, black students often leave such classes thinking they have acquired concrete confirmation that feminism does not address issues from a standpoint that includes race or addresses black experience in any meaningful way. Black women teachers committed to feminist politics may welcome the presence of a diverse student body in classrooms even as we recognize that it is difficult to teach women’s studies to black students who approach the subject with grave doubt about its relevance. In recent years, I have been teaching larger numbers of black male students, many of whom are not aware of the ways sexism informs how they speak and interact in a group setting. They face challenges to behavior patterns they may have never before thought important to question. Towards the end of one semester, Mark, a black male student in my Reading Fiction English class, shared that while we focused on African American literature, his deepest sense of awakening came from learning about gender, about feminist standpoints. When I teach courses such as Black Women Writers or Third World Literature, I usually have more black students than those courses that are specifically designated as women’s studies. I taught one women’s studies senior seminar for a professor who was

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on leave. Too late, I realized that this course was really for women’s studies majors and, as a consequence, would probably be all white. Described as a course that would approach feminist theory from a standpoint that included discussions of race, gender, class and sexual practice, the first class attracted more black students than any other women’s studies course I have taught. Talking individually with black students interested in the course, I found that the majority had little or no background in feminist studies. Only two students, one male and one female, were prepared to take the class. My suggestion to the other students was that they look at the assigned material to see if they were interested in it, if it was accessible. They decided for themselves that they were not prepared for the seminar and eagerly proposed another option, which was that I would allow them to explore feminist theory—particularly work by black women—in a private reading course with ten black female students. When we first met, the students expressed the sense that they were transgressing boundaries by choosing to explore feminist issues. Very much a militant advocate of feminist politics before taking the course, Lori (one of the few students who had a women’s studies background) told the group that it was difficult to share with other black students, particularly male peers, her interest in feminism: ‘I see how it is when I talk to one individual black man who does not want to have anything to do with feminism and then lets me know that nobody wants to hear it’ Challenging them to explore what makes the risk worth taking, I heard varied responses. Several students talked about witnessing male abuse of women in families and communities and seeing the struggle to end sexism as the only organized way to make changes. Maelinda, who is Afrocentric in her thinking and plans to spend a year in Zimbabwe, told the group that she considers it misguided for black women to act as though we have the luxury to take feminism or leave it, especially if it is rejected because peers respond negatively: ‘I don’t think we really have that choice, that’s like saying I don’t want to have race consciousness because the rest of society doesn’t want you to. I mean, let’s get real.’ Throughout the semester, there was more laughter in our discussions—as well as more concern about negative fall-out exploring feminist concerns—than in any feminist course I have taught. There were also ongoing attempts to relate material to the concrete realities they face as young black women. All the students were heterosexual and particularly concerned about the possibility that choosing to support feminist politics would alter their relationships with black men. They were concerned about ways feminism might change how they relate to fathers, lovers, friends. Most everyone agreed that the men they knew who were grappling with feminist issues were either gay or involved with women who were pushing them. Brett, a close partner of one of the women, was taking another class with me. Since he was named by black women in the group as one of the black males who was concerned about gender issues, I talked with him specifically about feminism. He responded by calling attention to the reasons it is difficult for black men to deal with sexism, the primary one being that they are accustomed to thinking of themselves in terms of racism, being exploited and oppressed. Speaking of his efforts to develop feminist awareness, he stressed limitations: ‘I’ve tried to understand but then I’m a man. Sometimes I don’t understand and it hurts,’ cause I think I’m the epitome of everything that’s oppressed.’ Since it is difficult for many black men to give voice to the ways they are hurt and wounded by racism, it is also understandable that it is difficult for them to own up to sexism, to be accountable. More and more, individual black men—particularly

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young black men—are facing the challenge of daring to critique gender, be informed, and willingly resist and oppose sexism. On college campuses, black male students are increasingly compelled by black female peers to think about sexism. Recently, I gave a talk where Pat, a young black man, was wearing a button that read, ‘Sexism is a male disease: Let’s solve it ourselves.’ Pat was into rap and he gave me a tape of rap that opposed rape. During our last private reading session, I asked black women students whether they felt empowered by the material, if they had grown in their feminist consciousness, if they were more aware. Several commented that the material suggested to them that black women active in feminist movement ‘have more enemies’ than other groups, and were more frequently attacked. In their own lives they felt it was difficult to speak out and share feminist thinking. Lori posed the question, ‘What would happen to a black feminist woman if she spoke as militantly as a black man?’ She answered it herself: ‘People would freak out and start rioting.’ We all laughed at this. I assured them that I speak militantly about feminism in a black context and though there is often protest, there is also growing affirmation. Everyone in the group expressed the fear that a commitment to feminist politics would lead them to be isolated. Carolyn, the student who organized the private reading, selecting much of the work that was studied, felt she was already more alone, under attack: ‘We see the alienation that black feminists experience by speaking out and ask ourselves, “Are you strong enough to handle the isolation, the criticism?” You know you’re going to get it from men and even some women.’ Overall, the feeling of the group was that studying feminist work, seeing an analysis of gender from a feminist standpoint as a way to understand black experience, was necessary for the collective development of black consciousness, for the future of black liberation struggle. Rebecca, a Southerner, felt that her upbringing made it easier to accept notions of gender equality in the workplace but harder to apply it to personal relationships. Individually, everyone spoke emphatically about critically examining their standpoints and transforming their consciousness as a first stage in the process of feminist politicization. Carolyn added to this comment her conviction that ‘once you learn to look at yourself critically, you look at everything around you with new eyes.’ Audre Lorde’s (1984) essay, ‘Eye to Eye’, was one of the very first readings on the list. It was the work everyone called to mind in our class as we spoke about how important it is for black women to stand in feminist solidarity with one another. Tensions had emerged in the group between students who felt that individuals would come to class and talk feminism but not act on their beliefs in other settings. There was silence when Tanya reminded the group of the importance of honesty, of facing oneself. Everyone agreed with Carolyn that black women who ‘get it together’, who deal with sexism and racism, develop important strategies for survival and resistance that need to be shared within black communities, especially since (as they put it) the black woman who gets past all this and discovers herself ‘holds the key to liberation’. Reference LORDE, A. (1984) Sister Outsider: Black Women, Hatred and Anger, Trunansburg, New York, The Crossing Press.

Chapter 11 From Margin to Marginality: A Feminist in a PE Classroom Robyn S.Lock The Margin This chapter grew out of my experience as a feminist teacher in a physical education teacher education class. The specific situation I will describe occurred during the classroom section of a secondary methods block for physical education majors. As the teacher educator responsible for the secondary block, I had developed the course over a period of seven years. The block was designed to help students critically examine the fundamental assumptions prevalent in secondary physical education classes. The course materials included numerous critical observation instruments and autobiographical questions focusing on the issues of race, class, gender and homosexuality. The students in this course are typically near the end of their professional education sequence, so most have had numerous field experiences. In addition, these physical education majors are not new to me nor I to them, since I have had all of them in a number of other courses. The interesting and unique characteristic of this particular group was that the students were all able-bodied white males. My intention was to bring these 11 young men to the point of being able to genuinely reflect upon their own teaching in such a way as to make meaningful changes in how they perceived their role as teachers. I wanted them to engage in liberatory practice in the gymnasium. Writing this chapter has proven to be a very difficult process. It has resulted in a critical self-examination of my personal and professional belief system, although I did not originally intend to undertake such an examination. It has also meant struggling with my own biography and the influence my biography exerts upon my own practice as a teacher educator. Writing this paper has forced me to examine the ways in which I reproduce dominant ideology even as I attempt to confront it in my classroom. As an evolving, struggling feminist in physical education, and I use the term evolving to mean that I have yet to resolve some of my own ‘isms’, the line between truth and fiction, between comfort and panic, between reasonableness and rage has been blurred. Teaching from a feminist position in physical education is difficult and tenuous. It has been a trying experience because for me, being a feminist means asking questions about the rules that frame and construct experience. To mainstream academicians, physical education may not appear to be a site of struggle. The perception among many in higher education is that all we do in physical education is play. Yet, the process of play, what we play, how we play, and how we come to understand what it means to play are forms of ideological struggle grounded in dominant paradigms of knowledge, power and culture. Physical education and sport are frequently misunderstood by those inside and outside of these areas. But because physical education and sport are socially, politically and culturally constructed, they are by their very nature part of the larger sphere of oppression; they reproduce dominant cultural values and norms.

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My own marginalization as a female in physical education and as a female athlete has led me to try to begin to understand how the forces of culture, ideology, knowledge and power play themselves out in very specific ways. As a child I was a relatively talented athlete in a very traditional, white, middle-class male way. My family tolerated my interests and behaviors. I tried to ignore what other students in elementary school used to say about me. Being ostracized was a price I was willing to pay, because playing with the boys was always so much more gratifying to me than any conversation I could possibly have had with girl friends. As a matter of fact, it was in those conversations with other girls that I felt the most alienated, because I lacked the cultural capital necessary to help me connect with the topics of conversation in which they were routinely engaged. I use this personal but brief biographical sketch to underscore how these experiences have helped to shape how I feel about the concepts of knowledge, culture, power and ideology. Lacking the cultural capital that would have allowed me to connect to the traditional female world, I entered the male domain of sports, but only as a visitor for a brief stay. My sex marginalized me in that context as well. Thus, I learned very early about how the concepts of ideology and power serve to either legitimate one’s experience or negate it. Understanding the Context Historically, the field of physical education has suffered from a lack of respect. Physical educators have tried to gain credibility by adopting rigorous empirical positions concerning the nature and content of physical education. Teaching and learning in physical education are grounded in the assumption that these concepts are technological processes that can be developed and controlled. This approach supposedly provides preservice teachers with a systematic, objective way of looking at the teaching process. This in turn improves student learning, because teaching behaviors have been controlled and analyzed. ALT-PE (Seidentop, Birdwell and Metzler, 1979) and MOST-PE (Metzler, 1981) are two examples of evaluation instruments based on this concept and are designed to measure teacher on-task behavior and effectiveness while at the same time increasing teacher productivity and accountability (McKay, Gore and Kirk, 1990). Many preservice students in physical education learn how to manage equipment, manage student behavior, keep students on task, write behavioral objectives, and analyze and give performance feedback without regard, for the most part, to the implications of their teaching. As a result of undergraduate preparation, newly graduated teachers see their mission as the production of performance, because they are seldom, if ever, introduced to the ethical and political questions surrounding the social context of their profession (Lock and Martin, 1991). While some in the profession view these recent technocratic developments as progress, this approach to teacher development fails to engender a critical examination of the impact of the teaching process, of the nature of the content of physical education, or of an understanding of whose interests are served in the promotion of this approach to teacher education. Even though a significant amount of research in the last 20 years (Lock, 1993) has pointed to inequitable teaching practices (sexist, racist, homophobic, classist), research also indicates (McKay, Gore and Kirk, 1990) that for the most part these practices still

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pervade the gymnasium. Despite the attempts of some teacher educators to infuse new methods and materials into the traditional physical education curriculum, it has remained essentially unchanged in the last 20 years (Lock, 1993). Since the population of students who will occupy schools in the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, equipping preservice physical education teachers with the knowledge and capacities to critically reflect on their own experience and biographies is a critical issue for teacher educators in physical education, especially if physical education is to have a positive impact on children’s lives. The Feminist Classroom As a teacher and professional educator, I have undergone a number of professional pedagogical changes over the years. Most significantly though was that, as a feminist, I had come to the conclusion that I needed to teach from a position that was more consistent with what I had accepted as feminist, that is, sharing of power, recognizing all voices in class, and creating spaces for marginal groups to find their stride. It has become a moral imperative for me to understand and to help my students understand how the process of education serves to marginalize entire groups of people who, for one reason or another, lack the power to access the very system which, in theory, is there to empower them. Following what I thought to be feminist practice, I redesigned parts of the secondary methods course to allow and encourage teacher reflection and to encourage exploration of student autobiographies. My thinking was to create an atmosphere in which the students could examine the impact of their own life experiences on their perceptions of teaching and learning in the physical education setting. I wanted my students to change, to move from thinking of teaching as a value-free activity to viewing it as inherently political and powerful. To that end, I attempted to develop a conversational classroom that explored the political and social construction of knowledge, a classroom that acknowledged particular contexts and histories as sources of truthful views. The interactive pedagogical style that I adopted integrated student biographies and histories into subject matter. I infused the feminist pedagogy as described by Hollingsworth (1994) by encouraging the students to find their own voices in relation to the material. In keeping with the spirit of feminist pedagogy, I maintained a ‘commitment to the safety, challenge, and intimacy of conversation as a pedagogical tool to develop our autobiographies, our personal theories, and interests in teaching and learning, and the course curriculum’ (Hollingsworth, 1994:211). Creating a space for their voices meant the awakening of the students’ own responses, enabling them to speak for themselves and to bring their own questions and perspectives to the material. I had intended to develop a feminist classroom where the eleven students and I as teacher would fashion multiple voices together, where both students and teacher would use relevant personal experience to shape the questions as well as the kind of voice used in the classroom.

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Moving to Marginality: The Incident As the fall quarter moved forward, I seemed to meet with increasing resistance on the part of the students. Their resistance took the form of coming late to class, of not handing in assignments when I requested them, of frequently not coming at all, of silence when I asked questions, of not reading assigned material, of small conversations among themselves during class discussions, of body language which indicated unhappiness and eventually to direct confrontation. I attempted to use each of these situations as a point for discussion and exploration, trying to find the reasons for what I perceived to be resistance. What I had spent years developing deteriorated into a daily conflict, a conflict centering around what was discussed and what was not, who decided that, who got to speak and how they spoke, and eventually who listened. One Thursday in October my understanding of liberatory practice in the classroom collided with my students’ constructed perceptions of teaching and learning. On that Thursday when I asked for their assignments, two of the eleven students handed them in. I returned one to a student and told him he did not complete it as I had requested. Jason stood up angrily as he threw his materials into his backpack and, with face on fire with anger, shouted, ‘I have had enough of this, I am leaving.’ He stormed out of the classroom. I (foolishly in retrospect) followed him, asked him to stop and please explain to me what was wrong. He launched into lengthy description of how he hated this class, how his perception was that I had always disliked him, that I never graded anyone’s work fairly, that I picked on anyone who dared to have an opinion that was different than my own, and that everyone in the class agreed on these points. He was getting louder and louder as he progressed in the conversation so I asked him to come to my office. Upon arrival in the office, he picked up where he had stopped. His words were angry and full of hate. He continued by saying that everyone in the class was tired of hearing about feminism. He shouted, ‘Feminism! Feminism! That’s all you know. We’re sick of it and we’re sick of you.’ I don’t remember breathing but I must have. He kept up his verbal assault even as I turned my back on him and walked out. I mumbled something about having had enough. I left him standing in my office. I returned to the other students but, as I stood in front of them, I realized I would not be able to speak without crying. I looked at them for what must have been an eternity, then in a shaky voice told them that I was done, I could not do this with them any longer. I left them there sitting quietly by themselves. I used the exit leading to the parking lot behind the building where I sat on a parking curb between two cars and cried. My original intention was to critically examine structures of dominant ideology by giving voice through an examination of power relationships, but the ideological structures of the classroom were used to turn the examination on its head. Continuing discussions of race, class and gender proved problematic. Jason did come the next day to apologize. I listened carefully and responded appropriately, suggesting that we both use this as a growth experience. I also asked him if I could use our encounter for discussion in the next class. He agreed. Although during the next class meeting I did process the incident using the reflective model we used routinely in class, I never regained the sense of safety I had prior to that confrontation. From that day on, I approached the students with caution and with distance.

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An Attempt at Resolution Andrew Gitlin (1992) defines voice as the opportunity to speak, to question and to explore issues. But he also states that the notion of voice goes far beyond merely exploring issues or having the opportunity to speak. Having a voice can be inherently political. It means questioning what is taken for granted, acting on what is seen as unjust, in an attempt to shape and guide future educational activities. Giving voice encourages an examination of power relationships and an analysis of the structures that elevate particular groups while perpetuating stereotypes and subverting others. Gitlin continues by saying that voice as form of protest could be directed at the social construction of meaning and the structures that reinforce those meanings. Discovering voice can also direct one inward to examine the ways in which one takes part in the production of certain assumed beliefs, practices or roles that also reinforce dominant structures. Gitlin maintains that these structures that reinforce dominant ideology and reproduce inequities are in place because people do not question their existence. Reflecting on the incident I have described, I think the students’ collective voice became a voice of protest because I was asking them to examine their own participation in the continuation of the dominant structures of oppression. In that process, their collective voice became one of protest of the critique. Voice is found, developed and nurtured through a sense of mutuality and reciprocity between teacher and student. As Freire (1987) has indicated, developing voice begins with the resolution of the teacher/student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teacher and student. This resolution on either the professional level, as in the examination of the factors that determine normative behavior, or the personal level was never achieved. The contradiction between my students and myself was that I was trying to create an atmosphere of intimacy, of nurturance, of connectedness and one of relational knowing. The students wanted to learn how to manage, to control, to be effective teachers according to dominant perceptions of effective teaching. They are physical education majors who, as a group, tend to be more conservative and traditional than other education majors. Pre-service physical education teachers come to this experience with very narrow perceptions of performance, of success and of being physical (Dewar, 1994). This fundamental contradiction between my students and me only deepened. By trying to give voice I sensed that I had increased their resistance to me and to these ideas. The classroom became a site of struggle of competing pedagogies and what constitutes classroom practice. I wondered to what extent I could confront students’ perceptions without the students feeling trapped, resentful or resistant while at the same time preventing myself from feeling compromised and disempowered. My search for research examining teacher voice did not produce any insight into my dilemma. Most of what has been written and discussed in terms of teacher voice concerns the lack of teacher input into educational practice and policy. The concept of teacher voice also refers to the political activities in which teachers can participate to further their own interests. Magda Lewis (Lewis and Simon, 1988) described her position and loss of voice within the context of a graduate class. While she articulated my concerns about power and language by noting that it is the overwhelming experience of women in this culture that

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they are silenced, she could not shed any light on how I as a teacher had been silenced. My very position in the classroom was one of power. But the view that she did provide was the idea that one cannot donate freedom; I had deliberately silenced myself. I recognized, although had not articulated, that the men in my class had continued their political domination and entitlement through a discourse of silence and complicity. They supported their positions of power by refusing to engage with me in any meaningful way. Since I had not adopted their agenda, they used the class as a form of intellectual assault. I perceived myself as powerless to do anything. Lewis suggested that for emancipatory practice to exist within the classroom, men must understand their power and privilege and divest themselves of both. I was and am at a loss as to how teachers can create this awareness. Elizabeth Ellsworth has also written about voice in an article describing her experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a course designed specifically to examine racism as it was unfolding on the campus. She explained the development of the course and the experience of the course through her eyes. She wrote, I brought a social subjectivity that has been constructed in such a way that I have not and can never participate unproblematically in the collective process of self-definition, naming oppression, and struggles for visibility in the face of marginalization engaged by students whose class, race, gender, and other positions I do not share. Critical pedagogues are always implicated in the very structures they are trying to change (1989:101). Ellsworth was saying to me that I could never understand the position of the eleven white, able-bodied white students who attended this class. All I could know was my own. But I was not trying to assume a position of centrality in this class, nor did I assume that there was one collective voice from which we could all speak. Rather, I was trying to move in the direction of multiple authentic voices and experiences. In addition, she wrote that while critical educators acknowledge the existence of unequal power relations in the class, they have made no attempt to examine the barriers this imbalance created for student expression and dialogue. Perhaps it was the perception of the students in my class that they could not speak the truth of their experiences. Perhaps I had created an environment that served only to silence them and, as a form of protest, they resisted my critique of dominant ideology in physical education. I know that I had created a safe place for them to express their often racist, sexist and homophobic perceptions of students. I know because they expressed them freely and frequently. Recognizing that we could not talk about the issues honestly unless their opinions were stated truthfully, I deliberately refrained from any judgmental remarks. Rather, I pointed to the research, presented facts and figures to help them past their preconceived notions of other people. Still, I was accused of silencing them. Michelle Fine wrote, ‘Silencing signifies a terror of words, a fear of talk’ (1990:115). In this article Fine described her experience in a research project which she conducted in a public high school in New York City. An administrator, while granting permission for the project which examined dropouts in the school, also informed her that she could not mention the words dropping out to the very students she was researching. She continued,

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What became apparent was a systematic fear of naming. Naming involves those practices that facilitate critical conversation about social and economic arrangements, particularly about inequitable distributions of power and resources by which these students and their kin suffer disproportionately (1990:120). By naming social injustice and inequitable practices as they exist in the physical education setting, I had interfered with my students’ beliefs about public schools and their own roles as teachers in those schools. By naming these practices I had hoped to engage in critical conversation, a productive analysis and an increased awareness on their parts of the inequalities that exist within the gymnasium. Instead, I provoked their move to silence perhaps because, as Fine suggested, the naming subverted their belief (myth) about the role of schools and their roles as teachers. Unlike the teachers in Fine’s study who experienced loss of control over classrooms by not naming, I experienced loss of control and loss of my voice by naming. Resolution This incident underscores and illustrates the volatile nature of feminist positions in a politically conservative climate as well as the potential for very real emotional conflict within teacher education programs. My retrospective view of this incident is that I had very naively expected the students to happily embrace the feminist classroom as I had planned and to change their constructed views of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, I had failed to recognize the social and institutional constraints that first, prevented the students from critically examining their own privileged and vested positions, and second, systematically discouraged any potential change in their attitudes or behavior. I was busy working at the ‘person as political’ level without fully considering the implications of the greater institutional policies and normative practices of the profession, which together discourage any such analysis. While I had failed to construct learning experiences that successfully challenged their views, I also used their biographies and personal experience to reinforce what they thought to be true in the first place. What I failed to grasp intellectually as I constructed learning experiences was the fundamental political axiom that those in power very rarely are inclined to give up positions of privilege willingly. These students were physical education majors because they were successful in the traditions of the content. Having succeeded within the institution of physical education, these 11 students were strongly vested in the continuation of this very traditional paradigm. The students’ own experiences within physical education ran counter to the experiences I attempted to frame for them in the classroom. They came to class expecting me to give them the answers to management problems. What I had for them were more questions, probably very disturbing questions. I was asking them to examine their own biographies, recognize their own power bases and positions of privilege, and speak earnestly with me about sharing that position. Due to the nature of the course, these men could not avoid confronting social inequalities as they are played out in the gymnasium, but unlike the men in Maher and

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Tetreault’s study (1994), these young men were unable to work through the implication of feminism in their lives. These 11 young men did not have to listen to or give space to other females, only to me asking questions. As Maher and Tetreault stated, classroom discourses can raise ‘difficult questions about the degree to which individuals are embedded in the “identities” marked out for them by the dominant culture’ (1994:18). Physical education has long been associated with the development of a white, middleclass, masculinist conception of performance and identity. Sport and physical education are vehicles for the development of narrowly conceived perceptions of knowledge and experience as well as value and worth. There is a lack of awareness of social justice among physical educators that in turn suggests an absence of critical awareness of the social and cultural forces that shape the ideology of experience (Kirk, 1992). The information that is presented to preservice teachers works in concert with the teaching styles modeled in teacher education programs to reinforce a belief system that undergirds and gives shape to a very narrow interpretation of experience. Historically, most physical educators have not challenged dominant ideology or the social and institutional structures that promote and reinforce controlling and elitist norms of behavior (Dewar, 1994). Physical education is a field in which there are few spaces for expression of alternative views. In addition, it is my observation that there is little institutional support for those who wish to rethink or recreate current practice within a feminist paradigm. However, there is increasing evidence to suggest that practices in physical education must change. The changing conditions in public schools will act as a catalyst for rethinking practice. Students of different races, with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, will force a critique and will challenge the traditional ways of thinking about teaching physical education (Dewar, 1994). Within the theoretical framework of feminist pedagogy we have the responsibility to promote a democratic rather than autocratic atmosphere, promote a cooperative rather than competitive climate, and be concerned with connected and relational knowing. While the students’ resistance to the critical feminist analysis was considerable, I have every reason to remain hopeful. The social attitudes prevalent in this classroom supported the idea that public school education, specifically physical education, served the interests of the current student population. But it is the resistance of the students in this secondary methods class that gives me hope. Any change is usually difficult, but change that calls into question or implicates fundamental beliefs is particularly difficult. The feminist position I infused into this class struck a note of discord, challenging their commonly held perceptions of truth. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a critical need in the field for administrative leadership and support for feminist critique and practice. The leadership in higher education should provide a climate that is conducive to an analysis of current practice with an eye to change. My experience in this classroom has convinced me that the feminist position, while a difficult one, will serve as another force to challenge dominant and oppressive conceptions of the teaching of physical education. As Hollingsworth stated, The construction of feminist pedagogies is personal, complex, and multifaceted. Though often ignored as an important issue in discussions of

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teacher preparation or teachers’ reflective stances, these narratives point out the need for greater attention to the social and political positioning of teaching, if teachers are to become emancipated to develop their full reflective potential as educators (1994:232). References DEWAR, A. (1994) ‘Body work: Constructing ideologies of power and privilege in physical education’, Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA. ELLSWORTH, E. (1989) ‘Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy’, Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), pp. 297–324. FINE, M. (1990) Framing Dropouts, Albany, NY, SUNY Press. FREIRE, P. (1987) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, Continuum. GITLIN, A. (1992) Teachers Voice for School Change: An Introduction to Educative Research, New York, Teachers College Press. HOLLINGSWORTH, S.H. (1994) Teacher Research and Urban Literacy Education, Voices and Conversations in a Feminist Key, New York, Teachers College Press. KIRK, D. (1992) ‘Curriculum history in physical education: A source of struggle and a force for change’, in SPARKES, A. (Ed) Research in Physical Education and Sport: Exploring Alternative Conceptions, London, Falmer Press. LEWIS, M. and Simon, R.I. (1988) ‘A discourse not intended for her: Learning and teaching within patriarchy’, Harvard Educational Review, 56(4), pp. 457–72. LOCK, R.S. (1993, Fall) ‘Women in sport and physical education: A review of the literature in selected journals’, Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 2(2), pp. 21–49. LOCK, R.S. and MARTIN, R.J. (1991) ‘Cultural realities: Cultural reproduction in physical education. An analysis of nonsexist behaviors of student teachers’, Teacher Education Quarterly, 18(2), pp. 45–55. McKAY, J., GORE, J.M. and KIRK, D. (1990) ‘Beyond the limits of technocratic physical education’, Quest, 42(1), pp. 52–76. MAHER, F.A. and TETREAULT, M.T. (1994) The Feminist Classroom, New York, Basic Books. METZLER, M. (1981) ‘A multi-observational system for supervising student teachers in physical education’, The Physical Educator, 38(3), pp. 152–9. SEIDENTOP, D., BIRDWELL, P. and METZLER, M. (1979) ‘A process approach to measuring teaching effectiveness in physical education’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Alliance of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, New Orleans, LA.

Chapter 12 Feminist Pedagogy Theory in Higher Education: Reflections on Power and Authority* Carmen Luke In 1991 I first read Conflicts in Feminism edited by Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (1990), and was immediately taken with one of the last chapters titled ‘Criticizing feminist criticism’. Of particular interest to me in that chapter was the candid discussion among Jane Gallop, Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K.Miller of academic feminists’ changing status into new power/knowledge orders, of feminists’ moral discomfort with authority and power, the politics of feminists in authority ‘getting trashed’, ‘taken out’ by other feminists and students. Among colleagues I had often discussed these kinds of hidden tensions in feminism, but I had not come across literature that dealt with any of these issues. It seemed as though feminists adhered to some unspoken moratorium on going public with conflicts in feminism. At the time of my initial reading of this book, the contradictions and tensions between my theoretical commitments to feminism, and feminist pedagogy in particular, and my own pedagogical practices and experiences in the culture of the university were particularly highlighted. In 1991 I was working on a book on Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. The political project of feminist pedagogy I was describing in print was very much concerned with a politics of emancipation through resistance to phallocentric knowledges, knowledge industries (i.e., grant and publishing regimes), and traditional patriarchal teacher/student relations. However, I was also acutely aware of the impossibility (at least, for me in my context) of practicing what I was advocating. Classes of 450 undergraduate students whom I was then lecturing in 50 minute blocks, do not lend themselves to the kind of feminist pedagogy about which I was writing. Furthermore, my decade-long experiences as a graduate student, then junior lecturer and finally tenured professor, taught me that the dynamics of power, rank and authority are powerful forces underpinning pedagogical relationships are not easily dislodged by theoretical shifts from transmission to emancipatory or patriarchal to feminist pedagogy models, or from enlightenment concepts of undifferentiated subjectivity to postmodern difference. In this chapter I explore some of these tensions and contradictions within feminist pedagogy and feminist work in the academy more generally. I situate this commentary in the midst of the tension between what Jane Gallop calls good girl and bad girl feminism (1994:1–12). Prior to Elizabeth Ellsworth’s 1989 publication of ‘Why doesn’t this feel * Reprinted from Educational Theory (1996), with permission from the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and the Editor, Nicholas C.Burbules.

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empowering?’, in which she problematicizes the politics and authority of identity in the emancipatory classroom, the feminist pedagogy literature indeed was a victory narrative over what was widely dismissed as patriarchal models of pedagogy characterized by hierarchy, canonical authority, objectivism and competitive individualism. Feminist pedagogy argued for a more gender-sensitive pedagogical model, one characterized by a rejection of power and authority, and celebration of (women’s) differences, feminist knowledges, cooperative and egalitarian pedagogical relations among equal, but culturally differently situated, subjects. This celebratory and nurturant model of pedagogy Gallops considers emblematic of ‘good girl feminism’. More recently, feminist critique, most notably those by Gallop (1990),1 have begun to argue against the prescriptiveness of a traditional feminine, nurturant and maternal pedagogy, and against feminist pedagogy’s theoretical disregard of power and authority, the politics of desire, gendered and racialized embodiments that constitute all institutionally mediated pedagogical relations. My aim here is to map out provisionally some of the contradictory dimensions of feminists’ location in the academy, and to explore the double-bind feminists face by being in authority and power and yet being politically committed to theoretical positions, particularly those espoused by feminist pedagogy models, that refuse claims of authority and power in pedagogical practice. My general argument is that a disavowal of authority, power and desire coupled with feminism’s first principle of difference(s) has several potentially disabling consequences for the transformative politics claimed by feminist pedagogy discourse. I will argue that a denial of power and authority risks masquerade of what Jane Gallop calls good girl feminism, and that good girl feminism locates feminist pedagogy on one side of a nurture/authority dichotomy. Feminist pedagogy, conceptualized as (maternal) nurture and distanced from claims of pedagogical authority and institutional power, leaves itself wide open to the theoretical impossibility of having a foundation from which to arbitrate knowledges, student voices and experiences, and the teacher’s own epistemological position. I argue, therefore, that the theoretical turn to and celebration of difference in all feminisms including feminist pedagogy, raises crucial epistemological and political questions about normativity which, in turn, call into question the theoretical validity and political agenda of feminism’s ‘truth claims’. I attempt throughout my discussion to link the contradictory politics of desire implicated in the public performance of pedagogy to issues of pedagogical authority and institutionally mediated power which, in my view, have been largely left out of accounts of feminist pedagogy and feminist work in the academy. Mindful of the tremendous personal and political benefit the safe havens of the feminist classroom have provided for countless women, my intent here is to offer a starting point for debate about largely unexamined theoretical and political issues which are at the core of women’s teaching and intellectual work. I begin with some comments on the contradictory experiences of institutionally granted power and intellectual authority, and then discuss how embodiment of power and authority are intimately tied to a politics of performance in pedagogical encounters. Power and Authority In the chapter ‘Criticizing feminist criticism’, Gallop comments that, after having been powerless for many years, women who have gained powerful senior positions often

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continue to feel and act powerless and victimized because, in part, ‘feminists have a lot of trouble with our own authority because women are not in general in power’ (Gallop, Hirsch and Miller, 1990). Marianne Hirsch puts it this way: I think that…we never really feel in power. It is important for tenured feminists to articulate that, as difficult as it may be for younger feminists to hear. I don’t know what it would mean to feel in power. Women—and feminists in particular, having tried to theorize or to think through some different ways of dealing with power and authority especially power and authority in relation to other women and to other feminists—find it extremely difficult to actually acknowledge that at times we are the powerful person, or in the powerful position (Hirsch, 1990:355). In my estimation, feminist pedagogy discourse, particularly that variant described by Jane Gallop as symptomatic of good girl feminism, is one instance of feminist practice that avidly disclaims any pretensions to power invested in the teacher position. Yet, its pedagogical practices (one of which is the commitment to reverse traditional uses of power and authority in the teacher-student relationship) claim to empower women students, and that giving of power presumably is generated from the self-proclaimed powerless teacher-feminist that Hirsch describes above. What is it that empowers women if not the power of self-authorization, and the power of feminist knowledges to enlighten women? Clearly, there are tensions and contradictions between feminist theoretical positions on power and authority and feminist practices. Kathleen Jones makes related arguments about feminists’ political choices of refusing sovereign authority to rule and define in favor of women taking authority over their own meaning making and situated subject positions (Jones, 1991). Given our political commitments to avoid taking the masculinist position of power-over, the hegemonic authoritarianism subtending male author-authority in Western thought, and postmodernism’s delegitimation of claims to foundational authority, many women do indeed have trouble claiming authority and power. Yet our labor as academic teachers is unthinkable without acknowledging our positions of institutionally sanctioned authority and power. When a woman walks into a lecture hall of some 500 or more students, and a hush falls over the vast sea of faces and all eyes look at the one person in authority who steps up to the podium to speak, to perform, to (re)present knowledge which she in fact embodies and usually cares a great deal about, women do experience a strange rush of authority and power, anxiety and vulnerability. These decidedly visceral moments have not received any substantial theoretical exploration in current feminist pedagogy literature. Authority and power are semiotically framed by the privilege of position at the raised lectern, the amplified voice, the lights focused on the speaker. In such contexts the body becomes exaggerated, amplified, magnified, dispersed into the vast space of the lecture hall occupied by dimmed student faces. Anxiety and vulnerability come from the pressure to get it right, and our knowledge of the cultural mediation framing students’ reading of our embodied habitus, our social, cultural, and speech markers and, consequently, of what we have to say. Rey Chow has noted that students bring culturally produced terms of reference to their readings of Asian literature which mediate their

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experience of the literature, and their own ideological construction of both the literature and their experience of it (Chow, 1990). The cultural codes that operate among students in the reading of texts or listening to lectures, also extend to their reading of the lecturer’s body, the knowledge she offers, and her performance of that knowledge.2 And since women generally, and especially women of ethnic and non-English speaking background, are not the standard bearers of intellectual authority and institutional power, we find ourselves in that unstable place of being institutionally authorized to speak, yet often deauthorized by students’ and colleagues’ cultural assumptions about female professors, or worse, black or Asian female professors.3 Bhopal, for instance, comments on the racialized division of academic labor: white academic women are expected to do the theorizing and ‘black women are the ones expected to carry out research on their own communities’ (Bhopal, 1994:129). Of her own experience in the university, she writes that ‘being an Asian woman lecturer, I was constantly being treated as being weak and in need of being looked after. There was a feeling of not being accepted and not belonging to academia’ (Bhopal, 1994:129). Thus, the anxiety and vulnerability that persistently destabilizes academic women’s institutionally granted power and hard won intellectual authority stems from the historical legacy and cultural ideology of the university in which ‘white [and male] stands in a relationship of authority to black [and female]’ (1994:133). For women, another contradictory and tension-filled institutional marker of power and authority is the granting of tenure. Tenure liberates from job insecurity and economic uncertainty, from a provisional relationship to intellectual authority, and from the social category and constitutive social relationships of powerless and junior status. The other side of tenure does feel empowering and yet, as Gallop points out, that shift in power and authority relocates women academics into new realms where we suddenly become fair game, open to attack, refutation, ‘trashing’ (Gallop et al., 1990:355–57). So, the uncertainty commonly experienced by junior academic women who can often feel like imposters within male academic discourse, who fear being found out or unmasked for not really knowing, becomes transformed into a new kind of vulnerability as tenure or promotion propel us in ascendant power and authority positions. Consequently, increased access to and exercise of institutional power generates increased pressure and desire to perform well, to produce and to be recognized and valued by peers and students who, in turn, have the power to validate or subvert our position and authority. What links the points I have raised so far about the contradictory nature of academic women’s power and authority together, is the ‘otherness of women academics’ (Acker, 1994:132), and their relative recent entry into a privileged male and Anglo-European cultural domain and form of labor (i.e., the production of knowledge). Feminist academic women, now more visible, numerically plentiful, and many in more senior positions than a decade ago, are negotiating newly acquired status positions, forms of institutional power, and intellectual authority in many different ways. My own experience and discussions with women colleagues have started to reveal that all is not as it seems, or as it seemed even a decade ago. Then, we claimed that we would never assume and exercise power in the same way male academics do. Rather, we said that we would share, negotiate, reconceptualize and practice institutional power in different ways. Maybe we are doing things differently. However, there are many aspects of what we do in the feminist classroom, in faculty meetings or conferences that look and feel quite different from the good girl feminist model we theorize in our writings and claim to practice in our

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classrooms. What I will argue shortly is that as good girl feminists, we may have unwittingly replicated all the classical school-marm virtues of selfless dedication to, nurturing and caring for our students, particularly women. However, I will first outline in this next section how power and authority are embodied and enacted in pedagogical relations, how the institutionalization of pedagogy in the university constructs pedagogy as performance and codes that performance in a culture and genderspecific body politics. Pedagogy and Performativity Committed to non-authoritarian and student-centered pedagogy, feminist educators have refused to acknowledge, or repressed recognition of, some of the identity politics and desires endemic to our work as public women-intellectuals constantly engaged in performativity of public speech, in struggles for authority and power in order to get the feminist agenda on the public agenda, of being both eyed by and in the eye of power, of looking and being looked at. Feminists’ relatively recent ascendancy into more senior and highly visible strata of the education industry locates them in uncharted territories of the gaze in which they also occupy new places in the observatory. In this place, she performs public, embodied acts of authority and knowledge, and she is looked at in more ways than one: in print perhaps by thousands, on the podium by hundreds of students or hundreds of conference participants, in the committee meeting, by women and men, or by male graduate students (Gallop, 1994; 1995). In elementary and high school teaching, the common catchcry is ‘all eyes on me’, or ‘eyes up front’. Enlightenment pedagogy is fundamentally occularcentric: learning by looking at the printed word, rather than learning by doing and, importantly, looking at the teacher to access mind and knowledge. Teaching in the university, unlike teaching school, is public performance of a different kind: we perform oral discourse in front of adult groups of women and men, we perform at conferences, in faculty meetings, tenure or hiring committees. Furthermore, the look extends to our bodily habitus, identity and image crafting. The image we present to students or to senior male colleagues on whose formal and tacit institutional support many feminists may still depend, can have an important bearing on others’ perceptions of our intellectual authority and credibility, and the extent to which we are taken seriously. As graduate students and junior academic women, many of us have learned the hard way that certain self-representational modes—bodily or communicative—detract from academic/intellectual credibility however elusive that term may well be (see Bartky, 1996). We craft ourselves within our workplace culture through linguistic communicative choices, self-signification, and bodily habitus in ways that often contradict the diverse identities we embody and signify as private women. Reminiscent of Goffman’s stage craft metaphors of sociality, teaching and other forms of academic work are ultimately about being on stage, talking (knowledge) scripts, crafting our performance, managing the audience. Pedagogy, the dictionaries claim, is an art, a craft, and a science. Science would name teaching as motivation, but motivation requires a kind of bricolage performance of knowledge on the part of the teacher (Luke, 1994:211–30), and a skillful crafting of student desires to learn. As a craft and art, pedagogy is seduction and performance: we cajole, humor, invite, persuade, convince, in efforts to seduce students into the

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knowledges we embody, over which we have authority, and which we want our students to see and grasp in that pleasurable ‘ah-ha’ moment of (en)light(enment).5 As authorized and authoritative signifier of knowledge, the teacher embodies both engendered power and authority, and a substantial amount of pleasure is invested in that position and embodiment of knowledge. When students demonstrate that they have transited from unknowing to knowing subject, teachers’ pleasure is expressed through a powerful and productive act (in the Foucauldian sense) in the symbolic form of good grades which validate the student’s journey from ignorance to knowledge, and self-affirm the teacher’s successful pedagogical rhetorics and persuasions. Yet the unmistakably engendered dynamics of student-teacher relations and the gendered ideological foundation of authority also means that women often encounter ‘problems with male students who do not accept their [women’s] status or authority as academics… Some male students find it hard to do what a woman tells them and they don’t like it. They have difficulties with my authority’ (Bagilhole, 1994:18). In sum, while I would not claim that all aspects of pedagogy can be reduced to desire, pleasure, sexuality or the erotic, nonetheless, there are many psychosocial and psychosexual, distinctly political, dimensions of pedagogy that have been largely left out of feminist pedagogy discourse. The speaking and enacting of knowledge in pedagogical relations are always produced through engendered and racialized bodies located in specific historical and cultural contexts. I agree with Laurie Finke who has rightfully noted that ‘some feminists write about pedagogy as if they believe that the classroom is a universal and ahistorical space, rather than a local and particular space embedded within a specific institutional culture that serves a range of disciplinary and institutional objectives’ (Finke, 1993:8). In my estimation, it is the very differences of culturally differentiated and socially valued embodiments, and of institutional status and power among teacher and students that subtend the dynamics of institutionalized pedagogical authority and, importantly, that are at the heart of feminist critiques of subjectivity to which I now turn. Feminist Difference and the Politics of Positionality Foucault’s premise that the human subject, social practices and institutions are products of historically situated discourses, social practices, and (embodied) author-authorities, underlies much of feminist theorizing. Feminist scholarship has repeatedly shown over the past two decades that, whether through the eye of the camera or the eye of theory, the socially situated epistemological standpoint of masculinity dominates the making of knowledge, history and the present: materially, textually, visually and symbolically. The speaking and reading/writing subject of feminism is seen as both a cultural product of master discourses and as a cultural agent negotiating and/or contesting the meanings about her, given in the discourses available to her. Women’s complex and multiple identities experienced in and through the discourses that define feminine gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, class or culture, suggest that an understanding of women and the concept of femininity cannot be articulated in universal principles, but must come from women’s individual voices articulated from specific social and cultural locations. Hence, in feminisms generally and in feminist pedagogy specifically, the importance of

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‘positionality’ of voice and experience is paramount.6 The gendered politics of speech and silence in the university classroom are thus central theoretical, political and practical concerns for feminist educators.7 However, the extent to which individual voice and experience can be taken as legitimate epistemological grounds for knowledge, and in the formulation of normative criteria ramains hugely problematic for feminists.8 I take up this pont in further detail later in this chapter. The feminist rejection of meta-narrative regimes of legitimation for totalized knowledges and a universal subject has been supplanted by insistence on the local and multiply-constituted subjects and differences of identity. This turn to specificity—to a totality of difference, to a universe of different but allegedly equal voices, perspectives and experiences—runs serious theoretical and political risks. Most crucial is its potential to undermine, indeed eradicate, any political and ethical grounds from which to claim authority of moral, social or legal norms. Views and voices from everywhere and everybody potentially are views and voices from nowhere and nobody. In other words, without normative benchmarks, which criteria can we invoke to distinguish between morally defensible and indefensible positions? For instance, what moral and ethical criteria do we use to censure patently oppressive knowledges such as those (also called science) which spawned eugenics, colonial genocide or ethnic cleansing? Or, if cultural experience and social identities are so intricately intersected and unique that one cannot speak of commonalities or group interests, then how do we claim a standpoint—an extradiscursive justification of right and wrong—in which to ground any kind of coalitional solidarity? How, in the production of knowledge in classroom encounters, does the teacher claim a standpoint of authority on issues of identity difference, reading positions and what counts as discriminatory and offensive cultural representations or student readings? Is one student’s critical interpretation or authority of experience equally valid to another’s? How does a teacher arbitrate what Diana Fuss calls the ‘hierarchy of oppressions’ that often surface among students in identity-based knowledge productions? (Fuss, 1989:116–7). According to Fuss, the politics of voice in the classroom often result in the ‘ranking of identities which is often used either to authorize an individual to speak on the basis of the truth of her lived experience or to de-authorize an individual from speaking on the basis of his lack of experience…when identity politics is used to monitor who can and cannot speak in the classroom, its effects can be counterproductive’ (1989:116–7). As I have argued elsewhere, rather than rely on experience testimonials as the ground from which to introduce students to feminist work…it might be more useful to begin with those theoretical interpretations which can help explain ‘processes of identity production…the discursive nature of experience and…the politics of its construction’ (Scott, 1992:37). Experience, as Joan Scott puts it, ‘is always already an interpretation and in need of interpretation’ (Luke, 1994:223). Issues of positionality, differences of voice and experience thus raise practical pedagogical, political and ethical questions about knowledge, identity and authority which are not easily resolved from the theoretical standpoint of endless deferral to

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difference. Critical and feminist pedagogies which pride themselves on flattened hierarchy models of instruction, and claim to relinquish normative benchmarks (commonly associated with canonical worth defined by masternarratives) of judgments and assessments in efforts to affirm students’ different but equal voices, experiences and abilities, potentially uncouple pedagogy from its productive potential; that is, its potential of leading students to understand themselves and the world through different, more (en)light(ening), lenses. On this point I support bell hooks’ position that the teacher must assert her authority against the myth of the egalitarian classroom (hooks, 1989). Instead of a pedagogy that promises a mythic safe space for ‘equal talk among equals’, hooks suggests that a ‘confrontational’ pedagogy can dislodge students’ monochromatic worldviews that are often racist, sexist, homophobic. To pretend that social, cultural and economic differences do not define students’ identities and lives in and out of the classroom is to abandon the political and moral responsibility and authority we have as teachers to work on students’ consciousness through critique and analysis. I now turn to consider how feminist theoretical work on pedagogy has framed issues of difference, power and knowledge which, I subsequently argue, has tended to locate this discourse on one side of a conceptual nurture-authority dualism. Mindful that conceptual dualisms as analytic can be dangerously reproductive in their explanatory potential, I use nurture-authority cautiously. I locate feminist pedagogy on the nurture side of this dualism based on my reading of feminist pedagogy literature which has strongly argued against epistemological, institutional and personalized authority (of the textual canon, ‘banking’ pedagogy, and teacher voice), in favor of nurturant and nonhierarchical pedagogical relations, and the politicization of authority and knowledge itself. Feminist Pedagogy Debates over and research on feminist pedagogy has intensified in recent years. Pedagogy has become a hot topic, and not just within feminisms. The focus in most feminist scholarship on pedagogy, has been to valorize emancipatory teaching, reading and writing as a politics of consciousness raising and, by extension, of self and social transformation. Central to feminist critical practice is the importance of enabling and listening to women’s voices, centering a primarily female authored canon in course readings, encouraging research and term paper topics of interest to women and, importantly, engaging in non-coercive, non-hierarchical, open and equitable relations with students. The feminist antidote to the hierarchical modus operandi of male academic business is to argue for shared and negotiated leadership models, non-hierarchical administrative models, collaborative research agendas, and pedagogical and supervisory models based on non-exploitative, relational and nurturant student-teacher relationships. Feminist critiques of patriarchal politics of the academy combine with the feminist theoretical and practical agenda for envisioning a different model of knowledge production and social relations in the academy, and feminist pedagogy discourse has been at the forefront of reconceptualizing and practicing different ways of knowing. The primary principle of feminist pedagogy is a mode of teaching to enable ways of learning which foregrounds women. First, it foregrounds women’s specific social and

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learning needs as women and as students in terms of their status and identity within a profoundly masculinist university culture. Second, it foregrounds feminine scholarship as a way of centering feminist epistemology and critical practice in efforts to connect women’s experience to knowledges which validate, theoretically extend and politicize women’s life trajectories and possibilities. Third, because of feminism’s sensitivity to the impossibility of Woman and its commitment to the plurarity of women, differences among women students is taken into account through inclusive content delivery in teaching and assigned readings, term assignments and evaluation strategies. A central but problematic tenet of feminist pedagogy is the demystification of the teacher-student relationship, and the politicization of knowledge (Luke and Gore, 1992). As Jennifer Gore puts it, it is a ‘focus on the processes of teaching that demands that attention be drawn to the politics of those processes and to the broader political contexts within which they are situated. Therefore, instruction and social vision are analytical components of pedagogy’ (Gore, 1993:5). Gore is correct in drawing our attention to ‘the processes of teaching…[and] the politics of those processes’, because although feminist educators may claim to have dismantled the master(teacher)-slave(student), power and authority dichotomy of pedagogical relations, the institutional embeddedness of feminist pedagogy suggests that there can be no pure space outside of power and institutionally authorized authority. Feminist educators, as any academic on the university payroll, are institutionally authorized because they are judged and named, at the moment of tenure or hiring, as authorities of knowledge. Hence, their institutional status is based on their institutionally legitimated claims to knowledge which gives them both de facto and de jure authority and institutional power. Feminist pedagogy disavows much of what is taken for granted as part of university culture and ethos. It refuses hierarchies of power and authority, competitive scholarship, and disclaims theoretical specialism and elitism with which to interpret women’s allegedly undertheorized experiences.9 Hence, the feminist classroom tends to be more of a bottom-up than top-down knowledge exchange. In other words, the feminist pedagogue refuses the common equation of teacher as knower and student as unknowing and theoretically naive. The feminist pedagogue, so the literature claims, does not see herself as authoritative arbiter of student interpretation and understanding. Instead, she emphasizes her own situatedness, her own partial ‘take’ on the world, and thus acknowledges her own experience and knowledge as no more and no less valid, better or authentic than the diversity of students in her class. Pedagogically, what follows from this standpoint is a way of teaching which focuses on women’s differences, and her own situatedness as academic teacher-scholar within that grid of differences. It makes knowledge production a collaborative class effort in which the feminist pedagogue has a specific body of knowledge to offer alongside other women’s equally situated knowledges and experiences. This characterization of feminist pedagogy is its public face. That is, in nearly all feminist scholarship on pedagogy, collaborative knowledge production, and a disavowal of teacher authority are presented as key political practices in the emancipatory project. It is both an ideal vision of what ought to be and a collective stance and testimony among many feminist educators. However, as Gallop among others has pointed out, what follows from this is a dangerous depoliticization of the institutional (and not least sexual) politics operant within the feminist classroom. I believe this to be an important counter-

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argument to feminist pedagogy’s slippage into one side of the nurture-authority dichotomy and, by extension, its ambivalence toward power, authority and questions of normativity. In other words, failure to acknowledge the intellectual authority and institutional power invested in the teacher role runs the risk of disavowing a standpoint— a foundation from which to draw normative criteria for judgments of students’ writing and speaking, and of our own curricular selections. I now turn to discuss some of the tension between feminist claims that authority is a politics and practice crucial for all women, and the antifoundationalism of, particularly poststructuralist and postmodernist, feminist critique which has dismantled the theoretical coherence of authority, and charges all self-proclaimed authoritative texts and voices as falsely unifying differences. Jones names this tension as feminism’s ‘trouble with authority’ (Jones, 1991). Claims of Authority and the (Im)possibility of Normative Judgments In my own teaching I find myself repeatedly caught between nurture-authority practices, and institutionally constrained from disclaiming power and authority over students and knowledge. Despite my best efforts to demystify the student-teacher relationship, the politics of knowledge production, credentialing and credential inflation in the academy, in the end I still have to exert intellectual authority and institutional power to judge student work, assign grades, rank student grant and scholarship applications, and mediate the hierarchy of oppressions that so easily creep into identity-based classroom debate. I teach several courses in feminist cultural studies and find the following example, which is worth citing at length, particularly useful in elaborating the political and theoretical tensions emanating from feminism’s ambivalent stance towards authority. Jones talks about teaching a large class of diverse students who are deconstructing an ad for the Four Seasons Hotel which features a woman from a ‘small Chinese village’ who now works for the hotel. She is depicted ‘crisply uniformed, and holds two enormous, clean fluffy towels like gifts in her arms’. Part of the caption reads ‘Marlene is the very soul of concern. She cannot sleep well at night unless she is certain that you will.’ Jones continues: You ask the class to respond to this ad. Many have already gasped or snickered in shock. A vigorous discussion ensues, with people who have never spoken before in class offering their analyses. Then, one young Asian-American woman raises her hand. ‘My mother is like this woman … She would not have been able to sleep unless she knew that everyone else was happy. I understand the point you’re trying to make, but in my culture, much as I myself am now critical of it, this image is not derogatory.’ You respond by calling attention to who is ‘owning’ the image—the Asian-American population or American capitalism—but you wonder whether, by using this ad to illustrate a point about the politics of gender images, you have assumed an ethnocentric interpretation of exploitation … Feminists have challenged the authority of the ‘fathers’ and their great works. Yet we also have claimed authority for our own

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texts. Moreover, critiques of feminism as a new ‘master narrative’ that arbitrarily postulates women’s universal subjugation…has dissolved the category woman into women so that even the category women seems to have lost its coherence. No more authority; no more women (Jones, 1991:165–6). We might ask: Does this student’s reading invalidate the teacher’s and other students’ readings or are they all equally valid readings depending on the situatedness of student identities and experiences? If all student readings are considered equally valid, then what is the point of the lesson if the image both is and isn’t derogatory and subjugating? What is the teacher’s position vis-à-vis the image and the student readings? Surely there is more at stake here than exposing students to textual polysemy or the politics of meaningmaking. If we accept this text as empowering and culturally affirming for some groups, then on which political and moral grounds can the teacher claim authority, and which normative criteria can she invoke, with which to argue that this text does indeed exemplify cultural, racial and gender stereotyping, an orientalist reading or the corporate interests of capital? How can we sustain critiques of injustice, subordination, imperialism or exploitation without reference to some forms of normativity, benchmarks or feminist ‘master narratives’? This example illustrates the paradox of feminism’s relationship to authority—its antifoundationalist stance and commitment to contingent identities and knowledge, and yet at the same time, its political and theoretical mission of critique and transformation. The feminist teacher’s desire to change, convince, enlighten her students through contestation of the masculine canon, by definition has to rely on some normative criteria by which one set of (patriarchal) knowledges are explicated as inadequate and inferior to the (feminist) knowledges she usually claims as superior to patriarchal regimes of truth. Pedagogy and feminism are fundamentally hermeneutic and hermeneutics functions from its exteriority—that is, its appeals to normative discourses, whether these be normative feminist claims of ‘the good’ for women, normative moral claims in educational discourse about meritocratic equity or ethical conduct in student-teacher relationships, or the many discipline-based truth claims that guide teaching and interpretation across the curriculum. Appeals to normativity—even if an ideal-type model of social justice were available based on normative principles of situated heterogeneity (Young, 1990)—invoke issues of authority at the level of discourse (the ‘sovereign’ authority of normative criteria), and at the level of discursive practice (the speaking subject who invokes and is governed by normative criteria). I agree with Jones that Authority has become both totem and taboo: we consider those who claim authority to be powerful and controlling and… Yet the antifoundationalism of the postmodern critique undercuts the theoretical coherence of authority itself. Consequently, feminists are confronted with a paradox: claiming that authority is the practice most necessary for all women—and all ‘others’…while simultaneously deferring the question of writing [and speaking] authoritative texts in favor of a theoretical position supporting a veritable cacophony of voices. I contend that we remain

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trapped in and immobilized politically by a peculiar discourse on authority (Jones, 1991:107–8). Feminism’s slippery and ambivalent relationship to such a peculiar discourse on authority raises several theoretical issues about difference and standpoint, a politics of critique and transformation, to which I now turn. Contradictions of Institutional and Pedagogical Authority Feminism is still fundamentally about transformation and enlightenment and, therefore, feminist educators still attempt in their teaching to give students access to better, more inclusive, socially just and non-exploitative knowledges. But in doing so, feminists like all educators resort to criteria of moral, ethical and political worth to make value judgment in their teaching: from arbitrating student commentary, evaluating their work and selecting course readings and classroom materials, to teaching aspects of feminist knowledge as better than patriarchal knowledge, as well as making theoretical and political value distinctions among feminist theories. Moreover, because our work is authorized within a profoundly masculinist culture of the university, we repeatedly run up against the same dilemma regarding our professed commitment to changing male models of power and authority invested in us, and yet being bound by an entrenched patriarchal intellectual and bureaucratic ethos of normative procedures, criteria and power relations through which we exercise our power over students and authority over knowledges. How well one performs those procedures within the rule structures of the organizational culture remains a critical factor in measuring and rewarding academic success, as Breda Gray notes: ‘how women academics engage with the operation of procedures in higher education is related to academic success which is often the reward for recognizing and implementing procedures…[yet] by following procedures…‘there is a danger of perpetuating unaccountability in the use of power and authority between women’ (Gray, 1994:82). Anna Yeatman also talks about the tensions ‘subaltern intellectuals’, such as feminists, encounter by virtue of their dual and often incommensurate accountability to their constituencies (i.e., women) and the institutional apparatus of the university, both of which position and challenge her authority in different ways: For these intellectuals, there are unresolved tensions between demands for accountability to the academic authorities for the quality of the academic performance their work represents, and demands for accountability to the subaltern constituencies which their politics is entailed…. What matters is how they practice their authority as an intellectual and whether they open it up to being both problematicized and made accountable to different audiences (Yeatman, 1994:36–7). The tensions and contradictions inherent in the multiple locations and forms of authority, accountability and power experienced by feminists are wide-ranging across the institutional spectrum. As mentioned earlier, Gallop et al., for instance, talk about

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established senior feminists in authority, ‘getting trashed’ and ‘attacked’ in print or at conferences by other feminists, male theorists or graduate students in order ‘to score points’ (Gallop et al., 1990). bell hooks makes similar points about feminist struggles over authority and power within the intellectual ‘star system’ of ‘third-world diva girls’ which spans black and ‘third-world’ feminisms (hooks, 1990). The flipside of these kinds of public and visible tensions over intellectual authority and institutional power can be found in the innumerable instances of university forums where feminists often are disempowered and de-authorized by the (usually male, sometimes female) discursive techniques of silencing, exclusion and other vanishing acts of making her invisible. Not least, the feminist classroom is one site where feminine authority and power are often actively and explicitly denied by women themselves. A purported absence of pedagogical authority runs a two-fold theoretical risk. On one level it positions persons in pedagogical relations as equals-in-difference. This provisional equality—the momentary bracketing of patriarchal knowledges which hierarchize differences—imbues the female teacher with the subject position of nurturer (in place of masculine power and authority), and the student as object of nurturance. This risks masking substantively differential access to and deployment of power between student and teacher since the very identity of teacher (as embodied signifier of the knowing subject) and student (as embodied signifier of the un-knowing object—the teacher’s other) is institutionally produced and named. On another level, the disavowal of authority potentially works much like Foucault’s disciplinary regimes of truth whereby authority, discipline and truth statements, for example, judging student voice or ranking student work, are deployed from faceless, panoptic centers of control. Pedagogy without a locus of authority thus risks deceit: embodied difference and differential power access camouflaged under false pretence of allegedly equal subject positions. Knowledge production through teacher and student voices—in speech and in text—thus becomes a masquerade of ostensibly authentic voice and knowledge shared among equals. This assumption invokes Habermas’ model of communicative intersubjectivity, specifically his concepts of communicative competence and ideal speech situation. Habermas’ rationalistidealist conceptualization has been challenged—not least by feminists (Fraser, 1989)—on its epistemological blindspot to embodied (i.e., sexual) difference, and failure to theorize power relations underlying all communicative exchange and identity politics. Critical and feminist pedagogies, then, which attempt to transform top-down transmission models of knowledge by reconceptualizing the teacher role as equal to the diversity of student differences, run the risk of giving up authority over and claims to knowledge altogether, or else masquerading as an ideal speech situation wherein all participants allegedly have equal speaking status and equally valued cultural and linguistic resources with which to make knowledge claims and seek consensual understandings of different knowledge claims. Clearly this position is theoretically untenable for two reasons. First, it contravenes feminism’s cherished claims of having more fine-grained and morally defensible conceptions of ontology and epistemology than patriarchal models. Second, rendering differences as equal but situated unifies them into a principle of sameness which contradicts feminism’s commitment to difference(s) of identity, location, history and experience. Feminism began with a critique of the many inequalities structured into patriarchal knowledges and institutions under the guise of categories of sameness: man, humanity, human nature, others. Yet what has become of

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feminism’s critical practice-in-practice is that feminist pedagogy disavows differences of authority, power and knowledge among women, and celebrates an almost dogmatic antiessentialism which totalizes difference through false generalizations about women’s inexhaustible and irreducible differences (see Martin, 1994). Once ‘woman’ or ‘experience’ or ‘reading position’ are individuated to the point where commonalities are impossible, and authenticity of voice, identity or experience are conceptualized as more or less equally valid but different, then differences and structures of power are ignored and, in a world of nothing but difference, diversity is given a uniformity and dangerous sameness (Luke, 1992). The contradiction here between the practical teaching project of academic feminism (denial of sovereign and foundational authority; equal differences; individuated voice/identity) and its professed theoretical and political standpoints (critique of sovereign and foundational authority; critique of myth of equality and exclusion of difference; universal voice/identity) undermines feminism’s commitment to honest and ethical engagement with the politics of knowledge production, and the conduct of teacher-student relationships. That is, to treat power and authority as absent or illusory in the feminist classroom, as an exclusively male evil or attribute of bad girl feminism, is to deceive students and masquerade a performance of good girl feminism. Gallop’s recent writings on pedagogy, and her characterization of two kinds of feminist pedagogy in the metaphor of the good and bad girl is a useful figurative framework for exploring both the historical and cultural context of the white female teacher as good woman and, consequently, feminist pedagogy’s ambivalent relation to power, authority and, not least, sexuality and desire. What are the implications of a pedagogy that masks power and authority, and reconstructs the female teacher in the traditional Anglo-European image of female virtue and good mothering? ‘Good Girl Feminism’: Constructs of the Teacher, Authority and Desire As I have argued so far, in contesting phallocentric models of knowledge and the subject—wherein male/rationalist/objective knower is counterposed to female/ affective/subject of knowledge—feminist pedagogy has located itself, perhaps unwittingly, on the maternal-nurturance side of humanism’s classic dualism. Concepts of nurturing invoke maternal images: an ethics of care, ontology and intersubjectivity as relational, groupness and cooperation rather than individualism and competition. Transposed to pedagogy, this image and social vision is potentially disastrous because it reinstates and legitimates the asexual, maternal and disempowering image of the selfeffacing, benevolent school-marm or, as Belenky et al. (1986) would have it, the midwife. Teachers with authoritative knowledge and in authority have traditionally been male, and the historical record, beginning with Socrates, and popular cultural narratives are filled with images of great and illustrious male teachers, for example, To Sir With Love, Blackboard Jungle, Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, Educating Rita; or compare Mr Kotter with Our Miss Brooks. In the cultural imaginary, female teachers become notable only when they cross the sexual line from good girl to bad girl seductress, for

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example, movies such as Class, and the Australian film Heartbreak Kid, but otherwise female and particularly feminist teachers are cast in the image of the good woman: asexual, benign, powerless, nice. As Gallop puts it: In the discourse of feminist teaching, the bad girl has been at best an object, at worst invisible, never a speaking subject. Although feminist pedagogy has sometimes promoted the bad-girl student, feminists as teachers have almost always spoken from the place of the good woman. Perhaps because teaching itself has been associated, since the common school movement of the early nineteenth century, with traditional ‘good’ femininity, that is, with selfless, sexless nurturance (Gallop, 1994). One consequence of good-girl feminist pedagogy is that the sexual politics of the feminist classroom (or of desire), whether in single-sex or coed classrooms, have hardly been taken up by feminist educational scholarship. I suspect that there are two reasons for this. First, feminism’s moral discomfort with publicly claiming individual power and authority (Jones, 1991), has produced a concept of the feminist teacher characterized by a series of lacks, including lack of bad girl authority and sexual identity. Her refusal to claim power or authority over others or knowledge, evacuates her identity of any authoritative knowledge claims and claims to institutional power—or at least, not to use power and knowledge in abusive or traditional male ways. Second, because her role as teacher is conceived in good girl feminism—selfless dedication and nurturance of her students—her identity is desexualized and repackaged as the nurturing maternal subject. The teacher as maternal signifier reverses the historically formalized and sexualized student-teacher relationship: the masculinization of the teacher-father and feminization of the studentchild (Kirby, 1994:18). To take this argument one step further, one can argue that the reversal of the historically eroticized male-teacher female-student relationship through displacement of the paternal-authority teacher signifier by historically infantilized women leaves no conceptual room, within patriarchal discourse of the academy, other than to mark and mask the female teacher as a desexualized, non-desiring, nurturing maternal signifier. In this theoretical scenario, the feminist pedagogue does not give up desire, but it is disconnected from sexual identity politics (a current theoretical preoccupation in all other branches and brands of feminism) and reclaimed by maternal desires: ‘the maternal guise of benign innocence, purity of purpose and desire, natural devotion and selflessness’ (Kirby, 1994). Her desire becomes devotion to socialize, nurture and transform her students through the feminist lenses she offers, with which they can reinterpret and potentially liberate themselves from a litany of patriarchal injustices. As feminist scholarship has thoroughly documented, those multiple injustices are written into the forms and content of patriarchal knowledges which are the very metanarratives and ways of knowing that feminism and feminist pedagogy seek to contest and subvert. Desire is always socially located within complex and contradictory power relations which both construct the desiring subject and the objects of desire. The social situatedness of feminist academics means that our desire to be good teachers and good feminists, to be liked and respected by students and colleagues, and affirmed (through publication) in our intellectual work, is often compromised by the contradictions of

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implementing feminist agendas within the powerfully masculinist structure, procedural discourse and social relations of the university. Feminist commitments to exercising the power our positions invest in us through different models and practices are often difficult to attain and maintain in a system which still values sole authorship, a hierarchical teacher-centered model of instruction (the mass lecture), and hierarchical bureaucratic and communication structures. Jana Sawicki notes that how one might go about ‘altering one’s desires when they appear to conflict with “feminist” political or moral principles is not obvious’ (Sawicki, 1991:37). How, then, should we think and talk about such conflicting desires, women’s pleasure and desire through the performativity of teaching, the seduction of intellectual and moral authority and institutional power, the pedagogical power of seduction, the spectacle of the look? Rather than turning to the sexual or erotic as analytic and explanatory nexus, I concur with Moira Gatens (Gatens, 1994) and Meaghan Morris (Morris, 1994) who caution of psychoanalytic interpretations of pedagogy or sole reliance on a sexualized logic of desire with which to explain pedagogical relations. Morris claims that if we can front up to the truth that ‘education is a social site in which some women, far from being “victims” or vulnerable children, are now empowered’, then it would require of us ‘to question the limits of any model of feminist pedagogy, and all feminist thinking about pedagogy, which metonymically centralizes “sex” as the feminist issue, as the explanatory key to a feminist understanding of the world’ (Morris, 1994:26). The key issue in my estimation is feminism’s general lack of engagement with a whole range of theoretical, political, social and ethical consequences deriving from the tensions between feminist educators’ theoretical commitments—which are fundamentally based on ontological and epistemological standpoints of embodied sexual difference(s)—and the social sites of higher education in which their labor, activism and theoretical practice are actualized. Yet, regardless of which feminist or educational analytic we choose, we cannot ignore the sexual politics, personal pleasures and desires implicated in the getting of knowledge, speaking that knowledge from a position of power and authority, the intimacy of student-teacher relationships, and what Kirby identifies as the ‘passion for the power in learning, our delight in the flirtatiousness of intellectual debate, in the game of competing…in the sexiness of winning’ (Kirby, 1994:19). The glossing over of the sexual(ized) dynamics of pedagogy has foreclosed discussion about a whole range of issues connected with desire, pleasure and performativity, which are politically crucial dimensions of the workings of power and authority in the feminist classroom, and in the everyday intellectual and administrative work that feminists do. It seems to me vitally important that feminist scholarteachers begin to transgress the good girl imperative and start talking about the ambiguities and contradictions that face feminists today in increasingly conservative and competitive work environments where the politics of career restructuring, intellectual work, and the grassroots work of classroom teaching are taking radically different shape. In many ways, the new economic rationalist and corporate culture of the university militate against feminism’s nurturing, egalitarian and cooperative ethos. Increasingly women are competing with each other for scarcer resources, jobs and opportunities. The pressure is on: performance reviews push women into new competitive relationships where we all have to outperform one another, attract large student numbers, entice them with ‘fun’ course outlines or high-tech content delivery. In the midst of all this, some of the old feminist collegiality is, in Gallop’s

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words, ‘getting trashed’. We need to begin talking about these issues, about power, authority, desire, the knowledges we profess and ones we enact or mask. Conclusion Given feminism’s inheritance of metanarratives written in the language of the father, and taught by the rule and authority of the teacher-father, it is little wonder that feminist pedagogy would be based on a conceptual and practical reversal of masculinist forms of power and authority, knowledge production and transmission. Yet, as I have argued, the conceptual logic and political practice of feminism’s opposition to the male legacy of authority, power and knowledge—specifically as that opposition is practiced and theorized in feminist pedagogy—has potentially self-invalidating and politically disabling consequences for women. I suspect that, among feminist pedagogy theorists, the lack of self-reflexive critique of issues of female power, authority and sexual politics has to do with fear of crossing the line from good girl to bad girl feminism. Despite our discomfort with foundational and institutional authority, I am convinced that we need to re-engage with the Foucauldian project, but this time making our own power and authority visible and political. Clearly, some theory-based, politically and ethically defensible criteria are needed with which to formulate the kind of anti-confessional pedagogy that Mary Lydon calls ‘pedagogy as an ars erotica, but differently’ (Lydon, 1988:141), joined with ‘an ethics of pedagogy’ (Gatens, 1994:15). Speculatively, such a pedagogy would seek theoretically to combine the seductive dynamics of knowledge, engendered embodiment of teacher and students, and the performativity of teaching with an ethics grounded in resistance to all forms of abusive power and social injustices. Further, such an ethics would be grounded, following Foucault, in some form of an aesthetics of daily life which I would claim has immediate implications for the kind of pedagogy as art and craft that I noted earlier. An ethics grounded in resistance to social injustice is already theoretically woven into feminist and other progressive pedagogy models which imply recourse to justificatory norms of right and wrong. An ethics provisionally grounded in Foucault’s later work on aesthetics (Foucault, 1986)—the making of the self as a work of art—ties knowledge with pedagogy in the care of the self and the politics of self—and social transformation.10 Such a pedagogy could avoid reducing feminist teaching to maternal nurturance and reproducing the tyranny of authoritarian transmission models, and at the same time avoid slipping into a vacuous celebration of difference and rampant pluralism. In my estimation, feminist and otherwise progressive educators need to disengage from their anxieties about authority and power. Feminist educators particularly need to find ways to interrogate the assumptions and consequences of our critical practices, in efforts to let go of our feminized attachments to powerlessness and scepticism of authority. I would argue that, first, we do need to take authority—or at least, make explicit that we already embody and exercise authority even in its camouflage of pastoral nurturance. Second, we do need to acknowledge and theorize the power we variously exercise in order to come clean on the ethical and political dimensions of feminist work in the academy, and in order to stake public claim on the knowledge domains and institutional practices we want to transform according to feminist normative visions of

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the good and socially just. Importantly, we should resist the silent authority—the hidden hegemony of feminism itself—that keeps feminists from engaging in constructive criticisms of some of feminism’s most cherished tenets. Notes 1 See Gallop, 1994; 1995. 2 See Bagihole, 1994:5–28; Carty, 1991:13–44; Luke and Gore, 1992:192–210. 3 See Henry, 1994:42–57. 4 See Bartky, 1996. 5 To conceptualize pedagogy as craft and art of seduction and performance, connects knowledge, desire and intersubjectivity in ways analogous to Foucault’s (1986) later work on ethics, care of the self, and the politics of self-transformation which are at the core of the pedagogical act for both teacher and student. Particularly in progressive and feminist pedagogy, emancipatory knowledge is intimately connected to self—and social transformation, to a better understanding and care of the self and other. 6 See Alcoff and Potter, 1993; Ferguson, 1993; Flax, 1990; Haraway, 1988. 7 See Belenky, et al., 1986; Bunch and Pollack, 1983; Culley and Portuges, 1986; Gabriel and Smithson, 1990; Gore, 1993; Lather, 1991; Lewis, 1993; Luke, 1994; Maher, 1987; Mahoney, 1988; Middleton, 1993; Pagano, 1990; Stone, 1994; Weiler, 1988; Welch, 1994. 8 See Alcoff and Potter, 1993; Bondi, 1993; Brown, 1991; Fraser, 1995; Fraser and Nicholson, 1990; Fuss, 1989; Love, 1991; Martin, 1994; Shor, 1989. 9 See Belenky et al., 1986; Bunch and Pollack, 1983; Culley and Portuges, 1986; Lewis, 1993; Luke and Gore, 1992; Maher, 1987; Mahoney, 1988; Middleton, 1993; Pagano, 1990. 10 In Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966–1984 (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989) Foucault argues that crafting the self within existing rules of social conduct and regulations, requires knowledge so that we might understand and remake our behaviors in order to act against social injustice, disciplinary or normalizing regimes, as they occur in specific contexts. Mindful of the reservations feminists such as Lois McNay (1992) in Foucault and Feminism, Cambridge, Polity, and Carolyn Ramazanoglu (1993) in Up Against Foucault, New York, Routledge, have raised about Foucault’s conceptualization of the life project as a work of art, I submit that aesthetic as metaphor is useful if we want to re-envision an ethics not based on traditional male, western, and exclusionary moral codes, but one based on an aesthetic of creativity and reconstruction, or what Foucault would call a positive productivity of new and hybrid forms of subjectivity and sociality. Moreover, if we accept that the making of the self is crucially dependent upon the getting of knowledge, then the pedagogical relationship in which knowledge is crafted, performed, enacted, contested or accepted, loved or hated, is itself part of the aesthetic of everyday life: an experience in the aesthetics of knowledge, and the art of pedagogy as craft teaching and self-learning. Not least, a work of art as an act of creativity and unique formation renders aesthetics a productive metaphor for conceptualizing an ethics grounded in the specificity of differences and diversity.

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Notes on Contributors

Sandra Acker is a sociologist of education who has worked in the United States, Britain and (since 1991) in Canada at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) as a professor in the Department of Sociology in Education, crossappointed to the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education (Higher Education Group). Her research interests focus on gender and education, the teaching profession, and higher education, focusing on careers, change and workplace cultures. Good indications of her past work can be found in her books: Teachers, Gender and Careers; Gendered Education: Sociological Reflections on Women, Teaching and Feminism. She codirected a research project on the thesis supervision of graduate students in education and psychology, and conducted an ethnographic study of teachers’ work in two primary schools. Since coming to Canada, she continues to write up material from those studies, as well as moving on to Canadian-based research. Currently she is the principal investigator of a project called Making a Difference, which involves interviewing academics in the four fields of social work, education, pharmacy and dentistry. Estela Mara Bensimon is professor in the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the University of Southern California and Associate Dean of Faculty in the School of Education. She is the coauthor of Redesigning Collegiate Leadership: Teams and Teamwork in Higher Education and Promotion and Tenure: Community and Socialization in Academe. In several of her publications she has employed the tools of feminist critical analysis to deconstruct traditional theories of leadership and management. Rosemary Deem is professor of Educational Research and Dean of Social Sciences at Lancaster University, UK, where she is the only woman faculty dean in the history of the university. Lancaster’s Centre for Women’s Studies provides her with valuable intellectual and moral support. Her research and publications range over the fields of gender and education: (Women and Schooling; Schooling for Women’s Work; Coeducation Reconsidered); women and leisure: All Work and No Play; Work, Unemployment and Leisure; and school governance and management: Active Citizenship and the Governing of Schools. Current research, apart from women managers in postcompulsory education, includes women and holidays (taking them as well as researching them), the caravan as a contemporary British cultural icon and crisis, risk and the governance of higher education (the latter inspired by recent financial crises in her own university).

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Grace Feuerverger is an assistant professor in the Centre for Teacher Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/ UT). Her research interests include cultural and linguistic diversity; ethnic identity and minority language learning as they relate to school curriculum and teacher development; women academics in higher education; and conflict resolution and peacemaking in international settings. Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin is a doctoral candidate in Educational Organizations and Policy Studies in the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill NC. Her research interests include critical policy analysis, cultural studies and qualitative research methodology. She has presented papers at national conferences on qualitative research methods and the social construction of difference, and has conducted qualitative research for several educational evaluation projects. Her dissertation takes a critical emancipatory policy analysis approach and focuses on a democratic educational reform movement. Judith S.Glazer is professor of Education at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and has also served in academic administration, research, and public policy positions. She is the author and editor of books, chapters and articles on graduate and professional education, public policy, and equity issues Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, (co-edited with Bensimon, E.M. and Townsend, B.K.); The Teaching Doctorate? The Doctor of Arts, Then and Now; and The Master’s Degree: Tradition, Diversity, Innovation. Her current interests are twofold: promoting a public policy agenda that enable women to assume more active and visible leadership roles in the transformation of academic institutions and advancing the dialogue among women across international perspectives. bell hooks is a feminist, theorist, cultural critic, writer and artist. Born Gloria Watkins, she has taken her grandmother’s name as a tribute. hooks received degrees at Stanford and University of California, Santa Cruz, was assistant professor of African American Studies and English at Yale and professor of Women’s Studies at Oberlin. Currently Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York, hooks is the author of nine books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Recent publications include Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation, Teaching to Transgress, and Reel to Reel: Race and Class at the Movies. Robyn S.Lock is currently enjoying a joint appointment at San Jose State University and San Francisco State University with previous experience at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. In her 26 years as an educator, Dr Lock has served as a public school physical education teacher, high school and intercollegiate coach, athletic director, teacher educator, and has authored numerous articles on gender equity and other feminist issues sport and physical education. Her experience as an intercollegiate athlete prior to the passage of Title IX in 1973 and as a feminist physical education teacher have served as a framework for the feminist analysis of physical education and sport as they exist in the public schools today. Carmen Luke is associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Queensland in Australia. She is the author of numerous books and scholarly journal articles on feminist pedagogy theory, women in higher education and feminist cultural studies. She is currently working on two major research projects: one investigates the nexus of gender and cultural identity politics in interethnic families; the other

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examines cultural differences in managerial culture and glass ceiling effects on senior academic women in south-east Asian universities. Catherine Marshall is professor of Education Policy and Leadership at the University of North Carolina, having started her career as a public school teacher. Her areas of expertise are displayed in titles of some of her publications, such as Designing Qualitative Research, Culture and Educational Policy in the American States, The Assistant Principal, The New Politics of Race and Gender, and The Administrative Career. Her observations at all levels of education are the motivators for this book, providing a link between hers and others’ observations of: seeing women’s history and feminist theory placed at the margins in schooling; watching gender equity policy slippage; seeing devaluation of the caring professions; puzzling over her field’s resistance to women in leadership, and increasingly seeing the connection to policy analysis. She is currently analyzing special education policy implementation and writing up her observations of the cultural origins for the differences between gender equity policy in the US and Australia. Jean O’Barr is director of women’s studies at Duke University since its inception in 1983. She comes to feminist scholarship through a PhD in African Politics where she studied grass roots politics in Tanzania and the role that women played in nationalist protest movements. An activist by inclination, she built on her academic training in the 1970s, leading the Continuing Education program at Duke and began teaching the introductory women’s studies course at Duke. From 1985–1990, she served as editor in chief of SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and she is the author/editor of 16 books, including essays on being a feminist in the academy, Feminism in Action: Building Institutions and Community Through Women’s Studies, and a forthcoming anthology about women resistors—first person narratives on power and social change. She lectures on campuses, evaluates programs nationwide and serves as a consultant to individuals and institutions seeking to improve the position of women. Jenny Ozga is professor of Education Policy at Keele University. Before that she was Dean of the Faculty of Education at Bristol, UWE, and worked for many years for the Open University. She has also worked for the National Union of Teachers. Her main areas of writing and research are concerned with understanding education policy, and with teachers’ work and the historical and contemporary development of state policy for the teaching labor force. As a result of illuminating experience gained in attempting to combine academic work and management, she has become particularly interested in gender issues in management, and is continuing to explore, analyze and voice how attention to and avoidance of gender impacts policy theory and development. Frances K.Stage is associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Associate Dean for Research and Development for the School of Education at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. She has Masters and undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and a PhD in Higher Education. Stage’s research and writing focuses on college student outcomes with a particular focus on teaching and learning in early undergraduate mathematics classes and women in the math/science pipeline. She is winner of research awards and coauthor of Enhancing the Multicultural Campus Environment: A Cultural Brokering Approach (New Directions for Student Services), and author and editor of over 50 chapters and articles on college student outcomes.

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Geert ten Dam is associate professor of Education at the Graduate School of Teaching and Learning of the University of Amsterdam. Her current research interests include learning and instruction and social inequality in education. She has previously published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Higher Education Policy and other educational journals. She is currently working on a study of the relationship between the new subjects Care and Technology in Dutch secondary education and the gender identities, learning styles and attitudes of boys and girls. Melanie Walker is associate professor in Professional Development in the Academic development centre at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her commitment to equity is reflected in her work on action research in educational settings, and in her current research interest in gendered and raced identities for academic women in South Africa.

Index

abortion, legal, 92 academic institutions: affirmative action at, 60–2, 64–7; authority in, 200–3; culture of, 51–2, 57, 70, 191–5; equity policies in, 12–13, 26–8, 33–4, 160–4; gendered division of labor in, 16, 27, 132–43; heterosexual discourse in, 152–3; homosexuality in, 141, 146; male dominance of, 7, 11–12, 57, 62, 134; norms of, 144, 152, 198; as patriarchy, 11–12, 136, 143, 144; public sphere of, 142; retrenchment in, 137; salary inequity in, 8, 13, 34, 70, 104–5, 123; training of teachers, 158; woman-centered, 135, 157; women managers in, 23, 25–34 academic women: academic rewards for, 129–31; and affirmative action, 60; appointment for, 54, 70, 100; assertiveness of, 54; black, 56, 70, 138n6, 192; Canadian, 122–37; career satisfaction of, 122–3; as caregivers, 127–8, 133–4, 135, 136, 137; childrearing by, 54, 132; collaboration among, 131; competition among, 206; and departmental housework, 129; feminist, 189, 207; as good citizens, 128–9; leadership style of, 127–8; lesbian, 98, 142–53; male backlash against, 56–7, 67, 124; maternity leave for, 10, 46, 62, 124, 127; mentoring of, 52, 128;

Index

198

merit procedures for, 130–1, 135; as outsiders, 135, 137; perfectionism of, 134; powerlessness of, 191; in private sphere, 97, 98; productivity of, 3, 52, 68–9, 126–7, 131–2, 134, 136, 137; promotion for, 50, 68, 70, 129, 130, 131, 135; research on, 25–6, 28, 29, 134; as role models, 125; sexist behavior towards, 51–2; and sexual harassment, 13; socialization of, 115; stress on, 129, 132, 137; tenure for, ix, 1–2, 17, 62, 78, 124, 129–31, 135; use of power, 201; at UWC, 46–7 academic women managers, 23, 26–8; Canadian, 124; characteristics of, 34–7; coping by, 34; as cultural change agents, 29–34; empowerment by, 35–6; gender identities of, 30–1; networks for, 52; stress on, 34–5 ACE Commission on Women in Higher Education, 67 Acker, J., 9 Acker, Sandra, 52, 97, 117n7 Adkins, L., 31 aesthetics, 206; of knowledge, 208n10 affirmative action, 23; attacks on, 60, 71; equity discourse in, 57; feminist analysis of, 12; history of, 63–4; legislation, 64; and merit, 65; officers, 67; as patriarchal construct, 62–3; universities’ response to, 64–7, 78–9; at UWC, 51, 58n4; and women’s studies, 91; and workload, 131 androcentrism, 6–8, 152 anti-discrimination legislation, 78, 138n3 antifoundationalism, 198, 200 apartheid: gender politics under, 23, 42, 55; at universities, 45 Apple, M., 13 appointment, for academic women, 54, 70, 100;

Index

male dominance of, 68 Arendt, Hannah, 151 assertiveness training, 16 authority: in academic culture, 191–5; and desire, 203–6; and feminist pedagogy, 199–206; feminist theory on, 191; gendered foundations of, 194; and knowledge production, 202; and normative judgments, 199–203; and nurturing, 196, 198, 199; in pedagogy, 189–90, 198–203; and power, 191–3; relationships in, 77 Balin, J., 16 Ball, S., 44, 51, 53 Barry, Kathleen, 151 Bartlett, K.T., 61 Becker, M.E., 62 Bensimon, E.M., 7, 9, 106, 117n7 Berea College, 84 Bhopal, K., 192 biography: interpretive, 145; students, 181–2, 186 Blackmore, G., 35 Bleier, R., 115 Braidotti, Rosi, 161 Brown, Murphy, 91 California Civil Rights Initiative (1996), 72 campus commissions on the status of women, 66–7; effectiveness of, 70, 71; in the 1990s, 67–72 Canada: bilingualism in, 138n5; higher education in, 122–37 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 123, 124 Casey, C, 36 chilly climate reports, 123 Chubb, Karen, 46 Clark, Margaret, 165 Clark, S.M., 15 class: critical theory on, 5; and gendered power, 88; and women’s studies, 90 classroom, feminist, 174–8; as nurturing, 190;

199

Index

in physical education, 178–87; power in, 193, 198, 202; sexual politics of, 204 competitiveness, 33, 190, 203, 206; in mathematics, 111, 112, 116 Conflicts in Feminism, 189 Conley, Frances, 1, 2, 18n1 The Conversation Begins, 92 Cornell University, 75 critical theory, viii, 5–6; legal, 1; and postpositive feminism; 8 cultural relativism, 26 culture: of academic institutions, 51–2, 57, 70, 191–5; gendered, 2; oral, 157; organizational, 28, 31–3; transformative, 32 Dalton, Clara, 1, 2 D’Augelli, Anthony, 143 DeBold, Elizabeth, 92 Denzin, Norman, 145 desire, and authority, 203–6 difference: analysis of, 9–10; ethics of, 208 n10; in feminist pedagogy, 195–7, 202 discrimination: feminist critical policy analysis on, 10; legislation against, 78, 124, 138n3; reverse, 65, 69 dropouts, 166, 169, 171n2, 185 Duke University, 75, 83–4, 87, 89; Women’s Center, 78 education: effect of economy on, 26, 33; gender reform in, 160; mathematics, 102, 103, 111, 114; politics of, 18; societal meanings of, 160 education: higher: adult women in, 75–6, 157, 161–4, 170; Canadian, 122–37; cultural change in, 29–34; gendered hierarchies in, 62; gender-typing in, 31; organizational change in, 26, 30;

200

Index

201

research in, 116n3; social sites of, 205; in South Africa, 41–4; in the United Kingdom, 26–8; women’s perspectives on, 61 Eisenhart, M.A., 14 Eisenstein, Z.R., 63 Ellsworth, Elizabeth, 184–5, 190 Equal Employment Opportunity Act (1972), 64 equaiity: and gender, 165; in liberal feminism, 3–4 equal opportunity, 66; in British higher education, 26–8, 33–4; Dutch, 160–4 Equal Rights Amendment, 66 equity: in academic institutions, 12–13, 26–8, 33–4, 160–4; in Canadian universities, 135; discourse of, 44, 57; see also gender equity faculties: gender ratio in, 49–50, 67, 69, 125, 138n2; male domination of, 1, 2; productivity of, 7 Federal Contractors Program (Canada), 123, 124 feminism: of black women, 5, 176, 201; conflicts within, 189; cultural, 4; ‘good girl,’ 190, 191, 193, 203–6; individualist, 117n6; liberal, 3–4, 106, 117n6; postmodern, 170; postpositive, 5, 8; power and politics, 4–5, 8, 18n3; radical, 117n6; relational, 117n6, 135; solidarity in, 178; third-world, 201 Feminism in Action, 82 Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy, 189 feminist critical policy analysis, viii–ix; and affirmative action, 60; characteristics of, 3–11; deconstruction of patriarchy, 14; and feminist theory, 61–3; interventionist, 10–11; lessons of, 11–18; and mainstream policy, 97;

Index

on mathematics/science pipeline, 105–16; methodology of, 17–18; on public/private distinction, 142 feminist epistemology, 197; standpoint, 144–5 feminists: as agents of change, 61, 72; generation differences among, 91–2; male, 88; socialist, 117n6; South African, 42, 43; as teachers, 174–87 feminist theory: black, 5; and feminist critical policy analysis, 61–3; on power, 191; of state, 17 femocrats, 26, 34, 35–6, 37 Fine, Michelle, 16, 83, 185 Finke, Laurie, 194 Foucault, Michel, 195, 202, 206, 207n5, 10 Freire, P., 183 Fuss, Diana, 196 Gallop, Jane, 189, 190, 191, 198, 201, 203–4, 206 Gatens, Moira, 205 gender: as analytical category, 2, 3, 9; in black liberation, 174; black male critique of, 177; in British higher education, 27; hierarchies in, 62–3; in organizational cultures, 28; in quantitative studies, 100–1; and race, 42, 88, 174–8; as social structure, 106 gender equity: in apartheid, 23, 42, 55; in Canadian universities, 133; discourse of, 50–1, 57, 170, 171; Dutch policy on, 160–4; as economic problem, 161, 162; in feminist school culture, 166–9; and gender neutrality, 69; and power relations, 63; and race, 42, 56–7; reproduction of, 13–14; in South Africa, 41–4,58n5; and tenure, 15–16, 17,18n5; in the workplace, 177 gender identity:

202

Index

203

construction of, 42, 160; of girls, 164–6,167; male, 52–3; role of schools in, 165–9,171 gender neutrality, 2; advantages for men, 9; consequences of, 11, 14–16; and equality, 10; and gender equity, 69; at Joke Smit School, 167; in law schools, 16; as male standard, 62; and patriarchy, 88; and promotion, 15; rhetoric of, 23 gender policy, 12–13; analysis of, 23; contestation of, 53–4; identity negotiation in, 160; implementation of, 55; and women’s studies, 89 gender regimes, 12, 17 gender relations: and adult education, 169–70; socialization in, 14–15 Gerwel, Jakes, 45, 46 Gilligan, Carol, 112 girls: gender identity of, 164–6,167; in South African education, 41–2 Gitlin, Andrew, 183 Glickman, Rose, 92 Gore, Jennifer, 197–8 Gray, M.W., 65 Grundy, S., 35 Guinier, L., 16 Hacker, A., 63–4 Harding, Sandra, 7, 143 Hartsock, Nancy, 152 Hearn, Jeff, 141 Heilbrun, Carolyn, 1–2 Hensel, Fanny Mendelssohn, 90 Herland, 158 heterosexuality: in academic culture, 98; as normative, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150–3 Higher Education Funding Councils (UK), 26, 27 Hirsch, Marianne, 189, 191 historically black universities (South Africa), 57n1 Holland, D.C., 14

Index

Hollingsworth, S.H., 186 homosexuality: in academic institutions, 141, 146; silence about, 143 hooks, bell, 5–6, 56, 157–8, 196, 201 identity: academic paradigms of, 55; in adult education, 164–6; cognitive/social dimensions of, 166, 167, 168–9; collective definition of, 184–5; difference in, 195–7; in organizations, 36; politics of, 190; social construction of, 4 identity negotiation, 8, 160, 161, 165–6; and learning environment, 169–71 institutions: androcentrism in, 152; transformation of, 10, 61, 72 Irigaray, Luce, 12 Itzin, C, 26 Johnson, Lyndon, 63 Johnson, R., 34 Johnsrud, L.K., 15, 134 Joke Smit Combined School, 163–70 Jones, Kathleen, 191, 199, 200 Kadalie, Rhoda, 48, 57 Keller, Evelyn Fox, 189 Kennedy, John, 63, 66 Kirby, V., 205 Kitzinger, Celia, 153 knowledge: aesthetics of, 208n10; authoritative, 203–6; construction of, 4, 5, 181; cultural determination of, 17; industry of, 158; male dominance of, 195; models of transmission, 202; non-exploitative, 201; patriarchal, 202, 204; politicization of, 197; relational, 184 knowledge production: and authority, 202; collaboration in, 198, 199; feminist scholarship on, 195–6; by lesbians, 145;

204

Index

205

at universities, 45, 193; in women’s studies, 77 Kramer, D.A., 112–13 Kuhn, T.S., 11 labor market: effect on education, 41–2,169; women in, 62, 161–2 language: binary opposition in, 61; male dominance of, 5; and power, 184 Lasswell, H.D., 61 Lather, Patti, 6 legislation, anti-discrimination, 64, 78, 124, 138n3 lesbians, 32; in academia, 98, 142–53; invisibility of, 153; as negative other, 151; political existence of, 142–3; private lives of, 148; in public sphere, 148–9 Lewis, Magda, 184 literary criticism, feminist, 95n4 Lock, Robyn, 158 Looper, Christina, 92 Lorde, Audre, 5, 175, 177–8 Luke, Carmen, 158 Lydon, Mary, 206 MacKinnon, C., 62 Maher, F.A., 186 management: gendered paradigms of, 28, 29; women’s culture in, 31–4 Maple, Sue, 101, 103, 113 Marshall, C, 106, 117n7 Marxism, 18nn3–4 master narratives, 199 maternity leave, for academic women, 10, 46, 62, 124, 127 mathematics: applications of, 110; competitiveness in, 111, 112, 116; cooperation in, 113–14; culture of, 106–7,109, 110–14, 115; and economic opportunity, 99–100; gendered expectation in, 106–7; mentoring in, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 114; undergraduate study of, 108–9; women in, 97, 99–116; women’s conceptualizations of, 102

Index

206

mathematics/science pipeline, 99–116; dropouts from, 104; transformational studies in, 101 McNay, Lois, 207n10 Melchior, J., 112–13 men: black, 175–7; feminist, 88; gay, 142, 143, 151 micropolitics, viii; of women’s studies, 82–9 Miller, Jean Baker, 124 Miller, Nancy K., 189 minorities, 102; academic, 125, 134, 138n6; in British higher education, 28; in hard sciences, 104 Moore, K.M., 11 Morley, Louise, 135 Morris, Meaghan, 205 The Mother-Daughter Revolution, 92 multiculturalism, 77 naming, power of, 97, 185 National Labor Relations Act, 63 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (1993), 69 National Women’s Studies Association, 75 natural sciences, 115 Newman, J., 26, 31–2 new managerialism, 32, 36, 37 new universities (UK), 26 Nixon, Richard, 63–4 Noddings, Nel, 135, 137 norms: of academic institutions, 144, 152, 198; heterosexual, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150–3 nurturing: and authority, 196, 198, 199; in teacher-student relationships, 197, 203, 204 Nyerere, Julius, 75 O’Barr, Jean,74–94 observer-neutrality, 8 Olsen, D., 113 oppression, and sexuality, 147 organizational change: feminists on, 30; in higher education, 26; and social justice, 87 Park, Shelley, 15–16

Index

Parker, L.H., 110 patriarchy: dualism in, 158; and female identity, 6; gender neutrality in, 88; ideology of, 11–12; metanarratives of, 206; public/private dichotomy in, 142 pedagogy: authority in, 189–90, 198–203; caring discourse in, 135; confrontational, 196; as craft and art, 194, 207n5; enlightenment, 193; ethics of, 206; patriarchal, 190; sexual dynamics of, 203–6; Socratic method of, 16 pedagogy: feminist, ix, 157; and authority, 199–206; characteristics of, 196, 197–8; difference in, 195–7, 202; as nurturing, 190, 204–7; and performativity, 193–5; in physical education, 179–87; resistance to, 182–7; in teacher training, 186; tensions within, 189–90 physical education: dominant ideologies in, 184, 187; feminist teaching of, 179–87 policy, deconstruction of, viii, 61 policy analysis: and feminist critical analysis, 6; feminist critique of, 3; methods of, viii; narrative, 17, 157; traditional, 2 politics: electoral, 93; feminist, 174, 177; and the personal, 158, 186; of sexual identity, 204 Politics of Education Yearbook, ix polytechnics, former, 26, 27, 30 positionality, politics of, 195–7 postmodernism, 165, 170; on authority, 191, 198, 200; effect on education, 26; on gender bias, 61 postpositivism, 5, 17

207

Index

poststructuralism, ix, 5, 198 power: and authority, 191–3, 198; and culture, 5–6; and gender policy, 12–13; institutional, 192, 198; and language, 184; male models of, 201; in pedagogy, 189–91,198; and politics, 17 power relations, 45, 98; and desire, 204–5; discourse on, 165; in feminist pedagogy, 183, 185, 201, 202; and gender equity, 63, 88, 89; in policy implementation, 44, 53–4; teacher-student, 193–5 Prentice, S., 124 Pringle, R., 31 private sphere: academic women in, 97, 98; cultural feminism on, 4; gender identity in, 6; public dominance of, 147–8; separation from public sphere, 149–50 public sphere: homosexuality in, 141; inequalities in, 149–50; organizational culture in, 31; separation from private, 149–50; sexual orientation in, 142, 151; women managers in, 35–6 Quinn, Jocey, 25 race: critical theory on, 5; equity in, 55–7; and gender, 42, 56–7, 88, 174–8; social construction of, 42; South African terminology of, 58n2; and women’s studies, 90, 174 racism, 63; and gender equity, 47; and sexism, 158; victimization by, 153 Ramazanoglu, Carolyn, 207n10 Ramphele, Mamphela, 43 research: collaborative, 197; gender bias in, 16;

208

Index

transformational, 116n2 Rhode, D.L., 62–3, 71 Rich, Adrienne, 142–3, 150 Sagaria, M.D., 11, 15 Salner, M., 110 Salter, B.G., 27 Sawicki, Jana, 205 Schafer, A.T., 65 scholarship, feminist, 93, 122; legal, 61–2; on pedagogy, 198; on production of knowledge, 195; spread of, 125; transformational, 175 school culture, feminist, 166–70 Schools for mothers, 157, 161–4 science: culture of, 115; girls’ study of, ix; women in, 97, 99–100; women’s views of, 110 self: colluded, 36; transformation of, 206, 207nn5, 10; as work of art, 206, 207n10 self-esteem, and academic success, 115 sexism: of black males, 175–6, 177; institutionalized, 2; and racism, 158; victimization by, 153 sexual assault prevention, 79 sexual harassment, 13; officers, 124 sexuality, in organizational cultures, 31, 32 sexual orientation: and power, 88; public/ private aspects of, 141, 142, 144–52 Signs (journal), 80 silence: about homosexuality, 143; about lesbianism, 146–7, 152; of academic women, 52; in construction of gender identity, 42; gendered politics of, 195; in higher education, viii; as resistance, 150–1, 182, 185; of South African women, 42, 43; techniques of, 201; and women’s studies, 93

209

Index

Skeggs, B., 27 Slaughter, Sheila, 9 socialization: of academic women, 115; in gender relations, 14–15; of students, 101, 107, 110; of women students, 110, 113, 115 social justice: in feminist classroom, 185; in higher education, 33, 87, 207 social studies, and women’s studies, 80, 82–3 South Africa: gender inequality in, 41–2; racial terminology in, 58n2; women’s rights in, 23, 42 sports: marginality of women in, 179–80, 186; social construction of, 180 Stage, Frances, 9, 97, 113 standpoint theory, 5, 144–5 Stanworth, Michelle, 164, 165 state: and British universities, 27; feminist, 17, 158; regulation of gender, 13 Stone, L., 158 stress: on academic women, 129, 132, 137; among women managers, 28, 34–5, 36; social construction of, 34 students: black, 167, 174–78; feminization of, 204; gender identity of, 169–70; nontraditional, 99; socialization of, 101, 107, 110; in United Kingdom, 27–8, 33 students: women: access to advising, 108; adult, 75–6, 157, 161–4, 167, 170, 171n1; black, 174–8; degrees earned by, 2, 99–100; differences among, 197; doctoral candidates, 9; in mathematics, 97, 99–116; ratio to males, 69; research on, 100–5; role models for, 122; socialization of, 110, 113, 115; support networks for, 105, 114; transformational view of, 107–14; views of mathematicians, 111–12

210

Index

211

subjectivity, 189, 207n10; feminist critiques of, 195 Tapper, T.R., 27 teachers: feminist, 174–87; gendered expectations by, 164–8, 170, 171n3; incentive systems for, viii; male, 203; preservice, 180–1, 186–7; relational norms of, 158 teacher-student relationships, 137, 198, 199; eroticized, 204; knowledge in, 194; nurturing in, 197, 203, 204; patriarchal, 189; power in, 193–5; voice in, 183–5 ten Dam, Geert, 157 tenure: for academic women, ix, 1–2, 17, 62, 78, 124, 129–31, 135; and gender inequity, 15–16, 17, 18n5 Tetreault, M.T., 186 texts: patriarchal, 11; policy, 44 Tierney, W.G., 71 Title VII, 62, 64 Title IX, 13, 64, 92 tokenism, 68, 137 United Kingdom, higher education in, 26–8 universities. See academic institutions University of California, 60, 69 University of Michigan, 66, 79–80 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 75 University of San Diego, 75 University of Texas Law School, 71 University of the Western Cape (UWC): Action Task Group, 47–8, 49; black women at, 56; committee processes at, 52–3; gender balance at, 49–50; Gender Equity Officer, 48, 49, 54, 57; Gender Equity Unit, 46, 49; gender policy at, 41, 45–57; Human Resources Committee, 46, 47, 49; promotion at, 50–1, 54; race equity at, 55–7; senior women at, 52; students at, 55, 58n6;

Index

Women Studies Group, 47 values: gendered, 2; in organizational culture, 31–3, 37; reproduction in sports, 180; of South African universities, 42–4 victimism, 151 voice: authenticity of, 203; in the classroom, 196; collective, 183–5; in feminist pedagogy, 183–4; in women’s studies, 92 Walker, Rebecca, 92 Walkerdine, Valerie, 167 Watson, S., 26 Williams, W.W., 62 woman question, 7 women: acceptance of patriarchy, 14; African, 75, 76; under apartheid, 46; behavioral research on, 80; black, 174–8; campus commissions on, 66–72; health issues for, 79; in labor movement, 158; lived experience of, 10, 88, 90, 145; mathematicians, 115; as Other, 4, 12, 42; politicization of, 106; professional, 78, 91; science careers for, 99–100; in secondary education, 2–8; working-class, 91. See also academic women; students, women women’s movements: and affirmative action, 63; in the Netherlands, 157, 161–4, 169 women’s studies: and affirmative action, 91; and campus commissions, 67; classroom teaching of, 174–8; content of, 90–1; evolution of, 74–82; future of, 91–4; graduates’ accomplishments, 86–7, 92–3; integration into curriculum, 78, 79;

212

Index

international, 81–2; methodologies of, 77; micropolitics of, 82–9; opposition to, 84; politics of, 77, 81; on poor women, 93; rationales for, 85–9, 94; spread of, 122; support for, 23, 83–4, 86, 87; at UWC, 49 Woolf, Virginia, 42–3, 97 Yeatman, Anna, 26, 35–6,201 Young Feminists (Glickman), 92 Young Women, Listen Up, 92

213