Being a feminist academic

Citation

Sang, K.J.C., Joy, S., Kinge, J. and Sayce, S. (2012), "Being a feminist academic", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 31 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/edi.2012.03031eaa.001

Being a feminist academic

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Volume 31, Issue 5/6

A growing body of academic literature argues that there is a resistance to feminism and gender equality within universities, particularly amongst the student body in the UK (Morrison et al., 2005) and in other countries (Webber, 2005). This is supported by popular media, which cites resistance to feminism within a broader societal context. Feminists working within universities report a range of problems. Feminist academics may challenge students’ gender attitudes, causing discomfort, which may result in complaints. Additionally, feminist academics may be vulnerable to abuse from male students who enrol on women’s studies courses with the intention of causing disruption. The increasingly commercialised nature of UK higher education (HE) has resulted in a corporate culture, which may be incompatible with feminist ideals (Edwards, 2000).

Feminists working within academia have been able to affect change to the benefit of marginalised groups and are often loyal to their institution (Barg, 2009). However, some feminist academics report a perceived need to keep their feminist identities at home while expressing a desire to unite their identities of “feminist” and “academic” (Edwards, 2000). Much of the extant literature does not explore the intersection between a feminist identity for academics and ethnic minority status. There is some suggestion the diversifying of the student body within Western universities may offer hope for black feminism, although further empirical evidence is needed (Ali, 2009), particularly in light of the changes to funding for higher education in the UK, for example, there are concerns that the student body may lose some of its diversity. Marginalised academics may prefer to undertake work within their own communities, although such applied work is often not recognised by leading journals, potentially resulting in further marginalisation (Coates et al., 1998). It has been argued this has led to a focus on feminist theory rather than feminist practice within universities.

This special issue focuses on feminism within universities. Given the broad range of definitions of feminism, we do not provide one. Rather, authors were invited to provide their own. Our aim was to further understand the experiences of feminist academics (faculty, research staff and PhD students) in relation to their teaching, research, relationships with colleagues and career progression. Papers were invited from feminist academics at any stage of their career. We invited either empirical or reflective pieces, which focussed on a range of topics, including:

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  feminism and career progression;

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  intersections of feminism with ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, academic discipline, type of institution or age;

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  feminist activism within universities;

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  relationships with students; and

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  relationships with colleagues.

The development of this special issue has been a labour of love for the editorial team. Each of us is acutely aware of the issues facing women academics and work in our own ways to make the academy less of a “chilly-climate” (Chilly Collective, 1995) for ourselves and our female colleagues. In 2010 Katherine Sang attended a networking event for female researchers. This event was intended as a place for women staff and PhD students to meet and network. All committee members (of which I, Katherine, is one) were asked to stand up and introduce themselves. As the women did so, a familiar sentiment was echoed, which one woman summarised as “don’t worry, there’s no feminists here”. This struck me as extraordinary. When it came to my turn I stood up saying “don’t worry I am a feminist”, to be met with a smattering of applause. It led me to question why the anti-feminist sentiment was so strong, particularly amongst a group of women engaged with the women’s movement and social justice. After discussions with colleagues, myself and Susan Sayce (one of the co-editors of this special issue) ran “Celebrating the feminist within” a one-day networking event, which was kindly supported by Norwich Business School. This free event was over-subscribed and attracted female and male feminist academics (including PhD) students from all over England. We quickly realised that we had tapped into something important and that feminist academics wanted to meet, talk about their experiences and make their voice heard. Hence, this special issue was born.

Our original call for papers attracted over 20 fascinating submissions, all but one of which was invited to return a revised version of their paper. We have a final tally of 11 papers, each representing a highly personal, reflective and occasionally distressing view from inside academia. Although we have not met all of the authors, judging by the names (which may not be entirely accurate!), we assume that all of them are female. Of the 16 authors, eight are based in the UK, two in the USA and two in Austria. The remaining authors are from New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and Israel. The disciplines of these authors are equally varied, including management, sociology, literature, political sciences, education and human services. The papers explore research ethics, interactions with male interviewees, negotiating the academy and male colleagues, and the impact of ethnicity. Indeed, intersectionality is a key theme emerging from the papers and as such the second half of this special issue groups these papers according to this important theoretical perspective. In the first half the papers explore the nature of silence and voice in managing interaction between researcher and participant.

A key tenet of feminist research is to uncover the gender dynamics of relations which can result in women’s less-privileged voices being heard, or their dissenting voices being marginalised as excessive, unreasonable or ridiculous (Simpson and Lewis, 2007, p. 23). Putting together this special issue was not without its tensions. All of our submissions reflected the authors’ personal experiences and perspectives. As such, it was unfortunately necessary to strike a balance between respecting the authors’ viewpoints and ensuring that no one individual or institution could feel that they had been unfairly represented. A number of the papers in this special issue have been slightly amended at the request of the publisher. We hope that none of the meaning has been lost and that all authors feel that their “truth” has not been misrepresented.

Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz’s autoethnography describes how she felt unable to articulate her distressing experiences when conducting sensitive but importance research into men who self-reported as domestic abusers. The voices women as the researchers need to be heard not only in relationships with male colleagues but also with male research subjects. So this very personal paper outlines not only feminist theory about how to do research but also puts into practice the need to articulate those experiences to combat asymmetric inequalities in research-participant power relations. The interaction of both the researched and the researcher’s voice is is central to Rosario Undurraga’s research in Latin America. Subjectivity is a major aspect of feminist research, which recognises research as a social interaction. Here, the writer offers valuable recommendations about prioritising women’s voice and their truth as they see it in order to promote a balanced power relationship between researched and researcher. The key word here is “aim”, while feminists are concerned about asymmetrical power relationship they recognise the dynamic nature of these power relationships as so vividly portrayed in Dalit’s work. So while awareness to aim for balance is good there needs to be an acknowledgement that this itself is a dynamic and continual process of realignment, as the Woodwards’ paper indicates. Kath and Sophie shared dialogic voice is used to unpick their experience as “we”, women and as individuals. They point out that it is though giving voice that experience becomes meaningful and acknowledged and thus can be reflected about and action implemented. While feminism theorising celebrates difference, it also has to balance this with a focus on women as a collective with some common interests and experiences. As Dalit’s work points out it is the silencing of women’s experience, of which she is one researcher but of whom there are many female researchers, that continually threatens advancement of feminist practice within the academy.

The Brown and Syme-Taylor paper generates feminist insight into the experiences of female academics in professional military education where the presence of civilian female faculty can mean women’s voices are doubly marginalised. Here, the authors talk explicitly about identity and professional construction, not only in relation to voice, but also visually and collectively as women. The insight that this paper gives resonates with Joan Acker’s work about the gendered organisation and how the privilege grouping assume that the organisation is gender-neutral in its own likeness (Acker, 1990). Here, the academics have established a gender and professional military education working group, to give them a safe space where they can articulate their concerns and support each other against the mobilisation of masculinity. Maria Tsouroufli’s sets her paper in another discipline – medicine – where masculinity is the norm. By taking an autobiographical approach, Maria reflects on how the patriarchal norms and practices of Medical schools, together with the emerging entrepreneurial orientation, other a feminist, disrupts her academic identity and in-authenticate her scholarship. The outcome is not only emotional scars, but a stunted career. Schmdit and Bendl take us to Austria to a different type of academy the managerial university, where gender equity policies have shifted from being a feminism bottom-up activism to becoming part of the organisational strategy and managed from the top. Paradoxically, the focus on women’s academic position within the university is forcing other gender issues off the agenda. The findings indicate that there is not one feminist approach but many and that these can co-exist within a managerial university and this polyvalence of discourses. But for social transformation to occur feminists need to negotiate new spaces to mobilise action in understanding and resolving gender inequalities. Amy Verbos and Maria Humphries also recognise that mainstreaming and institutionalisation of equality efforts have only reinforced exclusionary institutional logics. They offer indigenous epistemology grounded in relationality as a way to promote true inclusion that goes beyond numerical equality.

The second half of this special issue highlights the importance of intersectionality to the experiences of feminist academics. Amanda Gouws’ paper highlights the challenges of intersectionality for feminist academics from global South. Through a multi-level analysis of the national, institutional and disciplinary contexts where her experience is located, she describes the issues of voice and representation and challenges for engendering change and in creating alliances for change in a South African university.

Two papers in the special issue focus on intersectionality in teaching. Lena Wanngren and Karin Sellberg remind us that for a feminist academic, classroom is a place for radical action and transformation. In creating a classroom space where inequalities and power imbalances are minimised and dissensus is encouraged in favour of exploration of multiple meanings, they are choosing not to replicate the power structures in the society and thus their teaching becomes political. Rina Arya’s paper further elaborates intersectional feminist position in academy and in classroom based on her own experience. She narrates the classroom strategies she employed to reconnect students to feminism and help them find its personal meaning for them in their own lives.

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan in her paper argues that in the international research non-Western participants become subalterns when only Western frameworks are used to give them voice. She demonstrates how the use of post-colonial concepts in particular can facilitate the articulation of the subjective experiences of non-Western research subjects.

This special issue is not the end of our journey. As we write this editorial we are busy preparing for a one day Feminist Research Methods Workshop. Katherine has established Feminist Academics International – an online network for feminist academics around the globe. We thank all of those who submitted papers to the special issue. The reviewers were gracious in their reviews and gave of their time freely – we cannot list them all here, but we thank you.

Katherine J.C. Sang, Simy Joy, Josephine Kinge, Susan SayceDECERe, Norwich Business School, UEA, Norwich, UK

Corresponding author

Katherine J.C. Sang can be contacted at: k.sang@uea.ac.uk