Being female in the academy

I want to talk about the ways that being female in the academy is complicated, the ways in which it still, despite all of our rhetoric to the contrary, matters.

I’m running up against my own internal, not-wholly-resolved, critic on this one, so let me say this at the outset.

There are lots of ways the academy is hard for different people, and lots of different “minority” identity positions get screwed in this system. (I put “minority” in quotes only because the people who are not marginalized in some way don’t actually constitute the numerical majority.)

I do not subscribe to any kind of Pain Olympics, in which only the experience or position that is the very most hardest counts. All of our pain and othering counts. All of it.

Okay? Okay.

Why I’m talking about this

Because academia relies on a narrative of merit, there is often a cultural assumption that academia is an equal playing field. And because of this, lots of smart, talented women have blamed themselves for the ways the system has undermined and devalued them.

And that shit has got to stop.

Despite all of our claims to post-feminism, the world – and that includes the academy – is still unequal. And blaming ourselves for that reality only makes it harder for us to identify it, respond to it, and find creative ways to call attention to it so it can be transformed.

So, to that end, I’m going to list all the ways I can think of that women experience inequality in the academy.

Let me count the ways

• Women, especially junior women, carry a disproportionate amount of service work in many departments, which jeopardizes their chances for tenure.
• Women in traditionally male fields (read: hard sciences) are often subjected to outright misogyny and abuse.
• Women are punished for their desire to have a family through family-unfriendly policies and practices, unlike their male partners, who are often seen more positively for their family commitments.
• Women have fewer mentorship opportunities.
• Women have a more difficult time projecting and owning authority in the classroom, which is often worsened by the responses of department chairs, deans, and other higher authority figures.
• Women are often perceived as threatening to the often-all-or-nearly-so-male “old guard.”
• Women who are cross-hired into Women’s Studies and their “home” department are often denied tenure because their feminist scholarship is denied credibility in the “home” department.
• Women who aren’t cross-hired are often denied tenure because their scholarship is considered “narrow” or “particular” because it doesn’t buy into the assumption that white men are universal and everyone else is “interested.”
• The fewer women there are in any given field, the more the existing women are called upon to mentor those behind them – leaving them less time to do the work they’re rewarded for.
• Women aren’t often taught how to negotiate, and for this reason among others, women are paid less well than men for the same work.
• Women are assumed to be less committed to their work if they have a baby.
• Women experience exclusion in graduate courses, in which they aren’t called on or in which their contributions aren’t considered equal.
• When women outshine their male peers, their achievements are dismissed as exceptions.
• Administrations are still, largely, male.

The important caveats

Now, not every woman will experience all of these. Departments and institutions vary, of course, and there are some that are doing their explicit best to address some of these issues.

But I’d argue that women in academia experience quite a few of them. Some will be obvious, and some will be the subtle kind that make you wonder if you’re crazy for thinking that gender inequality might be part of what’s going on.

If your gut says that gender inequality is part of what you’re experiencing, trust it. Trust that something bigger than you is at work. That doesn’t make it okay, but it means that it isn’t some fault of yours if you run afoul of the ways gender inequality plays itself out where you are. You are not the problem. A larger social and structural devaluing of women is.

What other ways have you seen or experienced women experience inequality in academia?