Feminist Academics Feminist Perspectives on The Past and Present Advisory Editorial Board Lisa Adkins, University of The West of England, UK Harriet Bradley, University of Sunderland, UK Avtar Brah, University of London, UK Barbara Caine, University of Sydney, Australia Sara Delamont, University of Wales College of Cardiff, UK Mary Evans, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK Gabriele Griffin, Nene College, UK Jalna Hanmer, University of Bradford, UK Maggie Humm, University of East London, UK Sue Lees, University of North London, UK Diana Leonard, University of London, UK Terry Lovell, University of Warwick, UK Maureen McNeil, University of Birmingham, UK Mary Maynard, University of York, UK Ann Phoenix, University of London, UK Caroline Ramazanoglu, University of London, UK FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON THE PAST AND PRESENT ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD iii Sue Scott, University of Stirling, UK Janet Siltanen, University of Edinburgh, UK Dale Spender, Australia Penny Summerfield, University of Lancaster, UK Martha Vicinus, University of Michigan, USA Claire Wallace, University of Lancaster, UK Christine Zmroczek, Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, UK Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change edited by Louise Morley and Val Walsh UK Taylor & Francis Ltd, 4 John St., London WC1N 2ET USA Taylor & Francis Inc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007 © Selection and editorial material copyright Louise Morley and Val Walsh, 1995 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, elec tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permis sion in writing from the Publisher. First published 1995 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. A Catalogue Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-48250-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-79074-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0 7484 0299 3 (Print Edition) ISBN 0 7484 0300 0 (pbk) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available on request Contents IntroductionFeminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change Louise Morley and Val Walsh 1 Chapter 1 Troubling Transformations: Gender Regimes and Organizational Culture in the Academy Celia Davies and Penny Holloway 7 Chapter 2 Black Women as the ‘Other’ in the Academy Naz Rassool 22 Chapter 3 Irrigating the Sacred Grove: Stages of Gender Equity Development Barbara Brown Packer 41 Chapter 4 In Our (New) Right Minds: The Hidden Curriculum and The Academy Debbie Epstein 55 Chapter 5 Ivory Towers: Life in the Mind Mary Evans 71 Chapter 6 Transgression and the Academy: Feminists and Institutionalization Val Walsh 83 Chapter 7 ‘Out of the Blood and Spirit of Our Lives’: The Place of the Body in Academic Feminism Tracey Potts and Janet Price 99 Chapter 8 Measuring the Muse: Feminism, Creativity and Career Development in Higher Education Louise Morley 113 Chapter 9 The Good Witch: Advice to Women in Management Lesley Kerman 128 CONTENTS vii Chapter 10 Black Women in Higher Education: Defining a Space/Finding a Place Heidi Safia Mirza 142 Chapter 11 Taking Offence: Research as Resistance to Sexual Harassment in Academia Avril Butler and Mel Landells 153 Chapter 12 Pain(t) for Healing: The Academic Conference and the Classed/ Embodied Self Jo Stanley 167 Chapter 13 My Mother’s Voice? On Being ‘A Native in Academia’ Liz Stanley 181 Poem Grievance Dinah Dossor 192 Notes on Contributors 194 Index 197 Introduction Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change Louise Morley and Val Walsh This book discusses feminist interventions in dominant organizations of knowl- edge production. As a feminist anthology, it attempts to be both a political and strategic act, bringing authors together through a shared commitment and purpose. In this it breaks the primary taboo of women being seen together, especially women congregating with intent. Feminisms are located as creative energy for change and critique, empowering women to apply political understanding to methodologies for teaching, learning, research and writing in the academy. Con- tributors demonstrate how feminist analysis of the micropolitics of the academy in terms of power, policies, discourses, curriculum, pedagogy and intra- and interper- sonal relationships, provides a framework for deprivatizing women’s experiences and influencing change. Academic feminism is also problematized and decon- structed, particularly in relation to the linkage of the two terms. For many, aca- demic feminism is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron (Elam, 1994), selling out feminists’ commitment to everyday praxis. Yet, on the other hand, academic femi- nism is also frequently viewed by the establishment as being insufficiently aca- demic. Using theoretical constructs, our own biographies and experience, as impetus, example and frame, women map present predicaments and inequalities, and identify sites and opportunities for strategic interventions. We notice the trans- formative possibilities of feminism as an oppositional discourse whilst acknowledg- ing that all experience is mediated by a discourse. As multi-dimensional actors, feminist academics are conceptualized as innovative rather than reactive, creating optimism about the permeation and permanence of change. Feminist process acts as both politics and self-care. As agents for change, feminist academics frequent a territory in which micro and macro processes are analytically related. The chapters are set against a back- drop of major educational reform, particularly in the UK, and the rise of New Right policies and practices. The transition from welfare to market values and the socioeconomic climate of recession, have resulted in a new economy of power (Ball, 1994). Now that the methods of managerial capitalism are entering and reshaping the academy, academics are beginning to experience increasingly coer- cive working environments, combined with escalating workloads, long hours, open- ended commitment/availability, together with increased surveillance and control. It 1 2 FEMINIST ACADEMICS: is debatable whether New Right policies have changed, or have simply entered and reinforced gender relations in the academy. Whereas previously a central concern for feminist academics was to document the specificity of how gender inequality permeates intellectual frameworks, more recently attention has also been drawn to organizational and policy contexts and conditions of the production of feminist knowledge. Government legislation, unfunded expansion and the new concept of managerialism have resulted in changes in the culture, values, ideology and struc- ture of Higher Education in Britain. There is a discourse of opportunity, without the prefix of equality, suggesting that whilst the client group of the academy may be in transition, changes in the understanding of the connections between gender, knowledge and power remain slow. A gendered deconstruction of the academy exemplifies the social and psychic labour involved in the daily negotiation of patriarchal power in the acad-emy. Fem- inist academics demonstrate how oppressive patterns from the private sphere have been reproduced in the public services, made more complex by Enlightenment val- ues of objectivity and detachment in the academy. This book invited women to move beyond the limitations of Enlightenment role expectations, and discuss aspects of work which trouble, excite, or enrage us. In so doing, contributors articu- late feelings and ideas behind the organizational culture of disembodiment. As members of subordinate groups, based on gender, social class, ‘race’, sexuality and disability, feminist academics in this book demonstrate how social and psychic development occur simultaneously, resulting in a coagulation between external structures of discrimination and women’s internalized oppression. Hence, feminist academics are required to perform and produce, with authority and excellence, in an organizational and social context which disempowers materially and psycholog- ically. This book attempts to give a voice to the psychic narratives which run when maintenance of external pretence of authority and composure is required. It also decodes and disentangles gendered message systems and the matrix of power rela- tions in the academy. In a culture where emotional literacy is discursively located in opposition to rea- son, feminist academics frequently have to repress pain and anger, and hide the contradictions and tensions that arise from being members of subordinate groups in powerful institutions. Discrimination in the academy can reinforce and restimulate women’s wider experiences of sexist oppression. Feminist consciousness can act simultaneously to sensitize and heal. In postmodernist thought, power can be both oppressive and generative. The creativity comes when one recognizes that this hurt can be transformed into knowledge, action, analysis and energy for change. As Audre Lorde (1984:127) suggests: Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Every chapter has been written by women enduring, negotiating, resisting and reworking the daily realities which both provide our contexts for writing (speaking INTRODUCTION 3 out) and our data (the evidence). These acts of writing are, in themselves, evidence that oppression, discrimination and victimization need not end in depression or despair, but can fuel women’s creative and political