Abstract
Meaningful responses to address gendered experiences of women in academia require deep systemic changes that speak to (and from) the kinds of individual and collective narratives espoused in this edited volume. (p. 197)
With a critical analysis of the impacts of gender, the contributors to this volume share their experiences of being gender-identified women working in diverse academic settings, across disciplines and in various roles including doctoral students, instructors and professors, researchers, staff, as well as administrators. Locations include the UK, China, New Zealand, Italy, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Bangladesh, and the United States. While focusing specifically upon gender, the authors state clearly that women's realities must be understood in conjunction with all intersectional aspects and nuances of their identities. Additionally, groups of women will experience academic life differently depending upon their unique configuration of identities. These multiple dimensions of identity, however, are not the primary lens of these narratives. The contexts and structures in which academic women live and work inform daily the powerful organizing concept of gender.
The inherent nature of patriarchal academic structures presents innumerable obstacles for women. Sexism, embodied in individualism and competition, places women in vulnerable positions in their multiple roles, especially when considering the impacts of their socialization and expectations, which emphasize service to others. As a retired professor with 40 plus years in various academic positions, I identify with the narratives that are both disheartening and hopeful. As academic women, we are not alone. That realization, in and of itself, serves to support women as they navigate the complexities of higher education.
This book review cannot do justice to describing the powerful voices of gendered experiences, which serve as barriers to women's success in academe. Along with the challenges, acts of resistance are shared as ways to support those women with minoritized and marginalized identities, whether those be related to being a mother with children or to being Black or to being an employee on a temporary contract, or to being a woman with disabilities, to name but a few possibilities. Original research, survey data, interviews, autoethnographies, narrative vignettes, and literature reviews validate the realities shared by the contributors.
One overarching theme is academic women's struggles “to belong,” which manifests itself in a myriad of ways. Is one's research valued and taken seriously? Does one's teaching meet the bar based upon student evaluations which are known to be biased against women? If I continue to do more (and more) service, will I be seen as an equal in relation to men's achievements? What more do I need to do to earn a salary commensurate with my male peers? Maybe I am simply “an imposter,” a fraud.
Those feelings—of not belonging and not being good enough—harm women, whose work lives are tenuous at best, especially given the current upheavals in higher education fueled by the ongoing reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic. In one chapter in particular, 13 women in supramolecular chemistry used a collective autoethnography in their attempt to break “the culture of silence” among women in STEM. The International Women in Supramolecular Chemistry's website was launched in 2019, has participants from countries such as the UK, Europe, India, and the United States, and shows how women in science are both giving voice to their concerns and building networks of resilience.
The “caring coven” is used as a metaphor for community with a variety of configurations. In these covens, women in higher education can be their authentic selves and create ways to disrupt the systems, which discriminate against them. While there may be a risk that such feminist collectivity turns into separatism, for as long as women remain minoritized and marginalized in academia, self-isolating in caring covens may be the only form of self-preservation. (p. 33)
Online feminist collectives offer another example of ways for women academics to facilitate connection. One story describes how six women on a Facebook group ended up leading the International Women in Academia Support Network of several thousand members. A positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may be the impetus and strengthening of online communities of mentoring, hope and care, as well as providing greater opportunities to work collaboratively.
The reality of gender discrimination in higher education is evidenced in numerous ways and in varying degrees, by the positions held by women in countries and universities worldwide. While there has been progress in some places and in some practices and policies, that progress is rarely, if ever, permanent. Data on the increase in women in higher education leadership indicates that the positions they hold are typically not at the highest levels. And those women leaders are likewise subjected to discrimination, although their offices hold greater privilege, but not necessarily safety. It is a collective of small changes, happening in different academic fields, at different career levels and in different parts of the world that can open up the road towards progressive systemic change. (pp. 167–168)
I highly recommend this book to all women and to those who care about women, currently in or thinking about a career in higher education. My review scratches the surface of the breadth and depth of content covered by the 40 contributors. There is something for everyone whether or not you identify as feminist.
