The Present
Book Article
Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers, and Sacrifices
by Jan Currie, Bev Thiele, and Patricia Harris —
Lexington Books, 2002
Reviewed by Sally Male
This book was launched in WA in 2003. Currie, Thiele, and Harris’s qualitative research, narrating the views of academics, general staff, and managers of American and Australian universities, examines the gendered power structure of university life. Professor Currie, A/Prof Thiele and Professor Harris teach in the areas of Education, Women’s Studies and Sociology respectively, at Murdoch University. The following is quoted from the
We seek to describe what is happening to our universities from the inside and with a gendered lens. We are telling these insider stories with an aim to understand and seek change in the current organizational culture, our working environment. We conclude with visions of alternative scenarios for universities.
Gendered Universities
Based on our study and review of the literature, we conclude that universities are dominated by masculine principles and structures that lead to advantages for male staff and disadvantages for female staff (whether academic or general). The most valued activities in universities are those that reflect male patterns of socialization: individualist rather than collective, competitive rather than co-operative, based on power differentials rather than egalitarian, and linked to expert authority rather than collegial support. The masculinist culture is a particular type of culture and, set in the context of globalized universities, it has developed into a more competitive, aggressive, and entrepreneurial culture.
In addition to the masculinist culture that has characterized universities for centuries, a managerialist ethos has begun to pervade universities in this globalized era. This means that universities are rapidly losing their collegial communities and scholars are becoming more individualized. This culture tends to benefit men more than women; yet not all men benefit from this type of university culture. Some men resist these global trends and decide that they will not compromise their values. Others are not aware of making sacrifices or compromising values because their socialization has suited them to this culture. In the end, it appears that more men identify with this culture and are able to engage with it more easily because of their determination to succeed, no matter what the costs.
Our study has some similarities to one that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) completed in 1999. That study grew out of conversations in the summer of 1994 by three senior women in the School of Science about the quality of their professional lives. The report on the status of women noted:
“While each of them had come to realize, individually, that gender had probably caused their careers to differ from those of their male colleagues, they had never discussed the issues with one another, and were uncertain about whether their perceptions were in fact accurate or their experiences unique. Once they began the discussion, they realized that their experiences in fact formed a pattern, and the idea of a full-scale study was born.” (MIT 1999: 5)
The committee found, in the words of Professor Lotte Bailyn, chair of the MIT faculty, “that gender discrimination in the 1990s is subtle but pervasive, and stems largely from unconscious ways of thinking that have been socialized into all of us, men and women alike” (MIT 1999: 3). Our study came to similar conclusions. However, we were not focusing on women alone and their differences from men. We were trying to understand the organizational culture in which both men and women worked. We discovered that there was a peak, male culture that dominated the universities we studied. That meant that most women and some men were denied entry into that culture. The peak male culture was not the only one operating in the university, but it had the hegemonic power within the institution.
Australian sociologist Don Edgar
draws a connection between globalization and emotional labour. He theorizes
that one of the underlying problems affecting many workers, especially female
workers, is the masculine structure of work. “Successful careers require long
hours, building a reputation while you are young, minimizing family work by
finding someone else to do it (a wife or a paid carer), and children are a
beloved impediment rather than a shared responsibility” (Edgar 2001: 11).
Edgar’s observations and those
of the MIT Status of Women Report were not the first to draw such conclusions.
The literature on gendered careers and gendered institutions goes back at
least three decades. Feminists have come to similar conclusions in their
studies of universities worldwide. What is new is that universities have
entered into a new era. They are adopting, almost without reflection, without
hesitation, global practices that emanate from neoliberal economic policies
that will make the lives of women within them even more difficult than they
have been in the past. As affirmative action officers eliminate the more
obvious gendered practices, the constraints on women’s careers become more
subtle, as the MIT women faculty reported.
For enquiries about purchasing the book contact Jan Currie: currie@murdoch.edu.au