Gender at the Univ

This week I submitted my app for a diss writing fellowship with the American Association of University Women. One of the more frustrating parts was the autobiographical statement in which I had to explain my career goals, anything that had impeded my progress in graduate school, and how I mentor women - all in less than 3500 characters (including spaces). I think of these essays as the "poor me" essays - where victimhood, and then overcoming victimhood, are embraced as justifications for worthiness of funding. And the truth is: the single mom working her way through a PhD program, or the woman who is supporting herself and an infirm family member, could definitely use this fellowship more than me, who (now) has a partner with a full time job. That being said, assuming we swing on his salary we're not making vast amounts more than we were when we were both in grad school, the difference is that it's one wage earner rather than two which gives me time to write - but we're not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here, vacations to Europe, or drinking champagne with our caviar. Either way, I always feel inadequate and guilty because I was fortunate enough to not have any debts and generally able to survive grad school by combining my TA income with another grad student's income and not end up in the poor house. Like I actually shouldn't even apply for these grants and take them away from a more "deserving" person. Is there a term for "class guilt"?

So, stuck with trying to answer this essay I sort of took the easy way out and decided to write about gender in my dept. Now, I don't think that I'm discriminated against b/c I'm a woman. But I think that has a lot to do with being a very outspoken woman who is willing to fight for what she wants. It never occurred to me that I didn't have as much right to, well, anything, as my male colleagues, and that confidence/privilege has gotten me far in life. Is that because my parents and class status reinforced those ideas? Probably. But it's also a lot of who I am. I know a number of people from similar backgrounds who struggle in ways I never have w/ this sort of stuff.

Back to the essay - writing about gender in European History is easy. In my 6 years, we've had a male: female faculty/instructor ratio of 8:2; grad ratio of 5:3, and the vast majority of my classes have been at least 3:2 men: women, if not 3:1. 15 TAships, only 1 female faculty member. I've gotten comments like "you're 'our' girl", in reference to my status as the only female Europeanist for a couple of years in the beginning, and the gender disparity in the classroom was always in the air, even if on the whole my female students are talkers. To that end, one student indicated that she talked more in my class b/c I am a woman and made her more comfortable. Although I am clearly dedicated to women's education (want to teach at a woman's college), i really do try to reach out to all students regardless of gender, and pay attention to gender dynamics in the class, but also those of race and class. So the tone of the essay was not that I was necessarily discriminated against as a woman, but that there exits a gender discrepancy in European history that makes my gender stand out. More importantly, female students in particular feel that "It makes a difference to have a women at the front of the classroom" because I model what being a female (successful?) academic looks like. In trying to meet the challenge of tackling disproportionate gender balances I create a much more inclusive classroom in regards to race, class, and sexual orientation, as well.

I always knew Europe was skewed for a variety of reasons only some of which relate to gender, but counting through the rest of our dept, we're still skewed. Considering all faculty and lecturers, we're still 2:3, women:men. In fact, that nearly fits the hiring pattern since I've been here, in which we've hired 3 men and 1 woman. Then I see articles like this one from Inside Higher Ed, in which "The study found patterns in which different kinds of words were more likely to be used to describe women, while other words were more often used to describe men," in which "communal" and "emotive" descriptions tended to be associated with women and those candidates were less likely to get hired. ""When you use communal terminology, it is linking people to a feminine type, and they are not seen as credible and they don't get hired," said Michelle Hebl, a professor of psychology at Rice University and one of the authors of the study, along with Randi Martin, also a psychology professor at Rice, and Juan Madera, assistant professor at the University of Houston. "It's not just men doing this to women, and it's not just women being hurt, but it hurts women more.""  Or this one, in regards to the wage gap in Jewish Philanthropy jobs.

Again, not saying, "poor me and give me money I'm discriminated against as a woman" - I like to think that I'm good enough to stand on my own merits and I've worked very hard for the fellowships/prizes I have received -  nor that quiet men, people of color, people from economically disadvantaged classes don't also face challenges, perhaps some much greater than those women face - but there are too many trends that seem to demonstrate that gender still matters and gender disparity is still a problem.