Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!cartan.berkeley.edu From: pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu (Sharon L. Pedersen) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Feminism, Inclusion, and the University Message-ID: <89416@aerospace.AERO.ORG> Date: 23 Oct 90 19:32:54 GMT Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Lines: 89 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R How to tell this, expect as a story coming out of my own experience? In the context of a discussion about how to reverse the astoundingly high failure rate of black students in college math courses, the architect (Uri Treisman) of a successful program to do just that, told me that "What works for all students, works for black students." I.e., the changes to be made are not to single out black students for special remedial help (which in fact they don't need--the problem is one of coping strategies that cease to work at the college level, not of bad preparation or less ability), but to set up the course in a way that supports everybody learning the material (in particular, making ways to relate the mathematics to students' everyday life, and setting up structures that require students to work together, and abandoning the pure lecture style for a more participatory style of learning). Now to feminism: This has got me thinking about feminism, in particular, how we work for equal opportunity. Even more in particular, how to work for equality in the academic world. Most discussions, including the ones I initiate, are in the form, "Women face such-and-such a problem; how can we change that?" Lots of problems women face, are faced by some men also. Have I been isolated from my colleagues? I know men in the same situation who have felt equally out of place. Is moving a hardship, because of family constraints? Some men also complain of these issues. Is the old-boy network alive and well? (YES!!!!!! (alas)) I know men who are not plugged-in either, and lose by it. Statistically I think these things are all much worse for women, and they would never have been noticed or begun to be acted on without women noticing them, but what kinds of different ways of thinking about these issues would we generate if we asked, "How can we make the university a more humane place for everyone?" Suggestions? For example, my understanding is that the "Up or Out" tenure policies at universities (supported by the American Associaition of University Professors) were instituted as a result of the feminist revolution of the late 60's. Suddenly it was noticed that many talented women had been kept by universities for years in low-level appointments. So "Up or Out" requires the University to actually promote and tenure people it wants to keep, in particular, women. (This is a slightly wierd example, since I don't think any junior faculty, male or female, thinks of this as a positive policy. Rather, the battle for tenure is enormously stress-making. But it's certainly not something that is currently perceived as being a special program for women, although historically that's where (I've been given to understand) it came from.) More cynically, might we not make more progress if we could sell solutions-to-discrimination to men as benefitting them as well, rather than setting up an "us against them" situation? (Golly, maybe we could gain the support of all the "When you do it to me it's feminism; when I do it to you, it's discrimination" types.) Less cynically, having a mind-set to solving these problems that stresses my _inclusion_ in the world of academics, that allows me to see _similarity_ between my experience and my colleagues', would be easing. I get frustrated--I don't want to be a WOMAN in mathematics, I want to be a PERSON in mathematics. Ambivalently, such a mind-set can be deceiving. Feminism and Humanism are not the same. In fact, my experience is NOT just like that of my male colleagues. It's not just like that of ALL of my female colleagues, either, but odds are that when I speak to a woman about, for example, the stress of wondering which male colleague is going to misinterpret my efforts to build a civil relationship in which we can discuss mathematics, and make a pass at me instead, she will understand, and when I talk to a man about it, he won't. (E.g., She will say, "Yes, it's terrible". He will say, "Are you sure?" or "Sexual attraction is unavoidable in a mixed-sex situation" (more on _that_ in another article) or "Well, we all have to live with minor job irritations" or some similar bone-head comment.) (And it's not just internal stress--every time I have to hesitate about how best to approach a mathematician to set up a dialogue, that's one more hurdle in the way of getting research done.) I so much want to be a Humanist. I want to believe Men and Women are Equal, and the Same. I want not to be confused in my logical mind by shouts of "Reverse Discrimination." But, it's just plain false that I can exist by pretending I'm just like everyone (oops, I mean "all the men", but golly, they sure are _almost_ everyone in this context) I work with. It's a terrible strain to be continually in a male world, in an environment that takes male experience as normative, and where female experience is almost nowhere to be seen. And so I deliberately seek out other women academics, to lend balance to my life. --Sharon Pedersen pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu OR ucbvax!cartan!pedersen