Misogyny Posing as Measurement: The Feminization Paradox in Academia Professor Louise Morley

1. Misogyny Posing as Measurement: The Feminization Paradox in Academia Professor Louise Morley Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) University of Sussex, UK E: l.morley@sussex.ac.uk

2. Morley, L. (2011). "Misogyny Posing as Measurement: Disrupting the Feminisation Crisis Discourse " Contemporary Social Science 6(2): 163-175.

3. Desiring Higher Education Student enrolment worldwide: • 13 million in 1960 • 82 million in 1995 • 137.8 million in 2005 • 262 million by 2025? (UNESCO, 2009). • Aligning aspirations with economy (Appadurai, 2003; Morley et al. 2010; Walkerdine, 2003, 2011).

4. Global Expansion Asia • China enrolment is now 20% (Marginson et al., 2011) • India (world’s third largest HE system) plans 15% by 2012 Sub-Saharan Africa • 8.7% annual expansion • 5.1% for the world as a whole. Regional Variations in Participation • Tanzania 1% (DFID, 2008) • Iceland 65.6% • Austria 60.7% (UNESCO, 2009)

5. Closing the Gender Gap • Number of male students globally quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million between 1970-2007. • Number of female students rose sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million. • Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08(UNESCO, 2009).

6. Regions and Disciplines In many countries, women make up 60-75% of graduates in: • Health • Welfare • Education In regions where enrolment rates of women are lower than for men, men also dominate these disciplinary areas (UNESCO, 2009). Globally, men predominate in STEM: • Engineering • Manufacturing and Construction • Maths and Computer Science (OECD, 2007). In 2007 there were more women than men in: • Northern America • Western Europe • Central and Eastern Europe • Latin America • Caribbean • Central Asia • Australasia There were more men than women in: • East Asia • Pacific • South and West Asia • Sub-Saharan Africa

7. Medical Women UK Medical Education = • 1977 = 35% of female applicants • 2002 = 59% (BMA, 2004). • Skilled manual backgrounds = 8% of applicants. • Unskilled family backgrounds = 1% of applicants. (Boursicot and Roberts, 2009; Grant et al., 2002)

8. Women as Pollutants • In 2004, Dame Carol Black (then President of the Royal College of Physicians): • Increasing numbers of women in medicine might lead to the profession losing status and influence. (Lurie, 1993; Whitcomb, 2004) • ‘dominant position of females’ (HEPI Report, 2009:3)

9. Crisis Discourse of Feminisation • Reinforces gender dichotomy/ binary frame/ seesaw; • Is about fear of the ‘Other’/ disparagement of difference; • Underpinned by essentialism; • Reduces gender to quantitative change/ confusing sex and gender; • About hyper-visibility i.e. women as dangerous; • Suggests a breach of social norms. (Leathwood and Read, 2009)

10. Whose Academy is it Anyway? • Male Academy = Hosts/ Victims • Female Students = Abusive Guests • A woman’s place is in the minority • Newcomers not knowing their place • A ceiling on women’s participation? • Reminiscent of immigration discourses (invasion fears).

11. Feminization= Damaging/Emasculating Men? • Dominant group reconstructed as victims; • Assumption that women’s success has come about by damaging men; • White male injury now read as the same as subaltern injury. • If atmospheric oestrogens don’t get them, women’s education and economic independence will.

12. Feminisation as Obesity Hysteria • Semiotics/ imagery of greedy, rapacious women taking over (Quinn, 2003) • Women as engulfers/ castrators/ vagina dentate swallowing up HE, employment • Gender violence (reflexive self minimising/ effacement).

13. Decontextualised, Common-sense non- Analytical Understanding of Gender? • Fails to challenge wider gendered power relations; • Fails to increase women’s rights in wider civil society; • Allows women to succeed in HE, but not in labour market. • Positions women as (turbo charged) consumers, but not in powerful positions as knowledge producers/ gatekeepers. In UK, women are: • 57.1% of students • 42.6% of academic staff • 20% of professoriate • 13% of Vice Chancellors (ECU, 2009).

14. The Higher Educated (overperforming) Woman is Responsible for... • societal destabilisation; • a crisis in masculinity; • devaluing of professions/ academic credentials/ institutions; • detraditionalisation.

15. Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania Measuring: • Sociological variables of gender, age, socio-economic status (SES) In Relation to: • Educational Outcomes: access, retention and achievement. In Relation to: • 4 Programmes of Study in each HEI. • 2 Public and 2 private HEIs. (www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/wphegt).

16. Equity Scorecard 1: Access to Level 200 on 4 Programmes at a Public University in Ghana According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status (SES)

17. Equity Scorecard 2: Access to Level 200 on 4 Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status (SES)

18. Sociology of Absences • When gender is intersected with: • socio-economic status • age • participation rates of: • poorer • mature women • are extremely low in both African countries. (Morley, 2012)

19. Steep Social Gradients • Opportunity hording by privileged social groups? • Middle class capture of affirmative action/ gender equality initiatives? • Are we now educating ‘doctors' daughters rather than doctors' sons’? (Williams/ Eagleton 2008)

20. Gender is…. • rarely intersected with other structures of inequality • frequently ignored when women suffer discrimination or under-representation • often amplified in crisis form when women start to be ‘over-represented’

21. Undoing Gender(Butler, 2004) Feminization = • Resistance to distributive justice • Subversion of gender equality • Individual, not collective rights • Re-doing of gender. How to build on the momentum of women’s increased participation: • to undo gender in the academy • transform knowledge production • imagine a different future for higher education?

22. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer ESRC Seminar Series: Imagining the University of the Future