Gender and Education

ISSN: 0954-0253 (Print) 1360-0516 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgee20

Exploring women faculty's experiences and

perceptions in higher education: the effects of
feminism?

Brooke Midkiff

To cite this article: Brooke Midkiff (2015) Exploring women faculty's experiences and perceptions
in higher education: the effects of feminism?, Gender and Education, 27:4, 376-392, DOI:
10.1080/09540253.2015.1028902

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2015.1028902

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Gender and Education, 2015
Vol. 27, No. 4, 376–392, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2015.1028902

Exploring women faculty’s experiences and perceptions in higher

education: the effects of feminism?
Brooke Midkiff*

School of Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA

(Received 27 October 2014; accepted 10 March 2015)

This study analyses women faculty’s discourse about feminism, themselves, and
their professional experiences as scholars in the North American university
context. This case study pushes at the boundaries of what we believe we know
about ‘the gender question’ in the academy, opening a discursive space for
scholars to examine university policies and practices. Poststructuralist emphasis
on the complexity and changing nature of power relations offer a framework that
makes sense of the ways in which women are simultaneously affected by power
relations and engage in power relations. I use feminist poststructuralist discourse
analysis to analyse women’s talk about their experiences in order to carve a path
for moving beyond the deconstruction of discourse in order to unpack how it
marginalises and silences women, even within and to themselves.
Keywords: higher education; discourse analysis; postfeminism

The topic of women in higher education has been explored by second- and third-wave
feminists. Questions like: What are the experiences of women in higher education? and
How have women negotiated gendered experiences in the academic workplace? have
been studied extensively (Acker and Webber 2006; Blackmore 1999; Earley, Apple-
gate, and Tarule 2011; Iverson 2011; Morrison, Rudd, and Nerad 2011; Westring
et al. 2012; White Berheide and Anderson-Hanley 2012; “Women in Academia”
2012). However, the current discursive context around feminism is that of postfemin-
ism – a time in which ‘the gender question’ (meaning the question of basic gender
equality) is reportedly answered, a time when women supposedly have equality and
parity with men (Butler 2013; Lewis 2014; Negra 2009; Pomerantz, Raby, and Stefanik
2013; Ringrose 2012; Tasker and Negra 2007). The purpose of this project is to
describe and understand women’s experiences in higher education in North America
by examining the following research questions:
. In what ways, do current women faculty consider that ‘the gender question’ has
been answered?
. What is their perception of the role of feminism in academia?
. Do these women think that they have benefited from the work of second-wave
feminists, and do they think that more work is needed?

*Email: [email protected]

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 Gender and Education 377

These questions are important in the context of postfeminism, in conjunction with

shrinking university budgets. Additionally, this study was conducted with the intention
of raising awareness among women university faculty around the need for continued
work towards gender equality within the academy.

Review of the literature

The metaphor of waves of feminism traces back to an article in the New York Times that
appeared in 1968 written by Martha Lear who referred to feminist activities as a ‘second
feminist wave’ (Dicker 2008, 5). The metaphor stuck and is readily recognised by scho-
lars, activists, and mainstream American culture. The waves of feminism that are gen-
erally accepted include first-wave feminism, starting with the Seneca Falls Convention
of 1848 and culminating with women’s suffrage; second-wave feminism, generally
dated from a protest of the Miss America pageant in 1968 and ending around the
late 1970s; and third-wave feminism, whose origins are contested by feminist scholars,
but generally believed to be in the early to mid-1990s (Dicker 2008). Additionally,
third-wave feminism is conceptualised as occurring within a postfeminist era – the
time occurring after second-wave feminism, marked generally by the rise of the New
Right in the 1980s through today, and characterised by backlash against feminism gen-
erally (Dicker 2008; Ringrose 2012).
While the wave metaphor is fraught with issues – lack of consensus over who is
included in which waves, the intersection of Black feminism, and movements in
support of rights and acknowledgement of LGTBQ people, for example (Hewitt
2010) – it is still a useful heuristic for framing the historiography of the women’s move-
ment. Noting the problems with the wave movement, Miriam David (2014) uses the
heuristic as a starting point at which to group the life histories of feminist academics.
David (2014) provides a rich history of the evolution of the women’s movement for
academics, specifically looking at the impact of feminism on prominent feminist scho-
lars across the UK, North America, and Australia. Her study offers much in the way of
thinking through the impact that feminism has had on generations of women scholars. It
differs from this paper, in that David (2014) explicitly sought out feminists as partici-
pants in her study, seeking to record and understand their life histories and interactions
with feminism. This study, however, does not seek out those who identify as feminists
per se. Whereas David’s (2014) more comprehensive approach provides rich details
about the role of feminism for feminists, this project seeks to explore the perceived
role of feminism within academia for women generally – those who have lived
through the days before second-wave feminism became a large influence on college
campuses, those who were a part of the heyday of second-wave feminism, and those
who have entered academe within the current postfeminist discursive context.
Postfeminist literature positions women’s issues in such a way that they are discur-
sively silenced, framing gender issues as already solved through the liberal feminism of
the 1970s. By focusing on the gains of second-wave feminism (such as Title IX) in
creating greater access for women, postfeminist language masks the persistent inequi-
ties within educational and professional outcomes for women. In the 1950s, well before
the peak of second-wave feminism, Charlotte Whitton, a feminist and the mayor of
Ottawa said, ‘Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought
half as good,’ an often repeated statement among feminists. Postfeminism assumes
that because anti-discrimination laws and policies are in place, Whitton’s statement
is no longer true.
378 B. Midkiff

Equality, equity, and parity

Parity between male and female earnings has steadily increased since the 1970s’
second-wave feminism. However, while the pay gap has steadily narrowed over
time, it has certainly not been eliminated entirely. From 2000 to 2010, the pay gap
rose from 73% to 77%, for an annual growth rate of less than one-half of 1%. At
this rate, it will be more than 60 years before the gap closes completely, and these
figures only show the portion of women who work full-time, excluding the large
number of women engaged in part-time employment due to childcare responsibilities
(DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith 2011; The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay
Gap 2012). In fact, women are disproportionately penalised economically for child-
bearing and other unpaid care. Described as the ‘mommy tax’, or the ‘caring tax’ to
be inclusive of caretakers of elderly relatives, individuals who are primary caregivers
lose an average of $659,139 in wages, in addition to other opportunity costs of caregiv-
ing such as passing up promotions, using up sick leave and vacation leave, and reducing
workloads to part-time (Crittenden 2010, 91). Of the members of our society who are
forced to pay this extremely high ‘caring tax’, at least three quarters are women. If
women now have equality, why are they disproportionately economically disadvan-
taged due to family responsibilities? The reality of the modern woman is disjointed
from the rhetoric of equality.
For women in higher education, this problem is amplified. In her analysis of the
function of the ‘mommy tax’, Crittenden (2010, 91) explains ‘The mommy tax is
obviously highest for well-educated, high-income individuals and lowest for poorly
educated people who have less potential income to lose.’ This prediction is born out
in data collected by the American Association of University Women showing that
the pay gap actually increases with additional education beyond high school until a
woman earns a doctoral degree; only then does the pay gap return to that which it
was prior to receiving education (80%), meaning that the pay gap for a woman with
a doctoral degree is the same as a woman with less than a high school diploma (The
Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap 2012, 13). Even when a woman reaches
the doctoral level and can once again earn on average 80% of the same salary as
men, she faces further economic disadvantage in terms of tenure. The wage gap
takes on a new form within the academy; 32.2% of women faculty are in a non-
tenure-track position, compared to only 19% of men faculty members (“Report of
the Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession” 2011, Table 11). Of those
on the tenure track, moving through the ranks proves to be a persistent problem –
22.9% of male, tenure-track faculty are ranked as full professors compared only 9%
of female, tenure-track faculty (“Report of the Committee on the Economic Status of
the Profession” 2011, Table 12).

Women in higher education

Gordon, Iverson, and Allan (2010) have examined how the discourses surrounding lea-
dership within universities shape and interact with perceptions of women leaders in US
higher education. Their study utilised feminist poststructuralism to examine discourse
within sampled articles of The Chronicle to unpack how images of women leaders in
higher education are created and contested in a publication widely read by university
faculty. Another recent study on the status of women in higher education was con-
ducted by Westring et al. (2012), developed an instrument to measure the level of a
 Gender and Education 379

culture conducive to women’s academic success. Their study demonstrated empirically

how the work environment inhibits women’s career advancement within academic
medicine.
A similar study was conducted by White Berheide and Anderson-Hanley (2012) to
examine work–family conflict (WFC) at liberal arts colleges. White Berheide and
Anderson-Hanley (2012) deployed a work climate survey and compared faculty by
gender using t-tests, by gender and discipline using analysis of variance, using multiple
regression to examine factors contributing to WFC. While the response rate to the
survey was high, and therefore statistically valid, the overall design of the study
does not address the WFC issues of faculty who did not respond to the survey.
Issues of university climate and work–family balance that were not explicitly addressed
in the survey had no space within the study to surface.
Misra et al. (2011) also used a survey to explore the experiences of women faculty;
however, in their work, they conducted focus groups to better understand the issues
faculty themselves found most salient. The focus groups revealed that women
faculty members contribute significantly more time and energy to service and teaching
than men faculty members, diminishing their capacity to compete in the other arena
germane to career advancement within the professoriate: research (Misra et al. 2011).
Using qualitative inquiry, the authors uncovered that despite policies and rhetoric
regarding research, teaching, and service as the three pillars for promotion and
tenure, only research truly mattered within this university. One respondent in a focus
group stated, ‘The criteri[on] for promotion is research. Associate professors have
time for everything but research’ (Misra et al. 2011, 23). Focus groups also revealed
that work trends differed by gender, suggesting that women in particular were pressured
by the demands of service, mentoring, and teaching, and that this prevented them from
devoting adequate time to research (Misra et al. 2011).
Earley, Applegate, and Tarule’s (2011) studied women who have served in high-
leadership positions within a university. Senior women higher education leaders,
such as current or former university deans, provosts, vice presidents, or presidents,
were asked to narrate a critical incident during their careers. The authors purposefully
used narrative analysis to add to their understanding of gendered leadership theory, ana-
lysing the narratives with an eye for themes around relational leadership (Earley,
Applegate, and Tarule 2011). The candid narratives elicited through this study belie
the protection the participants had already acquired, something not assured in a
study of a broader spectrum of women faculty members such as mine. This means
that access to participants and the depth of their responses is largely contingent upon
participants’ own security and protection within the university.
In fact, access to participants is a common theme throughout much of the litera-
ture on women in higher education. For example, O’Meara and Campbell’s (2011)
reported similar issues during their study on parental leave policies, describing the
great lengths it took to engage 20 participants in in-depth interviews about faculty
agency in successfully accessing parental leave, even though they assured anonymity
and used snowball sampling methods to gain access to participants already interested
in the topic. The authors were able to conduct 20 semi-structured interviews, then
used a constant comparative method to analyse interview data (O’Meara and Camp-
bell 2011). However, one must wonder, again, who did not agree to be interviewed
and what did they not say (for additional reading on silencing, see Fine 1992, 2003a,
2003b).
380 B. Midkiff

Theoretical framework
Feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis
Feminists have embraced poststructural theory for its ability to frame women and
events in an ever-shifting way, resisting labelling women as either victims or heroines.
Poststructuralism positions the signified and the signifier as constantly deferred, never
in a static or fixed position (St. Pierre 2000). Poststructuralist emphasis on the complex-
ity and changing nature of power relations offer a framework that makes sense of the
ways in which women are simultaneously affected by power relations and engage in
power relations. Given that ‘resistance and freedom are daily, on-going practices …
poststructural feminists have found these theories of power, resistance, and freedom
useful in their work for social justice’ (St. Pierre 2000, 493).
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) uses the study of language in its relation to power
and ideology to uncover power dynamics (Fairclough 2010). Discourse analysis is also
generally understood as the study of language in context to uncover relationships
between language patterns and purposes (Nunan 1993). While CDA helps us to
uncover hidden power structures embedded in language, it does not address the issue
of power dynamics that seem to be juxtaposed within a conversation or a monologue.
It is this shifting, sliding, and multiplicity of power within language that feminist post-
structuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) uncovers and seeks to understand (Baxter
2007). This theoretical framework opens up a space for moving beyond deconstruction
to allow us to see the interactions of power, and the ways in which power is negotiated
through discursive strategies. FPDA draws on the concept that, ‘to be constituted by
discourse is not to be determined by discourse’ (Blackmore 1999, 17).
FPDA is a feminist approach to discourse analysis, focusing on the ways in which
speakers constantly negotiate identities and positions within ‘competing yet interwoven
discourses’ (Baxter 2007, 1). FPDA draws on the definition of discourse as a social or
ideological act (Fairclough 1992), inextricably linked to issues of power (Foucault
1972). Baxter (2007), the germinal author of FPDA methodology, writes,

discourses are forms of knowledge or powerful sets of assumptions, expectations and

explanations, governing mainstream social and cultural practices. They are systematic
ways of making sense of the world by inscribing and shaping power relations within
all texts, including spoken interactions. (2007, 7)

And yet, though systematically constructed, power dynamics within discourse are not
rigid and unchanging – a feature of language that is highlighted by poststructuralism’s
interest in language as a site for the contestation of social meanings (Barthes 2012;
Derrida 1982; Foucault and Rabinow 1984; Kristeva 1980; Weedon 1997). Baxter
(2007) defines FPDA:

A feminist poststructuralist perspective on discourse suggests that females always adopt

multiple subject positions … In the majority of cases, females may be simultaneously
powerful within certain subject positions but yet distinctly powerless within other
subject positions … The quest of FPDA is not only to identify the ways in which
power constantly shifts between different speakers, but also to open up spaces for
those female voices which have been systematically marginalized or silenced. (10)

FPDA operates as both the theoretical framework for this study and the methodology
used to analyse interview data. FPDA’s framing of power as in-flux rather than dichot-
omous and static offers insights into important themes for women, as a group that has
 Gender and Education 381

historically been marginalised and silenced, because ‘Power (or the lack thereof) can be
represented both by what is not present, as well as by what is present’ (Allan, Iverson,
and Ropers-Huilman 2010, 38).

Consciousness raising research

The second theoretical pillar on which this study is constructed is that of consciousness-
raising research, a long-standing practice among feminist activists and scholars. The
epistemology of feminist consciousness-raising is characterised by the double con-
sciousness of the researcher – both as a member of the oppressed (women) and as
the researcher (Cook and Fonow 1986). This double consciousness enables us to
explore the needs and experiences of women experientially (Reinharz 1983). The
research process itself, then, can serve to uncover for participants and researchers
alike the social, political, and economic contradictions that women face (Mies 1983).
Grassroots feminist activists developed and used consciousness-raising method-
ologies; consciousness raising spread to academic feminism first in the field of soci-
ology (Mies 1983; Reinharz 1983; Stanley and Wise 1993), but has diffused into
other areas of feminist scholarship as well. For example, in the field of education, con-
sciousness-raising research acknowledges the need for ‘assertive question shifting,
redefinitions of issues, sharp attention to the power of dominant values, and vigilant
monitoring of how questions are asked and how research is used’ (Marshall and
Young 2006, 65). Through this framing, feminist research is in and of itself a con-
sciousness-raising act. The research lives in the minds of the researchers and the par-
ticipants, as well as any audience that may be found for the research. With this
understanding, this project embodies the notion that ‘the simple step of doing feminist
research is a political act and one that can make a difference in education’ (Marshall and
Young 2006, 63).

Methods
Based on the theoretical underpinnings of feminist poststructuralism and the history of
feminist scholarship using consciousness-raising methodologies, I chose explore this
research topic using life history interviewing, with attention to the fact that the partici-
pants were elites. Therefore, my interview protocol followed the tenets of life history
methods as well as elite interviewing in order to elicit responses from participants
who spoke to their perceptions of their own ‘stories’ of being a woman in the academy.
Life histories work to uncover participants’ subjective experiences and construc-
tions of their social worlds (Jones 1983, 147). Life history interviewing assumes that
the participant is constructing the story of her life in the context of her cultural under-
standings and socialisation into her specific societal norms. The life course paradigm as
a mode of inquiry is a combination of examining both individual choices and develop-
ments within historical pathways through social institutions and organisations (Elder
1994). Additionally, life history interviews often focus on critical moments to help
uncover the intersection of a participants’ development within and in response to
society (Sparkes 1994). Examining critical moments are particularly useful when study-
ing socialisation and group normalisation processes within institutions and professions
(Marshall and Rossman 2011). Furthermore, life history methodologies have been used
in feminist research as a way of uncovering how women’s lives and careers progress
with a minimal impact of androcentric bias (Lawless 1991).
382 B. Midkiff

I designed a semi-structured interview protocol that encouraged women faculty to

talk about their formative experiences as well as their experiences of gender within the
professoriate. I also chose a semi-structured interview approach because the nature of
the study entailed elite participants. The broad term ‘elite’ encompasses any individual
in a position of power and influence, and historically has been applied in research to
political elites, philanthropic elites, and organisational elites (Marshall and Rossman
2011). I propose that the participants in this study are elites and warrant elite interview-
ing techniques because of the intensely hierarchical nature of the academy and my own
positionality within it. In the tradition of elite interviewing, it is important to recognise
the challenges of access to participants as well as the tendency for elites, who are accus-
tomed to being the voice and leader, to take control of an interview and steer it away
from the researcher’s intended topic (Delaney 2007; Marshall and Rossman 2011);
therefore, attention to this dynamic of the interview situation was warranted.

Data
The framework of feminist poststructuralism and consciousness-raising research, as
well as my research questions, informed my decisions about sampling for this
project (Denzin 1989). Because I aimed to study university women’s experiences in
the professoriate and to raise awareness about the continuing need for feminist work
within the academy, my sampling was conducted purposefully rather than randomly.
Sampling was both stratified and opportunistic (Miles and Huberman 1994). Because
I sought to involve academic elites, opportunistic sampling was necessary. I did not
expect all potential participants to agree to participate, and anticipated the usual diffi-
culties of access that come with elite interviewing. Additionally, however, I sought to
stratify my sample in order to get a spectrum of university women faculty. Given the
scope of this study, that it was limited to one professional school within the university,
I sought participants who would represent women at varying stages of their careers,
women with a variety of backgrounds, family lives, and ethnicities. I was able to
include participants who were both tenured and un-tenured, and participants at the
level of assistant, associate, and full professor. There were five participants total, all
from within one department within the university; however, each participant specialised
in a different sub-field. Some participants were familiar with feminism, while others
only had tangential experiences with feminism as a practice, area of scholarship, or
ideology.
I supplement the interview data collected with a document analysis of participants’
curriculum vitae. The document analysis served to provide data from a different source
in order to substantiate the interview data (Rossman and Wilson 1994). I examined the
curriculum vitae of participants to see if the documents supported or refuted the over-
arching themes that evolved from the interview data.

Results
Interview data
Each participant took part in an in-depth, semi-structured interview. Interview ques-
tions began by soliciting women’s stories of their childhood, development, and edu-
cational experiences. The interview questions then moved on to probing about
women faculty’s gendered experiences within higher education, both as students and
 Gender and Education 383

as faculty members. From there, I guided the interview to questions on women’s per-
ceptions of feminism, how feminism has impacted them, and how feminism could or
should continue within the context of higher education. The interview transcripts
reveal several recurring themes across the sample of participants: (1) discomfort with
the term feminism, (2) improvements for women since second-wave feminism, and
(3) motherhood as an important, intractable issue.
Of all of the participants, only one did not have a verbal and visual response to the
use of the term feminism1. Participants demonstrated pauses, hesitations, and conflict-
ing facial expressions when questioned about what feminism is, how it has affected
them, and if they consider themselves feminists. The participants appeared to sense a
hazard in acknowledging or embracing feminism in the university, a historically andro-
centric, and patriarchal institution. However, the participants overwhelmingly, quickly
acknowledged the gains women have made since second-wave feminism.
From the perspective of FPDA, these two seemingly contradictory perspectives
were remarkably present in the interview transcripts, demonstrating a shifting power
within women’s discourse around feminism and the academy. For example:

Interviewer: How would you describe your experience in gender as a graduate

student? In either your master’s program, or your doctoral
program.
Patty: I think in both it was a nonissue. I’m trying to think of our cohorts.
When I entered both, I think they were pretty fairly divided, 50/50
men and women. As a female, I might have missed some things,
but I think I was treated pretty equitably. I think it was a nonissue,
my gender, at that level … For both master’s and doctorate.
Getting a job was a little bit different.

Patty2 was adamant that she was treated equally with her male peers in graduate school,
but then abruptly changes positions, saying outright that her gender was an issue when
she went onto the job market. Later Patty went on to describe conflicting ways of under-
standing gender bias within the academy.

Patty: I know the research out there, I know there’s a pay differential for
women. I made sure that didn’t happen to me. I think it happened
to me initially when I got hired. I wasn’t as astute in negotiating
skills, but as I’ve been here long enough and have figured out
the rules to the game, I’ve been able to negotiate a more than
fair and equitable salary. I think you could put my salary up
against the other full professors in this building, male or female,
and it’s equitable.

Patty readily states the general inequities that women face in the professoriate, yet she is
unable or unwilling to associate herself with these inequities. She is uncomfortable with
the prospect that she too may have been victimised because of her gender, even though
she sees it blatantly happening around her. Similarly, Sandra3 talked about unequal pay
between men and women faculty.

Sandra: There were disparities in terms of pay between men and women at
my former university and, frankly, at most universities in the
384 B. Midkiff

nation. I felt that directly because when I was hired, I was hired
along with another woman and another man in my same field at
the same time with very similar degrees. Yet, the male was
hired at a higher salary than the two females. That always pre-
sented a problem for me. I didn’t understand it. I raised it, even
with the dean later, when I asked for a raise, but I didn’t genderize
it, if that’s a word, as much as just held our productivity side-by-
side, my own productivity and the male’s productivity, and said,
‘Please consider raising my salary to at least meet his because
please compare our productivity.’ … Now I teach my students
that they must, basically, ask for more money upon entry into
the profession. Because, I’m afraid, that research bears that
women are less likely to ask for more money at point of entry
and, therefore, exacerbate the already inequitable distribution of
salary dollars.

Sandra, though she acknowledges that there are disparities between the salaries of male
and female faculty, frames it in such a way as to render it an individual problem rather
than an institutional problem. Her solution was to present her case based on her pro-
ductivity to her dean, in her own words, without ‘genderising’ the pay differential.
Later, she concedes that research suggests that women faculty members do in fact
have lower salaries, but that it is because they do not ask for more money. Interestingly,
after making this argument, Sandra went on to say that the dean she confronted did
increase her salary, but not enough to make it equal to the male faculty member to
which she was comparing herself.
Another participant, Noreen4, talks of specific incidences of sexism, how they
affected her, and how feminism has improved the academy in this area somewhat.
However, like Patty, she does not associate her beliefs in gender equity with feminism.
Noreen told me a story of her experience as an undergraduate student:

Noreen: I took a relatively advanced history course and the instructor in the
course was an elderly gentleman who announced at the beginning
of class that people did not make high grades in his class and the
highest grade a man can make would be a B and the highest grade
a woman can make would be a C.
Interviewer: He just announced that on the first day of class?
Noreen: He just announced it. There were about 50 students in the class.
We just sat there. Nobody did anything. We did these oral book
reviews, we had to go in on the weekend to his office and have
an individual oral review over a book he had assigned. I read
the book, I prepared well, I’m a good student, I knew what I
was doing. I went into his office and he asked me questions on
the book and we talked about it and I thought I had done relatively
well. He was supposed to tell us our grade at the end. I’m waiting
and he doesn’t say anything. I said, ‘So what is my performance
on this?’ He leaned back in his chair and he said, ‘I’m debating
between a C and a D.’ I was so shocked because I knew this
had been a good performance. I said, ‘a C or a D?’ He said,
 Gender and Education 385

‘Yes. Obviously you’re not a serious student.’ He said, ‘You have

a bow in your hair.’ I had pinned my hair back with a little ribbon.
Interviewer: That is what he determined you were not a serious student based
on?
Noreen: Yes, on a bow in my hair and not on my performance. He gave me
a C.

When asked later in the interview about the impact feminism has had on her career,
Noreen offered the following:

Noreen: Feminism would have more sensitized me to the needs of women

and women for many years have been a part of my research.
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Noreen: I don’t usually apply that label to myself but I would certainly hold
many of the values that feminists would in believing that woman
have the same rights as men.

Women’s talk presents a fluid movement between the position of emancipation from
second-wave feminist gains and the position of silence around continued gender con-
cerns. A FPDA of this shifting power suggests that women faculty both construct
and are constructed by university norms. Sandra, a different participant, when asked
about the role of gender during her training reported the following:

Interviewer: How would you describe your experience of gender at xxxx Uni-
versity, as a graduate student?
Sandra: … I saw it playing out more among the faculty, who were strug-
gling at the time publicly with how it was they were going to
recruit and then tenure well-trained women. There was, if I am
remembering during my time there, a female faculty member
didn’t get tenure and departed. The few women that were in the
department were struggling with that fact that, ‘Here was one of
their colleagues who was a woman who, in fact, didn’t get
tenure at their institution,’ and how was it that we’re going to
recruit women and then support them enough to meet these expec-
tations that they themselves had met, and their male colleagues
had met?

I can’t immediately think how my own experience was colored by my gender, as much as
me watching the faculty experience.

Sandra articulates how she witnessed gender disparities among the faculty of her gradu-
ate programme, but did not think that it affected her. That is, like other participants, she
saw gender as a very important issue, but for other women. When asked about any gen-
dered experiences during graduate school, Noreen shared the following story:

Noreen: I mentioned that when I was meeting with the chair of the depart-
ment at the University of xxx and he called in a person who had
386 B. Midkiff

been on the faculty at xxx University to talk with me because I had

received a fellowship from them. I so clearly remember what he
said in the middle of that conversation and it was, ‘They must
really want you to go there because they do not give women
fellowships.’

I had also applied to graduate school at Princeton, and I’m sorry I don’t have the letter, but
they wrote back and said we do not accept women in our graduate program.

Despite these experiences, Noreen did not identify as a feminist, and this reluctance is
echoed by Sandra’s explanation of the role of feminism in her life.

Sandra: I don’t explicitly teach feminism and I don’t explicitly do research

on feminist issues … it’s largely this issue, for me, now, in my pro-
fessional life, of balance of work and family. That’s a feminist
issue; it’s not feminism.

The issue of work–family balance proved to be a touchstone in the interviews.

One area that participants overwhelmingly discursively framed as a gender issue
was motherhood. Participants were hesitant to concede feminist concepts that
women are systematically and institutionally oppressed in conjunction with their role
as mothers. However, participants were also quick to point out that the American uni-
versity has been one of the slowest organisations to adopt progressive concepts brought
about by second-wave feminism such as maternity leave.

Sandra: In 2005, when I gave birth, my university did not have a maternity
leave policy. All you could do was take up to the federal leave that
Clinton put in place in the ’90s … All that meant really was that you
couldn’t be fired during that time … I was in the classroom until a
week before I gave birth, or less … Then, less than two weeks after
giving birth, I was back in the classroom teaching again. I did ask
for, and was granted, a co-instructor for those courses during that
semester, because we knew there would be at least a couple of
weeks, one or two sessions, I would miss … I had to ask for it,
and I received that support and I was grateful for it, but I remember
having to time teaching with breast feeding. Little, tiny two-week
olds don’t always wait for the allotted amount of time. I remember
the assistant in the department coming up and knocking on the
door, ‘Sandra, I think you need to come down,’ and having to
take the break a little bit early … Somebody was in my office
with the baby, because I knew I had to come down sometime in
the middle and breastfeed the child … For me, that was the most
significant experience, for sure, of a gendered workplace.

Again, these conceptions of the status of mothers in academia can be understood

through a FPDA lens. For example, while Noreen shared numerous encounters of
sexism within the academy, she was sure to emphasise the support she received
upon becoming a mother.
 Gender and Education 387

Noreen: I was pregnant three times during the time I was here. The faculty I
worked the closest with just could not have done more. When I
was ill during two of the pregnancies, they helped get my
classes covered, arranged for a graduate assistant to help. Every-
thing just moved along. I don’t think I could have had a more sup-
portive immediate circle.

Noreen was very appreciative of the support she received, but she does not allude to an
imagined community, a university setting, in which women faculty would truly have
the time, space, and support for childbearing and rearing during their fertile years.
This quote reinforces the theme that women faculty did not want to see themselves
as victims of an oppressive system, yet they were also unwilling to suggest that mother-
hood was not an ‘issue’ for women academics.

Interviewer: Do you feel that gender is an important issue for women in higher
education?
Patty: Absolutely. Unfortunately, fortunately, I do think we run into this
issue about childcare, and mothers, and kids. Who takes responsi-
bility, and what kind of society do we live in whereby, I work with
a lot of colleagues who are married with children and yet they’re
here every day, eight to five … Because their wives work part
time, or negotiate, or figure that out and do a lot of the childcare.
What if you’re female? … I don’t know the answer to this one,
whereby women are the mothers and mostly have the primary
responsibility for childcare. I don’t know, how or if that’ll ever
change.

As Patty’s statement shows, motherhood and caretaking seem to be the most intractable
issue for women faculty, one for which she cannot foresee a solution.

Document analysis
Several participants talked ardently about the impact that their careers as academics has
had on their choices regarding motherhood and conversely how motherhood has
impacted their choices regarding their careers as academics. Since the topic of mother-
hood emerged as an important theme throughout the interview data, I examined the par-
ticipants’ curriculum vitae to see if they indicated similar patterns. In the interviews,
women talked about putting their tenure clock on hold to have a baby, issues of aca-
demic productivity while mothering a young child, and the impact of motherhood on
career trajectories for women. However, analysis of the documents did not yield any
findings to either corroborate or dispel this. The documents gave no clues about
when or if women had children or if they stopped their tenure clocks at any time for
childbearing. This ‘de-gendering’ of their curriculum vitae can be understood as a
phenomenon of the same variety encountered in the interviews. Women faculty were
comfortable being women within the academy, but not comfortable with their vitae
revealing their gender or acknowledging gender issues in any way. One might ask:
why would they? Men don’t reveal gender through vitae. This is precisely the issue
388 B. Midkiff

– there is no space to address women’s issues within the professional norms of the
academy. Much like feminists of the 1980s wearing shoulder pads inside dark suits
to board meetings, the academic woman must make herself look male on paper. Her
vitae must look ‘normal’ by not revealing any impact of caretaking responsibilities,
childbearing, or any other work that has traditionally fallen to women.
Another major theme from the interview data was the gains women have made
within the academy since second-wave feminism, particularly policies that now
allow women faculty to stop their tenure clocks for childbearing. I examined the curri-
culum vitae comparatively to see if the progression from assistant, to associate, to full
professor has changed for newer women faculty as compared to women faculty who
entered the professoriate in the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis revealed that women
who entered the professoriate before and during second-wave feminism took 10 or
11 years to progress from an assistant professorship to a full professorship, and all
took exactly six years between earning their doctorate and being promoted to associate
professor. Women entering the professoriate after second-wave feminism (during or
after the 1990s) also took 10 or 11 years to progress to the position of full professor
and took exactly six years from earning their doctorates to be promoted to the rank
of associate professor. These findings suggest that not much has changed in terms of
the tenure clock. Women, if they progress through the ranks, do so at the traditional
pace. If progressive policies are in place allowing women to stop their tenure clocks,
where is the evidence of this? Perhaps a larger sample would show more variance in
the progression of women faculty through the academic ranks. One participant in
this study had made use of such a policy, but has not yet undergone tenure review.
Perhaps more disturbing, however, is the thought that most women for whom this
policy is written would not be captured even in a larger study because women with doc-
torates are disproportionately likely to become adjunct faculty, compared to men with
doctorates, or to leave academia altogether, particularly if they have young children
(Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden 2009).

Discussion
The findings of the study are transferable, meaning they can be used to understand similar
questions in similar contexts. Specifically, all women faculty interviewed are members
of the same overall academic department in the social sciences. Yet, current research
suggests that there still exists a wide gender gap in specific STEM fields such as math-
ematics and physical sciences, as well as in engineering and computer sciences (U.S.
Department of Commerce, Economics, and Statistics Administration, Executive
Office of the President, and Office of Management and Budget 2011). An expansion
of the research done in this project should include investigating the perceived role of fem-
inism in these fields in which gender inequality persists at a high rate. Additionally, this
research needs to be scaled up across multiple departments and/or multiple universities
before we can make any generalisations about the gendered experiences of women
faculty or how they feel about the role of feminism today. The findings from this
study are significant, in that they can guide future research endeavours. For example,
this study would be useful to university administrators if they were seeking to understand
how university policies and norms do and do not positively impact women faculty.
Another expansion of this project could entail a deeper look at the inter-relation-
ships of participants with other women faculty. One of the limitations of this study is
that it does not delve deeply into how participants perceived feminism to have impacted
 Gender and Education 389

their personal lives outside of the university or on their professional relationships with
other women faculty both within their own university and in their field. Lastly, this
study did not provide space for discussion by the participants of the difficulty in
being critical of higher education in a postfeminism era. That is, given that there
have been advances for women in higher education (although not in parity to male
faculty) into administrative roles and tenured positions, along with the general cultural
assumption of postfeminism, how difficult did participants perceive it to be to critique
higher education? Unfortunately, this study was not able to address this question.
The findings from this study highlight that research for social justice should have a
resultant, action-oriented goal in mind. That is, ‘Research for women should extend
and amplify research merely about women, to ensure that even the most revealing descrip-
tions of unknown or recognized aspects of women’s situations do not remain merely
descriptions’ (Olesen 2005, 236, emphasis added). Given the positive responses of partici-
pants in this study, I believe that this model of feminist research can serve as a call to action
among women faculty. Through the semi-structured interviews, participants had a space
to find their own voice and opinions regarding feminism within higher education. The
success of the consciousness-raising aspect of the study suggests that this is still a
salient methodology that should be deployed by feminist scholars. During nearly every
interview, the participant became emotional, teary eyed and some downright cried. Bring-
ing up their experiences forced them to think about how gender has impacted them pro-
fessionally and personally. As Patty succinctly stated at the end of her interview:

Patty: … this was harder than I thought.

One way to know better how successful the study was at raising consciousness would
be to conduct follow-up interviews with participants. I suspect that where some would
not identify as feminists before, after having reviewed life events through a critical fem-
inist lens, they may be more willing to accept the label of feminist.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Miriam David for her encouragement in this project and her graciousness in
reading a draft version of this work. I would also like to thank Margaret Sallee who served as a
panel discussant at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education at
which an early form of this paper was presented, and who followed up afterwards with me to
provide me with feedback. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments
and feedback were thorough and very helpful. I agree with the reviewer who said, ‘I’ll be a post-
feminist in a post-patriarchy.’

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Brooke Midkiff http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0377-6037

Notes
1. This one particular participant identifies as a feminist and had positive responses to the term.
2. Name has been changed.
390 B. Midkiff

3. Name has been changed.

4. Name has been changed.

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