Hi fas,
moving asymmetry to symmetry is akin to the 'equality' argument, and
this is not the issue. Nor is any notion of what is 'natural'.
Neither is it a matter of 'just add women and stir' (Noddings 2001)
to the mix of engineers and bam, what is missing from your work will
suddenly appear to 'balance' the dept., while the culture changes for
the better.
Gender is of course, about power and knowledge. Any attempt to
understand how gender operates requires an understanding of how
institutional practices are systemically organised to privilege
(certain) men and exclude women (as well as certain other men).
Morley (2003, p. 10) calls the hidden (gendered) curriculum in higher
education 'micropolitics', explaining:
Micropolitics theorises how power is exercised informally and
subtextually in organisations. It exposes how informal relays of
power alienate and exclude women (Morley, 1999). Micropolitical
relays of gendered power are notoriously difficult to capture.
Micropolitics is about influence, networks, coalitions, political and
personal strategies to effect or resist change. Gendered power can be
relayed informally via rumour, gossip, sarcasm, humour, and denial.
‘throwaway remarks' and alliance building.
It's a really short article, but addresses multiple issues, such as
exclusion and inclusion; gender and authority; organisational culture
and gendered divisions of labour; women and quality assurance
discourses (women are deemed suitable to be the administrative
housewives of institutional and pedagogical excellence); vertical
and horizontal segregation (this can be seen as men form the majority
of surgeons, yet paediatrics is dominated by women. This is
interesting for design as women are relegated to certain areas deemed
'suitable', such as fashion and textiles, while men dominate
'suitable' areas, such as engineering).
I encourage anyone interested in understanding more about how
micropolitics operates in universities to read it. It may shed some
light on the phenomenon described in the article Stefanie posted that
started this thread.
The Morley article is available online: http://csn.uni-muenster.de/
women-eu/download/Morley_WomenHigherEdu_CPx.pdf
teena
Morley, L. 2003, 'Women’s careers in higher education: theorising
gender inequalities', paper presented to the Europeanisation of
Higher Education and Gender, Brussels, 26–27 June.
Noddings, N. 2001, 'The care tradition: beyond "add women and stir"',
Theory Into Practice, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 29–34.
On 01/11/2012, at 10:17 AM, Filippo Salustri wrote:
> Teena,
> I appreciate the references, and your patience with my ignorance.
>
> ...for the record, I often feel my work life suffers because of the
> ridiculously low number of female colleagues in my dept. (I'm an
> engineer.)
> I'm not sure I know _how_ it suffers, but the asymmetry men to women
> strikes me as rather unnatural.
>
> /fas
>
> On 31 October 2012 18:34, teena clerke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> you might like to read any of the recent feminist literature for
>> compelling evidence. I included a number of references in my last
>> post, but
>> if you need more, try the ones below.
>>
>> teena
>>
>
>
>
> --
> \V/_
> Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
>
>
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