Why did so many of us encounter sexism at university?

[LittleRedPumpkin]

Right, hope it's ok to start a thread on this - it's partly because I am thinking about it for myself, and partly the topic has come up on at least two threads recently so I thought it'd be nice to have a discussion about it.

Do you think universities are still fundamentally sexist? If so, why? Is there really something about higher education that men are better suited to (an argument I've heard a lot)?

Was your experience of women supervisors better or worse?

I'll get the ball rolling: I have had male supervisors, but now I'm in a department mostly made up of women. I've noticed that here, there is a far stronger attitude of co-operation and partnership between the academics and their students - PhDs, MAs and undergraduates. For example, if my own supervisor isn't an expert on a chapter I want to write, she sends me to have a supervision with someone else, who is more expert. There's no sense of me being 'their' student or one course being 'their course' to run. This is very different from the male-dominated university I went to before, so I wondered how typical it was.

What's your view on women at university?

Sorry: if anyoen is unclear, obviously I do not wish to endorse the sentiments behind the term 'slapper'.

hudd, why's it good? Why's it there at all? I'm confused, but probably by my ignorance of geography.

In my subject, it drives me mad when there's a set of modules including, nicely tucked away, 'women writers'. I've only just started teaching, but someone told me how every year there are complaints in the English department that the students have to study 'too many women' in the 'non-women modules'.

This usually means spending one or two weeks out of ten on a female author.

I share the sympathy about teaching vs research, the departure form the scene of the academic who was tremendously well read and whose 'output' was brilliant course design and delivery from a wealth of knowledge. Strangely, though, that hasn't been a purely gendered problem in my experience-lots of older men like this (which is one reason, despite ingrained sexism, they often back women with proven teaching records for jobs-they have an 'antiquated' view of the profession).

If this is gendered, then maybe one of the good things to come out of Browne will be secure tenure posts for good teachers, an initial secure step for some on this thread where sexism might just work to their advantage.

That kind of ghettoising drives me crazy, LRP. Likewise 'postcolonial' authors who are tidied into that box and not part of courses on 'the novel'.

As for subject specialisms, I see that feminism is more likely to be an explicit subject of study in some subjects than others, but I can't think of any field which would not benefit from taking a long hard feminist look at its structuring principles.

Yes, exactly heart. Or indeed queer studies - I know someone who wanted to take a course on queer literature, but there wasn't one so he was recommended to take women's studies instead. The idea presumably being that it was close enough, or something.

littlered I've done a bit of research as my knowledge of geography isn't great and it seems that there are several subfields and approaches to human geography and that feminist is one of many (others include marxist,critical,cultural etc) so there wouldn't be enough time for more than half a module on it. So feminism has been incorporated into my friends degree and has been given as much teaching time as possible by the university.

I'm only guessing here as I know very little about geography or how degrees are timetabled.

StewieGriffinsMom, at our university, readers and full professors are still expected to carry out undergrad teaching regardless of gender.

I think sexist attitudes don't affect undergrads or postgrads however. It is more an issue of possibilities for career progression for academics due to the demands of the job.

In maths/science, I don't recall any sexism as a student. But as a researcher in a very driven area of science, it's all a bit "survival of the fittest" - everyone is on soft money (we apply for our own grants), and whether you get them, and the salary you can demand, depends on how your work is thought of (which depends quite a lot on self promotion, ie speaking at international conferences) and how much front you have in asking for an increase. Women tend to be less good at both these things, I find, but in particular I find the first is difficult with small children. My head of department has made it clear my career, chance of next grant will suffer as I do not want to travel to conferences in the US every month. This is the sexist side in science - if you cannot work 60-70 hour weeks, travel all the time, you will not progress.

But, hudd, that's exactly the same argument that people give for doing a module on 'women readers'. Women are roughly half the human race. Why should they only make up half of one module? It would perhaps be more appropriate to allow formal study of feminist geography to be always there as a structuring topic in all the modules?

But I don't know enough about geography and maybe something different is understood by the phrase from what I'm thinking.

Unseen - sexist attitudes don't affect undergrads/postgrads at your university, or don't affect them in general? Do you have equal proportions getting firsts then? Nice!

littlered like you I don't know much about geography but large bits of are gender neutrel because half of it is physical ie there aren't male and female volcanos iysim.

From what I've just read on wikipedia there are 8 approaches to human geography listed so I don't think it would be possible to have a feminist view always there as a structuring topic as you'd have to have 8 different views structuring the topic and this would be too much.

I've no idea if some of the approaches listed are viewed as being more important than others as I'm no geographer.

I guess the point that LRP is making, Hudd, is that all of those topics pertain equally to men and women, and none of them should be addressed using a sexist idea that 'people' really means men unless you explictly label the course 'feminist'. So feminism, while not necessarily conspicuous as a 'structuring principle', should be the very foundation which makes those investigations valid and meaningful. Because otherwise they're purporting to tell a story that, in fact, is being written through a warped lens.

I see what you mean Heartease but to be honest I don't know enough about geography as we said farewell after GCSEs.

I wasn't having a go at you Hudd, just ruminating on the topic. You lasted longer than I did with geography .

But hudd, why should you instead have a masculine view 'always there'? I guess that's the worry, and it sounds as if 'feminist geography' was developed as a way of redressing the balance. I could be wrong about that, but as none of us are geographers it seems a bit pointless to speculate.

As with heart, I bowed out earlier than you with it! (I am so shit at geography, it's not true.)

I expect my irritation is largely coming from my own subject, where the reasons against having a module on 'feminist literature' are much more clear-cut.

Littleredpumpkin - I don't know the numbers for what proportion get firsts. I do know that in sciences, roughly 50% of undergrads are female and roughly 50% of postgrads are female (though this may differ for individual universities/departments). The drop in proportions only really starts at lecturer level and beyond.

That sounds impressive - I hear people complain a lot about imbalance in the sciences.

unseen, were you on the cawks thread? they've gone a bit underground, (think on fb? not sure) but were v good at discussion of women finding academia challenging due to both family circs and departmental inequalities based on gender...

(I am academic.) I was not really aware of sexism as an undergraduate - partly because I was already used to quite male-dominated institutions (from school) and basically I enjoyed them and did well in that environment; partly because at the undergraduate level academia is comparatively equitable; partly youthful naivety! I began to be conscious of it - at an institutional rather than a personal level, for the most part - as a graduate student, as I watched my female contemporaries be more likely to drop out/not apply for funding/not put themselves forward for prizes/not get funding at each stage. As a post-doc - at a very old-fashioned, almost entirely older-male Oxbridge college - I saw real, unthinking sexism. Almost all perfectly nice and well-meaning men individually; just totally oblivious to the reality of the situation for a young women and very complacent about their own views and attitudes. (This was very recently.)

Hmm, Oxbridge isn't coming out of this thread too well, is it?

I was much less aware of sexism as an undergraduate too. I can see some of it now, looking back. But I guess the people who go on after undergraduate level are probably not the people who really found it difficult to cope with the commonest kinds of undergrad. teacher/pupil sexism.

LRP,Huddspur and Heartsease as a geography graduate herself I can tell you that feminist geography is a fairly recent development in geography. It was developed by geographers that felt that most geographical research was male-orientated and didn't take into account the differences in behaviour between men and women.

byrel - i started a dissertation once on gendered use of space

and i gave up geog in the third form.

it was a shock when i realised i had accidentally strayed into a multi-disciplinary world, i tell you.

Ahh, thanks byrel.