Gender equity and academic progression

Independent consultancy where benevolence and honesty meet

This service is no longer available. The information on this page has been archived for reading purposes only.

This service is now closed, except one.

My original consultancy was available for more than two years, and while several women took up the services designed for them not one university did. They were the primary target client because this service was designed to assist a defunct system not its (presumed defunct) people. It shows complete lack of will because universities already know that (investing in) gender parity in professorship hurts their bottom line which is all they care about. They also do not wish to take advice from a woman of colour. They always win. They have too much power. Stark inequity is a design by intention.

This announcement, sadly, is to say that the part of my consultancy designed to engage with universities is no longer available. All of the information about that original service has been archived for reading purposes only. I have done this to protect and preserve the emotional and intellectual labour that underpinned the service design, and to honour the workplace trauma and injustice I continue to survive. I wish to thank the women who thought the knowledge of a woman of colour was worth paying for - because of this experience I kept this part of my service open. I hope this gives you some of the oxygen you might have been looking for when you came to my site.

Dr Pooja Sawrikar, September 2022

 

  • It’s a naturally occurring human cognitive bias, where we attribute the cause of someone’s behaviour to internal factors such as their personality rather than to external factors such as their lived experiences even when they are clear/obvious. We do this to reduce the amount of empathy and therefore responsibility we feel for others’ misfortunes. This helps preserve limited time and attention for ourselves; a self protective mechanism that boots our chances of survival.

    I raise it here to ask that you keep a check on it in yourself. It is too easy to think that I am crazy for being so overwhelming with my many words. Instead, I ask that you see these as the gift of knowledge. It is overwhelming. Much is being shared because much has been forced to be learned. It’s what happens the less the status quo serves you. I ask that you work through this site slowly rather than tune out or place it in the ‘too hard’ basket, so the cognitive load of being a woman in neoliberal academia is at least seen.

  • At the bottom of each page, you will be guided to move to the next one so that you experience the site in the order it was intended. You can also get to each page from the footer.