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I could have done anything
The quagmire of how we as a species came to devalue women to the extent we do is so vast that I can’t put my arms around the problem and hold it; its breadth is uncontainable. In its full horrid scope it includes abuse, neglect, violence, rape, death, exploitation, trafficking, slavery, silencing, manipulation, minimising, belittling, objectification, fear, denial, harassment, exclusion, and control. If you have not experienced these things first hand, it sounds surreal; a defense mechanism to cope with the shock. But disbelief adds insult to injury. Burden of proof falls on the already crushed victim. You also never get personally outraged enough to want to fix it, keeping the same predictable injustices in place. I can only do my one little part. This is what I chose. You can learn more about the journey that led to this point here:
Research grants | Pay gap and publishing | Sense of agency bias | Feminist university strategic plan
Academia struggles to see viscous encumbered gender that women scholars do their work amongst, through, between, around. After 20 years of service to the industry, I was on my way to being another statistic: a hard-working woman who would become a tribal elder that others borrow wisdom from but lived in poverty. Take well exceeded give. My ‘professional age’ and its value fight to be seen. Once finally recognised, it is the first on the ‘cheaper replacement chopping block’ during times of financial duress. Archaic status quo assumptions that women live in households with access to a man’s “superior” income-earning worth and ability must go. Her work and her worth stand alone. Just because money is something we all need and want, it does not mean capitalism is the great universal leveller: it just widens the disparities in opportunities along other socio-politicised categories.
Is advocacy for justice thought leadership or trouble making?
When thought leadership is a prerequisite for Full Professorship … Houston, we have a problem.
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I’d like to say this service is in no way ‘neoliberal corporate lean-in feminism for the 1%’, but I can’t - I work within limits that create contortions, complexities, and contradictions. But I can say that status and money are secondary drivers - foremost, my work is driven by the desire for the wisdom of women to be systematically valued. It is not the title itself that is being chased (power for power's sake), it is the respect that title signifies (earned and recognised knowledge power).
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Excluding many modernised/urbanised families in India, it is common knowledge the mother-in-law is mean to the daughter-in-law. The devaluation she navigated when once the daughter-in-law herself, will eventually contort her into policing the patriarchy. Men can sit back and let women do the work of keeping the system in place. The new daughter-in-law will wonder where her empathy went, having walked in those very shoes. She may even find refuge and support from a man within the extended family network structurally powerful enough to afford to be softer and more benevolent. The playing out of social forces as a result of gender power imbalance and entrenched patriarchy are neither simple nor kind. The parallels as they play out in western corporate/mercantile feminism are that sometimes a woman expected to be ‘on side’ fails to be, and the man expected to not is.
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This website may come across your screen at any point in your career, or cause any number of emotions. Maybe you are at the beginning of your career and feel rage with solidarity, which you can express because you have nothing to lose. Maybe you are mid-career and want nothing to do with all this ‘gender business’, distancing yourself from the tarnishing brush of the risk that comes with speaking up; you keep your head low, so you can just get over the line. Maybe you’re older and not so angry or threatened anymore so simply smile knowingly. Wherever you are, I honour why you are there.
Beware the glass cliff
“What can you do to keep women out of powerful positions? Set them up to fall” Ijeoma Oluo