Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia

Women's Narratives and Experiences in Higher Education

Stephanie Anne Shelton, Jill Ewing Flynn, Tanetha Jamay Grosland, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Jill Ewing Flynn, Tanetha Jamay Grosland

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319905907
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume explores the diversities and complexities of women's experiences in higher education. Its emphasis on personal narratives provides a forum for topics not typically found in in print, such as mental illness, marital difficulties, and gender identity. The intersectional narratives afford typically disenfranchised women opportunities to share experiences in ways that de-center standard academic writing, while simultaneously making these stories accessible to a range of readers, both inside and outside higher education.

© The Author(s) 2018

Stephanie Anne Shelton, Jill Ewing Flynn and Tanetha Jamay Grosland (eds.)Feminism and Intersectionality in Academiahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90590-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Moments That Became a Book—The Need for Intersectional Women’s Narratives in Academia

Stephanie Anne Shelton¹ , Jill Ewing Flynn² and Tanetha Jamay Grosland³

(1)

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

(2)

University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

(3)

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

End Abstract

Though we did not know it at the time—in fact did not all know one another yet—this book began while casually socializing in November 2014 at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention. Co-editor Jill Ewing Flynn joined several graduate school friends for libations and, as night fell and temperatures dropped, conversations turned to work, family, research, and teaching—with each woman reflecting on how her choices after completing a Ph.D. led her on a different journey than the others. Those women, all recognized on our Acknowledgements page for their importance to this book’s existence, agreed, “THIS conversation could be a session at the conference!”

Fast forwarding one year, co-editor Stephanie Anne Shelton sat as an audience member in an overly air-conditioned hotel conference room at NCTE in November 2015, while Jill and co-editor Tanetha Jamay Grosland sat at a front table as co-speakers with the friends with whom the session was planned in the previous year. The all-women panel aimed to discuss female academics’ personal and professional experiences, with the speakers representing a range of institutions, job titles, and individual identities. Though an early morning session, there was standing room only as women filled the room’s chairs and then began to file along the walls to hear the panel. The session was structured so that each speaker shared her unique trajectory, a discussant wove the various narratives into an overall consideration of the ways that women navigated male-dominated academia, and then the participants invited audience members to share their own experiences within the contexts that the panel had offered. The panelists provided a range of gendered topics for consideration, including the complexities of motherhood, the challenges of being first-generation college graduates, the difficulties of finding an academic career that was a good “fit,” and the realities of being racially underrepresented in higher education. Each presenter discussed how she had experienced the demands of her Ph.D. program and her life as an academic while working to maintain a personal life outside the university setting. Emphasizing the theme of “pathway,” they shared their journeys to their current positions and the different routes that they had taken. Once the remaining time was yielded to those in attendance, dozens of hands reached into the air as women eagerly sought to raise comments and questions.

The energy in the room, buzzing with collective support and sympathetic outrage, empowered women to share a range of experiences and to question a multitude of inequalities. After several minutes, the conversation shifted to focus on what one attendee referred to as “mommy guilt.” Once she introduced this term and reflected aloud on how she often felt torn between the societal expectations of being a successful mother and of being a successful academic, numerous others took up the same thread. For nearly the remainder of the time allotted to audience discussion, those who spoke focused on the seeming impossibility of being both a scholar and mother. This discussion was wonderful, in that it is one that rarely receives true attention in academic settings, and it was clear in many women’s body language that they felt celebration and relief in finally being heard, finally being understood.

However, Stephanie sat in her chair frustrated, fearing the possibility of a backlash if she offered a critique of the trajectory of the discussion. As the session’s scheduled time neared its end, however, she tentatively raised her hand and offered,

I recognize the challenges of motherhood for any woman in our society, and of all of the ways that academia is unkind to mothers. I have absolute respect for all of you who raise children. But, I’m really bothered that the room’s discussions have shifted to focus only on that aspect of what it means to be a woman. I don’t plan to have children, but I certainly share realities with all of you, like being underpaid, undervalued, overworked. And, focusing only on motherhood excludes a lot of different kinds of women.

Issues of child rearing and being a wife had dominated the collective narrative and centered traditional notions of womanhood as heterosexual, as cisgender, and as married partners raising children. Others began to nod; faces registered recognition and agreement. And then, the session was over. Another panel was waiting for the room. As the previously packed space began to empty, Audrey Lensmire, one of the panelists, hastily invited any who were interested in continuing the discussion to gather outside.

That is when we met. Jill, Tanetha, and Audrey left the raised platform and joined Stephanie and chapter author Amy Tondreau in one of the convention center hallways. We each thanked the others for their contributions to the discussion and agreed that considering women’s experiences both within and beyond notions of parenting was important. We agreed that we would submit a revised and expanded NCTE proposal for the following year that would again examine women’s experiences in academia, but with a more intentional emphasis on intersectionality. That was our beginning, and it was one that was strongly committed to exploring a diversity of women’s experiences, identities, and understandings in higher education. And thus the plan for the book was born.

The Political Contexts of Women’s Experiences

In the year following when we three met, the US 2016 Presidential Election was in full force, and it unquestionably shaped us, the places we live and work, and this book. Primary elections winnowed the field down to two major candidates: Hillary Clinton, the first female Presidential candidate to be nominated by a major US political party, and Donald J. Trump, whose controversial, and often derisive, comments regarding a number of groups (e.g., women, those with disabilities, immigrants, Muslims) galvanized the nation’s political landscape. When the three of us met again for our session on women’s experiences in academia at NCTE, it had been less than two weeks since Trump had been declared the next President. This context made our session, which had already been important to us, feel incredibly relevant in new ways.

The discussions that we brought to the conference were proudly feminist, but Trump’s election had thrown the traditional notions of feminism into question. Prior to the election, numerous polls had confidently predicted Clinton’s win (e.g., Rhodan and Johnson 2016; Westcott 2016). In the aftermath, the inevitable sifting through the election data began in an effort to understand how the election had gone so differently than expected. One of the most significant findings was that a cornerstone of Trump’s electorate had been women—specifically, college-educated White women (Featherstone 2016; Scott 2017). Such a result seemed counterintuitive, that women would select Trump as their political voice, when “he was recorded bragging about…grab[bing] women’s genitals without their permission…made degrading comments about a female political rival…[and] has a history of making sexist comments about his employees” (Scott 2017, para. 6). As former First Lady Michelle Obama put it, women who voted for Trump arguably “voted against their own voice” (Hansler 2017).

However, as the nation worked to understand how election predictions had been so inaccurate, many racially minoritized US women were not perplexed, were not at all surprised. The election result was not the origination of the term “White Feminism,” but it was a moment when the term had a clear frame of reference. Author Tamara Winfrey Harris (2016) wrote, “The triumph of President-elect Donald Trump represents the failure of many things. One of them is white feminism” (para. 3). White Feminism is, at its heart, characterized by “the needs of straight, white, middle-class American women” (para. 4) while ignoring the realities and needs of women with multiple intersections, such as racially minoritized women, transwomen, queer women, low-income women, rural women, and disabled women. It is a claim of feminism made by the women who most benefit from the status quo, and that contention is anti-feminist and ultimately hurts all women and all of society.

It was wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Moments That Became a Book—The Need for Intersectional Women’s Narratives in Academia
• Part I. The Superwoman Complex: The Challenges of Family Life for Women in the Academy
• Part II. The Less Traveled and Less Valued Pathways: Examining the Devaluation of Women’s Contributions to the Academy
• Part III. The Importance of Intersectionality: Exploring the Diversities of Women in the Academy
• Part IV. Vulnerability in the Academy: Women Explore Emotionality, Affect, and Self-Care
• Back Matter