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22 April, 2014 Misogyny Posing as Measurement: Disrupting the Feminisation Crisis Discourse Professor Louise Morley Centre for Higher Education and Equity.

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Presentation on theme: "22 April, 2014 Misogyny Posing as Measurement: Disrupting the Feminisation Crisis Discourse Professor Louise Morley Centre for Higher Education and Equity."— Presentation transcript:

1 22 April, 2014 Misogyny Posing as Measurement: Disrupting the Feminisation Crisis Discourse Professor Louise Morley Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) University of Sussex, UK (l.morley@sussex.ac.uk)

2 22 April, 2014 Closing the Gender Gap Number of male students globally quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million between 1970-2007. Number of female students rose sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million. Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08 (UNESCO, 2009).

3 22 April, 2014 Women as Pollutants In 2004, Dame Carol Black (then President of the Royal College of Physicians): Increasing numbers of women in medicine might lead to the profession losing status and influence. (Lurie, 1993; Whitcomb, 2004) dominant position of females (HEPI Report, 2009:3)

4 22 April, 2014 Post-Feminism/ New Gender Regimes Narratives of crisis used to justify a return to values perceived as being under threat. Declaration of crisis reads facts/figures to become a declaration of war against the source of threat (Ahmed, 2004). Young womens assemblage for productivity/ phallic girls/ vengeful patriarchal norms reinstated (McRobbie, 2007). The duality of sexual difference is re- confirmed. Gender norms are re-consolidated and re-stabilised ( Blackmore, 2010).

5 22 April, 2014 Crisis Discourse of Feminisation Reinforces gender dichotomy/ binary frame/ seesaw; Is about fear of the Other/ disparagement of difference; Underpinned by essentialism; Reduces gender to quantitative change/ confusing sex and gender; About hyper-visibility i.e. women as dangerous; Suggests a breach of social norms. (Leathwood and Read, 2009)

6 22 April, 2014 Whose Academy is it Anyway? Male Academy = Hosts/ Victims Female Students = Abusive Guests A womans place is in the minority Newcomers not knowing their place A ceiling on womens participation? Reminiscent of immigration discourses (invasion fears).

7 22 April, 2014 Feminisation= Damaging/Emasculating Men? Dominant group reconstructed as victims; Assumption that womens success has come about by damaging men; White male injury now read as the same as subaltern injury. If atmospheric oestrogens dont get them, womens education and economic independence will.

8 22 April, 2014 Decontextualised, Common-sense non- Analytical Understanding of Gender? Fails to challenge wider gendered power relations; Fails to increase womens rights in wider civil society; Allows women to succeed in HE, but not in labour market. Positions women as (turbo charged) consumers, but not in powerful positions as knowledge producers/ gatekeepers.

9 22 April, 2014 The Higher Educated (overperforming) Woman is Responsible for... societal destabilisation; a crisis in masculinity; devaluing of professions/ academic credentials/ institutions; detraditionalisation.

10 22 April, 2014 Undoing Gender (Butler, 2004) Feminisation = Resistance to distributive justice Subversion of gender equality Individual, not collective rights Re-doing of gender. How to build on the momentum of womens increased participation: to undo gender in the academy transform knowledge production imagine a different future for higher education?

11 22 April, 2014 Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) ESRC Seminar Series: Imagining the University of the Future http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrc seminarshttp://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrc seminars Special issue of Contemporary Social Science (Volume 6:2, 2011) entitled: Challenge, Change or Crisis in Global Higher Education?


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