In Search of Progress: Female Academics after Jane Eyre
Keywords:
Educational alternatives, progressive education, alternative education, difference, educational theory, educational philosophyAbstract
Charlotte Brontë’s novel about a female educator, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. This current paper asks: what progress has been enjoyed by female academics since Charlotte’s day? Although women are no longer disbarred from academia, there is international evidence that women in higher education experience gender discrimination both as students and academics. This paper therefore borrows from Jane Eyre to define “progress” as the recognition that women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer” (Brontë, 2006, pp. 129-130). It questions the extent of this progress by asking ten female academics working in four UK universities to respond to quotations from Jane Eyre read in conjunction with recent media stories about education and gender. Some participants claimed that women may be antagonistic towards female academics who defy notions of domesticity, while other participants appeared resistant to the idea that discrimination exists. This paper argues that, together, these beliefs normalise career stagnation as the “natural” outcome of women’s alleged biological preference for non-agentic behaviour and risk isolating women who are wounded by discrimination. This study suggests that progress requires the universal rejection of culturally imposed limitations to the exercise of women’s faculties.
References
Aiston, S. J. & Jung, J. (2015). Women academics and research productivity: An international comparison. Gender and Education, 27(3), 205-220.
Asimaki, A., Zenzefilis, V. & Koustouraki, G. (2016). The access and development of female academics in the university field in Greece: University of Patras case study. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, 150-162.
Barker, J. (2001). The Brontës. London: Phoenix Press.
Barker, J. (2006). The Brontës: A life in letters. London: The Folio Society.
BBC News (2017). Election 2017: Record number of female MPs. Available online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40192060 [Retrieved 16th November 2017].
Beauvoir, S. de (1993). The second sex (Parshley, H. M. Trans. & Ed.). London: Everyman’s Library.
Brontë, C. (2006). Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Classics.
Brunner, C. (2005). Women performing the superintendency; Problematizing the normative alignment of conceptions of power and constructions of gender. In: Collard, J. & Reynolds, C. (Eds.) Leadership, gender & culture in education: Male & female perspectives (pp. 121-135). Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Court, M. (2005). Negotiating and reconstructing gendered leadership discourses. In: Collard, J. & Reynolds, C. (Eds.) Leadership, gender & culture in education: Male & female perspectives (pp. 3-17). Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Davies, B. (1991). The concept of agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 30, 42-53.
Duff, A.J. (2013). Performance management coaching: Servant leadership and gender implications. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 34(3), 204-221.
Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism. London: Verso.
Gaskell, E. (1960). The life of Charlotte Brontë. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Gilbert, S. M. & Gubar, S. (2000). The madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (2nd ed). Yale: Yale Nota Bene.
Greer, G. (1970). The female eunuch. London: MacGibbon & Kee Ltd.
HESA. (2017). Introduction – Staff in higher education 2015/16. Available online at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications/staff-2015-16/introduction [Retrieved 9th November 2017].
Ingham, P. (2006). Authors in context: The Brontës. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Koenig, A. M., Eagly, A. H., Mitchell, A. A. & Ristikari, T. (2011). Are leader stereotypes masculine? A meta-analysis of three research paradigms. Psychological Bulletion, 137(4), 616-642.
Leisyte, L. & Hosch-Dayican, B. (2014). Changing academic roles and shifting gender inequalities: A case analysis of the influence of the teaching-research nexus on the academic career prospects of female academics in the Netherlands. Journal of Workplace Rights, 17(3-4), 467- 490.
Marchant, T. & Wallace, M. (2013). Sixteen years of change for Australian female academics: Progress or segmentation? Australian Universities Review, 55(2), 60-71.
OECD (2017). The pursuit of gender equality: An uphill battle. OECD Publishing: Paris. Available online at: http://www.oecd.org/gender/the-pursuit-of-gender-equality-9789264281318-en.htm [Retrieved 08/11/17]
Phipps, A. & Young, I. (2014). Neoliberalism and “lad cultures†in higher education. Sociology, 49(2), 305-322.
Reay, D. & Ball, S. J. (2000). Essentials of female management: Women’s ways of working in the education market. Educational Management & Administration, 28(2), 145-159.
Rich, A.(1995) On lies, secrets and silence. Selected prose 1966-1978. London: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd. .
Ricketts, R. & Pringle, J. K. (2014). Going up? Perceived career progress of female general staff across New Zealand universities. Journal of Education Policy and Management, 36(5), 496-508.
Schuller, T. (2017). The Paula principle: How and why women work below their level of competence. London: Scribe.
Schmitz, S. (2010). Sex, gender, and the brain – Biological determinism versus socio-cultural constructivism. In Klinge, I. & Wiesemann, C. (Eds.) Sex and gender in biomedicine: Theories, methodologies, results (pp. 57-76). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen.
The Guardian. (2016). Gender gap in UK degree subjects doubles in eight years, Ucas study finds. Available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/05/gender-gap-uk-degree-subjects-doubles-eight-years-ucas-study [Retrieved 13th November 2017].
The Guardian. (2017). I can’t get a permanent lecturing job – Is it because I’m of childbearing age? Available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/jul/06/i-cant-get-a-permanent-lecturing-job-is-it-because-im-of-childbearing-age [Retrieved 10th November 2017].
Thormählen, M. (2007). The Brontës and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Walter, N. (2010). Living dolls: The return of sexism. London: Virago.
Ward, S. (2017). Using Shakespeare’s plays to explore education policy today: Neoliberalism through the lens of renaissance humanism. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wardman, N. P. (2017). “So you can’t blame us then?â€: Gendered discourses of masculine irresponsibility as biologically determined and peer pressured in upper-primary school contexts. Gender and Education, 29(6), 796-812.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License of their choice (usually CCBY 3.0 unported, but determined at the proofing stage by consultation with the Editor - readers looking for copyright permissions are required to do this on a case by case basis) that allows others to share the work in some way with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. We appreciate authors placing a link to the Other Education site wherever they choose to offer a PDF download to the original OE article.