I find reading history tedious, but constructive for taking future aim. People listen when you throw out an historical "fact." Rarely do I engage people who counter feminist positions with, "but so much has changed with regard to the status of women... feminism is unnecessary," or, worse, "but women have achieved equality now, so..." but I often take up backlash regarding women in Canadian higher education, as this phenomenon remains en vogue.
Indeed, one of the most striking features of Canadian universities at present is their feminization, even at the graduate level. This astonishing reversal from a man-dominated domain, occurring only over the past 30 years, undermines the question of women’s status in university education, as media and scholarly attention has turned to “poor boys” sympathies. In other words, in fearing the boys sliding down the academic pyramid, we're ignoring the real status of things outside of enrollment figures.
Fear mongering around women's unprecedented enrollment in formal education is alive and well. Exactly one year ago, Canada’s largest national-circulation newspaper (the G&M) published a weeklong series on the “failing boys” problem. Articles included “Failing boys and why we should care,” “The endangered male teacher,” “Are we medicating disorder or treating boyhood as a disease?” “Red-flagged as problem pupils, are boys misunderstood?” “Is affirmative action for men the answer to enrollment woes?” “We can’t tolerate failing boys,” “Are parents to blame [for failing boys]?” “Failing boys: What other countries are doing,” “Designated scholarships overwhelmingly favour women,” and finally, “Are we failing boys?” The series presented a number of concerns regarding the status of boys lagging behind girls in schools, but the overwhelming sentiments were that boys are victims of feminized pedagogies and this presents major concerns for Canadian society.
This moral panic is bewildering when put into context. Since progression to graduate and professional university programs reached gender parity in the 1990s, education theorists have questioned the problem of women’s access (usually measured by enrollment) as a valid measure of progress. In spite of women’s current high enrollment status, women still face issues of equal access to university in terms of field of study, time to degree completion, institution type, level of faculty appointment, pay equity, harassment, and classroom expectations. Further, university classrooms remain masculinist (for example, men tend to speak out more frequently in class and for longer periods, and women professors are expected to take on caring roles as discussion leaders) regardless of women’s dominance in numbers. Women’s increased representation on campuses has not been matched with equal rewards for their accomplishments, even within the Ivory Tower. The further you depart from the Tower, it seems, the worse it gets. Damn. Better stay put.
Today I'm reading the history of the University of Toronto and I'm jolted by how prevalent discourses circulating through women's position in academia in 1880 are still in motion. Women's acceptance into higher education has shifted dramatically, but some undercurrent around the appropriateness of female scholarship remains.
After the adoption of coeducation (in some programs) at U of Toronto in 1884, the "crisis of femininity" carried faculty debates and news stories. Anne Rochon Ford writes, "If women were too 'bluestocking' and serious in their studies, they were often viewed as being not feminine enough. On the other hand, if they were too involved in extracurricular nonacademic activities, they were seen as not taking higher education seriously."
Have we done away with this sentiment? Of course we've seen empirical shifts in women's status, as well as attitudinal shifts among new generations of women and men. From my man friends, I field "you're too complicated" more often than "the blood in your brain will dry out your ovaries."
But in both the pragmatic and symbolic realms, I sense an undercurrent of femininity crisis. Current debates in the Globe and Mail suggest women are missing their callings as mothers because they've been brainwashed/manipulated/misled by second wave feminism. This biological clock talk is just a subdued version of the 1890 crisis of blood draining from ovaries. Over 100 years have gone by, and intellectualism still plays rival to giving birth.
It's discouraging to think that for all we've progressed, we have not made space in our imaginations or institutions for the feminine intellectual body. Ask an undergraduate student to draw a picture of "a professor" and students across genders draw men in lab coats. Sure, our medical journals no longer question the appropriateness of women's desire for higher learning, but our mainstream media certainly does.
In 1894, a woman student at U of T writes, "The boys reserve the front rows of benches for their sister students who often march down the aisle to the classic strains of 'Where are you going my pretty maid?' or in tones of deepest pathos, 'You are lost and gone forever, oh my darling Clementine.'" As a male friend of mine laughed at the ridiculousness of this, I recalled a moment from my undergrad. I remember my Econ professor telling me that a doctoral degree is a liability to my financial capital and a swift knock to my social capital. I would graduate "poor, ugly and alone," he said. Hmph. A cocktail of naïvité, determination and pride propelled me forward and perhaps it still does.
As I move to reading about the recent historical situation of women in the Canadian academy, I'm learning that a generation of women professors who seem to "have it all" married their profs when they were graduate students. To me, this is a logical economic model. It's also an acceptable cultural script (aside from temporarily raised eyebrows at the "lecherous professor" among women faculty... which seem to reverse eventually). This tactic by young women is an important signal - women's opportunity still exists in a state of dependency that is not reciprocated by men counterparts.
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