My first encounter of the dominance of boy theory and theorists at supposedly feminist informed and ‘friendly’ conferences was a shock to the system. When I was in my first year of my postgraduate degree I had the opportunity to go to a very large established Cultural Studies conference. The specificity of the conference, location and people are irrelevant. I am certain that this story will be familiar to many and could easily stand in for experiences that others have had. These stories tend to be silenced publically. You will not usually find the reporting of academic sexism at conferences on the (now obligatory) twitter hashtag. Rather these stories are told in hushed, angry tones between feminist friends and colleagues unable to compute the hypocrisy of the situation that they have witnessed; gender inequality playing out so palpably in sites that they should not.

I was fortunate that my experiences of conferences when I attended this one had thus far been of small feminist arranged ones, which were by no means perfect but overall had a strong feminist drive with an awareness of the importance of practicing feminist politics. Practices such as conscious decision making about panel speakers, and others that #womantheory have helpfully pointed out. I (naively) came to this large Cultural Studies conference with around 300 attendees assuming that these types of practices were infiltrated into the very core of Cultural Studies, and as such this would be fundamental to the organisation of the conference. Women theorists had been so vital to the discipline of Cultural Studies, how could they not be?

Unfortunately, I was wrong. From the start, I had some gripes with the theme of the conference in itself. It was a conference professing a ‘new’ turn, which always makes me dubious. I soon realised that what was being cast aside and undermined in the ‘newness’ professed in this conference was the importance of feminist politics on inequality and power relations and how essential this is to Cultural Studies. As Sara Ahmed notes:

I would say that in the landscape of contemporary critical theory there is a sense – sometimes spoken, sometimes not – that we need to “get beyond” categories like gender and race: as if the categories themselves have restricted our understanding; as if the categories themselves are the blockage points. […] The hope invested in new terms (movement, becoming, assemblages, capacities) can thus be considered a way of “overing” as if these terms are how we “get over” the categories themselves. (Ahmed, 2013)

The majority of the actual conference was not necessarily my main issue, although papers with gender perspectives were largely labelled as such in the programme, whereas all other panels were labelled through their seemingly ‘apolitical’ content even if they were informed through these perspectives. A move that I felt marked the former types of panels as ‘other’ to the invisibility of the white, male perspectives that were not named as such.

It was not until the closing plenary, however, that the reality of the silencing of feminist theorists really hit home. As I sat with the other attendees, a fairly diverse audience from multiple countries, waiting to hear the closing panel I was taken aback to see a majority white, male panel shuffle on to the stage before me. These well-known academics sitting in front of me were meant to reflect and discuss where Cultural Studies was now. As the closing plenary began I was enraged as slowly, one by one, in some sort of bizarre display of male back patting and camaraderie, the six men began to discuss how fantastic Cultural Studies was citing the ‘leaders’ in the field – all men from Anglophone countries – and just how far the discipline had come. I looked around engulfed by rage and rolled my eyes at my feminist colleagues who sat beside me. Surely, I was not the only one who found this display unbelievable? If the actual presence of a male dominated panel in a supposedly feminist aware conference was bad enough, the content of what these men were saying was even worse. I did not hear the word ‘politics’ spoken once in any meaningful way, let alone any reference to feminist politics or female theorists.

I felt disappointed, saddened and angry. Perhaps these feelings were more acute as this was my first experience of this type of sexist display in academia, which felt all the more pernicious due to the fact that this was at a Cultural Studies conference. But as the second of two women spoke, I will never forget the wave of appreciation I felt for her as she took on the position of feminist killjoy. This woman began to speak with such directness and measured anger about the politics of Cultural Studies, the inequality still felt by many and how this focus on the ‘new’ can overshadow said structural inequality around gender, race, class “etc”. She gestured to the room that we were in where the grand pictures of solely white, aristocratic men that adorned the walls of the room only served to antagonise and remind us of how long the history of white male supremacy is, and how this would be seeming to repeat itself in front of our very eyes. Amongst other points, she was clearly making subtle reference to the display before us.

I do not know what it must feel like to be a feminist killjoy on a male dominated panel in a room full of around 300 people questioning the very heart of the theme of a conference. I imagine it is quite terrifying. This academic was (and still is) established in her field so perhaps she has become more used to taking up this position, or perhaps every time she is forced to appropriate this position she has to push herself to override her fears and exhaustion to be the subject that speaks up against inequality. Regardless, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for a number of reasons. Firstly, she showed me how important it is to not be complacent in the assumption that issues of power no less affect these types of sites that are supposedly more aware. Secondly, that she had the courage to speak up to disrupt and fracture the dominance of boy theory in that moment, which cemented how important it is to do – in the little and big ways – as a form of collective action. I am sure that I was not alone in feeling this as she cracked the mirror that supposedly reflected ‘where Cultural Studies is now’.

Written for Womantheory by Sara De Benedictis, King’s College London

The Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University ofWarwick:

‘DARING TO BE BAD’? An interdisciplinary workshop on rage, frustration and destructiveness in feminist theory and activism

With talks and performances by MARIANNA FOTAKI, RUTH PEARCE, RENI EDDO-LODGE, KAROLINA SZPYRKO, MEENA KANDASAMY and LAURIE PENNY

In her Bitch Manifesto from 1970, the feminist journalist and activist Joreen claimed that women should be “militant” and “dangerous”. She and other radical feminists made no secret of their frustration about and anger against patriarchal institutions and the prevailing gender norms, but radical feminism has attracted much criticism since. What role have negative emotions played in feminism in the past, and how shall we relate to them today? Is rage an affect that we have to overcome? Or can it help us to fight against sexism, racism and other forms of oppression?

When: Thursday 12 June 2014, 4.00 – 6.30 pm

Where: The Wolfson Research Exchange, 3^rd Floor, Library, University of Warwick

To register, please send an email to R. Yunus@warwick.ac.uk or Katharina.Karcher@yahoo.com

You don’t have to be a woman, or a feminist, to ‘do’ or to ‘support’ WomanTheory.

Supporting WomanTheory is about a commitment to recognising the contribution of women to the academy and to intellectual and public life. And acting on this.

Here are a few things you can do to show your support for WomanTheory:

1. Refuse to be part of a panel at an academic event where there are no women speakers.

2. When organising events, consider the gender composition of your keynotes and panelists. And facilitate the inclusion of younger/ early career academics.

3. Discard reading lists and teaching material that include only books and articles by men.

4. Change your citation practice: don’t just cite more ‘boy theory’

5. Refuse to be a member of editorial boards that don’t include or are seriously low on women

6. Complain to your institution – or conference organiser – if they fail to provide adequate creche and childcare  facilities for staff and delegates

7. Encourage and support junior colleagues

8. Don’t leave all the student care and academic ‘housekeeping’ (including picking up used coffee cups) to your female colleagues.

It’s pretty simple really. So come on, get involved! Join the Revolution.

*You can download this guide as a poster to put up in your institution.

In case you missed this, there was a brilliant – though depressing – article in the Guardian earlier this month about the massive gender disparities in academic research funding.

Written by an ‘anonymous academic’, the piece discusses the impact of gender bias in the peer review process of grant applications on the career paths of female academics.  As the writer states, evidence from Sweden suggests that female applicants are judged considerably more harshly in the peer review process than their male counterparts. These problems exceed the grant awarding process – they are also present in academic publishing:

‘The heart of the problem seems to be the perceived competence of men, and the fact that women often have to work much harder to be seen as competent. This is also evident in peer review for journal publications. We know that when double-blind peer reviewing was introduced for academic journals, there was a significant increase in female-first-authored papers – a difference of 7.9% of female-first-authored papers, and a 33% increase in the representation of female authors more broadly.’

Furthermore, the Guardian article refers to the ‘friendship bonus’ and forms of nepotism at play within the peer review process.  This echoes excellent research by Kelly Coate which explored the gendered hierarchies of ‘esteem indicators’ operating within academia.  Kelly’s research with academics shows how male academics rate their work of  higher quality than women. Furthermore, data from their project shows how male and female staff are differentially positioned and read in relation to the position of the ‘star academic’ or ‘leading scholar’. As one participant in their study stated:

‘There is a prevailing attitude that women are the worker bees and men are the shining academic stars. The work than women do in this university needs to be recognised‘.

The gendered dualisms between mind/ body that inform who can occupy such positions, and the invisibility of women’s labour in the academy - the doing of pastoral and administrative work that is deemed outside of and less than scholarly activities – need to be challenged.

Returning to the issue of peer review and research funding, with applications for academic promotion judged on academic publications and research funding, these inequities have massive implications for female academics’ chances of promotion and career development. No doubt these processes contribute to the huge disparities in the number of male and female professors in higher education where only a dismal 22% of professors in the UK are women.

DO WE STILL NEED A FEMINIST THEORY? SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACADEMIA AND SOCIETY IN ITALY

Friday 4th April, 2-4pm, WB 3.02, University of East London, Docklands Campus, West Building

Olivia Guaraldo, University of Verona, Italy

Is feminism still transformative or has it lost its ability to connect theory and practice and influence society as a whole? What are the needs that emerge from grassroots movements today? What happens to still unsolved issues such as inequality or the misogynistic imaginary at work in mainstream popular culture? How does ‘professional’ or ‘academic’ feminist theory respond? Are we still able to address political and cultural demands that come from ‘outside’ the academia? In this lecture I address these issues drawing on the Italian experience between 2009 and 2011, a time during which the country witnessed an escalation of sexual scandals under Berlusconi. On February 13th, 2011, a nation-wide demonstration with over a million participants took place in many Italian cities. A new popular and moderate women’s movement was being formed, the SNOQ, (acronym for Se Non Ora Quando? – which means If not now, when? ). The demonstration voiced a need “to strongly affirm women’s dignity” and to draw attention to the fact that, despite decades of feminist activity, Italy remained a patriarchal country. The large popular demonstration was preceded by a debate among feminist intellectuals on the opportunities the event might present. Some were against it, denouncing the ‘moralism’ inherent in the use of the term ‘dignity’, while others recognized the necessity of a public expression of women’s indignation. In my view this debate expressed some major tensions in Italian feminism and its relationship with society at large, and to some extent shows why Italy, in spite of its feminist tradition, still remains a patriarchal country.

Olivia Guaraldo
After receiving a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, Olivia Guaraldo began researching and teaching at the University of Verona, Italy, where she is currently Adjunct Professor in Political Philosophy. Her main topics of research are 20th century political thought, feminist political theory, literary theory. Guaraldo attempts to combine a politically situated approach to philosophy with a ‘gender sensitive’ approach and a literary oriented analysis of culture, thought and society. Her publications include Storylines. Narrative, History and Politics from an Arendtian Perspective, SoPhi, Jyväskylä: 2001; Politica e racconto. Trame arendtiane della modernità, Roma: Meltemi, 2003. Guaraldo has edited and introduced the Italian translations of Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (Rome 2004) and Undoing Gender (Rome 2006). She has also edited and introduced the Italian translation of Hannah Arendt’s essay Lying in Politics (Milan 2006). Her latest book, forthcoming, is a critical genealogy of violence in Western political thought, carried out from the viewpoint of vulnerability, loss, mourning. Continue reading →

Palgrave have launched a new book series - Gender & Education - edited by Yvette Taylor (Weeks Centre, London South Bank University)

Continue reading →