Women in Academia Discussion

The Feminist Reading Group met yesterday to discuss Women in Academe, in all its forms and valences. Here are a few of the points we discussed for further interrogation:
• We briefly addressed the Globe and Mail article in terms of the numbers and how mothers make less money than single women and single mothers even less money than mothers who are partnered.
• There is a set stereotype/idea/understand

ing of what makes a successful academic and it usually involves publishing and conferencing. This idea needs to be transformed ideally in such a way that it is more inclusionary of people who don’t fall into the presumed categories of single, male, childless, etc.
• These two things, publishing and conferencing are problematized and difficult if you are a mother.
• Student Parent Associations are a good way to both make connections to other parents on campus as well as can be a place where exchanges occur in regards to babysitting, outings, etc.
• There is all of guilt involved with being both an academic and a mother, no matter what you are doing, studying, reading, writing or spending time with your child, one always feels like they should be doing the other, thus guilt sets in.
• Mothers or even partners, couples, within departments often feel marginalized, that their children or their significant others are not welcome at functions. The discourse around this marginalizing is complex.
• One member evoked a discourse of “outing” in relation to their position as a mother, she felt that it was time that she moved to creating more exposure of her position as mother by letting others meet her children and partners.
• This discourse of outing relates the position of academic mother to other marginalized people within the departments, queer academics for one.
• Most of the academic articles on women in academia emphasize the need for exposure and for alliances to be made between all the marginalized people within any department or university, mothers, queers, racial minorities, etc.
• These articles also emphasize the need for more studies to be done on women in academe in general, both from a pedagogical standpoints as well as economic standpoints.

The FRG thanks everyone for coming out to this, our last meeting of the academic year and we hope that you all have a pleasant summer and join us again in the Fall. See you in September!

Save Guelph's Women's Studies Program

Below is a copy of the letter (it is the same as the first) and a new e-mail list (just with the addition of the provost)


To Whom It May Concern;



I am writing in concern about the future of the Women’s Studies program at the University of Guelph. It has come to the knowledge of the public that the University is considering cutting the Women’s Studies program. The closure of this program would reflect negatively on the University. It would signal a lack of support for safe and inclusive spaces around campus. It signals the University’s lack of respect for feminist theory and the perspective of marginalized voices within academia. It signals the University’s lack of understanding of how integral the Women’s Studies program is to the University as a whole. It is not only Women’s Studies students who benefit from the Women’s Studies program. Students from outside the program sit in on small Women’s Studies classes to engage in a unique dialogue not found any where on campus. Students from within the Women’s Studies program attend other classes and feel empowered to speak out about issues that might otherwise never be raised.

To close the Women’s Studies Program shows that the University of Guelph does not feel this program is important enough to work for. It shows that the University thinks we live in a society of equals – when really, we all know that is not the case. The University of Guelph has one of the oldest Women’s Studies program in the country, it has students that are willing to fight for it, who go on to become professors at Universities, who go on to become administration at our own University, and who go on to be graduate students at many different institutions.

The closure of the Women’s Studies Program puts other Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies at risk. We cannot set the example that these programs are not integral to a learning environment. Instead of closing these important avenues of discussion, we should be fostering and sustaining them. Closing the Women’s Studies Program is foreclosing on the work that needs to be done to work towards a just society.





Sincerely,



(Your Name Here) .


Send to:

Neil MacLusky
nmaclusk@uoguelph.ca

Don Bruce (Dean of Arts)
don.bruce@uoguelph.ca

Sherry Kinsella (Admin Assistant to Dean of Arts)
skinsell@uoguelph.ca

Alastair Summerlee (President)
a.summerlee@exec.uoguelph.

ca

Brenda Whiteside (Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs)
b.whiteside@exec.uoguelph.ca

Christi Garneau-Scott
csaacad@uoguelph.ca


Maureen Mancuso (Provost & VP Academic)
m.mancuso@exec.uoguelph.ca

or m.mancuso@exec.uoguelph.ca, csaacad@uoguelph.ca, b.whiteside@exec.uoguelph.ca, a.summerlee@exec.uoguelph.ca, skinsell@uoguelph.ca, don.bruce@uoguelph.ca, nmaclusk@uoguelph.ca


Please sign the petition that can be found here:
Petition

Women in Academia

The Feminist Reading Group invites you to join us for our last meeting of the term on Wednesday, March 25th, from 1:30-3:00 pm in UC 384. This meeting will provide a forum for discussion around the particular challenges women in academia may face (including not only forms of systemic sexism, but also age-related discrimination). We will also discuss the challenges and rewards of motherhood for women in academic careers.

No formal preparation for this meeting is required, as we will provide select materials for discussion at the meeting itself. If anyone has material that they would like to contribute for discussion (including online sources), please feel free to send it along ahead of time.

All are welcome!

See these urls for possible points of interest for this meeting.

Journal 1

Journal 2

Globe and Mail article

Celebrity Feminism/Feminists Discussion

The FRG met to discuss how affective the intersection of celebrity and feminism is in making feminism acceptable/accessible to all. Below are point form notes of issues that were raised. Please feel free to continue the discussion on these issues here, or on the FB group page:

• Celebrity Feminism seems to be very commercialized and centres around geographical limitations to activism. We buy something "here" to help women "over there".
• There is definitely and interaction of feminism and humanism in the "This is what a feminist looks like" campaign
• There also seems to be an importance placed on aesthetics in that campaign however. Feminists "look" as certain way, or at least they are supposed to. This creates a subsectionality to the movement.
• Thus ultimately this "this is what a feminist looks like" campaign seems to re-inscribe the very problems it is supposed to eradicate.
• In the Avon campaign the bracelet is the locus of power and empowerment
• This campaign is vague in its purpose and seems to inspire women who take such activism at face value without digging into the deeper issues and motivations.
• Seems to misrepresent itself as a UN partner/program.
• It never uses the "feminist" word in the campaign.
  
• Is Angelina Jolie a better feminist than others because she refuses to engage in the commercialized "performance" of the feminist? She actively refuses to engage with that discourse. Seems to use her silence as resistance.
• Allison Janey as possibly a good example of celebrity feminism, because she does not necessarily engage with commercialized or problematized activism. She addresses the issues using media but in a covert way.
  
• Hillary Clinton, is she signaling a movement towards feminism and feminist ideals to the US government?

Please join us again on February 25th from 1:30-3:30 in UC 384 when we will be discussing Motherhood, Feminism and Careers in Academia.

Celebrity Feminisms

The Feminist Reading Group invites you to join us for our first meeting of the term on Wednesday, January 28^th, from 1:30-3:00 pm in UC 384: “Celebrity Feminisms.” This meeting will interrogate the cultural politics of celebrity feminism, and celebrity-endorsed feminist campaigns—from the Feminist Majority’s celebrity “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” campaign, to Reese Witherspoon’s endorsement of the Avon Empowerment Fund and the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women.

No formal preparation for this meeting is required, as we will provide select material from news and media sources at the meeting itself. If anyone has material that they would like to contribute for discussion (including online sources), please feel free to send it along ahead of time. Hope to see you there!!

Here are a few links to start:

Celebrity Feminists

Reese and Avon Campaign

Avon Campaign

Maher on Feminism

Faux Celebrity with Real Celebrifeminist

Celebrity Feminism and Magazines

Live Nude Girls Unite!

Today the Feminist Reading Group screened the documentary, "Live Nude Girls Unite!" about the unionizing of workers at a San Francisco peep show. The documentary led into questions of how feminists and feminism is positioned in relation to this type of work. Here are a few point form comments and questions that were posed and addressed:

• Documentary suggested that the way to fight patriarchy is by taking their money. Is this intersection of economics and social issues a viable place to situate a fight?
  
• Ultimately, is sex work empowering, or is it only empowering as a means to an end, specifically an educational end? Many of the workers were Women Studies or Philosophy graduates, does being positioned as educated or going towards education change the way this type of work is seen, as opposed to say it just being a job to pay rent or bills, without a larger goal? This is also seemingly a class issue.
  
• There are moral divide operators. The mind is being respected here but the body seemingly isn't.
  
• There are good examples of this mind body divide as seen in characters on TV today. For example Catherine Willows on CSI was an exotic dancer who did it to advance her education. Similarly Lady Heather, the dominatrix character, used her money to receive a psychology degree.
• The documentary also spoke to the intersection of sex work and social work and how those two are not mutually exclusive positions.
• There was a large amount of classification done by the peep show managers along lines of race, hair colour, and body type, yet a lot of the bodies were the same. Little discussion was given in the documentary about body types in specific. Is this comfort level, a level where discussion is not necessary, the logical conclusion to say the type of activisms that Dove commercials promote?
• Was there ever really a threat of the peep show going out of business? How does this reflect in the union/management negotiations.
  
• This documentary promotes the choice of sex work as a feminist choice and not a bad moral judgment a la McKinnon.
  
• This can also tie into Irigaray and her work on the economy of the female body.
  

The next Feminist Reading Group meeting will be sometime in mid January. Details to be announced and posted soon.
Thanks to all that came out for this lively discussion.
THE FRG

FRG Today: Sex Trade Work, "Live Nude Girls Unite!"

The Feminist Reading Group invites all interested participants to join us for our second meeting of the term on Wednesday, November 12^th, from 1:00-3:00 pm in UC 274. We will be screening Vicky Funari and Julia Query’s Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000), a documentary film about a group of San Francisco sex workers and their efforts to unionize in the late 1990s. The 75-minute film screening will be followed by an almost certainly lively discussion on sex workers, working conditions, and rights.

We hope to see you there!