Introduction to "Educating Women/Women's Education: In the Postsecondary Context"

Christine Overall is a Professor of Philosophy and holds a Research Chair at Queen's University, Kingston. In 1998 she was the first fem inist philosopher to be elected to the Royal Society of Canada. She is the author of five books and has published over a hundred journal articles and book chapters in the areas of feminist philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of education.

For over three decades I have been teaching and researching in an academic discipline, philosophy, where women have, historically, constituted only a sm all m inority of the practitioners. Even today, women are only about 25% of the members of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
I spent academic year 2006-07 as a visiting professor at Halifax's Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU), where I held the tenth Nancy's Chair in W om en's Studies. "The Mount" was founded in 1873 as a college for wom en. In 1966 it becam e Mount Saint Vincent University, and the following year male students were admitted for the first time. MSVU remains, nonetheless, a place where wom en constitute not only the majority of undergraduates (a situation that is now com m onplace in North Am erica) but also, and m uch less com m on, the majority of faculty members and administrators. During my year at MSVU, I felt as if som ething that had been alert and guarded inside m e was able to relax. In stark contrast to my decades of experience in philosophy, I was now in an academic environment where it felt norm al to be a woman.
There's something odd about the very idea of feeling normal to be a woman. After all, if one is female, as I am, surely it is always normal to be a woman. But historically, m isogyny and sexism have m ade being fem ale abnorm al, deviant, and exceptional - in a negative sense. Male-dominated cultures operate on the assumption that being male is essential, or at least highly desirable, for participation in such human activities as politics and government, education, religion, sport, science, medicine, and business.
It has been the aim of feminism to demonstrate, both in theory and in practice,

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that being m ale is neither essential nor even, necessarily, desirable for any of these pursuits. Indeed, the progress of feminism is marked by at least two landm arks: First, there is its success in demonstrating that one's sex - by which I m ean, primarily, one's genitalia is not relevant to the fundamental human capacity to participate in politics and government, education, religion, sport, science, m edicine, or business. Second, there is its success in convincing individuals and societies not to treat an individual's sex as either an advantage or a liability for the purpose of political, intellectual, social, athletic, civic, religious, or scientific activities. To the extent that feminism has been and continues to be successful, it is gradually becoming norm al to be a wom an within a widening variety of environments. If individuals and societies learn to recognize that one's sex is, for alm ost all purposes, not relevant to what one can learn, experience, and do, then being female will not be taken as a unique disqualification for access to and achievem ent in all the various endeavours of hum ank ind.
For the purpose of normalizing the presence of women in academ ia, it is essential that there be a "critical mass" of wom en at the university - among undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators (whether in student government, staff and faculty unions, or senior administration). The presence of a critical mass of women provides a community of support, and m akes available mentors who can assist individuals to understand the institution and learn how to survive and thrive in it. Moreover, the presence of a critical mass reduces both the tendency for one woman to be perceived as the representative of her sex, and the propensity to assum e that all wom en are alike. Achieving a critical m ass also m akes it easier for each wom an to be seen as a student, a professor, a librarian, or a dean, instead of primarily as a woman. As fem inist scholar Virginia Valian says,
Studies have shown that when people are asked to rate a female

candidate for a m anagerial job, they rate her more positively if she is one of several wom en in the candidate pool than if she is the only woman. The explanation for this seem s to be that if you're in a tiny minority of wom en, you're seen in terms of your gender - and the general view of wom en is that they aren't so com petent professionally. But if there are many wom en besides you, people stop focusing on your gender and start judging you in term s of your ability.
(Valian quoted in Angier 1998)

The presence of a critical mass of women norm alizes being a wom an so that one's fem aleness no longer is taken to be one's defining characteristic.
In my dual context - embedded in the m ale-dom inated discipline of philosophy, but working tem porarily at MSVU, an institution where wom en are a majority - I was led to wonder about wom en's progress in post-secondary education. The papers in this issue of Atlantis arose out of a conference I hosted at MSVU in February, 2007. "Educating W omen/W omen's Education" explored the experiences, problems, and potential of wom en in/and post-secondary education in twenty-first century North Am erica. The focus of the conference arose from the following questions:

&lt;

Is post-secondary education still

gendered? Should it be?

&lt;

W hat are the goals of women's

post-secondary education? W hat are

the goals of educating women?

&lt;

W hat would a post-secondary

education of and for women be like?

&lt;

Does the sex/gender of role models,

m entors, and instructors m atter in the

post-secondary context?

&lt;

After decades of extensive feminist

discussion about the heterogeneity of

the category "wom en," is there a

need for educational institutions that

are primarily or even exclusively for

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women?

&lt;

Has there been any global warm ing

of chilly university clim ates?

&lt;

W hat are the roles of W omen's

Studies and of feminism in educating

women?

The conference received a range of submissions, including research papers on wom en's post-secondary education; more informal workshops and discussions of wom en's experiences in post-secondary education; and philosophical and norm ative reflections and arguments about what post-secondary education by, for, and of wom en would look like. In setting the them e, "W om en's Education/Educating W om en: In the Post-Secondary Context," I was seeking both empirical studies documenting the situation of wom en in academ ia, and m ore normative arguments about where we should go from here and what the goals of post-secondary education for women should be. The papers in this issue of Atlantis do both, and they draw upon a rich range of experience in university learning and teaching.
Unfortunately, as the first paper in this issue, "Pyramids of Power," by W endy Robbins and Vicky Sim pson, reveals, the normalization of women's presence in academ ia is still far from being achieved. Although women constitute a significant m ajority of undergraduate students in most though not all fields, at all points farther up the academic hierarchy women's presence dwindles significantly. Robbins and Sim pson argue that there is no single explanation for the paucity of wom en, and no single rem edy for it. They conclude, "in answer to the question ‘Is post-secondary education still gendered?,' the answer is demonstrably yes. For the com panion question ‘Should it be?,' the answer needs to be more nuanced: gender-sensitive and gender-inclusive, yes; blind to discrim ination based on gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, and other human rights issues, emphatically no."
In working to minimize these forms of discrimination, fem inist politics and wom en's

studies are essential elements of the academy. In "A Place at the Table and a Voice in the Hall," Michele Byers and Diane Crocker present the results of their study of junior female academics in Canadian universities. Motivated by widespread theoretical descriptions of a third wave fem inism that rejects m any beliefs and values associated with the second wave, Byers and Crocker sought to document the existence of a cohort of third wave feminists within junior levels of the Canadian professoriate. Instead, their findings reveal a greater breadth and com plexity of fem inist, academ ic, and political identities among women academics than is reflected in some recent feminist theory. Som e of their subjects did indeed identify with third wave fem inism , but others identified with the second wave; some participate in women's studies while others do not.
W om en's studies made a place for itself in academia during the tim e that women students were entering universities in increasing num bers. Som e universities now offer graduate program m es in wom en's studies. But wom en's studies is not a discipline like others. It confounds disciplinary borders and was originally created as a challenge to traditional disciplinary teachings. As women's studies becomes more successful and more entrenched within academia, can it m aintain its inter- and m ulti-disciplinary character and continue to contest standard academic claims about wom en, gender, and received ways of doing research? In "Disciplined or Punished? The Future of Graduate Education in W om en's Studies," Pam ela L. Caughie and Jennifer A. Parks explore the uneasy relationship between wom en's studies and post-secondary institutions. This relationship affects both students and faculty; both the teaching and learning of wom en's studies, and the research undertaken in its name.
The general problem is that of any new immigrant: it is the quandary of either assimilating and thus losing what is distinctive, or maintaining one's identity and enduring painful co-existence or even rejection. W ithout exaggeration, it might be

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said that this is the choice confronting both wom en's studies, on the one hand, and on the other hand women themselves, who in some respects are like new im m igrants to university land. W omen students and faculty want to be accepted and to flourish in academia, but not at the risk of compromising their identities, denying their experiences, or surrendering their values.
Many of the papers in this collection examine methods of achieving this latter goal. They offer some practical proposals that are aim ed at getting wom en into academ ia and helping them to stay there. In "I Discovered More Than Book Knowledge," Andrea O'Reilly describes and analyzes a pragm atic method of introducing women - especially wom en who may be older than the average undergraduate, or who com e from im m igrant or working-class backgrounds - to academic study. York University's Bridging Program provides a thirteen-week, pre-university course for women; any student enrolled in it who earns a grade of B or better is automatically accepted as an undergraduate at York University. O'Reilly's paper shows that this program offers its participants validation, a sense of security, an opportunity to explore academic ideas, and above all, an intellectual com m unity.
If O'Reilly shows one way of bringing women into academ ic study, Samantha Brennan and Rob Corless's "Creating a W arm er Environm ent for W om en in the Mathematical Sciences and in Philosophy" suggests methods of keeping them there especially in academic fields where women are in the minority. Philosophy and applied mathematics are dominated by men even at the undergraduate level; so the women who choose these fields need to be encouraged, mentored, and welcom ed; they need to have a sense of being part of an environment that values their ideas. As Departm ent Chairs, Brennan and Corless both have a wealth of personal experience in creating those conditions.
Based on her experience as a philosophy instructor in a liberal arts college for women, Donna Engelm ann, in "Another

Look At a Feminist Ethics of Teaching," proposes a pedagogy based on a feminist ethics of care. This approach to teaching focuses on attentiveness and responsiveness to students. But it also acknowledges "positionality": that is, the relative power of teacher and student, and the challenges that individuals in either role face if they are female or a minority-group member.
In their paper, Angela Johnson, Sybol Anderson, and Kathryn Norlock argue for "A Moral Imperative: Retaining W omen of Color in Science Education." Johnson, Anderson and Norlock advocate that we look not only for overt barriers to women's success, but also for the part that domination plays in distorting m oral relationships within academ ia. In addition, they suggest that women's goals and motives may be different than those of their male peers: wom en seeking careers in the sciences tend to emphasize altruistic goals of helping others and making m eaningful contributions, rather than earning m oney or achieving conventional success.
Suzanne Sheffield has created a professional development seminar that aims to provide its wom en graduate student participants with some of the knowledge and skills they need to negotiate the demands of a gendered professoriate. In "Enhancing W omen's Graduate Education" Sheffield describes the workshop she devised to help students, especially wom en students, come to an explicit understanding of the gender imbalances within academ ia, and to encourage them to develop ways to avoid being disadvantaged by them.
Another pragm atic approach to boosting women's success is featured under the banner Comm unity Voices in Donna Lisker's paper, "Reinventing Single-Sex Education: The Baldwin Scholars of Duke University." Lisker describes a new program that enables women undergraduates to study in a co-educational university but also to receive some of the benefits of a women-only academic environment. The experiences of the Baldwin Scholars confirm the often-cited observation that female students thrive in an academic context in which they can be part of

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a women's community that both supports their intellectual endeavours and challenges them to do even better.
It is, of course, im portant both to attract women to universities and to keep them there for at least two major reasons. There is, first, the matter of justice: It is only fair that wom en have the sam e opportunities for education and self-development that men have. Second, recruiting women to academia and supporting them there is not only consistent with academ ic excellence, as several papers in this issue argue; it also promotes academic excellence. The enterprise of creating and passing on knowledge is enhanced when the skills and talents of half the population are not arbitrarily excluded, and when the varying ideas and experiences of wom en of all ages, abilities, races, and ethnicities contribute to our collective understandings of the world.
W hat the papers in this issue of Atlantis share is the idea of creating and supporting intellectual com m unities com m unities of scholars and students that welcom e individuals who happen to be women but never confine women to their gender identity. W hen academia becom es a place where it is normal to a wom an, one can then also forget that one is a woman - forget, that is, that one is subject to social classifications and lim itations on the basis of one's genitalia. In an egalitarian academia, a wom an is not a token, not a representative of her sex, and not judged for the degree to which she conform s or fails to conform to social standards for her sex. In that context, post-secondary education offers communities whose m em bers can learn and teach as individuals but also in collaboration with others, based not on spurious and confining social categories but on the love of knowledge and the commitment to the creation of new understandings of our world.
Reference Angier, N. "A Conversation with Virginia Valian: Exploring the Gender Gap and the Absence of Equality," The New York Times (August 25, 1998).

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