Journal Article 2

Title: Today's Academic Women-Playing Out Already Dealt Hands
Author: Limbert, Claudia
Source: Women in Higher Education, 8(1):39-42, January 1999.
Publisher: Women in Higher Education

It is Christmas break. I am in my office at a large research-oriented university. My colleagues are on vacation and the room is quiet, the silence broken only by the hiss of sleet against the window. This is the perfect time to work on a scholarly article. Yet, I can't concentrate, perhaps because of a dream I had last night, a dream about when I was a little girl growing up in the Missouri Ozarks just after World War II.

[...]

Women's role: then
At first glance, those long-ago Ozark country women would seem to have little to do with modern academic women. Indeed, many of us have done as much as possible to distance ourselves from the women of our pasts, whether those pasts are the Ozark Mountains, the innercity, the Iowa cornfields, or the Mississippi Delta. We have nothing in common with those women of our pasts, right? Wrong. Actually, we have everything in common with them. In fact, as academic women, we may find ourselves playing out hands dealt to our mothers and grandmothers many years ago--hands that will continue to be re-dealt to us if we are not careful. Let me explain what I mean.
          [....]          If women carried the burden of household work and were quiet and self-effacing, they were acting appropriately. If they stepped out of this role, they were punished. Two stories stick out.
          One concerns a woman who actually went into a bar by herself and later that evening was gang-raped. No, it didn't make the papers that prided themselves on being "family-oriented" and would never have reported such a story, but it was passed along in whispers from woman to woman, with many buying into the idea that the raped woman shouldn't have gone into a male area and by going there, she had somehow caused the rape. In other words, if a woman stuck by the old rules of working hard and being quiet and staying only in women's spaces, she would have been safe.
          The other story happened when I was about ten and had become very ill. Our family doctor was on vacation, so my mother called a new doctor who not only specialized in pediatrics--an innovative idea where we lived--but who was female. I remember feeling amazement when I saw the new doctor. Not only was she beautiful and college educated, but she had brought me some coloring books and crayons for when I felt better. My usual doctor had never brought me anything, always treated me brusquely, never remembered my name, and was quick to depart.
          After she left, I said to my mother that I hadn't realized that women were allowed to be doctors and my mother, who was an LPN, said that this woman was the only female doctor in the county. She said the male doctors had made it almost impossible for her to practice, playing cruel jokes on her, talking behind her back, and even trying to get the local hospital to refuse to let her practice there. I remember lying there, once more receiving the message that if a woman stepped out of her expected role, she could expect terrible consequences.
          But things have changed, haven't they? Now we are among the ranks of professional academic women--staff and faculty--who function in a brave, new world, aren't we? I'm not so sure.

Women's role: now
On a practical level, have we left the Ozark women or the women of the Mississippi Delta or the Iowa cornfields--the women of our pasts--behind us? While we may not can our food or make our family's clothes and most of us have automatic dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, aren't we still the ones responsible for meeting the family's everyday physical needs? And although we may have more appliances, the standards are also higher.
          If you don't believe me, check the women's magazines. Their articles depict women as not only responsible for the daily running of our homes and providing nutritious, gourmet meals but also for the psychological health of our families. Also, on the few occasions when our husbands or significant others do help with chores, we are careful to thank them, in effect saying, "This was really my job, so I must thank you for doing it for me." On top of this, we are warned by our society not to allow ourselves to slip into middle-age without a fight. We must always look young, thin, and sexy, so we wear push-up, underwire bras that cut cruel marks into our flesh, tight skirts that constrict our stride, and high heels that make our backs throb at the end of the day.
          Women--professional academic women--are still the ones who bear the responsibility for meeting our children's needs, whether we are single parents or part of a couple. We are the ones who patch scraped knees, comfort a child in the middle of the night, meet with teachers, see that the children get regular dental and physical checkups, transport them back and forth, and take them shopping for new sneakers. And if our children are not doing well in school or get into trouble, it is somehow our fault.

Women's roles as academics
At this point, let us follow a hypothetical academic woman through a not-so-hypothetical day. Let's call this woman "Carol" and let's imagine that it is a winter day. Let's also imagine that Carol is a faculty member who is married to another faculty member who teaches on the same campus. Her husband "Dave" was tenured early due to his impressive publication record. Carol is not yet tenured because she had to "stop out" twice while she was pregnant and breastfeeding. Carol and Dave have two children--a girl of six and a boy of 14 months.
          Let's imagine that the baby is teething and that our colleague, Carol, has been up most of the night with him. Indeed, she has just gotten the baby settled when the alarm clock goes off. Without any clear remembrance of how she got there, Carol finds herself standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth. She looks in the mirror, noting the circles under her eyes and a few gray hairs, the same ones Dave had called her attention to last night during dinner. Shouldn't I be doing something about my looks, she wonders. But Carol has no time to think about this. She quickly showers and puts on exercise clothes, since this is one of her aerobics mornings.
          In the kitchen, after seeing her daughter off on the school bus (proper nutritious breakfast inside, proper nutritious lunch in hand, and permission slip for field trip signed), Carol puts the cat outside (proper nutritious meal inside cat) and sees Dave off to the campus (wearing the fresh shirt Carol ironed while cooking his breakfast and the suit she picked up at the cleaners on the way home from work yesterday).
          Carol feeds and dresses the baby and then, with a piece of dry toast in hand, she goes out to scrape her windshield. Thank goodness there was no fresh snow last night or she might have had to do some shoveling as well. Carol loads the baby's diaper bag into the car, straps the baby in his car seat, and hangs her suit up in the back of the car. She adds her briefcase and a carrybag of other things that she will need that day. She adjusts her seat belt and, just as she is ready to pull out of the driveway, realizes that the baby's diaper needs changing. They go back inside, where she changes the baby from the skin out. At last, Carol drives off to the daycare center as there is no daycare at her campus, since daycare is seen as unnecessary by the male administrators. Carol takes her son inside, taking a moment to tell the daycare providers that he is fussy with teething.
          Back in the car, Carol takes a deep breath and scans the forest of post-it notes attached to the dashboard. She rearranges a couple of them into higher priority. Then it's off to the gym for a tortuous hour of aerobics--one of the three sessions that Carol forces herself through each week in order to get her figure back after her second pregnancy. Afterward, she showers and puts on her suit, hose and high heels.

A woman-friendly campus?
Carol heads back out into traffic and finally reaches the campus. All the good parking spots are taken and she must circle the parking lot several times before spotting an open slot at the furthest end, the space under the dead streetlight, which means that for safety's sake Carol needs to leave the campus well before dark, and it will get dark early since it is winter. As Carol locks her car, she wonders why, after the two rapes that recently took place on campus, that light and others in the parking lot have not yet been replaced. But at least now Carol is on the campus, where she will be treated like the professional academic she is. But is she? No, unlike her male colleagues for whom a wife and family often provide a comfortable backdrop for their professional lives, Carol will find that her professional life will mirror her home life.
          Making a quick stop at her mailbox, Carol finds it stuffed with unrequested textbooks from various publishers, urgent ASAP phone messages, a couple of letters, lots of junk mail, and a returned manuscript that she thought had a good chance of acceptance, if only she had been able to spend more time on it. Carol also finds several memos, including two appointing her to serve on new committees, each of which is going to take up a great deal of time and will have its first meeting this very afternoon. Carol wonders whether she is on these committees because there are so few women in either faculty or staff positions at her campus. Quickly, she scans the lists of committee members. In both cases Carol will be the only woman, the one who will inevitably be asked, "Carol, what do women think about this?" Yes, once more Carol is to represent all women, a sort of academic Eve. Yet we need someone to represent women, don't we?
          Carol climbs the stairs to her office, remembering belatedly that she left her lunch home in the refrigerator. Well, there will be no time to go out, so she will just have to forage in the cafeteria. At least she will have some quiet office time to herself before her first class.
          Carol reaches her office door. Three students are sitting on the floor outside the door, all with complicated advising problems requiring immediate solutions. Two aren't even her advisees. She asks one why he has not gone to his regular advisor, a male. His answer: "Oh, I wouldn't want to bother him!" Carol doesn't have time to raise this student's consciousness, so she tosses her mail on the desk and begins sorting out the students' problems. They leave with appropriate papers appropriately signed in the right spaces, she hopes.
          Carol glances at her watch. She still has half an hour before the first of three overly large classes that she will teach that day. She quickly rummages through her mail, looking for the packet of Xeroxed handouts that she needs. The faculty secretary has not failed her; the handouts are there. Carol quickly scans her lecture notes and goes to her first class.
          After class, Carol deals with some questions from a few students who want to prolong the discussion, which is wonderful but also tiring as Carol is already exhausted. She finally shoos them all out, only to realize that a student doing an independent study with Carol is there for her weekly appointment.
          The day flies by. Carol teaches her other two classes and keeps another office hour during which she has several visitors. One is a non-traditional female student whose face is badly bruised. She tells Carol that her husband beat her and she needs help. Since the campus does not feel it is necessary to hire someone trained to deal with women's issues, Carol talks with the student and then gives her the phone numbers of community groups that can help her further. Carol then deals with several other academic problems including a student who is fighting a writing block and needs Carol to talk him through an outline for his upcoming honor's thesis. Carol's final visitor is a male student unknown to her who asks for one-on-one tutoring for a class taught by one of Carol's male colleagues. Carol tells the student that he should either approach his professor for help or get tutoring at the learning center as she cannot add another student to her already too full schedule. The student looks coldly at Carol and then turns to leave her office. Under his breath he mutters, "Bra-burning feminist bitch."
          For a moment Carol sits there, consciously forcing herself to take deep breaths. This is not the first time--nor will it be the last--that she has been treated this way by a male student. Last week another male student who knew Carol was a faculty member came in to ask her how much she would charge per page to type his papers for him. But there is not time to think of this now.
          The first of the two committee meetings is next. On the way out of her office, Carol notices a run in her stocking.
          The only woman present, Carol sits in the 3 pm committee meeting of white males, her stomach growling. There was no time to eat. As the meeting starts, the chairman glances around the room as if really considering the issue before asking Carol to take the minutes. For a moment, she considers saying no, but she is preparing for her final tenure review and some of these men will be on her committee. Carol cannot afford to be publicly labeled "women's libber" or "bitch," although she is pretty sure she has been called that privately, since she is the only person on campus who pursues women's issues. The second committee meeting is predictably like the first. Again, Carol is asked to take the minutes and write them up. She is vaguely aware that she is grinding her teeth.
          It is 5 pm. Carol makes a quick call home to be sure the babysitter made it and her daughter got home from school okay. The babysitter tells Carol that her daughter is watching television. This worries Carol as she feels her daughter watches too much TV and it isn't good for her. What effect will this have on her, Carol wonders?

The academic father
Carol then calls Dave, who is still on campus as he always is at this time. He tells her some men from his department are going out for a drink, so he won't be home until 7 pm. Carol is silent and Dave correctly takes the silence to mean she isn't pleased. He says defensively, "Carol, you know that I have to do this kind of thing if I want to advance in my career." Briefly through Carol's mind flit pieces of a half-remembered article about a woman at another university who, although she had impressive publications and excellent teaching evaluations and university service, was denied tenure because she was not considered "collegial" enough. Carol remains silent, saying only, "I'll see you at 7" and hangs up.
          At this point, Carol can't bear to think about the exchange she just had with her husband nor what it says about their relationship. Right now, her most pressing needs are to pick up her son from daycare and stop by the grocery store on the way home. Is it snowing again? She glances out the office window. Sleet is pelting the glass. The parking lot is pitch black. Carol shoves a pile of ungraded test papers into her briefcase and slings her carrybag over her shoulder.
          Trying to make up time, Carol gallops down the stairs. She will veer by her mailbox on the way out since she didn't find time to pick up the afternoon mail. Her hands shaking both with hunger and fatigue, Carol unlocks her mailbox and pulls out a stack of mail that she begins stuffing into her carrybag; a memo on top catches her eye. "Donate blood." For a while, Carol stands in the hallway by the mailboxes reading those two words over and over again. "What more do they want from me?" she thinks. Suddenly, Carol feels very cold and very empty inside, and silent tears begin to run down her face. Just then, a group of students pass by and glance her way. "What is her problem?" one of them laughs.

How can we change the role?
Yes, indeed, what is Carol's problem? Carol's problem, her role as a professional academic and as a woman in our society, is our problem as well. The answer is that Carol is playing out the old hands, the roles that were dealt to our mothers and grandmothers. We all know at least one Carol: a woman who because of the role expectations placed on her by her family, her professional colleagues, the administration of her campus, and her society will not be able to make it through tenure. Or if she is a staff member, will not be able to successfully compete for promotions and raises. The question then becomes: What are we going to do to change this?          On a personal level, Carol and Dave may need to work with a marriage counselor and we may not be able to offer her suggestions for regularizing her personal life. We can, however, assure her she need not become "Mother of the World" to everyone everywhere. On the other hand, there are many ways we can actively help Carol with her professional life.
          First of all, those of us who have achieved tenure and promotion or are in administrative roles at any level need to seek out the women who are following behind us and attach ourselves firmly to them, serving as a buffer between them and our schools. We may choose to arrange a casual over-lunch kind of mentoring relationship or set up a more formal one. But whatever mentoring relationship you establish, be sure to listen to Carol carefully, so you can identify and better help meet her needs, whatever they might be.
          Give Carol some well considered advice and information. Advice might include telling her to limit committee work to a few that count toward tenure and job promotion, or telling her to choose her battles carefully.
          If you have expertise in research and writing, let her brainstorm possible topics with you, critique her papers or find someone who can do so knowledgeably, and suggest conferences important in her field or which publications might be most receptive to her finished product.
          If you are good at networking, include her in the group, enabling her to make useful connections. Shared information might include some general ideas about campus politics, hostile people to avoid, or even how to get an updated computer or released time or apply for research funding. And somehow you will need to find a way to say things like, "Look, you may be interested in this issue, but it is taking you away from the things that will count for your advancement."

Join her battles
But there is more to it than just helping Carol on a one-to-one basis. We must look toward the larger geography of the campus. In other words, don't leave Carol out there by herself fighting the battles we ourselves should be fighting for women's issues: the need for campus daycare, the need to ensure women's physical safety, the need for a health care plan that is geared to women's problems, and the need to have experienced counselors available who are trained to deal with the full range of women's psychological health issues.
          If your workload permits, volunteer to serve on tenure committees when a woman is coming up for review or for a job search committee. Argue for reduced teaching loads or smaller classloads for women who are tenure-track faculty, especially when they are bearing or raising small children or caring for aging parents. Besides the more usual senior-junior mentorship arrangements, encourage the formation of peer mentoring groups and volunteer to share with these junior women what you yourself have learned. See that junior staff and faculty women get generous financial support for professional trips or needed equipment.
          Looking more globally, we can help the Carols of the academic world by becoming more involved with our own professional groups. Not only can we make sure the work of junior women is included on conference panels or that special panels (such as graduate students) are devoted to issues of interest to them, but we can serve in practice interview sessions held at conferences or help graduate students or junior women write effective resumes.
          In our organizations, we can raise women's issues. For example, if your group has no women's caucus, consider starting one; if your conferences do not provide daycare for participants, find a way to bring this need to the attention of the executive board of your professional group. If your workload will permit, seek leadership within your organization. And when you go to conferences and you come across a junior colleague whom you can help, don't hesitate to reach out to her and say to her as several senior women at conferences have said to me, "Tell me what I can do to help you and it will be done." This is just a beginning. I'm sure you can come up with even more useful ideas.
          In the end it all boils down to this: We must refuse to play out those old hands dealt to previous generations of women and insist on receiving new cards and writing new rules. Somehow I think my mother and her three women friends who sat on that long-ago Ozark summer porch, the bamboo blinds swaying in the breeze as they prepared green beans for canning, would approve.

          Claudia Limbert wrote this in 1996, as an English professor at Pennsylvania State University. She is now CEO of Penn State's DuBois campus. E-mail cal8@psu.edu
Copyright © 1999, Women in Higher Education