Gender Reckonings by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC026000 Social Science / Sociology / General
Publisher: New York University Press

Applying Connell’s Model to Academia

This chapter has considered the contribution of Connell’s thought to gender studies with specific regard to education, in particular higher education and knowledge production contexts like universities. These institutions play a central role in Connell’s research work and more generally in gender studies, because they are privileged contexts of gender production and reproduction (as well as possible deconstruction) of specific gender regimes that determine gender relationships both within organizations and in society at large.

Intervening in universities is particularly strategic for pursuit of a full institutional citizenship that “connects the project of inclusiveness to universities’ core mission of advancing knowledge and preparing the future citizens and leaders of a different polity to address complex problems and entrenched injustices” (Sturm 2006, 250).

Over time, gender balances in educational institutions have changed as the number of women has increased significantly. Nevertheless, universities—and within them scientific faculties and departments—continue to be strongholds of men and masculinity/ies. Recent changes in the management models of educational institutions and the rise of neoliberal policies, with their emphasis on merit and the valorization of human capital, offer alternative scenarios than those of classical liberal discourse, based on women’s exclusion and targeted on male networks and privileges. At the same time, they introduce values and practices that appear to lower the odds of gender equality improvements, such as the growing flexibilization and precarization of scientific careers, the affirmation of an individualistic and increasingly competitive model of scientific work, based on the idea of heroic masculinity and the request for a total and exclusive work commitment, without room for other aspects of social life.

In the foregoing pages, I focused on initiatives funded by the European Commission to tackle gender imbalances and support the presence of women in scientific research. In this section, I deepen this analysis in accord with Connell’s “structural inventory” of the four main gender dimensions: power relations; production, consumption, and gendered accumulation; emotional relations; and symbolization. On a theoretical level, I try to systematize key issues emerging in the debate on the gender politics of higher education, and, on a political level, I propose a comprehensive rather than partial agenda for gender reform politics.

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