Chapter 4: Gender Equity in the Academy: Perspectives and Contexts

For many women today, the academic world is at once seductive and brutal. Like Virginia Woolf we want £500 pounds a year and a room of our own, surrounded by ideas. We long for students, books, a salary and some intellectual company. Often we find much more than we bargained for.

I remember wanting this life, aching for it. I was a housewife with two small children. A friend of mine had a job in higher education and I envied her so. I thought she had the perfect job in the perfect setting. All around her people were learning new things. When I got my first academic job, I walked around thinking, “I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this job! It’s so quiet here! I’m surrounded by grownups! No one wipes strawberry yogurt on my skirt. This is truly heaven.”

Little did I know what was ahead for me. Whenever I would see the president of the college, he would grab me and croon, “I haven’t held a pretty girl’s hand all day.” My department chair used to come up behind me, put me in a headlock (he was a former wrestling coach), pick me up off my feet and drag me across the room backwards. It was a startling introduction to the academy, one that left me bewildered and sometimes crying in my office.