Sex, Grades and Silence: The Impact of Feminist Research on Higher Education Globally

1. Sex, Grades and Silence: The Impact of Feminist Research on Higher Education Globally Professor Louise Morley Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) University of Sussex, UK E: l.morley@sussex.ac.uk

2. Evaluating Research Quality: Knowledge Exchange/ Transfer • Research quality = its policy, social, economic and community impact. • Scrutiny of public money. • Knowledge = X not legitimate in its own right. • transferred into diverse contexts and effect auditable/ accountable change/ sustainable practices. • Rational-purposive understanding of change(Saunders, 2010). • A mechanics of knowing – cause & effect(Hey, 2010).

3. Exchanging Feminist Knowledge • Gender Equality = Representational Space? • Is research only used/ heard when it continues dominant narratives? • If it disturbs and disrupts, is it dismissed and disqualified? • If feminist research fails to transform practices, does this mean that it has failed as research? • What are the impact measures of feminist research?

4. Gender Mainstreaming? • Women and leadership(Blackmore, 2010); • Gender insensitive pedagogy(Welch, 2006); • Women and Technology (Clegg, 2011); • Promotion, professional development and tenure(Acker, 2009; Knights and Richards, 2003); • Knowledge production and dissemination(Grant, 2010; Hughes, 2002); • Curricula and subject choices(Morley et al, 2006). • Inequalities and gender mainstreaming(Rees, 2006); • Sexual harassment(MacKinnon, (1979; NUS, 2010).

5. Knowledge Exchange - Global South and Global North • How can feminist researchers share knowledge across national and economic boundaries to maximise impact and disrupt the dominant sexual economy?

6. Sexual Harassment: Women Entering Masculinised Work Spaces

7. Globalising Gender Violence • Australia (Bacchi,1998) • Botswana (Letsie and Tlou, 1997) • Ghana (Manuh, Gariba and Budu, 2007; Morley, 2011; Tete-Mensah, 1999) • Hong Kong (Chan, 1999) • India (Bajpai, 1999) • Israel (Kaplan, 2006) • Kenya (Omale, 2002) • Lesotho (Mapetla and Matlosa, 1997) • Nigeria (Bakari and Leach, 2007; Nwadigwe, 2007) • Pakistan (Durrani, 2000) • South Africa (Simelane, 2001) • Southern Africa (Bennett et al. 2007) • Sri Lanka (Jayasena, 2002) • Tanzania (Morley, 2011) • UK (Bagilhole and Woodward, 1995) • USA (MacKinnon, 1979; Paludi and Barickman, 1991; Townsley and Geist, 2000) • Sub-Saharan Africa (Hallam, 1994) • Zimbabwe (Shumba and Matina, 2002; Zindi, 1998) • Comparative studies of Sri Lanka, India, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda (Mirsky, 2003).

8. Sexual Harassment… • Is sex discrimination because the act reinforces the social inequality of women to men. • Is heterosexual male to female harassment in the majority of studies. • Creates hostile/toxic learning and working environments. • Involves spatial and cognitive justice, with women having to reflexively self-minimise. • Is rarely formally reported for fear of victimisation, stigmatisation or lack of confidence in procedures. • Constructs women as unreliable narrators. • Negatively impacts on women’s academic engagement, health and well-being.

9. Sexual Harassment … • Produces negative female learner identities. • Is a ‘phallic attack’ (Nwadigwe, 2007). • Frequently involves injury denial (Morley, 2010). • Reinforces the power of the dominant collective/ assumptive rights of (some) men. • Naturalises the hierarchical and gendered power relations within universities into a sexual contract. • Is a hidden norm of organisational life (Hearn and Parkin, 2001).

10. Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania Measuring: • Sociological variables of gender, age, socio-economic status (SES) In Relation to: • Educational Outcomes: access, retention and achievement. In Relation to: • 4 Programmes of Study in each university. • 2 Public and 2 private universities. • Quantitative Data -100 Equity Scorecards • Qualitative Data - 200 interviews with students and 200 with staff and policymakers. (Morley et al. 2010) (www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/wphegt)

11. Equity Scorecard 1: Access to Level 200 on 4 Programmes at a Public University in Ghana According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status (SES)

12. Equity Scorecard 2: Access to Level 200 on 4 Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status (SES)

13. Globalising Sexual Corruption • Tanzania Being a girl costs sometimes…There are some things in which people can take advantage of you because you are a girl…There are corrupt staff… Certain staffs like if you want help they say you have to do this or that, it is not your fault but he does that so that he can get you… get sex(Female student, public university). • UK Most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do? Enjoy her! She’s a perk(Kealey, cited in Reisz, 2009). • Australia A PERTH lecturer found to have pressured failing Chinese students for sex in visas-for-degrees trade(Lane, 2010). • Ghana • Manuh, Gariba and Budu (2007:138) discuss ‘transactional sex’, or ‘sexually transmitted grades’.

14. The Doxa Of Sexual Harassment/ The Discursive Enactment of Hegemony Sexual harassment is a way of life at this university … and people don’t like to talk about it … the female students are very vulnerable to lecturers... and the girls think that’s a legitimate way to get marks. Boys think the girls have an advantage because they can get marks that way and the men think if the girl comes to me and she’s a grown up she’s asking for it ...(female academic manager from the public Ghanaian university).

15. Sexual Harassment = Grade-enhancing Capital • 17 males and 9 females out of 100 students interviewed in Ghana saw gender difference in terms of preferential treatment for women. • Women’s failure = evidence of their lack of academic abilities and preparedness for higher education. • Women’s achievement = attributed to women’s ‘favoured’ position in gendered academic markets. • Post-feminism/ young women’s assemblage for productivity/ vengeful patriarchal norms reinstated (McRobbie, 2007).

16. Sometimes, we marvel you know... we wrote certain exams and a particular lady was not in the class but when the results came she had an ‘A’ and you know some of us said we wished we were ladies, you know, it’s like they get special favours(Male student, private university, Ghana). Sometimes you will see a woman or a lady in a class or maybe in a group discussion…you wonder how she got admission? But when the paper comes she performs better than you. …Sometimes some women have been favoured(Male student, public university, Ghana). Reverse Discrimination

17. New Gender Regimes • Transactional sex perceived as women’s aggressive, competitive and capacious actions and agency. • Phallic girls/ladettes. • Gender hierarchies/ male privilege untheorised. • The duality of sexual difference is re-confirmed. • Gender norms are re-consolidated and re-stabilised.

18. Reclassifying Sexual Harassment as Women’s Strategic Agency We do have a lot of females who come to this place with a mind to learn do well, get their grades and go out. And we have those who have come with the mind that they are doing everything to get what they want. … so if you are the type of person who really wants to compromise positions in terms of having sex with lecturers to get grades, you will get it. The avenue is there, you will get it…if you want to compromise that much I would say it will definitely favour you.(Female student, private Ghanaian university)

19. Women • Are corrupt/ fraudulent learners. • Are not entitled to higher education. • Are post-feminist strategic agents, not victims. • Construct corporeal style to manipulate essentialised male desire.

20. Impact: Dissemination Seminar in Ghana • Academic and Managerial Staff- Policy and Prowess • Stressed existence of policy on sexual harassment. • Some men blamed women students’ ‘indecent dressing’/ suggested that we interviewed the ‘wrong’ students. • Many women wanted to support/ raise awareness. • Students- Activism and Agency • Angry and outraged- started a zero tolerance campaign. • Wanted student union representation on disciplinary hearings. • NGOs- Partnerships • Wanted coalitions to challenge gender violence • Challenged sexist assumptions about dress etc.

21. Morley, L. (2011). "Sex, Grades and Power in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania." Cambridge Journal of Education 41(1): 101-115.

22. Summary • The Impact Agenda = simplistic, linear, techno-rational, situated, overlooks resistance, attribution and contexts. • Lucid, convincing evidence repeatedly ignored. • Abusive practices/ misrecognitions repeatedly enacted. • Impact is not a neutral concept. • A lot of sensationalism, but little transformation. • Considerable global knowledge but very limited exchange! (Hey, 2010) • How Impact interacts with gender regimes. • How to capture the effects of feminist research on communities of practice and activity systems?

23. Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) ESRC Seminar Series: ‘Imagining the University of the Future’ http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcseminars Special issue of Contemporary Social Science (Volume 6:2, 2011) entitled: ‘Challenge, Change or Crisis in Global Higher Education?’