Once, I was discussing my intention to become a university
lecturer with a colleague at an office job. She was telling me how her daughter
had gone in to accounting, and that ‘she used to have blonde hair, but she
started dying it dark because you can’t be taken seriously in business with blonde
hair’. I was gobsmacked, not only because I was surprised by the sheer stupidity
of what she’d said but also because my hair was down to my hips and shiny,
beachy blonde... The fucking CHEEK.
As a heteronormative white female, I can only speculate that
the everyday interactions people of colour and/or none-cis individuals are
underpinned by their identities as black, gay, trans etc. I hypothesise that
this is the case based upon the fact that I experience something similar as a
result of my gender. Specifically, in the context of academia.
Heads up – this is an account based solely on my personal
experiences over the past 4 years; I’m not laying claim to some sort of objective
truth here.
As you may well know from previous posts, I am an MA English
student at the University of Nottingham. During my time in higher education, I
have received some very sociologically interesting feedback.
Just as my old office job colleague demonstrated, many people
in the context of university and beyond have blatantly taken one look at me (I’m
tall, slim, wear make-up and have long blonde hair) and decided that I ‘don’t look
clever’. Of course, nobody has ever SAID that to me. Rather, they start meticulously
explaining things I learned at A Level even though I’m now a master’s student,
or make ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, or suggest I look at the ‘more straightforward’
essay questions.
I actually don’t mind this. It makes their thinly-veiled surprise
when they read my transcript or speak to me for a few shifts much funnier. Guess
what? People don’t have to be just one kind of person. We aren’t stereotypes.
We’re 3 dimensional. So what if I’m a clumsy slut-dropper with great taste in
lipstick and a 1st class degree?
Most poignantly, however, is the response I’ve gotten from
female lecturers compared with males. On numerous occasions, female lecturers
have been curt with me, taken a general disliking to me or been actively unhelpful.
Bear with me; I know this is a controversial statement, so I’ll
back it up. One gave me 69 in an essay (one mark below a 1st) and
when I asked her why I didn’t get 70, she said ‘because I didn’t get a first when
I was in second year’. Logic.
Another wrote me a bad reference because I forgot to ask
permission to include her as a referee. Despite the fact that it was
essentially my mistake, I think it was uncalled for and unprofessional. I was a
19-year-old undergrad, for god’s sake.
I have to be especially vague about this last one because it
happened very recently. I sent the same email to two lecturers from the same
module, one male and one female, and the female replied succinctly (almost robotically),
while the male teacher engaged with my comments and proceeded to offer further
advice and support. Weird.
So here’s what I’ve surmised. This pattern is less to do
with MY social position as a woman and more to do with THEIRS. Based upon my own
experiences, I think in the context of academia, women feel like they are on a
back foot. It seems that especially high intelligence is not indexical of
femininity. Therefore, there is some tension between their identity as a woman
and their identity as an academic.
Perhaps female academics feel the need to be assertive because
they had to work far harder to achieve the same positions as their male
counterparts. I don’t know, but what I do know is that my role as a woman seems
to become more and more relevant as I move through the education system.
