Feminism,gender and universities: Politics,passion and pedagogies,Miriam E David

Reviewed by: Paula Burkinshaw, Leeds University, UK

Miriam David is open and forthright in explaining her motivation in writing this book:

as a feminist social scientist, I had always been passionately interested in the relations between social and political changes, family, work and education […] I now wanted to devote my time and attention to providing an overview of the changes for women through universities and the question of changing forms of pedagogy, especially feminist pedagogy for the practices of HE. (p. 4)

She identifies feminists as ‘women who were actively involved in changing women’s social and political lives through developing new pedagogies’ (p. 53). She uses network analysis, similar to the Hoskins study of women professors (2012), to chart key institutions (‘structures’) and to locate feminists involved with higher education. Through this network analysis she solicits the views of various feminist academics from across the world (including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, USA and the UK). Her charting and interviews range across what she designates as ‘three generations’. Although she reflects critically on the concept, the wave analogy is deployed in her grouping of the feminist stories which she assembles into three broad ‘waves’. Networks of feminists in higher education, she observes, tend to be not just professional, but based on friendships. Another feature of this study is that the stories it relays are ‘owned’ (the authors are identified), and David includes an interesting discussion of the ethics of anonymity versus such identification in Chapter 1.

The book begins with Miriam’s exploration of the changing approaches to the study of feminism in academe and of feminism’s synergies within women’s learning lives. According to this book, the origins of the feminist project lie with the social and political movements for change after the Second World War, becoming known as ‘the women’s liberation movement’ and ‘second wave’ feminism. David argues that, although much has been written about these early developments, there is relatively little literature about how feminism has become part of academe, developing feminist knowledge. She speculates about whether this knowledge and feminist activism across higher education is responsible for the growing awareness of gender violence and sexual relations. She contends that feminist pedagogy is more practice-based than other forms of pedagogy because of feminists’ concern to ensure the ‘development and creation and recreation of feminist knowledge through our daily and pedagogical practices’ (p. 20).

Chapter 2 deals comprehensively with the feminisation of higher education across the world, with David arguing that misogyny survives despite increasing numbers of women participating in higher education. She also registers the advent of academic capitalism, with higher education playing a key role in the global economy. This chapter includes quantitative data which is used to bolster feminist contentions about neoliberalism. For example, she deploys this data to contend that neoliberalism reinforces the myth of meritocracy whilst denying gendered power relations.

David defines and debates academic feminism throughout Chapter 3, arguing that despite the massive growth in the numbers of women in higher education, the culture of these institutions remains sexist and misogynistic. She suggests that most academic feminists are still working through what feminism means for them and their working lives.

Ultimately the biographical stories are the story of this book, as they illustrate in detail how feminists have realised change in higher education and increased women’s participation in academic labour markets. Some of the older women tell how uncomfortable it was for them moving into higher education and how their relationships with men often determined their careers. The book indicates that some of the youngest women were more reluctant to label themselves as feminists, being more concerned with intersectional equality. Overall, the women David consulted come from different parts of the world and from different eras (including the contemporary period) and their stories are interspersed throughout Chapters 4 to 7 of the book. These stories are offered as collective biographies, or a ‘prosopography’, which connect individual action with social structure – a method which David adapts from the work of Olive Banks (1985, 1986) and which she uses to represent the responses to her questions. She provides a schedule of these questions in Appendix 1 of the book. (Her questions included: ‘What influences has feminism had on the changing university?’).

I immersed myself in this fascinating prosopography reflecting on the many perspectives on feminism, waves, social class and resistance/agency that it provides. I especially enjoyed the reflections within all of the biographical accounts about how and when the authors began to identify as feminists. I have often casually commented that: ‘I have always been a feminist’. Since reading this book, I have been thinking much more about the influences and circumstances contributing to my sense of being a feminist.

Indeed, I have realised that Miriam David’s work has been an important influence as I have been developing my own feminist perspectives as a researcher investigating gender in higher education in the UK. David’s research, as this book demonstrates, is characterised by its breadth and depth and by the passion with which she approaches it. Feminism, Gender and Universities in itself constitutes a significant contribution to feminist research on higher education and it also channels the voices of many other feminist scholars. It traces the history and shaping of contemporary feminist pedagogy, whilst highlighting the challenges which still remain in this sector. I will use this book in my own research and as an inspiration in my newfound career, and I am already recommending it to colleagues.