21 April 2023

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

21 April 2023

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).

21 April 2023

• 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?

Exchanging Feminist Knowledge

21 April 2023

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).

21 April 2023

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?

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Sexual Harassment: Women Entering Masculinised Work Spaces

21 April 2023

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).

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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.

21 April 2023

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).

21 April 2023

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)

21 April 2023

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)

Programme

% of Students on the Programme

WomenLow SES

Age 30 or

over

Mature and Low SES

Women and low SES

Women 30

or over

Poor Mature Women

B.Commerce 29.92 1.66 5.82 0.00 1.11 0.28 0.00

B.Management

Studies47.06 2.94 6.30 0.00 1.68 3.36 0.00

B.Education (Primary)

36.36 8.08 65.66 8.08 2.02 21.21 2.02

B.Sc. Optometry

30.77 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

21 April 2023

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)

% of Students on the Programme

Programme Women

Low SES

Age 30 or over

Mature and Low SES

Women and low

SES

Women 30 or over

Poor Mature Women

B. Commerce 32.41 8.59 1.13 0.16 0.32 0.0 0.0

LLB. Law 56.18 13.48 0.0 0.0 5.06 0.0 0.0

B.Sc. Engineering

25.05 11.65 1.36 0.0 1.36 1.17 0.0

B. Science with Education

11.20 28.00 4.80 1.6 0.80 0.0 0.0

21 April 2023

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’.

21 April 2023

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).

21 April 2023

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).

21 April 2023

Reverse Discrimination

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).

21 April 2023

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.

21 April 2023

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)

21 April 2023

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.

21 April 2023

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 April 2023

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

21 April 2023

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?

21 April 2023

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?’