Retaining a foothold on the slippery paths of academia : University women, indirect discrimination, and the academic marketplace
- Authors: Wilson, Jacqueline , Marks, Genee , Noone, Lynne , Hamilton-Mackenzie, Jennifer
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Gender and Education Vol. 22, no. 5 (2010), p. 535-545
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This paper examines indirect discrimination in Australian universities that tends to obstruct and delay women's academic careers. The topic is defined and contextualised via a 1998 speech by the Australian Human Rights Commission's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, juxtaposed with a brief contemporaneous exemplar. The paper discusses the prevalence of women among casual and fixed-term academic workers, and the contrasting low numbers of women in senior academic positions. It is argued that the neo-liberal 'marketisation' of higher education, which still prevails, has fostered a number of indirectly discriminatory practices and conditions that substantially disadvantage women. A selection of studies of the problem are critiqued. It is argued that a broad statistical methodology is inadequate due to its tendency to 'homogenise' the academy and its component individuals, in the process giving scope for unjustified optimism among university policy-makers. A particulate approach is advocated, acknowledging the wide variation between and within universities, and the range of hidden difficulties individual women academics can face. It is concluded that despite apparent reforms over the past decade, the situation of women has improved little in practical terms.
- Description: 2003007854
Teaching white privilege : an auto-ethnographic approach
- Authors: Wilson, Jacqueline , Chihota, Clement , Marks, Genee
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Inclusive Education Vol. 27, no. 14 (2023), p. 1642-1658
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The teaching of white privilege in Australian tertiary settings is beset by a number of obstacles arising especially from resistance, disbelief and outright obstructionism in white students, and occasionally colleagues. The article summarises the historical and societal context regarding race relations, racism and white hegemony in Australia, then presents the personal accounts of three academics of diverse backgrounds who teach white privilege as components of courses in Social Work and Education. The three accounts make explicit connections between their authors’ personal and ethnic origins and their respective pedagogical and epistemological approaches to teaching the topic, either explicitly, or embedded within other course content or encounters. The article contributes to the growing body of work on effective pedagogy in the area of white privilege, with emphasis on the increasingly urgent need for broad societal understanding of the issue in Australia. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.