Gendered Futures in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives for Change (review)

While several existing books focus on women in higher education or a feminist perspective, none capture the issue of gender like this book, Gendered Futures in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives for Change, edited by Becky Ropers-Huilman. The chapters included in this book capture the socially constructed nature of gender as well as the potential to deconstruct it. Other books on women in higher education or feminist methodology do not delve into provocative and diverse issues found in higher education that this book pulls together in one volume.

The editor shares that the purpose of the book is to provide historical, contemporary, and future insights that describe gender issues currently observed in higher education today. In addition, these insights are presented from a critical perspective that suggests change is needed. The range and depth of most chapters clearly meet these two purposes. The book is divided into four parts: (a) Learning from the Past, (b) Deconstructing the Present: Student Lives, (c) Deconstructing the Present: Faculty Lives, and (d) Re-Conceiving the Future. Readers who have little experience reading feminist literature will find that this volume provides a nice overview of many different issues. For readers who have read feminist literature previously, there are several chapters that deserve special attention and are worth reading.

While the chapters included in the Learning from the Past section provide an excellent foundation for considering the present and future, the nature of these chapters (history) limits their ability to provide new information; however, they are very necessary for readers beginning to explore these issues. The two chapters in the second section dealing with students and present day issues provide an innovative look at body image and violence towards women. Readers will find these chapters to be informative and provocative.

The third section thoroughly covers issues in faculty life: negotiating work and family, negotiating professional identities, and the impact of part-time employment. These issues are certainly important in higher education and while attention is paid to these issues, women continue to struggle in the work place. While the issues in this section are not new, each of the chapters offers substantive recommendations for change.

The most innovative section of this volume is the last section, which contains two chapters dealing with issues of gender, race, and re-conceiving the future. In the chapter "Advocacy Education", the editor and a graduate student share "a dialogic analysis of advocacy education from at least two perspectives" (p. 153); the editor, Becky Ropers-Huilman, writes from a White feminist perspective and the graduate students writes from a Black womanist perspective. This chapter was creative, enlightening, and stimulating. By using a dialogic style, the thoughts and reservations of each character are discussed within their own worldviews. This chapter was worth reading for its content and for its creative delivery. In the last chapter, race and gender are linked in order to "enable us to reveal discriminatory practices that would otherwise go undetected" (p. 180). The author provides a historical summary of research dealing with gender and race as well as critiquing research studies within the higher education context that do not recognize the importance of linking race and gender. These two chapters are truly innovative and provide evidence for the socially constructed nature of gender and the need to question and deconstruct how higher education views gender.

Overall the volume is concise and includes a wide variety of issues, making it a potential textbook or discussion tool for classroom or professional development. Perhaps the most important aspect of this volume is that it provides multiple perspectives while maintaining a focus on gendered futures in higher education.