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

To what extent can the lenses of gender analysis help students of higher education articulate needed changes in the 21^st century academy? This collection of essays attempts to answer that question in terms of lessons from the past, explorations of lives of students and faculties in the present, and possible goals and approaches for the future. To situate the collection Ropers-Huilman asks, "why gender?" and responds by saying that we must work to "understand the ways in which gendered norms and expectations have a variety of effects on teaching, learning and leading in higher education." To the question "why higher education?" she responds by saying that "higher education has far-reaching consequences for the construction of our society . . . what we do in these teaching and learning environments has the potential to exacerbate, replicate, or challenge gender constructions that exist in society writ large."

The essays that follow take up these issues in a variety of ways. The first two articles examine respectively the lives of prominent past women administrators and the histories and contributions of women's colleges. The latter provides women-friendly lessons for present-day situations, such as making all students believe that they matter, providing role models, and including women in the curriculum.

In the sections on the present day, the two articles on student life focus on eating disorders and the culture of sports and fraternity life. Laura Hensley summarizes the literature on "resiliency factors" in combating the "normative discontents" that college women have with their bodies. William Pinar provocatively details the connections between business-as-usual sexual violence and hazing practices in both fraternity life and college athletics. His horrifying anecdotes are bolstered by an analysis which focuses on the aggressive, sexist and homophobic nature of normative college masculinities. Quite rightly, but hopelessly, he calls for an end to all campus fraternities, a sharp curtailment of big-time campus sports, and required gender studies courses for all undergraduates.

The first article on faculty, by Judith Glazer-Raymo, gives a wealth of useful statistical information on the gender breakdown of tenured, full-time and part-time faculty positions over time. She describes the history of affirmative action struggles and worries about the future: "it is difficult to predict the long-range impact . . . if good faith efforts to bring about equity and diversity are replaced by laissez faire attitudes of meritocracy, race- and gender- neutral standards, and general attacks on advocates for women and people of color." (106.) Wolf-Wendel and Ward next delineate the difficulties associated with work and family issues for women academics, specifically the challenges for dual career couples and the balancing of the tenure clock with the biological clock. Suggestions for handling each of these issues are offered, but, tellingly, the authors point out that sometimes people will not take advantage of leaves or tenure clock delays because they are afraid of the effects on their careers. (127.) Finally, Becky Ropers-Huilman captures in a series of interviews the balancing acts - professional, personal, intellectual and political - that feminist teachers at one Research 1 university face in constructing feminist identities in the academy. She found that many of her fifteen respondents felt that they had to keep aspects of their feminism private until after they had achieved tenure.

Interestingly, the two articles focusing on the future are the only ones in the collections to deal with the intersections of gender and race. Ropers-Huilman and Denise Taliaferro describe their common involvement in an "education advocacy" discussion group which examined the relationships among white women and women of color. In the last essay, Ana Martinez-Aleman calls for more research using lenses integrating race and gender, instead of looking at either one or the other or using a simple additive approach.

This collection of essays admirably covers the current field of gender issues in higher education. It reinforces and...