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This study is a critical reflection on the last decade of my life in academic institutions as a learner, activist, administrator, researcher, and teacher. The analysis is based on a rethinking of my experience as a minority woman in academe from a Marxist feminist perspective. So far this study has raised more questions than answers. This is in part because there is considerable theoretical confusion in the literature on the topic. The topic is rather broad involving the democratisation of education, race, gender, class, anti-racism, and a variety of feminist and other critical pedagogical perspectives on the relationship between knowledge and power.
As social scientists and educators, we are involved in explaining this situation. No matter what sociological points of view we are taking to account for social inequality, students come to our classes in search of answers. Social theories and methodologies are changing so rapidly that it is difficult to keep abreast of development in any academic discipline. This creates stress and anxiety and I am not sure how conscious we are about this challenge, and if we share it with our students. How often do we say in our classes, for example, that 'I am learning about this topic', or 'I am a student of this topic', and even 'I don't know'.
Furthermore, as a result of the fast erosion of our dreams for a just and democratic society, we all are stressed and anxious. Students who enter our classrooms are over-worked, under-paid, insecure, and at best bewildered about their future. And finally, facilitating students' learning about the ways in which power and privilege shape and operate in our lives and what we could do about it, is a social responsibility that I have accepted.
My approach to teaching is not teacher-centred. The learning process is based on making sense of the experiences of all class participants, the students, the teacher, and the social and political context in which learning is taking place. The learning process is guided by feminist pedagogy and is experientially based. Discussions of racism are centred on our own experiences of racism, although we also deal with the accumulated knowledge about this topic. Each of us, whether members of the dominant or dominated groups, has diverse experiences. We share this knowledge with each other and try to make sense of them. We try to understand the relationship between power and privilege and the way that it shapes our interactions. We do not look at race and racism as independent or autonomous phenomena. Racism is tied to the unequal distribution of power in society, and enters into different relationships with class and gender. This is a thread that runs through all learning activities.
Talking freely about experiences of racism, whether as a member of the dominant or dominated group, is quite often not easy. We try to create an environment which is safe and conducive to critical thinking. Although the learning process is based on personal experiences, we use documentaries, newspapers, feature films and guest speakers in order to learn about other experiences. My role as a teacher in such a course is complex; it has been rewarding, enlightening, exhausting, and at times frustrating. As a minority woman, my credibility, authority, and objectivity are all under scrutiny. I expect some class participants to have racist and anti- feminist attitudes. The challenge is to walk the students through the learning process, which enables them to relearn their privilege and oppression.
The participants in this research were minority women students from Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal. I did not try to define who a minority woman is. Information about the research simply mentioned the project and its goals. In order to get good participation, I advertised the project widely on- and off-campus. I depended on student associations, the student women's centres, community women's organisations, and community and campus media. I also relied on personal connections and the word of mouth. Some of my colleagues had announced the project in their classes. The response was overwhelmingly positive. For instance, I received e-mail messages and had calls from women who heard about the project over a women's radio collective.
I did not interview participants individually. The participants formed focus groups in different times and places including my home. In each focus group, at least five women participated. The discussion started by addressing the question of who a minority woman was. We did not try to reach an agreed-upon definition. We did, however, reach a consensus about locating our experiences within the power relations in the university.
I used dialogue techniques and various documentaries as a means of raising consciousness among participants. First, I consciously deviated from the positivist approach of posing as a detached researcher capable of extracting unpolluted raw data from my subjects. Second, the fact that the women responded to my call indicates that they were conscious of their status as a minority person. This does not mean, however, that they had theorised their experience. Socialisation and acculturation do not allow us to question social relations as they are. Even in academic situations, in spite of the academy's claim to teach critical thinking, many people, both members of the minority and majority, accept things as they are even though they may have doubts about it. For example, I know, as a minority woman teacher, that my objectivity and authority is often under scrutiny. But like many other women, I do not always have the intellectual tools to conceptualise, theorise or problematise my daily experience of racism and sexism.
After a fair amount of discussion, I provided each participant with a questionnaire. We discussed the questionnaire and they were asked to respond to it at their convenience. They returned them at different times, some after a few days and others a couple of months later. The questionnaire consisted of eight sections and each section included one or more questions. It also contained both 'factual' and 'experiential' questions. Factual questions are designed to elicit information from the respondents regarding their background, their study and work history at the university. Experiential questions are designed to help respondents to reflect on and express their opinions about their experience within the learning environment. The respondents were encouraged to relate their experiences, to describe whatever events seemed significant to them, to provide their own definition of their situations, and to reveal their opinions and attitudes as they saw fit. The questions were open-ended. The participants were diverse in terms of disciplinary affiliation, ranging from engineering to social sciences, and according to academic status, as part-time and full-time members of the institution.
Some forty women participated in the focus groups. Twenty-eight questionnaires have been returned so far. Some of them are in languages other than English or French. So far, I have only analysed twenty-two questionnaires. The respondents have identified themselves as South Asian, Iranian, Indian, Latin American, Black, West Indian, visible minorities and others.
The majority of minority women participating in this study have experienced various forms of discrimination in universities. Reading the literature on racism and sexism in academe, I found out that these experiences were quite similar to those of the generation before. There is continuity in experiencing alienation, isolation, exclusion, hostility and lack of understanding of their lives. This continuity demands explanation. A relevant question is why there is little change in spite of the involvement of the state and the university in redressing inequality?
This diversification has occurred largely due to pressures from sources external to the university, i.e., as a result of popular struggles such as the civil rights movement, women's movement, Native people's movements, the environmentalist and peace movements and the activism of gay men and lesbians. Internally, too, the student movement of the 1960s and the 1970s acted as a powerful source of change. In spite of initial resistance, the state and the universities both showed flexibility in meeting these challenges. No one can deny that gender and race relations on the campus have changed to some extent. However, what my findings show is that the balance of forces on the campus has not changed. The historical precedent to the situation today is the struggle for suffrage rights. After decades of organised struggle, women were finally allowed into the legislative halls of Western democracies. Their entry into the parliament has not, however, led to a radical change in gender relations.
This experience offers a challenge to poststructuralist theory. We are told by poststructuralists that power in society is diffused to the extent that one cannot see the state or the market as dominant centres of power. Some argue that the state in contemporary Western societies is withering away. Others who still see the institution of the state argue that it is a site of struggle where minorities, much like power blocs, can negotiate their interests. Some of these theorists see the campus and the state as sites of resistance for disadvantaged groups.
My findings and my own experience indicate that the university is highly structured and has close ties with two major centres of power, the state and the market. There is room in the university for negotiation and resistance. But the two sides negotiate under unequal conditions. The state and the university administration are both highly organised and experienced. The women, especially minority members, are not. Negotiation under these conditions amounts to concessions. It is true that the universities show flexibility in opening their doors to marginalised women. Problems emerge, however, when they demand a radical break with a body of knowledge and institutional practices which negate their experiences of systemic racism and sexism. Such demands call for an all-round change not only within the universities but also in relations between these institutions and society.
Opposition to equity reform has passed from words to action. The conservatives have put the dismantling of equity programs on their agenda. In both Canada and the US, the issue has been debated in radio and television talk shows and other popular media. They argue that equity costs the taxpayer, and is a drag on the economy. Much of this discourse is misleading in so far as research indicates that inequity has serious economic consequences (Glyn and Miliband 1994). The leader of the Tories in the province of Ontario has dismantled the Employment Equity Act. The California university system, one of the largest higher educational institutions in the US, has recently voted against the continuation of their affirmative action programme (Jaschik 1994).
Although the limited diversity achieved so far has introduced certain changes in academic life, it has not transformed the balance of forces on the campus. It is true that the universities show flexibility in opening their doors to women and other marginalised groups. However, universities have failed to meet the demands of these groups. Meeting their demands requires the transformation of the universities into inclusive institutions. Inclusivity means incorporation of alternative knowledge capable of transforming the status quo (Richer and Weir 1995). For example, an inclusive business school should accommodate the interests of Native peoples in maintaining whatever is left of their self-sufficient hunting, fishing and farming economies. An inclusive agricultural school should conduct research and train students to engage in sustainable organic farming. Inclusive departments of economics should conduct research on alternative forms of economic organisation such as non-profit, co- operative, mixed, socialist or self-sufficient production and distribution systems. An inclusive educational institution should promote the feminisation of knowledge, and advocate equality.
Many conservatives feel that these demands for inclusivity amount to a challenge to established traditions of Western culture. Western culture is, however, diverse. What they call Western culture is in fact the culture of the most powerful social classes which command the market and regulate gender and race relations. For example, organic agriculture is as Western as the insecticide-based, large-scale farming. For that matter gender and race equality is also as Western as male-dominated and racist relations. Thus, the question is not the conflict between a non-Western tradition and a Western culture. The question is, rather, the demand of the marginalised groups for a radical change of the status quo.
The conflict over diversity is not easy to resolve. The forces involved in this struggle are no longer sharply divided into marginal versus central groups. Both the centre and the margin are divided along ideological and political lines. Advocates of each position are found in both the centre and the margin. In the last three decades, some members of the marginalised groups have been able to develop a body of knowledge which is credible, challenging and vigorous. For instance, feminist research has offered a serious critique of the male nature of social sciences and the humanities. This body of knowledge motivates the members of both genders to subvert disciplines which are constructed by the White, male and Eurocentric middle class scholars. It is important to emphasise that although marginalised groups were the motivating force behind these changes, some of their members do advocate the ideology of the centre. It would be more appropriate, therefore, not to reduce the current struggle to a conflict between two clean-cut camps. Although this was the case from the very beginning, it seems that the social base for diversification is now broader than ever before.
The universities are not 'ivory towers'. They are an integral part of the existing social and economic order. Responding to social movements for equality and justice, the Canadian state has pushed the universities to adopt employment equity policies and practices, and has provided limited incentives for more inclusive interventions such as women's access to traditionally male dominated fields of study. However, the state has also promoted the establishment of stronger ties between the institutions and the market that is dominated by powerful economic and financial monopolies. Under the circumstances, academic institutions are in a difficult position to promote diversity, and will continue to favour monopolies of knowledge enhancing the capitalist economy.
Although the conservative offensive is backed by powerful market forces, it is unlikely to succeed in the long run. We can learn some lessons from history. The universities, which were initially in the grip of the church and the aristocracy, were able to free themselves in spite of relentless repression. The struggle for secularisation of knowledge was bound to succeed: the social bases of the student population and faculty changed steadily; members of other classes and women entered the academy; new perspectives and new disciplines replaced the metaphysical worldview. These changes spanned a few centuries in the post-Renaissance period. Now at the end of the century, the institutions of higher education experience a crisis that entails change. It involves a radical rupture with the past.
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