On being the ‘gender person’ in an academic department: constructions, configurations and implications

Abstract

The term 'gender person' in an academic department is a colloquial expression which refers to someone who researches and/or teaches about gender, but whose primary affiliation is not to a gender studies department or centre. This role has particularly been discussed in relation to international development organisations, but has been neglected in relation to higher education institutions. The article reapplies Lucy Ferguson's 'gender person' framework to academics working as 'gender people' in the conditions of contemporary academia. Three cases of different manifestations of the 'gender person' role are explored in detail and analysed for the ways in which occupying the 'gender person' role impacts upon academic careers and gender knowledge. The article contributes an elaborated concept of the 'gender person' in academia and provides empirical evidence of being the 'gender person'. The article particularly shows that relying on a 'gender person' as a form of gender mainstreaming renders both gender academics and academic departments vulnerable in different ways.

“There is a hell and heaven difference among faculties who are from quota and those who are non-quota”: under the veneer of the “New Middle Class” production of Indian public universities

“…Of the 15 female academics participating, 8 were either tenured in centers or schools of Women’s Studies or were designated to promote gender mainstreaming from within departments in the disciplines of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in which they were situated. For the sake of confidentiality we have extended the term “gender persons” (Henderson, 2019 ) 10 to include all of those 8 participants.…”

“…We useHenderson's (2019) term where she uses the colloquial expression 'gender person' to refer to those academics who research and/or teach gender but whose primary affiliation is not women's/gender studies. In India, because of the lack of academics tenured in women's/gender studies it is quite usual for gender persons to give voluntary services to women's studies and they also act as research collaborators with academics in centres or departments of women's/gender studies.11 We have been careful to indicate our awareness of the limitations of this in this papers' analysis; in that, it gives a stronger dominance to that in-group.…”

Maneuvering within postfeminism: A study of gender equality practitioners in Danish academia

“…Practitioners in this category rarely maneuver, but remain, in their reasoning, within postfeminist logics. Other practitioners work as dedicated GE consultants and possess extensive knowledge about gender and feminism, and a lot of personal commitment to do GE work (Henderson, 2019; Sandler, 2015). There seems to be two ways that such practitioners maneuver within postfeminism; a more or less deliberate “tempered radicalism” (Meyerson & Scully, 1995).…”

“…Practitioners in this category rarely maneuver, but remain, in their reasoning, within postfeminist logics. Other practitioners work as dedicated GE consultants and possess extensive knowledge about gender and feminism, and a lot of personal commitment to do GE work (Henderson, 2019;Sandler, 2015).…”

Gender back on the agenda in higher education: perspectives of academic staff in a contemporary UK case study

“…Inspired by Ahmed's (2012) elucidation of institutional barriers or 'brick walls' facing diversity workers and chiming with Henderson's (2019) notion of the gender person -referring to the person who is identified as holding responsibility for working on gender issues in their department or organization -we explore challenges and complexities surrounding working on gender curricula in the contemporary milieu from the perspective of academic practitioners. Such gender work creates additional, often unpaid and unrecognized 'labours of love' (Morley, 1998), institutions often relying on women, marginalized and precariously employed academics' 'passionate attachments' to such work (McAlpine, 2010).…”