Creaming the Crop: When Hostile Conflict Impedes Feminist Mentorship

Friday, June 29, 12:00-1:15 p.m.

Introduction

Forgive me while I get personal before I get academic….

My name is Cierra and it is such an honor to be on this panel today to talk about

or rather hopefully begin a discussion about mentorship with you and my friends, really

who I consider my Women’s Center family from my alma mater EOU. If it were not for

the women before you today, I, a single mother of twins, likely would not be where I am

today, entering my second year of my PhD program in Gender Studies at IUB. I am so

thankful for Lisa, Jesse, and Chris for their friendship, counsel, and help with the kids

while I graduated from college! While these Women’s Center women became my family

and helped me with my children the academic mentoring that I received while at EOU

gave me the courage and confidence that I needed to pursue my dream (to be a teacher).

I applied for graduate school because I was encouraged by many wonderful people at

Eastern Oregon University—a small rural teaching institution known for its Master of

Teacher education and agricultural programs.

School in a much larger Research specialized academic institution like Indiana

University makes this kind of familial environment—the nurturing of familial mentorship

if you will—a fond memory. I was very lucky to get the encouragement that I needed at

EOU. My academic and mentoring experiences are very different now, as might be an

obvious expectation. I have entered the competitive realm of professional academia as a

graduate student and wanna-be professor in an environment where maximum output is

valued: I am a laborer for the department who is expected to also publish journal articles

and other forms of scholarly capital, while mastering the trade: researching.

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 Mentorship at this level of education and in the context of a much larger

institution, I have found, is quite different (of course). There is a distance between the

professors and undergraduate students that I did not experience at EOU, for example

undergraduates are often taught by graduate students rather than a professor. Graduate

students are hard pressed to find a professor with time to “mentor”: my program director

started off our first year by saying “we don’t hold hands here.” Welcome to hell….just

kidding…..So, the entire mentoring process, including my access to mentoring, and my

mentoring experience has shifted due to the institutionalization of professional

development. In my first year at IU, then, I experienced culture shock assuredly, but it

was my first experience with conflict and competition, borne of the special kind of power

dynamics that only large neo-liberal universities can wield. [graduate student

relationships to the students, rather than with the professors, publications, cultural capital,

money]

This panel is going to explore the dynamics of feminist mentorship, its

problematics and its successes. To claim that “feminist mentorship is a cornerstone of

Women’s/Gender Studies programs,” but to be critical of that the experience as a

negative or failure is to call for the necessity of understanding both the concept of

mentorship as a social and political doxa—that is an idea so entrenched that is it

commonsense, thus problematically unscrutinized—and its place in the context of

institutionalized feminism. We must examine some of the reasons why feminist

mentorship may have failed in order to create or establish a kind of mentorship that does

not mimic the institution feminism is fighting against, patriarchy. Thus, what I will

contribute to this discussion is a genealogy of the doxa of mentorship and how it relates

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to the historical trajectory in the growth of the institutionalized arm of the feminist

movement: Women’s/Gender Studies programs.

The two personal anecdotal examples of mentorship that I offer to you directly

reflects upon the history, or genealogy if you will, of the rhetoric of mentorship, or rather

the growth of mentorship as a socially and politically meaningful rhetorical ideology.

Hopefully you will see the connection to the anecdotes. Forgive the fractured nature of

this telling, but I am going to try to weave two histories for you….so I am going to jump

around a bit.

History of Mentorship

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: [1. a. Originally (in form Mentor):

a person who acts as guide and adviser to another person, esp. one who is

younger and less experienced. Later, more generally: a person who offers support

and guidance to another; an experienced and trusted counsellor or friend; a

patron, a sponsor. And

role model, someone who, in the performance of a role, is taken as a model by

others; (forgive the slippage between role model and mentoring)

Although it has a long history as a word that dates as far back to 1750 (OED), its

use can also be found in Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcumus and, in his

old age, a friend of Odysseus. Adeno Addis, in “Role Models and the Politics of

Recognition” claims mentoring as a truly academic practice emerged in the medical and

legal fields first in the 1950s as an integral process to the training of the growing

professional classes, mostly men of course, and likens this process to “role modeling.” It

was also at this particular moment that mentoring became more than a process, but

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became a part of the discursive landscape in publications from “the social sciences and

particularly in psychological and sociological studies”; mentoring or role modeling “was

slowly adapted into popular usage [and by 1973 as a concept and practice it was in

regular use] and has [since the 1980s] become a part of legal discourse” in “Wygant v.

Jackson Board of Education (affirmative action uses the rhetoric of role

modeling/mentoring).1 (Michigan board of Education and teachers’ union was challenged

by a group or white school teachers, it was decided that the “percentage of minority

teachers should be compared to the percentage of minority students in the student body,

because teachers are role models for their students.”2

“When the law embraces a particular concept, that concept has an advantage over

competing alternative [definitions] because it is no longer solely the subject of

philosophical musings and political theory [or even administrative duty]. It comes to

determine the ways and means by which our social and political life is ordered and

regulated.”3 Thus, if mentorship was not institutionalized before by its connection to the

training of a professional class, mentorship in the strictest legal form has become

institutionalized. As I said, it has become a political doxa—that is an idea so entrenched

that is it commonsense, thus problematically unscrutinized. It is no coincidence that the

instantiation of role modeling through the legal discourse, which is largely case law about

Affirmative Action and others involving the behavior of male athletes, coincides with the

time period of the founding of the institutional arm of the feminist movement in

academia: Women’s/ (and later) Gender Studies programs. Mentorship is deeply

1
Addis, Adeno. “Role Models and the Politics of Recognition.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review,
Vol. 144, 1996: 1381.
2
Ibid., 1433.
3
Ibid., 1431

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entrenched in the systemic workings of Universities. Mentorship is, for professors, just

another part of the workings, a part of the job, of turning out future scholars.

Teachers are supposed to be “comprehensive” role models. In other words, what

teachers do in their personal life should also model good behavior for students, because it

is assumed that teachers or role models/mentors will spend a good deal of time with their

follower/mentee. Addis claims followers will study the “actions, habits, and

commitments of their role models and perhaps will imitate them,” which points to the

power dynamic in the relationship.4 The mentor has something the mentee wants,

therefore, there is power, but not necessarily coercive power, involved.

Addis argues the power in the relationship is realized through sanction or lack of

recognition.5 Sanctions can be in the form of disappointment, as in the mentee does not

follow the mentor’s advice, but the more insidious of the power dynamic is the lack of

recognition, because of the potential effect on the mentee’s identity. “Individuals

develop their identities largely through a process of recognition and affirmation from

others and that recognition and affirmation will largely come from a circle of partners to

communication, like parents, teachers, and peers, the role model follower will probably

try to earn invulnerability and integrity by purchasing recognition and approval through

the process of emulation.”6 Thus, a person in this situation is vulnerable and depends

upon approval. Time and power, thus, are the social capital attached to the role model.

What is problematic about mentorship, or role modeling, especially for feminists,

is the silenced power dynamic. This model, which began in academia as early as the

1950s and was legally sanctioned in the 1980s, was created as a way to train men, to

4
Ibid., 1394.
5
Ibid., 1394.
6
Ibid.

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professionally develop men, thus it is—as a social and political doxa—a tool of the

patriarchy that was adapted by women.

Historical Context for a Discussion of Feminist Mentoring: The Rise of WST

Women’s Studies Programs began as result of the need in academia to include the

voices and the work of women in all areas of study. These programs in the 1970s and

80s were multidisciplinary programs to be begin with, as a result of the “communal”

efforts of (usually) women from multiple areas in academia second-shifting, so to speak;

they volunteered to provide “an extra service” to the students (in the form of classes

focusing on issues involving women). Dale M. Bauer, in an article entitled “Academic

Housework” from Women’s Studies on Its Own, writes that female faculty working in

WST programs at this point in time did two forms of labor: the kind for which they are

hired (teach sociology, for example), promoted and rewarded for, plus the extra work

borne from “their commitment or interest”: the fostering of women’s studies programs

included the “nurturing, sustaining, fostering of students, [which is a form of] labor made

“natural” because of the teacher’s interest in furthering a Women’s Studies Agenda.7 The

consequences of this process look something like compulsory heterosexuality, or a

nuclear family, in the academy, where disciplinary production is coded as “male,” while

volunteering on committees, teaching, and mentoring are coded as “female.” This

feminization of the academic work force is a part of larger patriarchal social processes.

What was, at one time, solely a second shift [thanks to Arlie Hochschild for the

concept] involving no money in the 1970-80s became an interdisciplinary process

involving funding coming from different areas in academia. Professors with no “special

7
In Weigman, Robin. Women’s Studies on Its Own. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006): 246.

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training” on “women’s” issues share appointments with their “specialty” discipline

(sociology, for example) pulling a paid “second shift” in their Women’s studies programs

—and this is largely still how these programs are set up.

So, in the 1970s-80s feminist agitation in many forms changed the structure of

institutions of higher education. The contributions of “power feminists,” like Catherine

MacKinnon, to feminist and critical legal theory permeated universities and even court

rooms. Women’s studies programs were established within institutions to provide

women with specialized education centered on women (usually) taught by other women;

also for the first time, anti-rape legislation made “justice” possible for women as victims

of rape (and other sexual harassment crimes). During this period we also have the

instantiation of “role model” rhetoric in the legal institution, as I mentioned earlier, and

the rise of “tokenism” and “model minorities.” Even with the gains won by “second

wave feminists” outside the academy—rape and sexual harassment remain pervasive and

convictions of these crimes remain low—and in the academy women and people of color

are often poorly represented overall.

Although the liminal position of the “outsider” is intrinsic to the centrality of the

“insider” (and not separate as a dichotomy insinuates), Women’s and Gender Studies

often forces categorical delineations to the detriment of the discipline and even against

the insistence that categories are inherently limiting (as in “identity politics” in Gunew, p.

54). In Women’s Studies on Its Own , Sneja Gunew writes that women’s and Gender

Studies has shifted from a once very marginal interdisciplinary position with “nothing” to

lose from risky pedagogical practices to a highly professionalized study within the

framework of the academy (pgs. 49, 50, 52). By moving to an inside-the-institution

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positionality the argument is that Women’s Studies has lost its edge because it must abide

by the terms of funding, but as Elam argues Women’s Studies “cannot forever exist on

borrowed time” therefore feminists must sometimes compromise politics for money (p.

220).

Kaplan and Grewal indicate that critics claim this transfer of power from the

periphery to the center has rendered “redundant [and] moribund” the work emerging from

“Women’s Studies as an institutional site” (p. 67), while Lee exemplifies how she is used

for her liminal body as the woman of color on her faculty thus limiting the possibilities of

“women of color” both within the institution itself and as a subject of study for students

(p. 85). Finally, Weigman problematizes the emergence of feminist’s emphasis on

gender over the traditional category of “women as an object of critical analysis” and

worries that the development of Gender Studies as a separate discipline is premature

because its failures are the failures of Women’s studies (p. 129-133).

Clearly there is a shift in priorities and power when once liminal objects become

the subjects of their own specialty, like Gender Studies borne from Women’s Studies,

and there is still much to learn. What I am resistant to (and disagree with) is the

hierarchy superimposed upon changes within feminism in the academy. For example, the

metaphor of the wave infers a family or “generational” structure and conjures

fragmentation and destruction in addition to a “natural” outgrowth of feminisms

emergent from the work of past feminists. Implicit in these wave discussions are the

faults of previous feminisms rather than the strength of feminism as political approach

which tends to create another insider/outsider or us/them hierarchical point of view. One

of the goals of feminism is to disrupt a priory knowledge, even and especially within the

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focus of interdisciplinary studies, however, how effective is constant criticism? Kaplan

and Grewal write that “there is no such thing as feminism free of asymmetrical power

relations” (p. 73), but critique without self reflection is like swimming across the ocean:

futile.

“Generational wars” use the family model and draw attention to the shortcomings

of other women in their pursuit and performance of feminist agitation. Because the

feminist activism of the 1970s and 80s brought change that permeated throughout various

social institutions, younger feminists are called upon to continue the momentum of the

second wave movement. Perhaps there are no public bra burnings, but the movement

within scholarship is and has been rousing. Throughout the thirty years since the civil

rights movements the academy has produced an abundance of scholarship on women.

Furthermore, there are now research specialists in disparate other disciplines like gender

and queer studies and students in these disciplines have a wide body of literature to draw

from and are receiving specialized training in different areas within the discipline.8

Professional (graduate) students can now draw from the vast and growing body of

knowledge and synthesize it to make claims about social experiences and the culture at

large today.

Unfortunately, what has not changed is the structure of the institution and the

function of the people working in its shadow. The people in the labor force in Women’s

Studies programs are still performing “feminized” labor and as I have mentioned and

mentorship in this sense means watching and emulating, modeling, my professors.

8
Based upon the areas of specialties in the Gender Studies PhD program at Indiana University
Bloomington.

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Teaching, learning, and mentoring are performed within a rigidly structured patriarchal

paradigm that is reified through administrative process and the judicial process.

The popular imagination and the judicial decisions regarding role modeling

suggests that its meaning is “empirically informed, logically sound, and normatively

defensible.” The concept of role model in academic institutions is widely invoked and

not in dispute and largely unexamined as a regular part of the professionalization process.

However, its very instantiation as a model is suspect when it comes to feminism, because

one of feminism’s very tenets is empowerment and that is difficult to achieve through

top-down power models like those currently held in Women’s/Gender Studies programs.

Feminist mentoring

Feminist Mentoring, however, could and should infer a reciprocal relationship,

although is has not been defined that way popularly or juridically. “Mentoring, to my

mind, differs from more traditional female relationships in that it should necessarily offer

complete freedom to both parties. While a mentor, by definition, is ideologically

constructed with "more power," particularly between a teacher and a student, a feminist

mentor-mentee relationship should work at setting aside that power to work at mutually

held goals. For instance, while I might suggest to a student that she look at historical

research, she should be able to say to me, "I'd rather look at more recent columns and see

how those compare to online columns or teen 'zines." It is HER education, her choice to

learn what feeds her feminist sensibility.

There is a difference between the relationships formed during feminist mentoring

and the relationships formed due to traditional female bonds. In a mentoring relationship

there is always an aura of professionalism that never entirely fades. However, I also think

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that traditional female bonds still play a role in a mentoring relationship. A feminist

mentor-mentee relationship has to be an equal balance of both. There has to be a

professional working side, but there also has to be a certain level of comfort and

friendship in order to help strengthen the relationship. There also has to be room for both

or all parties involved to voice their opinions without being afraid of consequences.”

http://www.womenwriters.net/summer05/scholarly/mahaffey_meade.htm

Conclusion

What I have done thus far is set forth a short history of the growth of the

discourse about mentoring and role modeling, which is intimately implicated in the

trajectory of the field of women’s studies. The emerging specialties—like AADS, WST,

GS, Sexuality Studies—exemplify the types of movements within the halls of the

academy that snowballed out from the momentum of the civil rights era. Much of the

scholarship available to women’s or gender studies scholars today was written by women

and men from “second wave” who had no larger body of literature to draw from nor were

they specialized in women’s or gender studies.

Furthermore, early WST professors had no “role models”—in the sense of other

women to emulate—in the academy. It is an exciting moment in the development of the

field, because there is enough literature to draw from and build on in such a way that can

avoid, or at least acknowledge, some of the pitfalls of past scholarship: like making

claims monolithically about all women, thus promoting a (now avoidable) type of sexism,

or even reproducing the power structures that are so limiting in the first place, like

oppressive forms of mentoring. In short, we must “develop a common literacy that

moves us beyond the recent paralyzing battles” and in accepting our limitations we can

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relax into “an interdisciplinarity that destabilizes, critiques, and challenges rigid

methodological practices” (Gunew, p. 64, Grewal and Kaplan, p. 66). Ultimately, I

accept that I have to learn and work from the inside of a regulated educational institution,

but I see it as my strength not my demise. We can choose to change things making them

less patriarchal and more feminist.

Bibliography

Addis, Adeno. “Role Models and the Politics of Recognition.” University of

Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 144, 1996: 1377-1468.

Colley, Helen. Mentoring for Social Inclusion: a critical approach to nurturing mentor
relationships. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. (New York: Random House, 1989/1949).

Weigman, Robin. Women’s Studies on Its Own. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Weingart, Peter. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Science and the Context of
Relevance,” Poetics Today, Vol. 9, No. 1, Interpretation in Context in Science and
Culture, 1998: 58.

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