Activism among feminist academics: Professionalized activism and activist professionals

Abstract

While focusing on the professional lives of women faculty, little of the scholarship addresses how faculty women mobilize or how and with whom they create networks in order to work in academe. It is the extraordinary dimension of women who collectively act on and in academe and society in which I am interested. Through an exploratory comparative case study, I seek to understand the relationships and activism of faculty women in order to shed light on what women are doing to address issues of equity and discrimination and on how women succeed. I will use semi-structured individual interviews and document and observational analyses from two Research I feminist faculty grassroots organizations to provide a deeper understanding of how particular feminist faculty organize in a climate that is entrenched in the patriarchy. From this study, I hope to show that feminism and activism can have a meaningful place in the academy. Moreover, I hope to provide examples of what academic feminism looks like. Finally, I hope that this study will make significant recommendations for those in higher education to assist in eroding the patriarchal systems embedded in academe.