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Me, the Patriarchy, and the Business School

2023; Wiley; Volume: 61; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/joms.12985

1467-6486

Andrea Prothero,

Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

This essay is a call to action to dismantle the patriarchal system which thrives in academia, and business schools in particular. Building on my personal experiences of being a woman in academia since 1989, and using an analogy of 'death by a million cuts', I outline how enmeshed and embedded the patriarchy is and the impact this has on one's career, health, and well-being. While acknowledging that changing and dismantling a system as enshrined as the patriarchy is not an easy task, I offer some solutions which focus on challenging and changing the patriarchal systems, structures, power dynamics, cultures, and norms, resulting in a reimagined business school, one which is kinder, fairer, and more collaborative for all genders. Dictionary.com defines patriarchy as 'a social system in which power is held by men, through cultural norms and customs that favour men and withhold opportunity for women'. I believe academia (and particularly the business school) is one such system. Utilizing my personal experience, this essay offers a call to action to help dismantle and rebuild the system. 'Death by a million cuts' is a quote from a female academic in a study I worked on. She said (in relation to sexism at work), 'It's death by a million cuts. Show anybody a single cut and they will rightly say I'm exaggerating'. Telling my story through this analogy allows an exploration of how injustices are endemic, and how challenging them led to my being labelled difficult and developing imposter syndrome. I demonstrate examples of these cuts, collectively adding up to a gushing wound, which no matter how hard I try refuses to stop bleeding. It is important to stress that I have many privileges which other academics do not share. I am white, heterosexual, and cisgendered. I am a full professor, permanently employed in the Global North. I am able-bodied. I am from a working-class family in the Welsh valleys. My local community and my family environment were dominated by a traditional 'men come first' culture. I'm mentioning this, alongside acknowledging my privileges, because while the business school patriarchy plays a huge role in my experiences, I know my upbringing did too. They are inter-twined. It is also apposite to mention how my experiences are shaped by working in the age of the neoliberal university, its masculinist modes of operating fostering an individualistic, competitive, and isolating culture. What better place to start sharing my experiences than with the first of my million cuts. At the beginning of my career I started working alongside a male colleague who had completed the same degree. I found out quickly he was paid more and was told this was because of an age differential. This turned out to be ten days, sowing the seeds for me realizing life for men and women in business schools is different. Experiences of sexism in the classroom and as a teacher are many. My first lecture began with students telling me I was in the wrong room. I told them I was Andy Prothero, and one said, 'No, you can't be Andy. Andy's a he'. This sounds ridiculous, but I even began to question myself at that point – 'am I Andy Prothero?' It also lit the thought of 'Do I belong here?' That has never gone away. It ebbs and flows, but it always lurks. My first experience teaching a large group was equally disastrous. A small number of male students threw paper airplanes at me. It was initially amusing but quickly became stressful. What should I do? In the end I asked them to 'fucking leave my class'. They did. What would I have done if they had not? These experiences of lacking authority stuck with me my whole career. Every week before class I was physically sick and was concerned for months afterwards I might get sacked for swearing at students. In my early career, a number of male students asked not to be taught by a woman. I was told to be accommodating and make life as easy as possible for them. How does one even do that? And what about making my life as easy as possible? Students have commented on my appearance (comments include 'not bad for a blonde', 'her skirts are too short', 'her skirts are too long'), sexuality, accent, and being a mother. Students making personal comments about one's sex life or body are demoralizing. However, they are more than annoying and distressing; they could impact your career. I remain amazed that in 2023 universities continue to use student evaluations in promotion considerations. This brings me to student aggressions. One incredibly tall and muscular mature student entered my office one day, stood over me, and told me he did not do Bs. I am five feet, three inches tall (at a push!). It was intimidating. The most distressing experience came from another student disappointed with his grade. He told me to be careful walking back to my car at night because he knew where I parked it. That was 25 plus years ago, but writing it down today gives me goosebumps. I cannot walk to my car at night by myself, ever; it terrifies me. All of these 'cuts' provide examples of how the patriarchy favours men, allowing male students to feel comfortable in harassing me, intimidating me, frightening me, showing their disproval of me, and questioning my capabilities. In the excellent book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez (2019), the author talks about environments being built for men. The classroom is built for men. At my first conference presentation I was so nervous I decided to hold on to the lectern. This was impossible, because it came up to my nose. It wasn't built for short women. I have never been able to use a wall-mounted whiteboard in a classroom; I can write on only half of it, sometimes less. Oftentimes chairs in classrooms are so heavy I cannot move them. Of course, not quite physically fitting into an environment makes you question your legitimacy. And this is combined with students telling you you do not belong either. Death by a million cuts. I now move on to how gender has impacted my career progression. I believe it played a significant role, but others told me gender had nothing to do with my failed promotion attempts. When I was unsuccessful, I was told that as a woman in my forties I should be grateful I was an Associate Professor. Reasons for not being promoted included my research not being mainstream enough (it seems my gender and researching gender are a double whammy). My various contributions to university life, including teaching and learning and student-focused roles, which are incredibly time-consuming, and which research demonstrates are roles more likely to be held by women, were not 'measured' in the same way my research efforts were. If you are asked to fill those roles and say yes (and women are much less likely to say no than men), ultimately they may be used against you in a promotions round because they lead to less research output. Consequently, it's not that decision-makers are sexist, but that the process is set up to prioritize some roles over others, and this is typically gendered. Recently, I have witnessed important changes in promotions processes, but there is a long way to go in eliminating the norms and customs favouring men and withholding opportunities from women. I work with my husband. Academic couples bring with them interesting baggage: in heterosexual couples, assumptions favour the male as the dominant/productive player. For example, at nearly every interview I've had I have been asked what my contributions to McDonagh/Prothero publications were. Pierre has never been asked that question. Both of us began our academic careers at roughly the same time and completed our PhDs within a few months of each other. We have worked in the same institution. At one marketing department a number of colleagues told me I was appointed because of my husband. It made me feel pretty worthless that colleagues thought I was only appointed because of my marriage. In unrelated incidents, two senior male colleagues treated me poorly. The first was trivial but upsetting. The second had the potential to significantly damage my academic reputation. The university instructed the professor to formally apologize. Sometime after the incidents I asked why they had behaved as they did. Both told me their actions were a result of being annoyed with my husband. And there you have the patriarchy in all its glory. Two senior male academics were annoyed with a junior male colleague, and their way of dealing with it was to be mean to his wife. Two of the biggest impacts the patriarchy has had on me are my being labelled difficult by peers and debilitating imposter syndrome. Let me take you back to my salary disparity. Senior colleagues told me not to pursue it because it would label me 'difficult'. It did. This was 1989; the Equal Pay Act had come into power in 1970. I wasn't being difficult. I was asking for my legal entitlements. However, the patriarchy was so powerful and embedded it did not even cross the minds of the powers that be that their actions were illegal. There are too many examples to write about how often I've had things mansplained, or been gaslighted, or suffered microaggressions. When I've taken on senior positions, colleagues have said I was not qualified. I was. I've been called defiant in a meeting. No one challenged the comment. I ask challenging questions and I'm a critical researcher, but I'm labelled difficult because of my gender. The label is infuriating. The constant challenging is exhausting. And these experiences are widely shared among female business school academics, including PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. For instance, on the conference circuit, students have told me of PhD events at which there are senior male 'predators', and of giving each other lists of which male academics to avoid. Imagine. In 2023 this is still normal. I have been an academic for 30 plus years. I think I'm a good researcher, an excellent teacher, and an outstanding contributor to university life. However, I still have imposter syndrome. If I am asked to give a talk anywhere, my first reaction is Why do they want me? My experiences in the workplace, combined with my upbringing and a patriarchal society more generally, have combined to play on a media-stoked sense of low esteem. Living with imposter syndrome is as exhausting as being 'difficult'. How can we challenge and change the patriarchal systems, structures, cultures, and norms within business schools? Below, I detail how people in specific university positions should take action to support and advocate for women, helping dismantle the patriarchy and rebuild the business school. Death by a million cuts experiences require a million solutions. People have been discussing these solutions for centuries, and it is impossible to highlight everything in a short essay. What is clear, though, is that it is only by adopting a multitude of solutions that change will be successful. This requires formal and informal approaches, alongside horizontal and vertical solutions within business schools' structures themselves. We need to focus on different stakeholder groups, too: What can individuals do? What can deans/heads of school do? What can university management teams do? How can HR contribute? and so forth. I call on other academics to follow my approach. My own efforts have included providing mentorship and support to female colleagues, especially early career scholars. This is based not only around meeting performance measures, etc., but specifically on navigating the gendered landscape. I challenge the patriarchy whenever I can – be it in calling out the reliance on the academic work of all-male (and usually white) scholars in a research talk, or explaining to senior management teams why teaching evaluations are inappropriate for promotion/tenure purposes. I use my power as a Full Professor to constantly champion and advocate for women. I now openly talk about my experiences as a means through which to normalize them. For example, it is important to normalize motherhood – I have three children. At the end of my first maternity leave, I came back to work two-thirds of the way through the semester. Because I wasn't teaching, I was given additional exam grading, even though I was working 40 plus hours every week in my other roles. Also, while on maternity leave, upon request, I developed a new module. I brought my baby with me to introduce it at a student event. Those responsible for the extra grading knew I was living in a country where neither myself nor my husband had any family nearby. We were brand-new parents. Even though I had shown goodwill, I was given additional work because people felt I was being 'let off' by not teaching. I call on department heads and colleagues to do better. Providing kindness and compassion for others (as oppossed to increasing one's work load) in similar situations could really help. During my second maternity leave, students complained they had not been given a revision class. This was untrue. However, a colleague telephoned my home and asked if I would give another class. Stupidly, I did. I gave a revision lecture I had already given with a four-week-old baby attached to me in a sling. No one thanked me. A few weeks before my return to work, I was asked to take on a significant administrative role upon my return. I did. It nearly broke me. I call on department heads to consider the stress of returning to work, and adjust workloads wherever possible. Many universities do this already, and I ask for more to follow. After the birth of my third baby, I suffered postnatal depression. My first day back at work, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. It was one of the most difficult periods in my life. I did not tell anybody at work because I did not want to look weak. I wanted to be the super mum the adverts told me I could be. Recognizing it is not possible for everyone, I call on those women who are able to speak up and share their difficulties with relevant university parties. And I call on universities to take the action needed to allow women to feel comfortable in doing so. This requires more than an HR policy detailing sick leave entitlements. We need to change masculinist cultures to allow all genders to feel safe in disclosing their struggles and thus gaining the much-needed support they require. We also have to reveal and counter taboos (from periods to menopause) which our patriarchal society dictates we do not talk about. We do not talk about periods even though most women with a uterus have them roughly once a month for a significant portion of their lives. I suffered from severe period pains in my twenties but never missed work. If I had, I would have been labelled unreliable or difficult. 'She's having a period and she's taken time off. Seriously?' Severe morning sickness. I did not realize before becoming pregnant that morning sickness is a misnomer and you can get sick at any time. For two of my pregnancies it was incredibly debilitating. I would have to stop lectures, literally mid-slide, to go and throw up. Breastfeeding, and having leaky breasts in a class, is so embarrassing. But it should not have been. I suffered a miscarriage, a common experience for women. I co-chaired a conference a month afterwards. I did not feel as though I could pull out even though I was grieving and in considerable physical pain. Here the patriarchal system meant I continued because I did not want to let people down, with an added fear that non-attendance would mean I might not be taken seriously in the future. And consider menopause, the gift that keeps on giving! It has, among other things, led to me having hot flushes at work, fatigue, sleepless nights, and brain fog – not great for a job which requires constant cognitive thinking. Again, I call for changes to university strategies and structures which enable more discussion of taboos, thus contributing to a change in culture, allowing women to feel comfortable and safe in talking aloud about topics that need to be normalized. These taboos ('women's issues') are ones the patriarchal system trains us our whole lives not to talk about. Silent suffering is a hallmark of the patriarchy. However, they affect us daily and can make work difficult. It should be OK to write on a promotion application 'I have debilitating period pain once a month' without fear of a promotions committee laughing at you. If I had been more open about sharing my experiences of depression, miscarriage, menopause, and harassment this might have helped others. I truly hope that changes to how universities operate will provide opportunities for everyone to take up my call and be much more open in sharing their experiences and supporting others. If new mothers are able to share their experiences in a safe space, they will know they are not alone; they can let off steam and laugh and cry with colleagues. If I had somewhere to go to discuss my postnatal depression, I would have known I was not alone. If I had had a mentor who advocated for me in the workplace, I might not have given a lecture with a four-week-old strapped to my body. I now try to be that mentor for others, and I hope for more space for women to take on mentoring roles which normalize discussions around life experiences. Breaking down taboos and normalizing them requires all genders to share their experiences, but we must recognize that some people, for whatever reason, are not in a position to do so. Power embeds everything. But as well as sharing experiences, we need structural and systemic changes – promotion and tenure policies, for example, which allow experiences to be explained, but whereby promotion panel members take them seriously, and mentors who normalize conversations around these issues, too. Everything requires a united effort. Similarly, HR policies should explicitly highlight that taking time off work to deal with illnesses such as prenatal nausea and postnatal depression are totally acceptable and women will be supported in doing so. We need men to step up too. If you are a man and in an environment in which women are being mansplained to or suffering microaggressions, call it out, please. If you write promotion/tenure letters for colleagues, check you gender bias – take a little extra time to ensure that you are not being gendered in how you talk about your colleagues. What then of other university actors? It is impossible to break down the predominant male culture overnight, and universities sometimes hide behind this. Ultimately, though, gender needs to be on the agenda, and universities need to acknowledge that inequities exist and commit to policies which are truly inclusive and not window dressing. University management teams need to ask why things are not changing faster and what they can do about it. You have to have commitment and progress. You cannot just have an EDI policy; you have to be an inclusive, diverse, and equitable university. Some of the serious issues to be addressed include having more women in senior positions and addressing precarious contracts. As well as mentoring and training for women, we need men to receive training, too, especially those who resist diversity initiatives and question their worth – awareness raising and highlighting inequities in the workplace of which senior staff many have been unaware is vital. Deans have a responsibility to enact and implement change. Examples include addressing the gender imbalance for workload allocations, for instance, women being given caring roles which are typically less valued by promotions committees. At the same time, what's rewarded and what's not in the promotions process must change. Recognition for work must be more equitable, such as the importance of 'hidden' labour, for instance. It is vital for there to be transparency to ensure there is not a 'formal' and 'informal' allocation of workloads, the latter of which typically favours men. Journals have a responsibility too. Equity across the entire editorial team is vital. Many journals are moving towards equal numbers of male and female editors-in-chief, associate editors, and reviewers. Other journals need to follow this lead. Editors have a responsibility to address the type of research that is published, for example, feminist thinking in our journals remains on the margins, we still rely on outdated research about organizations which is gendered, and men are more likely to have their work cited than women. I call on everyone to continue working towards gender parity in all editorial positions. Conference organizers need to seriously tackle (and not pay lip service to) sexual harassment at their events; having attendees sign a code of conduct, for example, is one solution. At the same time, other gendered issues need addressing, including more family-friendly conference timings, breastfeeding rooms for mothers, and inclusive social events. Of course, many organizations are addressing some of these issues, but much remains to be done. Building supportive networks is crucial. This requires formal and informal networks and support from peers and those in positions of power. Advocating for equity is vital. We have more training today than 30 years ago in terms of equality, diversity, and inclusion and discrimination, harassment, and assault, but it is not enough. We definitely need more. Continuing with this is imperative. We need shared and safe spaces to discuss our experiences. Universities should play a role in creating and funding these spaces, and deans and university management teams should champion their importance, as can marginalized groups themselves. If there are safe spaces for people, then senior management should become more aware of why removing things such as student evaluations from promotions applications is essential. This way, if we challenge the patriarchy and change the system, those 'cuts' will slowly disappear. What we should not do is focus on changing women to fit the system. I do not need to attend another training course on navigating a patriarchal and toxic culture. I need help in changing the system so that it is not patriarchal and toxic. A million solutions. I have shared my experiences in order to illustrate how the death by a million cuts analogy works in reality, thus helping explain why we need a million solutions. Of course, the solutions needed to change structures, systems, power dynamics, institutions, and organizational cultures are incredibly complex, and the patriarchy does not exist in a university bubble. We obviously need changes not only to our workplaces but also to our personal environment and society more broadly. This is not an easy task. It is why the patriarchy continues to thrive. In our current climate, in which hard-fought-for women's rights are being eroded at an alarming pace, it is crucial now more than ever for business schools to step up to the challenge. I hope sharing my experiences plays a small part in enabling policies and practices which dismantle the patriarchy, and in so doing contributes to redeveloping business school culture, alongside reimagining a kinder, fairer, and more collaborative environment for women, queer, trans, non-binary colleagues, and other marginalized groups whose race and/or ethnicity, for instance, may be targeted. This essay stems from a keynote address I gave at the 2021 Academy of Marketing (AM) conference. My sincere thanks to the conference organizers, Anne Marie Doherty, Finola Kerrigan, and Lisa O'Malley, for inviting me, and entrusting me to give a talk focusing on my experiences as an academic rather than my research activities. Thanks also to the audience, whose positive responses led to me being brave enough to turn the address into this essay. I would like to express gratitude to the JMS Says editors Trish Reay and Thomas Roulet, and Associate Editor Mark Healey, for accepting the essay and for their constructive insights, which helped me write a better piece. Finally, I am indebted to Anne Keegan, Pierre McDonagh, and Diane Martin, who commented on various drafts of this essay, helped me to better present my thoughts and ideas, and gave me further confidence to submit to JMS Says. As always, thanks to the GENMAC community for everything they do in their research, support, and advocacy efforts – its members inspire me every day! Open access funding provided by IReL.