The Glass Menagerie that Limits Womens' Career Prospects in the Groves of Academe
When Cromwell said ‘To hell or to Connacht’ I don’t think he was speaking to highly qualified and experienced female academics looking for a suitable position west of the Shannon. Women perhaps like Dr Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington who was discriminated against on gender grounds when she was overlooked for a senior lectureship. We now know from a recently published Higher Education Authority (HEA) report that in NUI Galway seventy-nine per cent of senior academic staff members are male; thirteen per cent of associate professors are female and fourteen per cent of professors are female.
And it’s not only the illustrious universities that are worryingly misogynistic. In our institutes of technology twenty-nine per cent of those who hold senior academic posts are women. In Athlone Institute of Technology just thirteen per cent of senior academic staff are female. But why are women under-represented in senior academic posts in Ireland’s universities, institutes of technology and colleges?
Could it be that a significant proportion of men are still intimidated by brainy women? It’s all diaphanous dreaming spires at lecturer level with a 50:50 gender split. However, as grades increase in seniority the dearth of women becomes more apparent. There is a whiff of aftershave hanging in the corridors of learning and it needs to be tempered by a potent antidote. According to the HEA women account for just thirty-five per cent of senior lecturers, twenty-six per cent of associate professors and nineteen per cent of professors across Ireland’s seven universities and fourteen institutes of technologies are held by women.
Has nothing changed in almost three hundred years? It seems to me that a woman at lecturer grade in third level may as well be Jude the Obscure for all the hope she has of reaching a lofty professorship. I could go back to Hypatia (350 AD – 415 AD), teacher of mathematics and philosophy and head of the Platonist school at Alexandria who paid the ultimate price for being a scholar – but I won’t – she just came to mind because I read about her recently in Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve.
Patronising the ‘gentle sex’ simply meant that civilisation only developed fifty per cent of its capacity because only fifty per cent of the population were allowed on the developmental team. Throughout the centuries there would always be a handful of enlightened people who considered it worthwhile to educate their daughters, among them Henry Vlll and Sir Thomas Moore. But there was always a backdraft of condescension. Eighteenth century middle and upper class women, for example, were expected to know just enough about mathematics to discuss it in polite conversation. Seeing a ready market, the entrepreneurial author, Francesco Algarotti, penned a series of textbooks written for young women audaciously entitled Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies. For the benefit of the hapless damsels, he ‘clarified and simplified’ the latest developments in maths and science’ But here’s the rub; believing that women were only interested in romance, he attempted to explain Newton’s discoveries through the coquettish discourse between a Marquise and her male companion.
Nowadays, that would be the bizarre equivalent of a mathematician being approached by the Department of Education and Skills and asked to collaborate with ‘chic lit’ authors in order to weave some sneaky maths lessons into the plotlines, hence, giving the unsuspecting readers a good dose of hard sums without them even realising it. Of course, the cunning plan would be discovered if ever a male of the species happened to accidentally read one of these works of fiction. They would puff out their chests with pride, being yet again reassured that those who are lucky enough to have their genitals on the outside are also blessed with a special aptitude in all things numerical.
Suffice to say that it was not through the study of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies that piqued one Sophie Germaine’s curiosity about hard sums; no gentlemen; it was Montucla’s History of Mathematics and in particular his chapter on the life of Archimedes, and even more particularly, on the death of Archimedes. On that fateful day, he was so engrossed in studying a geometric figure he had drawn in the sand that he did not respond to a Roman soldier and was consequently fatally introduced to the sharp end of his spear.
I guess the clever Germaine must have thought, as perhaps did many clever women in her day – “I may as well be murdered (almost unawares) doing what I love rather than die of boredom.” And so, she started a late night studying lark swotting up on number theory and calculus. Being sooo of their time, her parents became understandably alarmed at her unfeminine pursuits. But what to do? Her father confiscated her candles and her clothes and stopped heating her room.
Just like little Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, Germaine spent her days in a cold room with an empty grate. Unlike Fanny though, Germaine was no martyr. She requisitioned a secret stash of candles and wrapped herself in bedclothes. I guess her parents were left with two choices – let her freeze to death in the garret or relent and hire a maths tutor. Eventually Germaine would disguise herself as a man to get into the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1794. Her career in mathematics would have been astounding in the 21st century, let alone the 18th century. Luckily for her, many famous male mathematicians did take her seriously. She revolutionised the study of Fermat’s Last Theorem but despite this astounding mathematical achievement her death certificate would describe her as a single woman with no profession.
A British contemporary of Germaine’s would encounter similarly bizarre instances of misogyny towards a girl who was good at sums. Mary Somerville’s two brothers were given a good education but, in keeping with the ideas of the time, Somerville's parents saw no need to do the same for her. Her mother did teach her to read but did not think it necessary to teach her to write. She tried to educate herself by reading every book that she could find in the house. Like Germaine, this unladylike pursuit alarmed her parents who sent her post haste to a school that taught needlework.
But the trouble was only starting. While taking painting lessons from the artist Alexander Nasmyth Somerville became interested in mathematics when she heard him explain how Euclid's Elements formed the basis for understanding perspective in painting, and that it was the basis for understanding all sciences. Just like Germaine and Archimedes, Somerville would make it her mission to understand Euclid. Her parents worried that her long hours of abstract study would be detrimental to her ‘female frame’.
Luckily for Somerville, she had all the right friends in all the right places. When asked in 1827 to translate Laplace's Mécanique Céleste Somerville didn’t stop there but went on to explain the mathematics used by Laplace because most mathematicians in England at that time would have been unfamiliar with it. The final work, The Mechanism of the Heavens appeared in book form in 1831 and was a commercial and critical success. She was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1834 and to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835. Her Physical geography book, published in 1848 was her most successful text and used until the beginning of the 20th century in schools and universities.
Like Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington’s grandmother, Mary Somerville was a strong supporter of women's education and women's suffrage. When British philosopher, John Stuart Mill petitioned parliament to give women the right to vote, his first signatory was Mary Somerville and Somerville College in Oxford was named after her in 1879.
Coincidentally, Millicent Fawcett, another suffragist and co- founder of Newnham College (for women) in Cambridge, had a mathematically precocious daughter. Philippa Fawcett studied pure and applied mathematics at University College London from 1885 to 1887 and was awarded a scholarship to study mathematics at Newnham College, the very college that her mother had helped to found. In 1890 Fawcett was the first woman to come tops in the Mathematical Tripos Examinations – a marathon of twelve three hour papers. But because Fawcett was a woman, winning was too good for the likes of her; only men were ranked in the Tripos Examination. The few women who did take the exam were made aware of their placing in the most convoluted way by some old be-whiskered geezer who was probably in denial. Rather than being told they came second they would be told that they were placed between the man who came second and the man who came third – a tight fit, you will agree – or equal to the man who came second. The man who won was called The Senior Wrangler. But when Fawcett came first a dilemma emerged. Should she be slotted between the top man and a fictitious man? Or, should her remarkable win equal that of the highest scoring man who scored less than her? A comedic solution was concocted by the male hierarchy of Cambridge: Philippa Fawcett was awarded a placement ‘above the Senior Wrangler’ – not the official winner, mind you. The official winner – a man – got the ‘bit of paper’ saying exactly this.
Okay, so I wandered a bit. Please forgive me but these women just came to mind when I read the Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington story and the HEA reports. Has some secret, misogynistic society infiltrated the upper echelon of Irish academia? Will naming and shaming colleges like NUIG and AIT send this mysterious sect scurrying under the dusty library stacks of outdated volumes, where they belong? When I was a kid in the nineteen seventies I was fascinated by the women of that time who fought for equality. They were brave and exotic and I admired these traits. Now that I am a curmudgeonly old commentator in 2014 I cannot believe that this topic is still up for discussion in a developed western democracy. In a time when we are watching women fighting for an education in less developed countries, the epicentre of that battle being Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, we should be squirming in our seats that Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington had to take NUIG to the Equality Tribunal.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
When Cromwell said ‘To hell or to Connacht’ I don’t think he was speaking to highly qualified and experienced female academics looking for a suitable position west of the Shannon. Women perhaps like Dr Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington who was discriminated against on gender grounds when she was overlooked for a senior lectureship. We now know from a recently published Higher Education Authority (HEA) report that in NUI Galway seventy-nine per cent of senior academic staff members are male; thirteen per cent of associate professors are female and fourteen per cent of professors are female.
And it’s not only the illustrious universities that are worryingly misogynistic. In our institutes of technology twenty-nine per cent of those who hold senior academic posts are women. In Athlone Institute of Technology just thirteen per cent of senior academic staff are female. But why are women under-represented in senior academic posts in Ireland’s universities, institutes of technology and colleges?
Could it be that a significant proportion of men are still intimidated by brainy women? It’s all diaphanous dreaming spires at lecturer level with a 50:50 gender split. However, as grades increase in seniority the dearth of women becomes more apparent. There is a whiff of aftershave hanging in the corridors of learning and it needs to be tempered by a potent antidote. According to the HEA women account for just thirty-five per cent of senior lecturers, twenty-six per cent of associate professors and nineteen per cent of professors across Ireland’s seven universities and fourteen institutes of technologies are held by women.
Has nothing changed in almost three hundred years? It seems to me that a woman at lecturer grade in third level may as well be Jude the Obscure for all the hope she has of reaching a lofty professorship. I could go back to Hypatia (350 AD – 415 AD), teacher of mathematics and philosophy and head of the Platonist school at Alexandria who paid the ultimate price for being a scholar – but I won’t – she just came to mind because I read about her recently in Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve.
Patronising the ‘gentle sex’ simply meant that civilisation only developed fifty per cent of its capacity because only fifty per cent of the population were allowed on the developmental team. Throughout the centuries there would always be a handful of enlightened people who considered it worthwhile to educate their daughters, among them Henry Vlll and Sir Thomas Moore. But there was always a backdraft of condescension. Eighteenth century middle and upper class women, for example, were expected to know just enough about mathematics to discuss it in polite conversation. Seeing a ready market, the entrepreneurial author, Francesco Algarotti, penned a series of textbooks written for young women audaciously entitled Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies. For the benefit of the hapless damsels, he ‘clarified and simplified’ the latest developments in maths and science’ But here’s the rub; believing that women were only interested in romance, he attempted to explain Newton’s discoveries through the coquettish discourse between a Marquise and her male companion.
Nowadays, that would be the bizarre equivalent of a mathematician being approached by the Department of Education and Skills and asked to collaborate with ‘chic lit’ authors in order to weave some sneaky maths lessons into the plotlines, hence, giving the unsuspecting readers a good dose of hard sums without them even realising it. Of course, the cunning plan would be discovered if ever a male of the species happened to accidentally read one of these works of fiction. They would puff out their chests with pride, being yet again reassured that those who are lucky enough to have their genitals on the outside are also blessed with a special aptitude in all things numerical.
Suffice to say that it was not through the study of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies that piqued one Sophie Germaine’s curiosity about hard sums; no gentlemen; it was Montucla’s History of Mathematics and in particular his chapter on the life of Archimedes, and even more particularly, on the death of Archimedes. On that fateful day, he was so engrossed in studying a geometric figure he had drawn in the sand that he did not respond to a Roman soldier and was consequently fatally introduced to the sharp end of his spear.
I guess the clever Germaine must have thought, as perhaps did many clever women in her day – “I may as well be murdered (almost unawares) doing what I love rather than die of boredom.” And so, she started a late night studying lark swotting up on number theory and calculus. Being sooo of their time, her parents became understandably alarmed at her unfeminine pursuits. But what to do? Her father confiscated her candles and her clothes and stopped heating her room.
Just like little Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, Germaine spent her days in a cold room with an empty grate. Unlike Fanny though, Germaine was no martyr. She requisitioned a secret stash of candles and wrapped herself in bedclothes. I guess her parents were left with two choices – let her freeze to death in the garret or relent and hire a maths tutor. Eventually Germaine would disguise herself as a man to get into the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1794. Her career in mathematics would have been astounding in the 21st century, let alone the 18th century. Luckily for her, many famous male mathematicians did take her seriously. She revolutionised the study of Fermat’s Last Theorem but despite this astounding mathematical achievement her death certificate would describe her as a single woman with no profession.
A British contemporary of Germaine’s would encounter similarly bizarre instances of misogyny towards a girl who was good at sums. Mary Somerville’s two brothers were given a good education but, in keeping with the ideas of the time, Somerville's parents saw no need to do the same for her. Her mother did teach her to read but did not think it necessary to teach her to write. She tried to educate herself by reading every book that she could find in the house. Like Germaine, this unladylike pursuit alarmed her parents who sent her post haste to a school that taught needlework.
But the trouble was only starting. While taking painting lessons from the artist Alexander Nasmyth Somerville became interested in mathematics when she heard him explain how Euclid's Elements formed the basis for understanding perspective in painting, and that it was the basis for understanding all sciences. Just like Germaine and Archimedes, Somerville would make it her mission to understand Euclid. Her parents worried that her long hours of abstract study would be detrimental to her ‘female frame’.
Luckily for Somerville, she had all the right friends in all the right places. When asked in 1827 to translate Laplace's Mécanique Céleste Somerville didn’t stop there but went on to explain the mathematics used by Laplace because most mathematicians in England at that time would have been unfamiliar with it. The final work, The Mechanism of the Heavens appeared in book form in 1831 and was a commercial and critical success. She was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1834 and to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835. Her Physical geography book, published in 1848 was her most successful text and used until the beginning of the 20th century in schools and universities.
Like Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington’s grandmother, Mary Somerville was a strong supporter of women's education and women's suffrage. When British philosopher, John Stuart Mill petitioned parliament to give women the right to vote, his first signatory was Mary Somerville and Somerville College in Oxford was named after her in 1879.
Coincidentally, Millicent Fawcett, another suffragist and co- founder of Newnham College (for women) in Cambridge, had a mathematically precocious daughter. Philippa Fawcett studied pure and applied mathematics at University College London from 1885 to 1887 and was awarded a scholarship to study mathematics at Newnham College, the very college that her mother had helped to found. In 1890 Fawcett was the first woman to come tops in the Mathematical Tripos Examinations – a marathon of twelve three hour papers. But because Fawcett was a woman, winning was too good for the likes of her; only men were ranked in the Tripos Examination. The few women who did take the exam were made aware of their placing in the most convoluted way by some old be-whiskered geezer who was probably in denial. Rather than being told they came second they would be told that they were placed between the man who came second and the man who came third – a tight fit, you will agree – or equal to the man who came second. The man who won was called The Senior Wrangler. But when Fawcett came first a dilemma emerged. Should she be slotted between the top man and a fictitious man? Or, should her remarkable win equal that of the highest scoring man who scored less than her? A comedic solution was concocted by the male hierarchy of Cambridge: Philippa Fawcett was awarded a placement ‘above the Senior Wrangler’ – not the official winner, mind you. The official winner – a man – got the ‘bit of paper’ saying exactly this.
Okay, so I wandered a bit. Please forgive me but these women just came to mind when I read the Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington story and the HEA reports. Has some secret, misogynistic society infiltrated the upper echelon of Irish academia? Will naming and shaming colleges like NUIG and AIT send this mysterious sect scurrying under the dusty library stacks of outdated volumes, where they belong? When I was a kid in the nineteen seventies I was fascinated by the women of that time who fought for equality. They were brave and exotic and I admired these traits. Now that I am a curmudgeonly old commentator in 2014 I cannot believe that this topic is still up for discussion in a developed western democracy. In a time when we are watching women fighting for an education in less developed countries, the epicentre of that battle being Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, we should be squirming in our seats that Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington had to take NUIG to the Equality Tribunal.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
