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Higher Education 11 (1982)67-83 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

WOMEN'S WORK AND ACADEMIC CULTURE: ADAPTATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS

KATHERINE JENSEN Department of Sociology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

This study presents a model of lifestyles based on the form of women's accultura- tion to academic life. The model rests on the assumptions of patterned behavior and values which can be termed "women's culture" and "academic culture" respectively. Since becoming academics requires women to mediate the boundary between behaviors expected of women and those expected by the overwhelmingly male academic profession, an acculturation rather than socialization model was employed.

The in-depth study of the acculturative modes of professional behavior is both an exploratory and a qualitative effort to derive issues and categories from women's own perceptions. Forty-two women from diverse disciplines and institutions were interviewed. Interviewees were either advanced PhD candidates or had recently entered professional

work. Three modal categories emerged from content analysis of intensive interviews.

Reorientation reflected the effort of women to exemplify the norms of male academic culture. Reaffirmation required the command of both professional norms and traditional feminine roles and values. Reconstitution was an effort to reformulate professional par- ticipation into a lifestyle more compatible with women's cultural norms.

Most studies of academic women have approached the subject from one of two perspectives: institutional constraints on women's equal participa- tion, or status conflict in the lives of individual women. Ample literature has reported women's lower rates of achievement in academic employment, promotion and pay. Most literature has surveyed the institutional status of women as a reflection of overt or covert discrimination. This literature serves to challenge the mythology that women prefer positions and institutions where work assignments are those least rewarded by the academic culture (Astin, 1973 ; Peters, 1974; Kilson, 1976 ; Fulton, 1975; Freeman, 1977).

Other studies have probed the conflicting combinations of personal

0018-1560/82/0000-0000/$02.75 �9 1982 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company

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and professional statuses (role conflict) which contribute toward women's institutional marginality and personal ambivalence about professional success (Bernard, 1966; Epstein, 1970). To be sure, neither men nor women know what behaviors to expect from academic women, especially as they move from the fostered dependency of studenthood to the mandatory indepen- dence of professional life (Graham, 1973).

The Acculturation Model

Without diSregarding institutional constraints and status conflict, it seems important to know more about women's own perceptions and expe- riences in the pursuit of academic careers and compatible personal lifestyles. This study depends on the proposition that there is an institutionalized academic culture which can be described [ 1 ]. Additionally, the study posits the existence of an unarticulated world of women's culture. This theoretical construction of women's culture is based on the general agreement of tradi- tional and radical analyses of the behaviors and personality characteristics common to women. Not only the affective and expressive traits widely attributed to female personalities, but the affiliational tendencies and embeddedness (relational aspects) of women's interactions and conceptualiza- tions appear in thoughtful discussions of what I have termed women's cul- ture [ 21.

The idea that women's professional behaviors were not simply struc- turally determined, but at some level chosen and learned suggested an accul- turational model of women's participation. As academic women rarely learn their profession from an older cohort of women, the professional socializa- tion concept seemed inappropriate. Instead, women experience a process of acculturation to the male dominated and defined professional world [3]. But as acculturative results of ethnic group and other subcultural contact can take several forms, so do the outcomes among women in academia. The orientations depend in part on the conditions of contact with the dominant culture: particular strengths of each subculture, graduate school experiences and relationships, definitions of career and professional conduct [4].

Intensive interviews were used to construct a model of effects of (responses to) contact situation. Three modal categories emerged. Reoriented women turned conscientiously to the perfection of dominant academic norms. Some women reaffirmed traditional feminine roles and values while adding the demands of professional careers to their set of responsibilities in compartmentalized, sometimes contradictory, statuses. Women intent on fusing the two cultures approached career perceiving the differences between men's and women's patterned behaviors, but believing that both cultures might be changed during professional contact into a new reconstituted model of career.

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The orientation of one generation of professional academics has implica- tions for the next. The lack of female role models in the past has encouraged women to believe that they must abandon their femaleness and reorient themselves in order to be taken seriously as professionals. On the other hand, numerical increases of working wives and mothers along with the threat to professional traditions posed by "liberated" female lifestyles now encourage the employment of reaffirmed women, as exemplary "superwomen". That employment model has promoted the belief among many women profession- als that they must simply be willing to work twice as hard as men do by being competent professionals and fulfilling traditional female role obliga- tions. By contrast reconstituted careers require forging into previously unex- plored conceptual and political space, without expectation of finding pre- existent guidelines, make the journey personal lifestyle, "woman-oriented"

but often with the belief that collegial and affinal supports less hazardous. This third group, while more diverse in appears less individualistically competitive and more

than either of the other two.

RESEARCH SUBJECTS

The sample data are drawn from extensive interviews of 42 doctoral candidates and new faculty women at five diverse western and midwestern universities [5]. This life stage was chosen for the potential strength of con- flict between female and academic cultures. Names of PhD candidates and new women faculty were secured from graduate school deans, personnel offices and offices of women's affairs. Other than attempting to schedule representatives from as wide a range of disciplines as possible, no effort at probability sampling was made. Lack of probability selection of women would restrict the value of any study attempting to test hypotheses or to generalize results to all women professionals; however, since this study is directed at formulating a model of women's acculturation to academia, a probability sample is of less value. Pivotal to model construction is an understanding of the process of professional adjustment. Once a model is developed, then the next logical research step is the testing of the model and its applicability to the broader population of professional women.

The 42 women represented diversity in regard to numerous personal characteristics. They were single, married, divorced;45 per cent were mothers; and they included two black women and two Chicanas. The subjects came from disciplines in which women are frequently represented as well as non- traditional areas for women.

The interviews were open-ended, usually lasting two to three hours. Interviews focused on broad topic areas including: disciplinary choice, per- sonal view of one's work, pattern of professional training, and human rela- tionships important in furthering their work (role models, friends, and peers).

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My role in the interview setting is best characterized as listening and compil- ing (all interviews were tape recorded and later transcribed). Neutral probes were utilized; however, efforts were made to use probes solely to encourage discussion rather than to provide direction to the women's comments. This research effort rests on the assumption that women's culture lies outside the articulated normative system; consequently, preset structured questions were of limited value in establishing women's orientation to the academic subcul- ture. In order not only to establish relevant issues, but also to grasp the tone of women's experiences and choices, efforts were aimed at allowing women themselves, rather than preformulated hypotheses, to speak.

Coding categories were allowed to emerge as interviews and analysis proceeded. This entailed the returning to earlier interviews time and time again to reevaluate categories. Once emergent themes were established, actual coding involved categorized transcriptions of each interview and develop- ment of a master sheet of concepts keyed to individual transcripts. Women were grouped by commonalities in the kinds of issues and emphases they reflected in the interviews as well as the general career choices they described. Fairly clear patterns emerged, with eleven women aiming toward the male career model, fifteen maintaining both traditional female and academic cultural expectations, and sixteen working toward a new professionalism [6]. However, while exhaustive, the categories are not exclusive, for some women indicated that they were in the process of change which would move them from one modal emphasis to another. Most importantly, women, themselves, through their words demonstrate the ways in which women's culture emerges in different behavior modes. In general, professional status in terms of disci- pline, PhD granting institution, employing institution, and employment status failed to correlate with a particular career orientation. Marriage and motherhood did correlate but appeared to be results rather than causes of acculturative orientation, which had preceded family commitments.

Emerging Portraits of Acculturation

NORMATIVE REORIENTATION

One of the most apparent characteristics of reoriented women was the "fairly large distinction between one's professional life and one's personal life," reflecting the norm that professional work should be apart from, perhaps above, personal issues. However, despite the distinction, ten (of the eleven) women whose lives are represented by the reoriented mode reported few personal relationships or interests outside their academic domain. They made statements such as, "Most of my nonacademic life revolves around people that I see at school . . . " Or when asked about friendships or sup-

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portive relationships, another said: "There are a couple of people, but I've really felt my life has been my work." Like most descriptions of academic men, none of these women expressed interest in activities outside the asso- ciated academic worlds of work, leisure reading, and spectator arts.

Professional goals appeared to define their existence in other ways as well. Most were in nontraditional areas for women, with linguistics, political science, sociology, economics, philosophy, history, and communications represented. Professional aspirations had consciously led each of them to the "best PhD program in the country" in her particular discipline. One had followed important men in the field to three different institutions since her undergraduate years in order to get what she considered the best training. Another had been the first woman admitted to her department, which she chose for its prestigious training in a short, intense program so she could attain early ascent in her profession.

If graduate schools were important considerations, choice of advisors was even more important. Virtually all the women in the study talked more about their dissertation advisors than any other subject. For professionally reoriented women the choice of advisor was much more carefully calculated than for the other women. Initial intentions were clear: the professor was both "brilliant" and "nationally well-known". But none had stayed with her original advisor. One "got rid of" her advisor when he disapproved of her topic. Another was dropped by the department chairman because she would not do the dissertation he wanted. A third had switched from a "famous professor" who "didn' t have enough t ime" to a young one who had not before trained a PhD student. Both relationships had been difficult.

I was very much aware I was leaving a guy who had lots of connections. I hur t his feelings and alienated him, but you have to be really aggressive to work with somebody that ' s well-known because they don ' t have the time. Women don ' t feel that aggressive. Everyone who 's worked with him feels like they ' re imposing on him every t ime they go in. Maybe men are less sensitive to that , or feel they deserve the t ime anyway.

But the younger advisor also had status concerns which infringed on her career decisions:

I 've wondered about the motives of my new advisor. He has said my work is good. I also th ink a lot of it is a personal thing. He comes up for tenure soon and he wants someone to graduate with him as advisor. It 's very impor tan t for him to have some good students. He's t rying to get me to publish stuff. He has encouraged me to take certain jobs as opposed to o ther jobs because of the prestige associated with some and not others. I get depressed when I think of it. ! feel like a tool.

This "model s tudent" completed her graduate work with speed and quality,

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and was being discouraged from accepting a Fulbright to France because it would keep her out o f the academic market for a year.

In sum, the experiences of these talented women who sought out the

best training and the best sponsorship of their careers demonstrated the great

difficulties of working within what they expected would be a master/appren-

tice relationship. They were either not compliant enough to pursue the topics and jobs assigned to them or not valuable enough to be treated as prot~g6s.

Yet their professional determination kept them steadfast in their graduate programs which remained the focal point of their lives. It is not surprising

that all but one of the dozen women who talked about the "isolat ion" and

"pa in" of graduate school came from this group. The fact that these career-defined women saw themselves primarily as

academics had not deterred some of them from perceiving the professional liability of their sex. One volunteered at the very end of the interview,

One thing I want to say is that I don't think women's points of view are respected as much as men's points of view. Even though my department is as liberal as any, you might get recognized to say something in seminar, but typically they just go on to the next comment. They just gloss over what you've said.

But several suggested that the professors were too sophisticated to be guilty

of overt sexism and one sounded weary of the matter: "Everybody is com-

pletely oversensitized to the issue." One person described herself explicitly in terms which seemed to fit

many reoriented women.

I 'm sort of an asexual being. I think I was always seen as a young maverick who operated well in either male or female roles. Professors weren't threatened at all, but they saw a lot of potential, a lot of drive. They were willing to recommend me the same as they were a man. I'm pretty sure of that. But once I got into my doctoral program I was tossed with no help into a classic situation. It was almost archetypal. I had to write better papers than the men. I had to have better documentation. I was called upon daily.

The reoriented women knew few other women students in their pro- grams. None had any female faculty they would consider role models. One student described a faculty woman as being present only because the depart- ment wanted her husband. Another related a "destruct ive" encounter with two faculty women over her evaluative review. A third enumerated the four women on her faculty. Did their presence make any difference? " I f you ' re asking if they ' re role models - sort of. But they have very diverse interests." (Pause) "Their personalities are such that I never consider them role models in any real sense." One of them, it turned out, had not only helped her with her master's program but had been responsible for getting this older

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s tudent admi t t ed to one o f the mos t prestigious and highly compet i t ive

graduate programs in her field. Yet she could no t acknowledge the presence

o f w o m e n as suppor ters . One professor did describe hersel f as a role mode l and talked at length

abou t tha t professional responsibi l i ty in t radi t ional normat ive language.

I establish a collegial relationship early. If they are going to teach, I must treat them as colleagues. My TAs are notorious because I maintain a higher level of profession- alism. I will not allow a student to call a TA by his or her first name, just as I won't let students call me by my first name. It's just a hang-up I have, and I think it's important to maintain some aesthetic distance. It's important that these people be seen as legitimate teachers in their own r igh t . . .

Despite their presence in fields where few w o m e n work, women ' s cul-

tural values did seem to be ref lec ted in the disciplinary specialties o f these women , though a lmost none could explain why they had made the choices they did. T h e y unde r s tood their work as d i f fe ren t f rom tha t o f mos t o f their male colleagues and gave it these labels: "areas conce rned with the

h u m a n c o n d i t i o n " ; " in te rpre t ive reading, a classic female area" ; communica - t ions problems be tween women and physicians; h i s tory o f social re form; small group in te rac t ion ; " l i t e ra ture as it to ld me abou t people and life, ra ther

than the abst ract ions o f l i tera ture - the aesthetics and ph i losophy ; research

on c o n t e m p o r a r y ra ther than historical f igures ;and methodolog ica l d i f ferences - " I ' m simply no t in to compute r s and statistics and mult ivar ia te analysis.

My scholarship is very d i f fe ren t f rom the empir icism o f mos t o f the m e n . " One descr ibed the status problems associated with the dis t inct ion be tween

theore t ica l and applied work, as it related to women ' s t en d en cy toward

concre te and part icularis t ic styles o f thought .

I was working on language acquisition, which is finally gaining more importance, but still looked down upon. People have the feeling that you do that because you can't do other things. But the reason I got into it in the first place was because I thought it would help in understanding theory. But you hear these things said and start internalizing all the negative feelings -~ you question yourself.

Even within normat ive reor ien ta t ion to the male style o f work, these women ' s

choice o f research interests and unders tandings o f their status appear to

ref lec t an e thos w o m e n have in c o m m o n : a pervasive o r ien ta t ion toward con- crete h u m a n problems. Thus relat ional , con tex tua l aspects o f w o m en ' s cul ture m a y survive behavioral redi rec t ion .

VALUE REAFFIRMATION

If r eo r i en ta t ion mean t seeing onesel f as an academic, rea f f i rmat ion o f

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womanhood with career provided expectations of " the best of both worlds". Only seven precisely exemplified that demanding acculturation mode, while eight more fell near the type. The most clearly reaffirmed women profes- sionals, however, were among the most remarkably energetic people I inter- viewed. Most of them had children, but they could not be described as wives and mothers who later expanded their lives in academia. Most had pursued professional training in which they had long-standing interest; later they married and produced children.

These women were very committed to their particular careers, even if "career" in general did not define their daily routines. Their disciplinary areas spanned both traditional and nontraditional areas for female scholarship, including art education, history, English, archeology, anthropology, educa- tional administration and zoology. They spoke with enthusiasm about their disciplinary specialties, rather than career in general. "I always wanted to be a scientist. I didn' t have to make a decision about my work." Another said, "I really want a chance to pass on the love I have and the enthusiasm and excitement about history in a classroom. That's what I really want to do."

An English scholar described the importance of her initial employment: "When we got here the baby was nine months old. I taught two sections of freshman composition and was writing my dissertation. Everything was perfect. I was busy teaching and writing hard and being with him." She did not teach the year her second child was born, but she was no less a scholar, and she reported this episode with the emphasis and vocabulary characteristic of women's speech.

I wrote several pieces that year at home. When actually doing it, it was lust such a pleasure. That's what it is, because you get to see the end. It's so exciting. I'd usually get the baby to the sitter by 8.30. Everything would be clear by twenty to nine. I'd write hard until five of twelve and then apologize to the sitter because I was late. During those hours, it was just a thrill. It still is. Time just flies. I don't feel guilty or anything. Then by the end of the day I'd justify it by saying "having publications is the only way I'm ever going to be permanently employed."

This group of women viewed their careers as individual achievements, certainly not accidental opportunities. They too had chosen superior training in their areas. All of these academics intended to persist in their professions with the same seriousness as men with whom they lived or worked. Husbands of the married women worked primarily in academic or professional life, though not all had training equal to the women, nor were residence and employment always predicated on the husbands' work. The women all expected to work full-time, to take the normal responsibilities and to reap the same rewards, with some qualifications on pace of progress. Except for the fact that many had to work out dual career family arrangements, the women assumed the basic male career model. The important difference

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was that they shouldered the additional responsibilities of complicated per- sonal lives. Family responsibilities were managed in addition to professional work. Some husbands provided considerable assistance, but the woman made every effort not to ask special concessions from the university.

With this combination of traditional image of career and traditional demands of womanhood, I wondered if reaffirmed women might indicate a preference for teaching over research, since teaching has been assumed to be women's professional strength. A few were positive about teaching, but many had found that the scholarly orientation of graduate studies had left their preparation for teaching thoroughly inadequate. Those who had small chil- dren or new babies had discovered course preparation and teaching both difficult and time consuming. Perhaps for this reason, all emphasized the importance of research and writing. For some, this work was clearly tied to career advancement - tenure or a permanent job. But the satisfaction seemed intrinsic. "Writing is an activity in which I'm basically in control." "I love to do research, especially historical archeology. You get to do the research and then go out and dig it up." "I think research is much more fun than teaching. I like the stimulation of group research. As a graduate student I spent five years in a highly electric atmosphere." Several others mentioned getting research grants as a way of buying time away from teaching and their heavy load of student advisement.

Unlike the reoriented women, their subspecialties reflected little that could be described as a particularly female perspective. One woman had taught some women's studies courses but had avoided the label of a "feminist" perspective. One said she always noticed articles about children in news- papers she researched, but couldn't think of anything in her work that dis- tinguished it from that of male colleagues. The others thought their gender had an impact primarily in terms of personal relationships and personal responsibilities, not scholarly pursuits.

There was much evidence to support these faculty women's conten- tions that they had inordinate numbers of advisees and students who sought their support or saw them as models. One woman who had never had a woman professor herself, nor felt particularly deprived by that, nevertheless felt that the birth of her second child in mid-semester and her meager two- week absence was an important lesson. "We need to show that it is possible to do both." Many had sought the assistance of women faculty themselves. One relied primarily on a woman on her committee because her male advisor kept forgetting her name. Two graduate students felt that only women had really cared enough to read their work carefully and to express interest in their research. They took personal concerns only to women faculty as well. One had been given secretly several hundred dollars by a woman professor, and another had arranged to transfer an NDEA Fellowship in a program she left to a woman with small children.

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But if the reaffirmed professors were willing to support students, they did not care to mother them. One said, '"I feel a responsibility to students - to get them set on a problem, to find funding for them. But I wouldn't be good with someone who was continually, constantly dependent." Another explained at length. "Two years ago I made a conscious decision to stop playing Mama to the world. I carefully weaned my students away from me . . . M y work was suffering. They weren't getting a damn thing done. I cut that out." Apparently, they have sufficient opportunities to play the role they define as female so that their gender does not manifest itself strongly either in their intellectual work or in student relationships.

More than anything else, busyness characterized the days of reaffirmed women. Their lives not only included children, men, and major outside inter- ests, but they valued those parts of their lives. Consequently, they described their highly organized daily routines as no others did, including babysitting and nursing schedules, allotted writing time, problems of early morning and evening meetings, and the awkward experiences of bringing children to the office on occasion. They also made time for community organizations, artistic and cultural events, and campus groups. Most expressly emphasized the personal importance of cooking gourmet meals, redecorating and main- taining an orderly home, and even doing gardening. One helped her husband run a working ranch.

For the most part they saw these responsibilities as anomolous to their case and their particular stage of life, rather than generalizable to many women. But one woman made a more analytic statement about her lifestyle and status.

My problem isn't so much being a woman as being married and having children. I think when I 'm obviously happy and functioning in a role similar to those of wives of men in the department, they can't imagine why 1 want a job. I think that's true. I think it also has to do with clearly being fulfilled in other ways. My normaIness works against my looking as if I really am serious. Any woman they have ever been committed to was single, or had children and no husband, or was living with some- body.

These women all spoke at length of important relationships with men, though not all were necessarily positive experiences. Unlike the reoriented women, most had never considered not marrying. Even those who were divorced talked about affiliations with men in both professional and personal contexts. One woman had received strong personal encouragement as an undergraduate and master's student from a man who, though now geograph- ically distant, remained an important force in her professional ambitions.

Relationships with male advisors were an ongoing problem for several women, especially those who were divorced. One example follows.

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My chairman has implied that he'd like to be more than just my chairman, to be a closer friend. He complains about his wife to me. Do other people have their chair- men make passes at them? It's not that he's backed me up against the wall, but he's just made it known. Yet I know I have never given any indication that I'm the slightest bit interested in him. I'd be a damn fool to do something like that. Can you imagine having an affair with your committee chairman and then have a falling out, the way lovers do? Your whole future is gone! I mean he can just destroy six or seven years work if he wants to.

Another woman had had an "extremely short fling" with her advisor, and since then the relationship had been very difficult, and she had almost no other choice of advisor in her department. "He doesn't talk to me at all, and I don ' t know how to change the situation," she whispered in desperation.

Several reaffirmed women reported serious problems in working with young male advisors, with whom they talked easily socially but rarely had intellectual discussions beyond trading bibliographies. None could articulate the issues explicitly, but they appeared to be related to status differentials of male faculty/female student between people who were peers in age and nearly so in training. Perhaps there is less awkwardness in the master/student relationship when the male master is older or when the woman is less defined by her assumed availability as a female.

Other women had thesis advisors who asked no favors, but could not comprehend the other concerns that impinged on female advisees' attentions and time. The most positive descriptions were of advisors who permitted highly independent work.

In general these women did not talk about the problems and experiences of women as a class. Many of them stated somewhere in the interview that they had never talked to anyone about many of these issues before, whether an affair with an advisor or a typical day's work schedule. University struc- ture and demands were given. Their multiple feminine roles were assumed. They had the responsibility to utilize their considerable talents and the energy to avoid having to make a choice between the two cultures.

CAREER RECONSTITUTION

If diversity can be said to define a category, that is the impression this third group of women provides. Marital decisions demonstrate one aspect of the variation. While four women live in fairly stable marriages of more than ten years duration, three more had only recently married after establishing their professional credentials. All had been professionally employed as long as or longer than their husbands. Some have supported husbands or con- tinue to do so. But the group also included women who had been divorced ten years earlier and never-married women. As many have borne children as have not in each of the subgroupings except for the never-married women.

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Three, one long-married and two newly-married, have chosen not to use their husbands' names. Another uses a surname which has no family connec- tions.

The commonalities among these women become more apparent as expressing the theme of change in their descriptions of themselves and their work. Many volunteered, either as an initial introduction to themselves or as a conclusion to the interview, that particular experiences had changed their view of themselves as professionals. I did not ask them about change. Change was a personal theme.

Graduate school experiences often were as important for their negative as for their positive content. Remarks by a faculty member that " I f my wife can't get on the faculty, you never will," and by a department chairman that "We aren't hiring any women" only made one woman more determined. But at the same time she remembered observing two more advanced graduate student women to whom she hardly ever spoke, but who impressed her as role models.

Another self-described "golden girl" of her department initially spoke of graduate school and faculty in positive terms. But in talking about her advisor, "impeccable as a professor," she revealed that he had taken her with him to a new position for her first job. The offer was made in secrecy and he told her behind closed doors that he was going out on a limb for her, and that if she didn' t do well, he "would just as soon stab [her] in the back as pat [her] on the head." She thought this was just his way of getting her to finish her dissertation. But as a 24 year old assistant professor with a heavy teaching load, she did not finish her dissertation soon enough and was not kept on the faculty. After this "infantalizing" experience she had gotten a university administrative position and had come to a different view of work, defined by human relationships, a characteristic which pervaded these inter- views.

I don't consider simply work I get paid for as my work. . . It is a process; not what you are but what you are doing. Labels don't suffice . . . I don't think in terms of profession, but of being. Work is part of what you do, but how you relate to people is also part of what you do. I don't like to have people call me "doctor", not because I haven't worked hard or because I don't deserve it. I prefer that people relate to me as a person.

Another woman found herself avoiding the advisor she had idealized after her thesis progress began to slow. A conference of women in her field pro- vided not only encouragement about specific information she needed in her research, but provided her a model of serious female PhDs, some with children in tow, and turned a dissertation chapter into a women's studies specialty.

But the most elaborate description of changed career orientation came from a PhD who worked closely with a group of women as a graduate student.

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The only person who had given her any encouragement when she returned

for a master's degree was a female professor in sociology, neither her under-

graduate nor her intended field, but " I f there had been a female historian,

that 's where I would have been. It was not so much a question of overt

discrimination; but support was so limited, if you didn' t go where it was, you didn ' t go."

The professor took on a cohor t of eight graduate women, several with

children. She had displayed real sensitivity to the difficulties of combining and balancing career with family, but had defined the group as very task- oriented, with all of the students working on dissertations related to one

large research project. The former student remembered " total ly free-flow, unpremedi ta ted criticism, without worry about egos," and shared skills

and expertise as well.

What amazed me was that at [a highly ranked school] there was n o c o m p e t i t i o n

among us. I had been in an honors program elsewhere which was absolutely cut- throat - where the name of the game was to make the other person look bad. That n e v e r eve r happened. And our strategy in dealing with the outside world was always to build one another up. We're still doing this. We write letters of recom- mendation for one another. We give each other consulting jobs when we can. Some- times we've worked jointly on a symposium or something.

Nearly all these women would be comfortable with the label of feminist.

And changed consciousness about inequalities played an important role in their present views. One said, "In seminar, women had to be impeccable.

Everyone else could be mediocre, but women had to be impeccable." She identified her greatest regret about graduate school as her extreme competi- tiveness at the expense of other women. She felt embarrassed that she had

not drawn on the support of other women ten years ago, when she "under- stood the game and still agreed to play it". Another woman had recently

made a practice of observing how men conducted interviews and how women candidates handled men who were wearing dark glasses, smoking, tapping

their pipes, and rocking back in their chairs. A third had come to the realiza-

tion that the best students in her average department were women, but

summer fellowships were all going to men. "Good men wouldn ' t be here ,"

she said, "but most of us still walk around behaving as if we didn' t know we were the best s tudents ."

The PhD candidates were insistent on changes in s tudent -advisor rela- tionships, wanting professors to react to them as people, not just " the thing that produced the paper ," expecting oral interchange as well as written comment and serious advice about one's future in academia. One professor described her own orientation in that regard:

I get a lot of women students as advisees just because I'm a woman and they can

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talk to me. But men students also like the openness of talking to somebody who isn't measuring every word. We have some very positive working relationships. Women faculty advisors are willing to give more time and care, in general. Women are more humanistic in the main. They think about person to person relationships.

Another who felt overburdened with teaching, publishing pressures and committee work told me why she could not make herself less available to students.

But I can't turn them away. We deal with women's issues in my classes. They come to talk to me personally about the kinds of work they've had to do for years and what education means to them, about husbands who not only don't support their schooling but don't support their children either, about their abortions and how they feel and how they were treated. They can't think of anyone else to talk to. I can't turn them away.

These women emphasized their commitment to teaching, whether still graduate students, a professor who introduced herself as an artist, or an administrator who missed the reciprocity and generation of energy in teaching. They acknowledged the low esteem that pedagogical endeavor rated in their departments. Students were as important to these academics as their subjects. But part of the issue lay in their pursuit of academic specialties in what they regarded as "frontiers" but what colleagues viewed as the "margins" of their fields. The social scientists had published pieces on women's roles and impact of high rise buildings on urban neighborhoods. Those in the humanities and education had done pioneer work in women's history, feminist art publica- tions, alternative education programs, radical counseling for women, and literature ~"as it deals with the human species". Their unorthodox specialties implied both a liberation from some traditional academic criticism and the burden of forging professional networks and theoretical conceptualizations on their own. Consequently, women's academic organizations and conferences provided important evaluation of their work and contact with new resources. The network is still very informal. There is yet no Old Girl System; students often provided the most valuable feedback available.

Part of the notion of career reconstitution included provision of time for nonacademic facets of their lives. They gardened, restored houses, read novels, did creative writing, played with children, spent time skiing, swimming, and sailing. One had studied for several required courses and her preliminary examinations while running a charter boat on the Caribbean.

Unlike either reoriented or reaffirmed women, they were attempting to insure that their careers made some accommodation for the other parts of themselves. Pressures to publish were inopportune for those whose long- awaited children were momentarily young. Pressures to publish early encour- aged narrow, small-scale studies that could be finished quickly rather than

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the global problems about women and the world they wanted to investigate in-depth. Some of the women were still graduate students and had not yet put their images to the test of employment. Half the remaining eight held full-time tenure track appointments, though one commuted a hundred miles from her home and husband's institution. Another shared one and a half appointments equally with her husband. Administrative positions, research institute appointments, part-time teaching to support the "real work" of group counseling, and temporary reductions to part-time positions were other work choices.

Conclusion

While at one point it had seemed that the three acculturative types might be simple measures of feminist politicization, the data show that to be too simple a perspective. Some reoriented women did reflect fairly under- developed political views of their situations. Others regarded academic politics with disdain and aversion. But others had been active in student or faculty women's groups, albeit in orthodox forms of leadership and organization. One talked of the "wonderful opportunity to shape an organization in my own image," and another described her work on an "Old Girl System" and her "Continuous Five Year Plan for Advancement". Among the reoriented, political power was used primarily for traditionally individualistic ends. If reaffirmed women seemed less overtly political, it may have been that they simply had less time for politics in their very demanding, tightly scheduled lives. They too were individualistic about their careers, but most of them explicitly saw themselves as role models for other women.

However, the conditions of acculturation for the reconstituted group precipitated major efforts for change in academic participation. For them politics was both a personal and a group enterprise. Being women figured centrally in their perspectives. Female identity in reoriented women was both submerged and isolated from career. It was emphasized, but com- partmentalized, in reaffirmed women. But for women who would change the norms of academe, female attributes and activities should be not only tolerated but summoned and evaluated in reconsidering the shape of pro- fessional careers.

The question remains whether reconstitution simply represents less serious professionals, or whether work/profession/career are less narrowly defined. These women were less directed toward particular goals than others, had changed fields of training more often, but had also survived PhD pro- grams at prestigious schools at rates equal to other groups. If many were reluctant to use traditional labels of "professional" and "career" in reference to their lives, they felt positive about the choices they had made. Intellectual

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growth and intrinsic interest overshadowed achievement. A lack of consistency and clarity must be expected in the process of change. Without predicting whether the effort toward career reconstitution will be generally workable, it is nevertheless clearly directed toward integration of life activities in the two cultures of academia and womanhood and toward a wholeness which we may come to recognize and describe as women's culture.

Notes

1 Some of the basic sources for this secondary analysis of sociology of higher education research include Logal Wilson's (1942) classic, Academic Men, Charles Anderson and John Murray (eds.) (1971) The Professors: Work and Lifestyles among A eademicians, Theodore Caplow and Reece McGee (1958), The Academic Marketplace, the collec- tion of studies from the Carnegie Commission research including Martin Trow (ed.) (1975), Teachers and Students and Lionel Lewis (1975), Scaling the Ivory Tower. Even though some of these authors may not agree that there is a male academic culture, their descriptions over thirty years ' time are remarkably consistent.

2 The analysis drew from a large number of anthropological psychological, sociological, linguistic, and political analyses of women's social roles. However, some of the basic arguments refer to Shirley Ardener (ed.) (1975), and the essay by Edwin Ardener in Perceiving Women; Sherry Ortner (1974), "Is female to male as nature is to culture?"; Nancy Chodorow (1974), "Family structure and feminine personali ty,"; Nancy Chodorow (1974), The Reproduction of Mothering; and Adrienne Rich (1976), Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, as well as personal con- versations with Michelle Rosaldo and Nancy Chodorow, although Rosaldo remained cautious in the use of this concept (1980). Carol Gilligan (1979) has more recently stressed the positive aspects of female at tachment in a synthesis of life-cycle theory, and Georgia Sassen (1980) has reevaluated success anxiety in terms of female modes of reality construction in articles in Harvard Education Review.

3 While the acculturation model is my own, significant support for the idea of different worlds of work came from Arlie Hochschild's (1975) article, "Inside the clockwork of male careers".

4 The model was adapted primarily from Bruce P. Dohrenwend and Robert J. Smith's (1962) theoretical framework, first appearing in Cultural Stability and Cultural Change, Proceedings of the 1957 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, and later versions in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, and Deward E. Walker, Jr., (ed.), (1972) The Emergent Native Americans: A Reader in Culture Contact. Rosabeth Moss Kanter 's (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation supports the idea that structural conditions affect sex differences in organizational participation.

5 I interviewed PhD candidates and faculty at Stanford, Arizona State University, University of California-Berkeley, University of Wyoming and University of Wisconsin. However, the PhD granting institutions also included Brown, Columbia, Washington, UCLA, Brandeis, Carnegie-Mellon, Chicago, Cornell, Harvard, Northern Illinois, and Iowa.

6 These and other distributions should not be construed to have statistical significance. The personal statuses of the sample generally conform to national data, except that they have more total children. I chose to interview relatively equal numbers of women in traditional and non-traditional fields. Patterns rather than numbers should receive attention.

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