A Sporty Conversation on Gender in the Academy

HERE’S A PART IMAGINARY, part real email thread of conversations among faculty members at an elite law university in India. Two developments are being discussed simultaneously – one is a weekly cricket match, and the second is the establishment of a women-only Women’s Law Society. The names of participants in the conversation have been changed to maintain anonymity. I have identified the professors as male and female to pronounce the genderedness of the conversation.

The Initiation

Dear students and colleagues,

I am emailing to inform you that I will be taking the lead to organise a weekly 20-overs-a-side cricket match with tennis ball (our facilities don’t allow hard ball cricket yet) each Saturday morning, between 9 AM and 1 PM. We need at least 22 players for a proper 11-a-side contest. The idea is to mix students, faculty members and some campus-based non-teaching staff members in creating two teams on the spot every Saturday morning and to play with the gusto and spirit that die hard lovers of the game thrive on!!

So, please RSVP about your participation in this Saturday morning’s inaugural game to me. I hope to hear back from at least 22 of you so that we can have a rollicking start!! The plan is to make this Saturday morning tennis ball match a regular fixture that students and faculty will look forward to as a form of bonding, competing and… of course, exercising!

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

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Dear Prof. A,

This sounds very exciting. I wonder too whether some bonding experience might also be organized that would enable the inclusion of female students and faculty, particularly considering that not only is sports generally played by men – but cricket in particular.

I am sure regulating female participates to the sidelines was never the intent – but nonetheless the side effect. I also understand how central cricket is to Indian culture. I hope to engage all faculty in this challenge.

Thanks.

Prof. B (female)

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Dear all,

I completely second Prof. B. Even the most declaredly gender neural spaces and categories – especially something like sports – turns male by default – so much so for cricket.

Warmly,

Prof. C (male)

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Dear all:

I’m excited to hear about Prof. A’s cricket plans. I won’t be able to make it this Saturday, but I’m looking forward to being a part of it from time to time on future Saturdays. I don’t think there’s a gender issue with having regular cricket games on campus. Prof. A’s initial email made it clear that all students were welcome.

I understand there was recently an all-female meeting of the Women’s Law Society (WLS), and a decision to only allow female students in the future. I don’t know that there’s any automatic problem with that, although it raises some serious concerns. This may be an area where there is room for discussion and formulation of a non-discrimination policy. At many universities, official student groups are not allowed to exclude any members of the student body based on sex, race, religion, etc. We may want to consider a policy here.

In any event, at this stage in the development of our university, it is important to foster a wide variety of student initiatives, to ensure that there are activities that appeal to a diversity of student interests. To that end, I am excited about both of these recent initiatives and I look forward to hearing about many more in the weeks and months to come.

Regards,

Prof. D (male)

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The Instigation

Dear Prof. B,

Very valid concerns indeed. The cricket we are planning will be competitive and fast, i.e. all male in likely composition. How about the Women’s Society you are forming getting together and deciding on sporting or other activities that can involve female students and staff over the weekend? I wish your endeavour good outcomes, especially considering that you are an athlete yourself.

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

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Dear all:

Speaking from personal opinion:  I don’t think anyone’s slamming Prof. A for his love of cricket. I think the issue was more about disparate effect and institutional sensitivity. E.g., if the cricket match is the primary informal means of interaction between students and faculty, then we need to think about additional options.

Regarding the WLS, there are reasons of disparate effect and unique perspective that militate towards varying degrees of exclusion– as in almost all racial and religious societies. In my opinion, until the legal profession and educational system changes, arguments of reverse discrimination are misdirected, and take focus away from the purposes of such groups as the WLS. That said, any critical inquiry remains an important safeguard.

Best,

Prof. E (male)

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Dear all:

If more of us had been witness to the first meeting of the WLS (though that might have defeated the point), perhaps this discussion would have taken a different turn.  Luckily for me, since our research centre called the first meeting to session, I was able to attend it.  I was surprised at our large turnout, considering it was after a long day of classes and immediately after another meeting.  I was also surprised at the participation of every student in the room, something I have never quite been able to accomplish in the classroom.  And, I was surprised at what had drawn them to the meeting.  The students were so relieved, it seemed, to finally have a safe forum to discuss what had been going on in their lives, and on campus. They talked about the attitudes of male classmates and how the male students always assume females can’t do things, and that males can.  They talked about how they wanted to show the male students how prejudiced they sounded.

It is important for female students to have a space to meet, without judgment or interference.  Unfortunately, as Prof. E noted, we are in a society and a profession prone to exclusion.  The WLS is one way to help mitigate this.  Another is to foster an environment where females are included in the activities which bond faculty and students.  As someone who spent years being excluded from corporate golf, whiskey, and after-after parties, I can attest to this from experience:  what happens outside the classroom (or the boardroom) inevitably drives what happens in it.   If we exclude female students both from bonding activities and from even bonding together, we are fostering the patriarchy outside and inside the academic setting.

I think it is important to have stronger faculty-student relationships, as the first meeting of the WLS taught me.  I saw students who had never spoken up in class in an entirely new light.  I am sure a cricket match would work towards this too, for some people.  I just want to make sure that those whom it doesn’t work for, and those whom it might actually work against (those excluded for not being fast or competitive enough), have spaces and activities that do work for them as well.  And that when the cricket does happen, it is done in a spirit of inclusion by welcoming (as opposed to allowing) anyone to play.

Regards,

Prof. F (female)

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Dear Prof. F,

Thank you for your email.  While I recognize and appreciate Prof. D’s point that many law schools have adopted policies that prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion etc. with respect to membership of student organizations, I want to share with you my experience in private practice.  Large law firms, recognizing both the importance of gender diversity and the business potential of senior female attorneys, have adopted a number of women’s initiatives to foster the professional development of women in big law.  These initiatives are generally available only to women for the reasons that Prof. E and Prof. F have already recognized- namely, current systems of professional and business development take place in traditionally male spaces.  Some the largest U.S. law firms have recognized that while keeping organizational initiatives open to all members of the organization is an ideal goal, the realities of the organizational environment necessitate certain gender specific initiatives in order to attain the ultimate goal of greater inclusion of women in the senior attorney ranks.

If the goal of our university is to provide an education to Indian students that allows them to compete on a global basis, there is no way to escape the critical component of providing an educational space that empowers the female students to compete with their male counterparts, within India or globally.  It certainly is not a given, and I don’t think there was any suggestion by any faculty member, that such an educational space must exclude male students.  Rather, the realities of the university environment at this point in time may suggest that such an educational space for the female students is best created by the WLS that includes only women.  For example, the university has an uneven the ratio of male to female students, female students grapple with a cultural and familial context that may not be supportive of their professional ambitions, female students don’t have upper class/senior students to whom they may look for guidance, and, based on Prof. F’s email, until WLS, female students had not had a forum to discuss their experiences on campus.  As these things change, perhaps in the future the WLS can be opened to both male and female students.  However, at this point, it may be premature to take a context-neutral, gender-neutral stance on the WLS.

Warmly,

Prof. G (female)

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Dear all:

Ah, now we are speaking! One mention of gender and you can see how things shake up – that’s the power of subversion. Apart from the WLS providing a much needed safe/ non-judgmental space for women on campus, it disturbs the neatness with which we want to go on with our lives within a ‘global’ space, seduced by the promise of emancipation.  It’s the old, still unresolved debate on special rights/ privileges vs. equal rights/ privileges. No space or policy can be gender-neutral or non-discriminatory if the very structure and architecture of that space/ policy is not. And our university is no exception – by the sheer imbalance in the male to female ratio of faculty, students, admin staff, construction workers, service providers.

This of course is not the only marker as Profs. F and G have convincingly pointed out. As I mentioned in my last mail, even declaredly gender/ caste/ sexuality/ disability/ race/ religion-neutral spaces are by default male/ Brahmin/ heterosexual/ abled/ white/ Hindu, and there is an almost unquestioning internalization of that fact – it disciplines us so smoothly that we don’t even recognize it.

Talk of non-discrimination in a space that is structurally unequal will only reinforce the gender hierarchy. I see no reason why the WLS should be looked at as an exclusive space – rather it’s the first step towards turning our university inclusive – making it substantively equal for its women students. It’s not factionalism, it’s solidarity. The very fact that WLS’ formation, or a move to include women students in the gender-neutral Saturday cricket fixtures unsettles us (surprisingly only men!) means that a hierarchy was already in operation. As Foucault has eminently reminded us, resistance to power, is what makes us recognize it. The WLS has done exactly that.

Having said that, as a feminist deeply committed to queering any form of essentialism – I’d like conveners of the WLS to respond to my question about whether a Hijra student can be accommodated within the WLS. This is a question with much larger purport than the WLS itself – of whether we are on the slippery slopes of biological determinism when we create women-only spaces to undo the gender hierarchy which in itself is predicated on biological determinism? How powerful is our subversion if we continue to operate within the binaries of male/ female? Are we subscribing to another hierarchy which places gender above sexuality on the arc of historical disadvantage?

Looking forward to more unsettling discussions.

In solidarity,

Prof. C (male)

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The Closure

Um… excuse me? Could you guys with your subtle post-essentialist analysis and managerial double-speak please stop trying to bring sense into this? I am still hoping to see a grudge match between Profs. A (male) and B (female). If Prof. B wins, the women of our university get to be free of their oppressive masters. If Prof. A wins, we’ll join the British Raj again, wear white for the rest of the year and pay “triple lagaan.” No? Arm wrestling? Push ups? Why am I the only one laughing?

Cheers,

Prof. H (male)

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P.S.; No one continued the thread beyond this email. The cricket matches have become a hit – though participation of female students is negligible. The WLS meets every week. On the occasion of the 100 years of International Women’s Day they organized the screening of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Deathproof’. Was it a feminist film? You need to watch it to find out.