women in british geography

Women in British GeographyAuthor(s): Linda McDowellSource: Area, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1979), pp. 151-154Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000043 .

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Women in British geography Linda McDowell, Open University

Summary. Not only is geography as a subject dominated by a traditional male-orientated view of society but British university geography departments and the pages of the journals published by the Institute of British Geographers are also heavily dominated by men. It is as important to redress this imbalance as to encourage the study of the spatial behaviour of women.

In a recent article in Area,' Jacqueline Tivers drew attention to the invisibility of women in traditional geographical studies and theories. Class differences and household behaviour continue to be the main foci of attention, thus denying many women any place at all in geography. Tivers placed part of the blame for this state of affairs on the predominance of men in our discipline2 and this prompted me, as a new recruit to a male-dominated department (the only other woman was on secondment elsewhere), to wonder just how many women geographers there are in British universities. In order to assess the present situation, a short postal questionnaire on staff and student numbers was sent to all geography departments in British universities. After one reminder card, 34 schedules were returned-a response rate of 830%, which is a respectable return for a postal questionnaire. I had hoped for higher but perhaps even asking questions about women raises problems. Certainly a number of depart ments did not keep their figures in this form.

Women as students The results of the survey of 34 departments showed that the proportion of students reading geography at first degree level that were women (42%) was slightly higher than might have been expected from the overall representation of women in British universities (35 %). Indeed women are better represented than might be expected from advanced level GCE results-in 1976, only 39 % of all passes in geography were gained by girls.3 There were few departments in which the sex ratio deviated markedly from the national average, although in five departments women actually outnumbered men at first degree level. Two of these five were Scottish universities and the London colleges also appeared among the less male-dominated student bodies. As might have been expected, the ratios were least favourable to women at those bastions of male privilege

Oxford and Cambridge. Here women accounted for just under 30% of all undergraduate geographers.

At postgraduate level, the numbers of women decline markedly (Table 1). Since part-time study is a traditional method of combining the responsibilities of employment, and perhaps marriage and motherhood, with academic study, it is perhaps surprising that among Ph.D. students women comprise a smaller proportion of those studying part-time than of those studying full-time. At this level it is clear that a large body of talent is being wasted, as women's first degree results are, on average, as good as those of men, although a slightly smaller proportion achieve first class results. However, many women lack the self-confidence, and in some cases parental support, to continue to further study and, in addition, they have the example of a male-dominated academic profes

151



152 Women in British geography

Table 1. Sex ratios of student geographers, autumn term 1978

Men Women Level of study no. % no. % Totals

First degree 4411 581 3194 41 -9 7605 Masters degree 197 71 -4 79 28-6 276 Ph.D.-full-time 345 69 0 155 31-0 500

-part-time 251 79 9 63 20 1 314

sion before them to discourage their ambitions. It is also possible that there is overt or implicit discrimination in the selection procedures for postgraduate study, although this issue was not probed in the present study.

Women as academics Among dons, the dominance of men is overwhelming (Table 2). Only 7% of the total full-time teaching staff in the departments surveyed were women and 43 % of departments had no women at all on their full-time staff. Women were better represented among the part-time teaching staff, but the financial rewards and status are correspondingly lower. Among the full-time staff, women were disproportionately concentrated at the lower levels of the profession. Student geographers are twenty times more likely to have a male head of department than a female one, and at less exalted levels the discrepancies are almost as

marked. Less than six in 100 readers and only one in ten lecturers are women.

Table 2. Sex ratios of university geography teachers, autumn term 1978

Men Women no. % no. % Totals

Full-time teachers 575 92 7 45 7-3 620 Part-time teachers 10 55-6 8 44-4 18

Table 3 shows the position of female academics in geography departments in another way, giving the status distribution within each sex. The proportion of professors is still nearly twice as high among male geographers as amongst women. Why is this so? Without a detailed comparison of age, qualifications and length of time in departments it is difficult to attribute this to either discrimination against women on the part of predominantly male appointment and promotion boards or to a lack of ambition on the part of women academics themselves. In addition, many women academics have competing family

Table 3. Levels of achievement of full-time male and female geography dons

Lecturers (inc. Professors Readers Senior Lecturers)

no. % no. % no. % Totals

Men 69 12-0 64 11-1 442 76-9 575 Women 3 6-8 4 8 9 38 84-4 45



Women in British geography 153

responsibilities whereas men tend to acquire an unpaid and often highly skilled assistant on marriage, as the prefaces to a large number of books make abun dantly clear. Women are left holding the baby and collating the index as their spouses climb the academic ladder.

Publications Another method of assessing the impact of women geographers is in their publication record. Here the picture is just as bleak. Not only are there very few articles about women, hardly any are by women. Tables 4 and 5 give the results of a survey of the authorship of the main articles in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Area over the last 5 years. In those

cases where only the initials of an author's forenames were given and he or she was unknown to me personally, I assigned them to category D. The final column of the two tables gives the percentage of articles written by women when joint articles and those where the sex of the author is unknown are excluded.

Table 4. Sex of the authors of main articles in Transactions, 1974-8

A B C Male Female Men and E

Total only only women D B as no. of authors authors authors Unknown a %

Year articles % % % % of A+B

1974 27 63 7 - 30 10 1975 37 73 3 24 4 1976 36 58 6 36 9 1977 29 63 3 3 31 5 1978 35 63 6 31 3

Totals 164 64 5 1 30 7

Table 5. Sex of the authors of main articles in Area, 1974-8

A B C Male Female Men and E

Total only only women D B as no. of authors authors authors Unknown a %

Year articles % % % % of A+B

1974 48 73 4 4 19 5 1975 54 66 2 4 28 3 1976 49 72 8 2 18 10 1977 49 65 6 2 26 9 1978 56 70 2 2 26 3

Totals 256 69 4 3 24 6

The results are little different for the two journals. The large majority of academic publications are by men. Other studies of the academic profession have demonstrated that this is not because women do not publish.4 Female dons in general are at least as productive in terms of writing as their male counterparts and the percentage of articles in Transactions and Area written by women is similar to the overall representation of women in the geographical profession.



154 Women in British geography

Tivers concluded her article with the assertion of Peet that 'the geography of future equality demands our attention '5 to support her plea for greater understanding by geographers of the significance of sex-role differentiation.

With apologies to Peet, I believe that the future equality of geography demands our attention just as urgently. Our discipline exemplifies the predominantly male ethos of British university life and we should be aware of how it discourages women. Both attitudes and behaviour are conditioned by the existing system and if we want to foster greater equality between the sexes in both the profession and the academic study of geography we must act to change it.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the 34 departments who filled in the questionnaire on which this article is based.

Notes

1. Tivers, J. (1978) 'How the other half lives', Area 10, 302-6 2. Tivers, J., op. cit., 302 3. Department of Education and Science (1978) Statistics of education 1976 vol. 2 (London) 4. See especially Blackstone, T. and Fulton, 0. (1974) 'Men and women academics', Higher

Educ. 3, 119-40 5. Peet, R. (1975) 'Inequality and poverty: a marxist-geographic theory', Ann. Ass. Am.

Geogr. 65, 571; quoted by Tivers, J. op. cit. 305

Strathclyde Seminar Series

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Land, property and financial investment

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Working Paper (price ?1 00) is available from the Administrative Assistant, SAUS, Rodney Lodge, Grange Road, Bristol 8.



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