Acknowledging Materiality as Agential Literacy

1
Acknowledging Materiality as Agential Literacy

• Cathrine Hasse
• University of Education, Denmark
• caha_at_dpu.dk
• Maja Hojer
• University of Education, Denmark
• maho_at_dpu.dk

2
UPGEMUnderstanding Puzzles in the Gendered
European Map- Brain drain in Physics through the
Cultural Looking Glass

• Project start 1st of September 2005
• Project end 1st of July 2008
• Financed by EU 6th Framework
• Under the The European Commissions Women and
  Science Unit

3
Background

• Natural sciences have problems with recruitment.
• Especially of female physicists students.
• Well-qualified female scientists seldom reach
  top-level positions to the same extent as their
  male counterparts and often leave the research
  system prematurely.
• (The SHE-figures, the Helsinki Group Reports, and
  the ETAN- and ENWISE Reports)

4
UPGEM Project-Partners
Project co-ordination Denmark The Danish
University of Education (DPU), Copenhagen Inst.
of Educational Psychology
Estonia Institute of Philosophy University of
Tartu
Poland Centre for Gender Studies University
of Lódz
Italy Institute of Social Psychology University
of La Sapienza, Rome
JRC Scientific Advisors
5
Argument

• 1. In Scandinavia gendered bodies is used against
  women in competitive environments (as in male
  dominated physics).
• 2. Sexual harassment is one way of excluding a
  (female) competitor and establishing hierarchy
• 3. This is possible because the field is
  considered without gender
• 4. Women also accepts this feel for the game
• 5. The feel for the game does not include
  agential literacy
• 6. Mount Olympus/Agora

6
Theoretical background

• Feel for the game (Pierre Bourdieu)
• Habitus as body hexis and doxa (Pierre Bourdieu)
• Agential literacy (Karen Barad).

7

• We do not talk about sex at all as physicists, we
  do not do that at all. It is unheard of.
  ()Probably because there are so few women. We do
  not talk about things like that. () They would
  think that you were an idiot or something.

8

• It is as if they have a deliberate policy of not
  looking at the individuals appearance and only
  focus on what he or she says or writes. In a way
  I find that very attractive that I as a person do
  not get involved in my work, that it is my
  knowledge that is being judged.

9

• The minute you step into university everything is
  very asexual. That is what it exudes and that is
  what I like about it. I can leave me as a person
  and my sexuality out of it, it is purely work. It
  the episode was very offending, even though it
  may not sound that bad because I had never
  imagined anything like that happening here. This
  was my safe base.

10

• I was really happy she warned me, so that I
  could keep that in mind. I am of the belief that
  if a man has this flaw that he cannot control
  himself then you must not put yourself in a
  situation where incidents like these are likely
  to happen. Avoid Christmas lunches and that sort
  of things. () I was really glad she did that, so
  that I could make sure that I did not wear
  anything remotely provocative and things like
  that. I deliberately wore big sweaters and
  shapeless clothes when I were to see him and
  avoided social events involving alcohol.

11

• 1. Gender is materialized by visualizing a
  physicist as a female physicist with breasts,
  lips, hips, pregnancy-available bellies and
  obtainable bodies.
• 2. The female physicist is reduced to this female
  sexual or childbearing body
• 3. This directly or indirectly scares female
  physicists away and leads to the elimination of
  women in situations of competitions between male
  and female.

12

• In connection with the position I didnt get, I
  experienced actual sexual harassment. I was
  groped at a job interview. In connection with a
  test lecture male member of the job interview
  committee groped me. () He got a good grip of
  my hips and had to sort of squeeze past me. The
  next day at lunch he came and sat demonstratively
  at the table where I was sitting and told me that
  a good reason for hiring me could be that I had
  pretty breasts.

13
Agential literacy

• Feel for the game
• Agential literacy
• Doing science with a respect for
  material-discursive boundary making
• Doing workplace environment with a respect for
  discrimination in boundary making

14

• I dont know, but there may be a tendency for men
  not to able to figure out how to deal with the
  female students. () Male students just have to
  be pushed hard, girls you have to treat with care
  and nurse them a bit.
• () But then, what I said before about the
  relationship some supervisors had with their
  female students, that they were anxious that
  someone should get the wrong impression, being
  too friendly towards their female students.

15
Mount Olympus/Agora

• Mount Olympus a world detached from everyday
  life
• Agora Responsibility for gender and mattering
  matter in everyday life