Interview with Prof Chrsitine Cooper - on the Occasion of 8th March 2002
1) Despite all the difficulties facing women academics, you have managed to become a professor .How difficult was this. What types of prejudices and obstacles did you encounter in the past and now.
I think that the most difficult thing facing both men and women on the road to becoming a professor is learning about the publication process. Certainly in my discipline (accounting), and I suspect in most others, this means going to conferences and show-casing your work, getting it noticed by journal editors and so on. While this is fairly tough for everyone, since most journal editors are men, this presents specific problems for women. Since it is still much harder for a women to network (with men) this means that women can feel isolated. She might watch her male contemporaries casually walk up to the editors and engage them in conversation, buy them a drink and so on. There is still strong remnants of the ideological problem that people still automatically see men as being “more important” or even “more intelligent”. I frequently hear women make excellent comments but they are only taken on board if a man reiterates them. In the very “combatative” macho academic world it is tough for everyone but especially women. Aside from this there are what could be described as the more mundane issues, but which are concerned with your quality of life, these are domestic responsibilities. Many of my male colleagues have female partners in the background who supply what might be described as the necessities of life – the hot evening meal delivered to their tables; the clean underwear which appear as if by magic in their draws; a person to maintain social contact with their friends and family; organise a social life; raise their children and perhaps most importantly provide emotional support. It is hard when you have put your life and soul into a piece of research to then receive a hostile review. I’m not suggesting that men don’t provide emotional support, just that, on the average, I think women tend to provide more. Unfortunately it is still the case that many men feel threatened by their wives jobs. This can lead to hostilities at home rather than support. I am not sure that I would have been more “productive” academically if I had had this type of support but I certainly would have had more leisure and relaxation time. My life is pretty much two dimensional – family and work. But many men have the luxury of work, family and social.
2)Recent AUT reports suggests major discrepancies in pay and conditions between men and women in academic posts , can you comment on this.
Having sat on some interview panels I think that one problem which needs to be addressed urgently is starting salaries. These have long term implications for average salaries. I have no rigorous scientific evidence for this but from my own experience and speaking to other women, it could well be the case that on average women are started at a point lower down the salary scale to “comparable” men. The vestiges of the old idea that men are breadwinners still seem to linger in peoples’ heads. This is a very difficult problem to overcome. I used to think that it would be great to have at least one women on every interview panel – especially if there was to be a women candidate. But some recent research has shown that if one women is put on a panel with a group of men, she is likely to become “ultra-masculine” and overly critical of the women candidate; perhaps to increase her credibility with her male colleagues. The other problem that both men and women face in higher education is the increasing move to fixed term posts. Again though this is likely to affect more women than men. These posts tend to be at the lower ends of the salary scales and by their very nature are not normal routes to promotion. Again appointments in this arena are perhaps enabled by an outdated ideology that women work until they get married (or pregnant); for pin money; with less commitment because of childcare responsibilities; and/or for short periods only because they have to move frequently to follow thier partners’ careers.
3-Given that "personal rights" and civil rights are born in capitalist societies, given that labour becomes a commodity and therefore should be divorced from gender, religion, race and nationality one could have expected an end to legal, formal inequality between men and women. Today , even in the most advanced capitalist societies , can one claim that this has materialised as far as women are concerned?
I think that gender and race issues and the commodification of labour are intertwined. I think that both race and gender are used to “divide and rule”. Or, in other words, that gender and race are used to push down wage rates. Throughout much of the 20th century, women were used as a reserve pool of labour. But, my argument above is slightly more complicated than it might seem at first. Firstly you need to take a “long term view”. It is well known, for example, that in my discipline (accounting), African-Americans offered to work for professional accounting firms for free in the 1930s - 1960s. They offered to do this so that they could obtain the necessary accounting experience to enable them to become qualified accountants. As far as I know, no accounting firm took them up on their offer. Yet, if low wages were the only criteria used by these accounting firms then they surely would have welcomed free labour with open arms. The same story could be told with respect to women. In academia for example, the average professorial salary for women is significantly lower than that of men. Yet we do not see a dominance of women professors. In the early part of the 20th century, male, white accountants underwent a struggle to create “the accounting profession”, and their struggle would not have been so successful if they had allowed women or people of colour into their ranks (or indeed the working class). The same is probably true with academics. In accounting, it was for the long term benefit of accounting firms not to allow certain social groups into their ranks. A second important issue here is the commodification of women themselves as “sex objects”. One doesn’t have to spend too much time watching TV to realise that the majority of images of women are of young and very slim women with a certain hip to waist ratio. The proportion of “normal” women seen on our TV screens have decreased significantly throughout the 1990s. From the cradle to the grave we are bombarded with the same story in many different forms – young beautiful girl attracts “knight in shining armour”. It is a credit to the current generation of young women that they seem to be overcoming this ideological obstacle and achieving brilliantly at school in every single discipline. I find that my women students display a level of confidence unknown to my generation. The third issue is one which confronts most women everyday. As I argued at the start of this, it is certainly a strategy of capitalism to lower wages through the setting off of women against men and race against race. (This leads to huge stresses on black women in particular.) But in order for this strategy to work, you need a certain ideology (which we still have in abundance) and certain material incentives. So, unfortunately, I think that many men benefit from women’s position in the world of work; and also in the home. So many studies have shown that the average male partner spends less than 15 minutes a day on domestic chores, whereas women spend on average 3 hours per day. Of course housework is “free”.
4- Do you think advances by a minority of women in Academia, politics or business affects the plight the majority for women, .eg women in housing estates in Glasgow or Belfast ...
I think that there are class issues that underline this question. Many of the gains made by the women’s movement in the past 40 years have been made by middle class women. The struggles of working class women may appear to conflict with those of middle class women in many cases. For example a middle class women may campaign for tax relief on child care whereas a women struggling to live on benefits may campaign for more benefits (perhaps funded through taxation). Of course tax relief on childcare would also benefit working class women. But it has indeed been argued that some of the gains made by middle class women have been at the expense of working class women. For me, as an individual the income of a “middle-class” job has given me all kinds of freedoms. But I’m not sure how much it will serve to help a single parent on benefits in Glasgow. It could be argued that women who have worked their way up the hierarchy can serve as a role model and help other women. While the first may be true, the latter certainly isn’t always. Sadly, some of the biggest opposition to my chair appointment (but also the biggest support) came from women. Perhaps it just depends on the individual. It is certainly the case that women who achieve positions of power can initiate projects to empower others. For example, I could (and did) add my weight to the campaign against tuition fees.
5- are you in favour of affirmative action ?
Yes.
Anything else you want to say!!
Perhaps I could just add at the end that I feel that as a single parent I had additional problems to overcome. If I go back to conferences. I have a friend (also a single parent) who tried to go to a conference in Brighton with her daughter. She took along a nanny (so she had to pay for an extra adult fare and a child fare, and an additional hotel room). The nanny worked from 9 - 5. So this meant that my friend could attend most of the sessions. But she couldn’t “network” at breakfast or in the evenings (for example at the conference dinner). The whole thing wasn’t a huge success and it was extremely expensive. I never had the luxury of a nanny. The first conference I took my daughter to allowed me to use the (excellent) university creche. This was brilliant. I took my daughter to the breakfasts and dinners, and credit to her and to many (men and women) academic colleagues, I had no bad experiences. In fact, on the whole, people went out of their way to talk to my daughter and make her feel comfortable. The problems could have come when she was too old for creches. But fortunately was didn’t mind sitting in papers and reading. I remember once we were at a conference in New York. On arrival one of the first things we did was to go to Barnes and Noble and spend $100 on books for her (her conference reading). She had read every single book by the end of the conference. I am happy that my daughter now feels totally at ease in the world of academia.