The Challenges for Women in the Academic Organization

For needed changes to occur, we need to do gender in higher education and tenure differently. The way that tenure is established and reviews for tenure are conducted need to be based more on a system that allows for the development of the whole individual. The future health of academia rests on the development and refinement of a system that creates a healthy environment for all members of that system. All faculty members cannot and should not be held to standards that were created in another time, which constructed the academic role as a gendered role. Individuals need to consider how we do gender, and how that creates an impact on our organization, academia. A process for equitable review of all participants in the system requires that all individuals be involved in the process of defining the standards for a tenurable professor. Then all voices should and must be represented when we construct how we do tenure so that even minority voices still have their chance to speak. There is a better way to perform the roles we take in academia, there is a better way to perform our gender in this setting, and from recognizing this we can then move to a better way to do all this that is academia.