Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012 

 15:56:02  Page 41

Janice Newson

Academic Feminism’s Entanglements with

University Corporatization

Abstract

Late 20th-century academic feminism has been impressively successful. In contrast

to their sparse presence in pre-1970s academia, women make up the majority of
students and faculty members in most social science and humanities disciplines,
and in professions such as law and medicine; women’s recruitment to the natural
and physical sciences has become an institutional priority; women occupy many
high-level academic-administrative positions; and, feminist intellectual perspectives
have undermined and in some cases replaced male-centred knowledge paradigms.
Yet this successful intervention into the academy has taken place at the same time

TOPIA 28
as another process, corporatization, has been reconfiguring the academy in sig-
nificant ways. That these transformative interventions have been reshaping the
academic terrain at the same time seems counterintuitive. A feminist vision for the 41
university hardly seems compatible with the commoditization and commerciali-
zation of teaching and research that accompanies corporatization. Their concur-
rence thus raises important theoretical and political questions. Has the success of
the feminist intervention intermingled with and been shaped by corporatization?
Have academic women’s advancements actually aided corporatization? This arti-
cle explores these provocative questions and their implications for the future of
academic feminism and for the university as a public-serving institution. It calls
on feminist scholars and activists to come forward with a renewed vision for the
university, one that could help to bring together and provide focus to the various
attempts by students and faculty to wrest universities from the grip of the neoliberal
policies that have given them a corporate shape.
Résumé

Le féminisme académique à la fin du vingtième siècle a connu un succès impres-

sionnant. Contrairement à leur maigre présence au sein du milieu universitaire
avant les années 1970s, les femmes constituent la majorité d’étudiant(e)s et de
membres de la faculté dans la plupart des disciplines appartenant aux sciences
sociales et aux lettres, ainsi que dans les professions telles que le droit et la médicine;
le recrutement des femmes aux disciplines de sciences physiques et naturelles est
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 42

devenu une priorité pour l’établissement; les femmes occupent plusieurs postes de
haut niveau dans l’administration académique; et, les perspectives intellectuelles
féministes ont ébranlé et, dans certains cas, pris la place des paradigmes de la con-
naissance axés sur l’homme.
Pourtant, cette incursion réussie dans le milieu universitaire a eu lieu en même
temps qu’un autre processus, la corporatisation, est en train de remodeler l’université
de manières importantes. Le fait que ces interventions transformatrices ont influ-
encé le terrain de l’université en même temps paraît incongru. Une vision féministe
pour l’université semble à peine compatible avec la marchandisation et la commer-
cialisation de l’apprentissage et de la recherche qui accompagnent la corporatisation.
Ainsi, leur concurrence soulève des questions importantes aux niveaux théorique
et politique. Est-ce que le succès de l’intervention féministe s’est entremêlé avec
et a été influencé par la corporatisation? Les progrès des intellectuelles ont-ils en
effet aidé à la corporatisation? Cet article explore ces questions provocatrices et
leurs implications pour l’avenir du féminisme académique et pour l’université en
tant qu’institution public. Il demande aux intellectuelles et activistes féministes de
présenter une vision renouvelée pour l’université, une vision qui serait capable de
rassembler et de donner une orientation aux divers essais par les étudiant(e)s et les
enseignant(e)s d’arracher les universités de la prise des politiques néolibérales qui
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leurs ont données une structure corporative.

Keywords: academic feminism; corporatization; the university; strategies of resist-
42 ance; renewed feminist vision

¤
In 2007, I interviewed the acclaimed feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith for a col-
lection of essays exploring how Canadian academics have responded to the shifts
that have taken place in the university over the course of their careers. I asked Smith
how her vision of the university has fared in the face of these changes—from the
expansion of higher education in the late 1950s and 1960s, to the funding cutbacks
of the 1970s and early 1980s, to the shift in the late 1980s and onward toward the
university pursuing an increasingly corporate and commercial direction.
…some changes I see as very positive…changes that have come about from
struggles we have made in the women’s movement and struggles people have
made against racism. I don’t want to idealize the results of these struggles
but if I think back 30 years, the effects have been huge. They are major gains.
(Smith 2010: 74)
I was mindful of Smith’s response when my department at York University was
revising its constitution in 2009 to merge with another sociology department. In
the early 1980s, the department had adopted a constitutional clause entitling the
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 43

women faculty to place a woman representative on all departmental standing com-

mittees until the proportion of women faculty in the tenure stream reached 50
per cent. By 2009, this 50 per cent target had been exceeded for some time and
the need for this provision had come to an end. Because I was a member of the
department’s constitutional sub-committee, my job was to move that the clause
be deleted. But I had conflicting feelings about doing this. That the clause was no
longer needed was an occasion for celebration. But I worried that, once removed, it
might be forgotten that this clause had once been necessary, and that it had been
so obviously efficacious.
I used the opportunity to flag the significance of deleting this clause, primarily to
the women faculty members and graduate students who had not been present when
it was first adopted. I told them that this clause had become part of the depart-
ment’s constitution because a handful of primarily female faculty members had
waged a long and difficult struggle to increase the presence and influence of women
in the department and university. Were it not for the fact that we won this struggle
on a number of fronts, the overall gender equity that York and other universities in
Canada loudly celebrates today would not exist.
Smith’s comments and the change in my department’s constitution bear witness to
one of the most important, and arguably most successful, sociocultural interventions

TOPIA 28
of at least the past fifty years: namely, that the Canadian university, over the course
of a few decades, has transformed itself from being a relatively enclosed, elitist and
patriarchal institution to becoming more open, accessible and women-inclusive. 43
Some commentators have referred to this development as the feminization of the
academy.1 Women have not only acquired majority status in many social science
and humanities disciplines and previously male-dominated professional schools
such as medicine and law, but they have also entered the ranks of senior administra-
tion, including the office of university president.
To be sure, reports still abound about chilly climates for women in certain parts
of the university. Women remain underrepresented in the senior professorial ranks
as well as in many physical sciences and technology–based disciplines, and on lists
of winners of high-ranking academic awards. Also, women scholars’ efforts con-
tinue to be thwarted when, in Donna Haraway’s words, they challenge the “god
trick of seeing everything from nowhere” in order to advance situated knowledges
from women’s perspectives (Haraway 1988: 253). As well, members of minority
groups have some distance to go in achieving the gains that women academics
have attained.
Yet the fact remains that feminist struggle has helped to change significantly the
landscape of higher education systems in ways that cannot be easily reversed. In
many Canadian universities, women studies, gender studies, equity studies and fem-
inist research centres have been established as separate departments or disciplines.
As well, in disciplines ranging from philosophy to mathematics to social studies of
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 44

science to legal studies to biology to engineering—and many in between—femi-

nist scholarship and feminist pedagogies have effectively challenged and subverted
androcentric understandings of the natural and sociocultural worlds (Franklin et al.
1984; Langland and Gove 1981; Luxton 2012). Women centres, status-of-women
offices, equity hiring policies and sexual-harassment centres have become institu-
tionalized to support women’s presence in the academe and counteract resistance
to their inclusion. Moreover, other underrepresented and minority groups have
benefited from women’s advances by expanding notions of inclusion and equity:
members of these groups have also been able to gain access to university education
and academic careers. To be sure, these advances have not been achieved easily
or without opposition: on the contrary, the women’s movement in particular, as
Smith notes, both from inside and outside the university, struggled hard and long
to secure these gains. Even more reason for feminists to celebrate their transforma-
tive impulse, which, over a relatively few decades, has worked its way through, and
helped to reshape, a powerful educational and cultural institution.
Now, then, is a timely moment to take stock and reflect on where the success of
this intervention has taken us, and on where to go from here. For those of us who
celebrate the successes of the feminist struggle, it is helpful to think of where we
are now as a plateau. The idea of having reached a plateau allows us to catch our
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breath; women in academia could surely use such a moment, since much of what
they say about their lives in academia concerns how very busy they are. Even more
significant, the time and energy women have devoted to achieve these successes
44
is undeniable, and what they have given of themselves has been enormous.2 But
plateaux are not only places for taking a breath and looking back on where we have
travelled to see what we have accomplished; they also present us with opportuni-
ties to see more clearly the path we are on, and to consider where it is leading and
whether to continue on it or shift to another.
I write this article, then, as an intervention from the vantage point of this meta-
phorical plateau. I want to pose some questions and propose a way of thinking
about where we are, how we got here and what lies ahead of us. Some of these
questions and the ways of thinking they require are provocative. I do not do this
for rhetorical effect, but because I hope to ignite an interest in undertaking a seri-
ous assessment of the path that should now be taken in light of significant changes
that have taken place in universities since women began to challenge their exclusion
from academic life in the early 1970s. I often hear about women faculty mem-
bers and students becoming engaged in specific struggles to extend or protect the
advances that have already been made at particular campuses or in particular areas
of study, but I hear little to indicate that a shared vision exists for a new stage of
feminist intervention. Yet I believe that there are powerful reasons that a shared
vision and a new stage of intervention are now required.
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 45

One powerful reason is that a feminist success story is not the only tale to tell of
the university’s development over the past 50 years. Especially from the mid-1970s
onward, universities have increasingly justified their existence in terms of their role
in wealth creation and their usefulness in promoting private-sector innovation and
productivity. Commentators on higher education—whether as critics, advocates
or analysts—have used terms such as corporatization, marketization, privatization
and commercialization to conceptualize the changes that have taken place in the
university, terms that reflect the contemporary university’s self-understanding as
having economic value to society.3 A substantial literature has accumulated about
the effects of these processes on the academy.4 Many commentators define these
effects in terms of the increasing ability of private-sector corporations, aided and
abetted by government policies, to influence the content of university research and
teaching programs, and to appropriate academic research findings and teaching
outcomes to advance their own financial interests.
I don’t disagree that corporate influence in university affairs is a consequence of
the corporatization project.5 But important to grasp is that corporatization is not
only a matter of external agents, such as private-sector businesses, reaching into
universities to gain access to their intellectual resources. Rather, corporatization
is a two-way, outside-in/inside-out process. Universities also actively reach out to

TOPIA 28
attract corporate and other kinds of funders—quasi-governmental organizations,
philanthropic foundations, even community-based agencies with money to spend—
in order to grow their financial assets. In the process, they adopt a corporate-like
45
modus operandi, using their human resources, intellectual property and material
facilities to compete with one another to increase their market share of research
dollars and student tuitions, including creating high-fee boutique and international
student programs to enhance their income from teaching.
Corporatization is best understood in terms of complex realignments, on many
fronts, in the social relations of academic work. Claire Polster depicts these realign-
ments as
...the reconstruction of the various pathways through which key players in
higher education (including university administrators, academics, students,
and various communities outside of the university) are brought into contact
with one another. As old pathways are dismantled and as key players are
brought together (or kept apart) for new purposes and/or in new ways, both
their own roles and the role of the university as a whole begin to shift in a
new direction. (Polster 2012: 350)
This new direction increasingly engages universities in orienting their services to
private and individual (paying) clients and customers—whether they are students,
private-sector corporations, community agencies, NGOs or governments min-
istries—rather than to the collective public good. Although academics continue
to perform the same tasks and exercise the same skills as academics have in the
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 46

past—teaching students, engaging in scholarship, maintaining the daily operations

of their departments, programs and faculties—they now do so under profoundly
different conditions and to serve profoundly different purposes.6
Given that the corporatization project and the feminist intervention have brought
significant changes to the university during the same time period, it is reasonable
as well as prudent to ask whether and how they have intermingled. Have aca-
demic feminists’ agendas been shaped by corporatization?7 Or has corporatization
been shaped by academic feminists’ agendas? More provocatively, to what extent,
if at all, have feminists’ bids for access to, and influence in, academic communities
been implicated in the shift of the university toward supporting and initiating
the commercial and market-oriented endeavours of the increasingly corporatized
university?
Before I explore these questions, a clarification is in order. Naming the struggle
for women’s access to the academy as a “feminist” struggle is not meant to exclude
women as well as men who have been part of this struggle but who do not identify
themselves as feminists. While I use terms such as feminists, academic feminists,
feminist agendas and feminist struggle, they are not stand-ins for the true feminist
or feminist politic. I mean to include whomever is open to, or willing to consider,
my argument that a renewed vision of and feminist intervention into academic
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affairs is required to address the current state of the university.

46
I first began to think about the relationship between these two trajectories of insti-
tutional change in the early 1990s, when the effects of policies promoting corpo-
ratization began to appear on local university campuses.8 During this period, I
attended a status-of-women conference sponsored by the Canadian Association of
University Teachers, where I overheard one colleague ask another over coffee, “How
much of the usual women’s paraphernalia have you acquired on your campus—you
know, sexual-harassment centre, affirmative-action programme, equal-employment
officer, status-of-women’s office, et cetera?” The comment jarred me. For one thing,
“paraphernalia” was an odd way to refer to programs and offices that had come into
existence, not through a process of “natural” administrative growth, but through
hard-fought struggles to support the increasing presence of women in the academy.
In addition, the ho-hum tone of the comment suggested that these programs and
offices function as a matter of routine rather than through the extraordinary invest-
ments of time and energy by female faculty and staff.
But the comment stuck with me most of all because I had been noticing that
university websites and glossy in-house public-relations magazines had begun to
profile this same “paraphernalia” as beneficial features of their institution — a nas-
cent appearance of the processes of university branding that are now so entrenched.
Universities were just beginning to use distinctive institutional logos on their web-
sites to define themselves, and to advertise their research and teaching activities as
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 47

knowledge products that set them apart from other universities. They were doing
this as a marketing strategy, in order to more effectively compete with other insti-
tutions for funding opportunities and to attract the attention of paying clients. As
government funding was becoming increasingly contingent on competitive criteria 9
and mandatory adherence to certain standards of practice,10 the ability to display
diversity and women friendliness, among other things, was good for business: it
was a version of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
From my vantage point, however, these displays read as though university admin-
istrations were claiming bragging rights to sexual-harassment centres, affirmative-
action programs, equal-employment officers and status-of-women’s offices and, by
publicizing them, were attempting to project the image of wise and progressive-
thinking institutional leadership. I was struck by the revisionism underneath this
image. Nothing in the postings and profiles disclosed the decades-long struggles it
took to acquire these programs, struggles that were waged primarily by committed
women faculty,11 struggles that most, if not all, university administrations initially
resisted, sometimes vigorously, to some degree or another. What to make, I won-
dered, of the fact that university administrations were appropriating the successes
of women’s activism? And what to make of the fact that the woman faculty mem-
ber whose comment I overheard could speak about12 the results of this activism as

TOPIA 28
routine concerns, rather than sites of struggle? Is it possible, I asked myself, even
more than contributing to promotional rhetoric,13 that the advances made in the
1970s and 1980s to increase the presence and influence of women in academia have
47
become assets to university administrations, as they respond to increasing demands
to pursue commercial and entrepreneurial success?
I know of no academic feminist voice that specifically advocates for the corpora-
tization of universities.14 On the contrary, I often read or hear feminist scholars
criticizing the corporate agenda and changes related to it. It is thus hard to imagine,
let alone argue, that a reframed feminist intervention would or should embrace the
corporatization project; the university as knowledge business15 seems the antithesis
of the kind of university that academic feminists individually and collectively envis-
age. Yet I have observed a number of developments that lend support to the idea
that the successes of the feminist intervention have helped, and continue to help, to
advance corporatization goals, while, at the same time, the corporatization project
has created opportunities for extending the successes of the feminist intervention.
A few examples will illustrate. One obvious example is that the feminist inter-
vention has transformed the gender composition in many areas of academic life.
Women academics are not only increasingly present and engaged in day-to-day
operations of universities; many have also taken over positions of responsibility at
departmental and faculty levels for such things as program development, curricular
design, teaching and learning—a myriad of activities that support the academic
and educational endeavours of universities. Engaging in these responsibilities has
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 48

become less attractive to male academics,16 but, ironically, from the perspective of
women academics once excluded from such positions, being a departmental chair
or a chair of a faculty council, or a member of a committee dealing with important
academic functions has provided opportunities, or the promise of opportunities, to
bring their influence to bear. The very fact that they occupy these levels of respon-
sibility is one indication of feminists’ success. The fact that women are the busy
housekeepers of the contemporary university is well established. But the ways in
which they are busy housekeepers behind the scenes have changed dramatically
over the years. Women academics are now staffing supervisory front lines that keep
the university up to speed and, in this sense, their energy, time and commitment
are valuable assets to administrations that want to increase productivity and ensure
that their institutions are leading the competition for resources.
A second example is women’s increased participation in research and competi-
tions for research funds. Granted, their research may focus on advancing feminist
goals or strengthening feminist methods and theoretical positions; nevertheless,
from the perspective of the corporatization project, being productive in research,
succeeding in competitions for research funding and securing research contracts
with external funders are vital to contemporary universities’ competitive success. In
Canada as in many other national contexts, success breeds success: publicly funded
TOPIA 28

research councils and government agencies increasingly distribute funds based on

institutions’ previous funding success. It is therefore incumbent on universities as
knowledge businesses to exhort their faculty to compete for research funds and
48
non-public sources of funding. In a real sense, the faculty—including women,
regardless of their interests and commitments—are intellectual assets in the uni-
versity administrations’ inventory, much like the highly skilled salaried professionals
on which private-sector corporations depend to extend their market shares.
But administrative pressures alone do not drive women academics’ participation
in research. Many women fight for time in order to engage in scholarship, some-
times adopting sophisticated manoeuvres to escape from the many service-oriented
housekeeper roles that women academics in particular are often asked to perform.
While analyzing the data we collected in a study on time, gender and technology
in 2006, Heather Menzies and I were surprised by the extent to which busy women
academics organized their time in order to pursue scholarly endeavours (Menzies
and Newson 2008). The surprise was not that they valued their scholarly work but
that they were enthusiastic in embracing online technologies as aids to this end,
even though online technologies were also a big part of why, according to their
own statements, these women academics were feeling so pressed for time. This
study strikingly revealed how important scholarly achievement and recognition
is to women’s academic identities. For many feminists, being able to develop the
scholarly dimension of their careers and thus contribute feminist understandings
to scholarly debates is what the feminist intervention has been about, and it is one
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 49

sign of its success that women now have greater access to resources that support
their research.
A third example of the intermingling of the feminist intervention with the cor-
poratization project is the advance of women academics into high-level posi-
tions of administration, although it bears noting that this advance has not hap-
pened everywhere to the same degree. In Canada, women have become university
presidents—in some cases, of universities that are among the most highly ranked
research institutions. They also have become provosts, academic vice-presidents,
vice-presidents of research, deans and directors of prestigious academic-research
units. For many feminists, the appointment of women into these positions has been
a cause for celebration. At my university, the first time a woman was nominated
to be president in the early 1990s, many feminists actively campaigned for her on
the grounds that “it was time.” As well, many women who have been appointed to
high-level administrative positions have identified themselves either as feminists or
as supporters of women’s issues. In fact, many of them and many of their advocates
argue that as occupants of high office, they are able to have more effect in advanc-
ing women’s issues and in giving a woman’s face to the university (White, Carvalho
and Riordan 2011).
At the same time, commentators on the changes that have overtaken universities

TOPIA 28
across the globe since the early 1980s agree that expanding university administra-
tions and adopting managerialist practices in university operations are character-
istic, even necessary, features of universities as knowledge businesses.17 As George 49
Keller argues forcibly in Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in Higher
Education, published in 1986, at an early stage of the corporatization project, uni-
versity administrators were urged to transform themselves from being servants
of the collegium to being strategically focused managers who take hold of the
university’s resources and follow their own agendas for change rather than those of
the faculty. Since the publication of Keller’s book, universities have moved deeper
and deeper into managerialist territory. It is hard to imagine that women who are
functioning as high-level managers of universities are not engaged in activities of
management that, even though their intentions may be otherwise, help to advance
the corporatization project. More on this later.
This intermingling of academic feminist successes with the advance of the cor-
poratization project is not without significant downsides, however. Perhaps the
most important is that it has led to serious divisions and conflicts among the very
academic women who embrace feminist goals.
For example, feminists who are seriously concerned about the university’s trans-
formation into a knowledge business are in some senses dismayed when women
academics take advantage of the new opportunities to increase their research pro-
ductivity even as these new opportunities advance the corporatization project.
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 50

Speaking from my own experience at a Canadian university, I remember sensing

a change in the rhythm and the spirit of academic life in the mid- to late 1990s.
Faculty members seemed not only to become ever more busy, but they also seemed
to focus increasingly on their research productivity. It was around this time that
the federal government in Canada was reshaping its approach to research fund-
ing and was beginning to insert a huge dose of public monies into the academic
research enterprise—more than four billion dollars between 1997 and 2010. Col-
leagues who I knew to be critical of the changing face of the university nevertheless
appeared enlivened and enthusiastic about the new opportunities open to them. I
noticed this in both male and female colleagues, but I especially noticed it among
academic women. I recall feeling disheartened and perplexed because I sensed that
this increased interest in research productivity, because of the terms and conditions
under which it was being made available, would feed the changes to the university
that some of us had been hoping to reverse.
One program, the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, is worth highlighting
in this regard. It was created by the federal government in 1999, two years after the
creation of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the latter program having
been designed to provide funds for infrastructural support to research. The CRC
was created to develop “research excellence” through identifying and giving special
TOPIA 28

support to “research stars” and “rising stars.”18 Taken together, these programs not
only introduced a significant dose of research funds into universities in a relatively
short time, but also represented, as Polster has demonstrated, a sharp break with the
50
way research grants until this point had been made available to academic research-
ers and their institutions (Polster 2002).
Several academics opposed to the corporatization project began to alert colleagues
across the country to how this new package of programs represented a significant
escalation of the federal government’s support for corporatization. A robust criti-
cal assessment of these programs ensued. The Canadian Association of University
Teachers published a substantial critique of them in the CAUT Bulletin (Turk 2000).
Polster’s examination concluded that the CRC and the CFI contained the potential
not only to better align the university system across the country with the economic
objectives of the federal government, but also to advance corporatization to a new
level by radically altering the social relations through which academic research is
accomplished.19 Most important to this discussion, however, is Polster’s conclusion
that these effects will be achieved not so much from the kinds of research that will
be undertaken through them, but rather from participating in them:
…it is not clear that CFI and CRC programs, as presently constituted,
will produce academic research that is radically different from that which
currently exists. It is clear, however, that they will stimulate some radi-
cal changes in relations among and between all of the parties involved in
academic research…[and] given the significance of these shifts…these
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 51

programs may end up having more impacts, and more profound impacts, on
academic research than their creators ever imagined or intended. (Polster
2002: 296)
In spite of these warnings, the CRC and CFI programs have appealed to many
academic researchers. They provide substantial sources of funding to support their
recipients’ work and the CRC program, in particular, affords considerable recog-
nition and public exposure. To give depth to their coverage of news events, for
example, media constantly draw upon CRC recipients. Even scholars who have
been deeply critical of the corporatization of universities have competed for CRC
positions on grounds that their critical work will receive more public attention and
have greater effect.
Feminist scholars are attracted to CRC awards for similar reasons: that is, to bring
more attention and recognition to feminist perspectives. It is not surprising, then,
that some academic feminists became motivated to act when they learned that
women were underrepresented in the first rounds of the CRC awards. The Cana-
dian Women’s Studies Association launched a suit under the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms and ultimately won it before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Understandably, many feminists regard this as a victory to be celebrated. As Doro-
thy Smith said in the interview referred to at the beginning of this essay,

TOPIA 28
That a group of academic women recently took the case of women’s under-
representation in the Canada Chairs program to the Supreme Court and
51
won it is both evidence of, and a further step on the way to, making, indeed
forcing, universities to adequately recognize what we’ve achieved as women
in academe. (Smith 2010: 74)
On the other hand, feminists who are convinced that the CRC program plays a
role in advancing corporatization find it difficult to embrace this victory without
feeling ambivalent. They are not only concerned that participating in this program
leads to the effects that Polster and several other critics have emphasized; they
are also concerned that the CRC program creates in each university a small col-
lection of celebrated faculty members who are better resourced and more highly
valued in light of their university’s desire to improve its competitive edge with
other institutions. In this sense, the CRC program is an instance of tiering in the
academic labour force, albeit one that is on the opposite spectrum from the one
with which most critical commentators on the university are familiar, namely, the
under-resourced temporary academic positions that represent a growing proportion
of academic labour. Since women largely occupy these casualized academic posi-
tions, it is hard to sit comfortably with the idea that women in the name of women
would participate in a program that encourages and further produces tiering and
labour-market fragmentation.
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 52

A second significant cause of division among academic feminists is the movement

of women into high-level managerial positions. Studies (Barry, Berg and Chandler
1998; Clark, Chandler and Barry 1999; Goode and Bagilhole 1998; Thomas and
Davies 2002; Whitea, Carvalhob and Riordan 2011) as well as personal reports20
show that many women enter management to introduce feminist principles into
the way the university is administrated. Yet, almost immediately upon entry, they
encounter difficulties in disentangling themselves from managerialist policies
and practices that promote corporatization. Nevertheless, these women managers
typically adopt a variety of sophisticated strategies to try to conduct management
differently.21
In so doing, however, these women managers risk encountering at least two obsta-
cles. On one hand, they often confront the women conundrum of becoming margin-
alized within the managerial cohort and, as a consequence, their ability for bringing
feminist principles to bear on the goals and modus operandi of their universities is
restricted. On the other hand, since these women’s positions are embedded in the
managerialist apparatus of their universities, regardless of how they try to apply
managerial policies differently, they also typically become alienated from their
women colleagues, who are the subjects of these policies. As Polster argues in her
analysis of the CRC and CFI funding programs, the intention of a given policy or
TOPIA 28

practice is less important than what the policy or practice actually accomplishes.
Managerialist policies and practices accomplish changes in the conditions of work
that women academics, as well as their male colleagues, experience in a multitude
52
of negative ways: increased workloads, increased demands for reports on their per-
formances, the closing or shrinking of highly valued programs such as women’s
studies programs, and a general decline in the supports they need to do the work
that matters to them. No matter how women managers try to distance themselves
from these effects, other women academics often perceive them as deeply involved
in bringing them about.
Juxtaposed to these women managers are women academics who try to bring
feminist principles to bear through participating in their faculty unions. While it
is almost a foregone conclusion that divisions would emerge between these two
groups because of the adversarial nature of labour-management relationships, it is
worth noting that management women and union women have in the past some-
times forged successful alliances in an effort to support feminist objectives. A case
in point is my own experience as a member of several faculty-union negotiating
teams at York University. Women who were active in the faculty union—supported
by some male academics—first tried to secure an affirmative-action program for
women faculty in 1976, when the union’s first collective agreement was negoti-
ated. They were not successful then, but a little over ten years later, in 1987, when
a woman chaired the administration’s negotiating team and a second woman who
strongly supported the union’s position was also a member of that team,22 a highly
successful affirmative action policy was negotiated. Two groups of women—one
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 53

on the management side and one on the union side—worked together to create
a policy that was acceptable to both. At the time, it set a precedent for Canadian
universities and was soon followed by similar programs at other universities.
However, opportunities to develop this kind of pincher strategy from both sides of
the management-labour divide are less and less available. In a neoliberal context,
forging alliances and working together for feminist principles is much more com-
plex than it was when university decision-making retained a meaningful adherence
to collegial governance. For the same reason, it is increasingly difficult for women
on the labour side of this divide to develop a unified feminist position. No single
neoliberal policy direction has been more an obstacle to pursuing a unified feminist
opposition to corporatization than the tiering of academic labour.
Tiering, as already mentioned, is a characteristic feature of universities as knowl-
edge businesses, and it has been underway for some time. Although some university
administrations adopted tiering policies earlier than others, most universities across
the country have in recent years begun to display some form of it. For example, at
most—if not all—universities, streams have been created within full-time faculty
bargaining units whose terms and conditions of employment differ significantly:
the division between tenure-track and limited-contract faculty is a case in point.

TOPIA 28
But the form of tiering that has most been the source of serious divisions and
conflicts among academics has been the creation of, and increasing reliance on,
a class of contract workers hired on a course-by-course basis only to teach. The 53
terms of employment for this class of faculty members differ significantly from the
terms for those who hold tenure-track or tenured-faculty positions. In many cases,
contract workers belong to different bargaining units from the full-time faculty,
but, even in instances in which they belong to the same bargaining unit, the union
negotiates separate agreements for each class of worker.23 Women academics are
thus politically and economically separated from one another, either because they
are members of different bargaining units or because their working conditions
are covered by different collective agreements. This separation makes it difficult,
if not impossible, for these women academics to work together to challenge the
policies and practices of the university administration that are designed to advance
corporatization. Strategies for defending the terms and conditions of employment
for one bargaining unit or class of worker often run counter to the strategies of
another, creating divisions that are hard to reconcile, especially since the adminis-
tration often attempts to exploit such divisions. Even more destructive to worker
solidarity in general, and feminist solidarity in particular, is that tiering in the form
just described has created a faculty complement composed of haves and have-nots:
that is, of faculty members who hold privileged positions with security of employ-
ment and substantial professional entitlements, and those who fill the ranks of an
increasingly casualized, under-resourced labour force predominantly composed of
women (de la Cour 2009; Blackmore 2011).
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 54

There is every reason to believe that this form of tiering is about to increase. Over
the past two years or so, many university managements have been attempting to
create “teaching only” streams within full-time faculty bargaining units. At my
university, for example, the administration recently inserted such a proposal into
a special side-table round of bargaining with the full-time faculty union. A com-
plex and heated debate ensued within the union about the merits of agreeing to
this proposal. Some members, both men and women, argued for it on grounds of
equity, insofar as it would create an opportunity to provide people who had been
employed as contract faculty for a number of years with more secure and beneficial
academic positions. Others argued that agreeing to this change in the collective
agreement would, among other things,24 place the union on the slippery slope of
tiering full-time faculty positions into teaching-only and research-only categories,
with different terms and conditions of employment.
While I was pulling together my own contribution to this debate, I remembered
the account given by the feminist sociologist and activist Sally Hacker of a feminist
action undertaken in the United States in the 1960s by the National Organization
of Women (NOW) (Hacker 1990). The story that Hacker recounted was about
technological change in the communications industry, and it alerted me to the
possibility that creating a teaching-only stream within the full-time faculty could
TOPIA 28

be a critical step toward opening the university’s traditional teaching mandate to a

profound technological transformation. Although universities have been wired for
almost two decades, technological change has not had a significant impact on the
54
delivery of teaching—not as significant, that is, as recent government reports and
statements by politicians would suggest.25 University administrations have not been
able to achieve the sorts of significant efficiencies in labour costs that technological
change has enabled in other kinds of work. But in order to more fully technologize
teaching, it needs to be severed from research, not just de facto, as has already
happened to some degree. University administrations anxious for flexibility need
teaching to be severed from research de jure, meaning: in the contractual provi-
sions of collective agreements. They need this because the collective agreements of
full-time faculty are based on the assumption that these bargaining-unit members
do both teaching and research; these agreements thus place serious obstacles in the
way of restructuring professorial work.
It is in this respect that Sally Hacker’s experience is an instructive cautionary tale.
The NOW intervention in which she participated was intended to open up jobs for
minority people and women in the powerful communications corporation AT&T.
Its labour force was largely composed of white, male, highly skilled technical work-
ers who enjoyed high salaries and benefits, and who exercised considerable political
and economic strength through their powerful union. Low-level jobs were available
to women and minority groups, but access to more desirable, higher-level positions
was denied to them. Hacker records the details of how, within a decade, all except
for a few AT&T jobs disappeared, including the highly skilled ones. She shows how
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 55

AT&T’s agreement to open up jobs to women and other minorities—a decision

that was lauded by NOW as a progressive move—fit into AT&T’s game plan for
tiering the highly skilled and costly positions. After the disappearance of these jobs,
Hacker discovered to her regret that the AT&T’s management had set a course in
this direction ten years before. At the time, management feared that the powerful
AT&T male union would effectively resist the technological transformation. But
once the highly technical jobs performed by this union’s membership were broken
into constituent parts requiring declining levels of skill, the union was seriously
weakened, the workforce was divided up and the table was set for replacing all the
workers with an integrated technological system.
It is increasingly likely that a similar scenario for technological change in universi-
ties is on the horizon. University administrations’ attempts to institute teaching-
only streams may well be the first step toward replacing substantial numbers of
highly educated academics with extensive online instruction systems. Given the
current financial situations of universities, administrations would benefit consider-
ably from a split between teaching and research. Teaching, except in the case of
high-fee boutique and international-student programs, is largely a cost item: higher
tuitions are not able to fully fund the cost of courses and, as is currently being dem-
onstrated by the student strike against tuition increases in the province of Quebec

TOPIA 28
(Bannerji 2012), tuitions can be raised only so far before they begin to create social
instability. Moreover, the majority of funding for teaching comes almost exclusively
from governments that are trying to cut universities loose from reliance on public
55
resources.26 Research, however, is funded more and more by diverse external sources,
including corporate clients and private foundations. More importantly, under the
policies that promote corporatization, research has become an income item. Uni-
versity administrations—like any number of corporate enterprises interested in
improving their financial outlooks—are motivated to reduce their costs while they
increase their incomes: to reduce the cost of teaching, for example, and to increase
income from research productivity and the commercialization of intellectual prop-
erty.27 The technologization of teaching allows university administrations to staff
courses more cheaply through software-packaged courses and online tutors (some
online universities have their tutors working in call centres, for example), while at
the same time, aided by programs similar to the CRC program in Canada, retaining
a smaller but well-paid and highly productive research faculty; this allows them to
compete more effectively for grant money and to attract private sector clients. It is
a compelling strategy suited to the realities of the moment.
Hacker’s cautionary tale draws our attention to how a successful feminist interven-
tion ran parallel with, and became entangled in, another socioeconomic transforma-
tive project: in this case, one that was spurred on by technological developments. It
thus behooves us to reflect on how the post-1960s feminist intervention in universi-
ties’ entanglement with the corporatization project might turn out. Although I read
and hear about the struggles in which women faculty and students on particular
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 56

campuses or in particular areas of study are engaged, I hear little that indicates a
shared vision for a new stage of feminist intervention. My intention in this article
has been to initiate a robust and prolonged discussion of where the feminist inter-
vention needs to go next. In my view, some aims that were relevant in the 1970s
and 1980s are less relevant today. Then, feminists focused on wresting the university
from its elitist and masculinist history. But today’s universities need to be wrested
from the grip of the neoliberal policies that have turned them into knowledge
businesses whose practices and objectives are a serious threat to the feminist gains
discussed in this article.
A renewed feminist struggle for the university would not be without allies or intel-
lectual inspiration. University and college students, along with university faculty
and staff members, are increasingly discontented with the high cost and declining
quality of education, as well as their universities’ ties with corporate clients and
influential donors, and they are more willing than ever to express their dissatisfac-
tion through active protest. At the University of Toronto, faculty, staff, students
and members of the wider community have formed an assembly to challenge their
exclusion from university decision-making and the unseemly commercial partner-
ships that their administration is forming with powerful corporations, such as its
acceptance of a donation from Peter Munk, founder and chair of Barrick Gold;
TOPIA 28

according to a statement on the UT Assemblies’ website, this donation affords the

Munk Foundation approval rights over the activities of U of T’s new School of
Global Affairs (University of Toronto General Assembly 2011). Just this spring, the
56
Osgoode Law School Faculty voted to reject a sixty million dollar donation to set
up an international-law program because many faculty members believed that the
conditions laid down by the donor, a think tank founded by Research in Motion’s
former co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, would constitute “unprecedented influence over the
University’s academic affairs” (Adem 2012). Across Canada and elsewhere, signifi-
cant efforts are being made to reclaim the university, or parts of it, for public-serving
interests. Some students and faculty members have become active in the Occupy
movement, motivated by a desire to grow an effective international challenge to
the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism. And even as I write this article, a truly
significant student-led mobilization against tuition increases in the province of
Quebec has engaged the wider public in nightly protests against related provincial
government policies (Bannerji 2012). All of these and more provide entry points
for a renewed feminist intervention.
Most importantly, resistances and challenges to the transformative effects of neo-
liberalism are both possible and needed, from inside the university as much as from
outside it. A renewed feminist intervention could contribute significantly to this
struggle and provide the coherence of a movement for the individuals and small
groups within the academe who want to act but who cannot exert much influence
by themselves. For one thing, feminism has a rich and multifaceted tradition from
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 57

which to draw, both in activist politics and also in theorizing the-world-as-it-is and
the world-as-it-could-be. The Italian feminist philosopher Federica Giardini has
given thought to this issue. She and other feminist colleagues have begun to join
their efforts with the largely youth-driven activist movements that have emerged
recently in Italy. She argues that academic feminists need to return to and deepen
their community-linked politics of the 1970s, and, at the same time, develop a
renewed theoretical analysis for feminism by drawing from queer theory, postco-
lonial theory and conceptions of the sexuate subject, among others.28 For another
thing, as already argued, academic women have acquired significant leverage within
universities. They—along with male colleagues who share their concerns—could
use this leverage to ensure that the university remains a public-serving institution,
to which it is worth gaining access.
The university in the 20th century has been shaped as much by a public-serving
tradition and democratic aspirations as it has been by the decidedly anti-democratic
corporate agenda that has been driving its development over the past two to three
decades. I never cease to be amazed and encouraged when some students in my
courses express a desire to experience their university education as a time and space
to think critically about life and the world at large, even though they have come
into adulthood in an era when neoliberal policy talk constructs students as atomized

TOPIA 28
consumers looking for the most lucrative career track. From where, I ask myself,
does their awareness of the university as a space for intellectual reflection come?
Wherever it is, it speaks to a legacy that we, who are inside the institution, have
57
the responsibility to preserve.
A number of years ago I presented a talk to a group of academic feminists about
the state of the university. I drew from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea of the uni-
versity as a space for living with ideas under the conditions of freedom and solitude
(Gadamer 1992: 48). I tried to demonstrate how the corporate-linked university
fails to provide this kind of space, and argued, among other things, that the loss of
a governance structure based on collegialism is a major obstacle to recovering this
kind of space. I was challenged by one woman for using language that reinstates
the masculinist view of the university as an elitist place apart and collegialism as
the means through which men have dominated university affairs. I did not have a
chance to respond to this challenge, but today I say, “that’s okay with me. I don’t
need to use that language. Give me a new language that helps us to address today’s
challenges!” In my view, we urgently need such a language, and, more than that, we
need a renewed feminist intervention to unite behind that offers hope of realizing
this language in a truly liberating university.
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 58

Acknowledgements
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s travel-grant program provided
financial support for this project. I am grateful for the insightful comments of two anony-
mous reviewers. Largely due to time constraints, I was not able to take advantage of all of
their suggestions, but, to the extent that I have responded to them, they have strengthened
this article.

Notes
1. The “feminization of the academy” has been characterized in some quarters more
recently as contributing to a decline in academic standards. See Leathwood and Read
2008.
2. See the essays by Archibald, Armour, Hamilton, Hearn, Hornosty, Neis, Glenis and
Quinlan, and Sangster in Newson and Polster 2010.
3. From the mid-1990s onward, higher-education policy discourse in Canada and else-
where increasingly priorized the economic functions of universities. Successive federal
governments led by Jean Chrétien, for example, adopted research-funding policies that
positioned universities as significant tools for their “innovation agenda.” See Polster
2003/2004 and 2002. More recently, the Dalton McGuinty government in Ontario
commissioned a report on the province’s higher education system—originally referred to
as “the Drummond Report”—whose current title, “Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of
Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge,” does not identify universities and colleges as its
TOPIA 28

subject matter.
4. Often, but not always, the effects of corporatization on universities are discussed as
58
part of the broader theorization of neoliberalism. Whether supportive of or antagonistic
toward them, few analysts of higher education would deny that these effects have been,
and continue to be, substantial. See, for example, Bok 2003; Clark 2001; Newson and
Buchbinder 1988; Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Tudiver 1999; and Woodhouse 2009.
5. I am adopting “the corporatization project” as a generic term to roughly include
changes that are alternately referred to as marketization, commercialization, academic
capitalism, and so on.
6. The university’s orientation toward the public good or the public interest can, of course,
also convey benefits to private and individual interests. But the reverse does not hold:
orienting to private and individual interests does not ensure that the public good is being
served, let alone priorized. For elaboration, see Newson 1998.
7. By referring to feminist agendas, I am not arguing that feminists, acting as a unified
group, devised well-thought-out programs of action for changing the university. However,
there is evidence that, at least in the early stages of the struggle, activist women academ-
ics—whether or not they defined themselves as feminists—shared common objectives.
For example, activist women in most Canadian universities produced, in the 1970s,
status-of-women reports that laid out political objectives for disrupting the androcentric
character of their own institutions—later, they would more easily say “patriarchal.” Now
lost to the memory of students and younger colleagues, these reports uniformly docu-
mented the invisibility/absence of women in academe and advocated, among other things,
for increasing the proportion of women in all areas of university life, and establishing
courses and programs that would nurture the development of women-centred/feminist
research and scholarship. As women have increased in numbers in academia, they have
developed a variety of strategies for influencing or transforming the university. As will be
shown in this article, these strategies sometimes conflict, with significant consequences.
Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 59

8. For example, commercial advertisements in university buildings; funding partnerships

with high-profile corporate clients celebrated in glossy in-house magazines; new high-
level administrative positions dedicated to creating partnerships with corporate donors;
on-campus private spin-off companies, and so on. For a detailed discussion, see Newson
2012.
9. Such as attracting matching funds from corporate clients and philanthropic
foundations.
10. An example of standards of practice is the Tri-Council Ethics Protocol.
11. At my university, some male faculty members not only supported but also actively
contributed to securing an effective affirmative-action policy.
12. I did not ask this colleague about the meaning of her comment; I am describing my
interpretation of it.
13. Universities’ deployment of promotional rhetoric is an important feature of corporati-
zation that has been given nuanced critical attention by Hearn 2010b; Wernick 1991; and
Chandler and Wong 2005.
14. I am using the term “feminist” here to refer to women academics that associate them-
selves with a feminist perspective. It is important to note that some academic women
who support the advancement of women within academe do not identify themselves as
feminist nor do they embrace some of the broader objectives for social and institutional
change that are advocated by feminists. Some of these women favour corporatization or
aspects of it.

TOPIA 28
15. Claire Polster coined the term “knowledge business” to conceptualize the trajectory of
the contemporary university.
16. Some reasons they have become less attractive to men are related to the growth of 59
managerialism. See White et al. 2011.
17. There are too many examples to mention, so I will list here only a few contributions
from a variety of national contexts: Askling, Bauer and Marton 1999; Currie and Vidov-
ich 1998; Deem, Hillyard and Reed 2007; and Newson 1992.
18. Parallel programmes have been adopted in other nations.
19. Even though the Liberal Canadian government that created the CRC and the CFI
programs was replaced in 2005 by the Stephen Harper–led Conservative government,
these programs not only continue to exist, but they also have become the vehicles of
choice for advancing the Harper Conservatives’ science and technology policies. Since
2007 through to the 2012 federal budget, the government has funnelled large amounts
of funding into the CFI program (500 million over five years in the 2012 budget), while
funds for basic research programs are being reduced. This government has also cre-
ated similarly designed units that bypass peer-review adjudication systems and provide
appointees from the business community with greater influence over the kinds of projects
that are funded.
20. For three examples from Canada, see the essays by Purkis, Rehimieh and Ristock in
Newson and Polster 2010.
21. Research shows that some women try to bring feminist principles to the way they
apply the policies and practices of management, such as allowing collaboration rather
than simply imposing administrative edicts. Without meaning to denigrate these efforts,
managerialism with a gentler, more respectful, consultative touch is nonetheless manage-
rialism in that it accomplishes managerial effects.
 Topia 28_Newson  Nov 07 2012   15:56:02  Page 60

22. In fact, the second woman had been a strong supporter of the union before she moved
into a management position.
23. The kind of terms and conditions of employment that pertain to contingent workers
in Canadian universities are discussed in Rajagoupal 2002, but for a gritty account of “the
life” of contingent workers, see Hearn 2010a.
24. There were more reasons for opposing the proposal than the slippery-slope argument.
For example, it contained no guarantees that people who were presently employed as
contract faculty would get these jobs.
25. The Ontario government is on record as wanting to create a speedier and more cost-
effective delivery system in higher education by expanding the use of online instructional
technologies. The Drummond Report (referred to in endnote three above) that the
government commissioned in early 2012 provides an economic justification for this policy
direction. See Drummond 2012; Gough 2012.
26. Note the dramatic change in policy underway in England, for example, whereby
the government is no longer putting money into a teaching-block grant, but is rather
distributing it to students through various means, thus making universities dependent on
students’ choices. For a critical take on these changes, see Collini 2011: 25.
27. Whether or not online teaching is cheaper than so-called traditional teaching is a
matter of debate. However, politicians, policy advisors and administrators believe that it
can be employed in ways that are cost-effective.
28. See Giardini 2011.
TOPIA 28

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