Feminism: The Ugly Truth. Mike J.D. Buchanan
have been on holiday over the period – I tried again.]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011, 4:27 PM
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Dr Zalewski, good afternoon. I emailed you on 28 July (see above) and wrote to you on 11 August (see attached). Having not even received acknowledgement of these items, I am forced to conclude that you are simply unwilling to provide the information requested. I’ve taken legal advice on this matter and am therefore requesting this information through invoking the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I understand that this leaves you a maximum of 28 days so I look forward to the information by Friday 23 September latest. Thank you.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011, 6:36 PM
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Dr Zalewski, would you please be so good as to acknowledge receipt of the email I sent earlier today (above)? Thanks.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:29 PM
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
No information is available as these courses are currently unavailable.
[Author’s note: I then returned to the University website and spotted a course which, it seemed to me, was very much of the type I was enquiring into. So I emailed again.]
From: [email protected]
Sent: 30 August 2011 17:37
To: Zalewski, Marysia
Subject: Re: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Thank you. Is the following course being run over 2011/2?
Abdn.ac.uk/prospectus/pgrad/study/taught.php?code=sex_gender_violence
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:38 PM
Subject: RE: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
This is not a gender studies course.
From: [email protected]
Sent:
Fw: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Thank you, but that wasn’t what I asked. I asked if the course was being run.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
Writing these words in late January 2012, four months after the nine week deadline I originally offered, I have yet to receive a response to that last email, and I have no idea if the requested materials will ever be forthcoming, despite my having invoked the Freedom of Information Act. In case the reason for the non-supply of information was my failure to satisfy some obscure protocol that a citizen would struggle to discover, I think it not unreasonable that Professor Zalewski might have informed me of the fact.
The leader of another Gender Studies course passed my request on to the office responsible for handling such matters. The lady in charge of that office supplied the requested materials but said they were subject to copyright restrictions and I would have to apply for permission to use them, as the academics running the Gender Studies course were concerned I might use them in a ‘misleading’ manner. I would have to present them with the material I sought to duplicate, as well as any commentary concerning it. I wasn’t even permitted to divulge the book titles on the recommended reading lists without prior written permission: copyright was claimed on these lists. But I could, she added generously, state the number of books on those lists. You couldn’t make it up.
Onto the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York. On 14 September 2011 I received a letter from Professor Stevi Jackson which started by apologising for the lateness of the response, and continued in a polite and informative manner. I rapidly concluded she’d attended a superior charm school to the one attended by Professor Zalewski.
The letter included the following table showing the headcount for all full and part-time students on Women’s studies courses over the academic years 2005/6 to 2010/11:
| Academic year | Female | Male |
| 2005/6 | 35 | 0 |
| 2006/7 | 30 | 0 |
| 2007/8 | 30 | 0 |
| 2008/9 | 30 | 0 |
| 2009/10 | 40 | 0 |
| 2010/11 | 40 | 0 |
Assuming the courses were completed within single academic years, that works out at 205 females: 0 males. A strong contender to win a coveted Harriet Harman Award for Gender Balance in Further Education.
What of the course prospectuses, which were mostly for MA courses? Taking a random sampling approach, I opened the ‘Handbook for MA Women’s Studies and MA Women’s Studies (Humanities) 2010 – 2011’ at page 22, which is the first page concerning an optional module, ‘Gender and Diasporic Identities (5080006)’. The course description:
‘The module centres on the ways in which diasporic identities in their intersection with gender are constructed in contemporary cultural production, in particular in film, performance, and fiction. It explores the impact of (dis)locations on perceptions of self and other in the context of diaspora as a continual negotiation between past and present, movement and stability, visibility and invisibility, tradition and transformation. It asks about the changing and diverse experiences of diaspora across generations, how diasporic experience shape gendered identities at local levels and in global contexts, and what socio-cultural issues emerge from the cultural construction of diaspora.
Following on from a session on conceptualising diaspora where we shall compare the personal experience of gendered diasporic identities and their theorisations, we