--- breaking the silence ---
Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
This study examines women's understandings of their doctoral experiences and the critical challenges they encounter on their journeys. This is a story of women's voices - a story of women who, in order to give meaning to their lives, have chosen a path of academic scholarship. It is a story of women in pursuit of the Ph.D.
In their stories, like stories of the science fiction genre where the normal rules that govern society and civilized social intercourse are altered (and on occasion suspended altogether), the agendas are not always visible, the endings are not always predictable, and the memories are not always coveted.
I really had no idea, though I suspected that it would be both hard and invigorating ... It represented being able to become a professor, and that meant a certain freedom of thought and flexibility of lifestyle that I desired.
I would say I no longer think of the degree as a means to an end, as I don't expect it will get me a job. The degree itself means very little to me now, though I suppose it means most when I think of it as an official marker that I've finished my dissertation. It gives me a good reason to have a party. I know that probably sounds flip, but it's not meant to be.
(Karen, Doctoral Candidate)
* * * I thought it was going to be difficult and challenging. I was afraid everyone would be smarter than me. I thought I would learn a tremendous amount. I thought it would be fun. I expected to really learn and grow.
It has been difficult and challenging, not because everyone is smarter than me but because the faculty is insane. As for how my views have changed, I guess I'd have to say I've lost my innocence. I had originally thought the process was set up to help me learn as much as possible, but now I realize that the process is mostly political and has very little to do with helping students learn. I feel pretty disillusioned.
(Margaret, Doctoral Candidate)
Women's Participation in Higher Education
In the postwar period of the 1960s, higher education in North America saw massive expansion in both faculty teaching positions and student enrollments. In Canada, the full-time university teaching staff increased from 4,973 to 29,710 between 1956 and 1975 with more than 10,000 new teaching positions created between 1964 and 1972 in the humanities and the social sciences alone (Cude, 1988, p. 20). In the United States, between 1965 and 1975 the student population grew from 6 million to 11 million (Finnegan, 1993). During this period and in the decades that followed, women's rates of participation in higher education also increased steadily. Today, in both Canada and the United States, more than half the undergraduate student population is composed of women (Caplan, 1994).
Currently, more women are enrolled in graduate programs than in any previous period in history (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992). In the US, by 1992, the enrollment of women in master's and doctoral programs represented 52% of the total graduate enrollment (Council of Graduate Schools, 1993). Canadian institutions have experienced similar increases in the enrollment of women graduate students. In Canada in 1971, women represented 22% of the full-time and 24% of the part-time graduate enrollment (Education in Canada, 1991). By 1988 these figures had doubled to 41% and 51% respectively (Caplan, 1994) and they remained virtually unchanged in 1991.
Women's enrollments in doctoral programs have increased as well but in both countries men's enrollments at the doctoral level continue to surpass those of women. In 1972 women represented 19.5% of Canada's total doctoral enrollment. By 1994 this figure increased to 37.7% of Canada's total enrollment of 26,081 doctoral students (Canadian Association of Graduate Studies Statistical Report, 1994).
In addition to increased doctoral enrollments, women in both Canada and the US are currently earning a higher proportion of doctoral degrees than in previous years. In the United States, between 1920 and 1966, the percentage of women doctoral recipients ranged between 11% and 20% (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992). Since 1966 this overall proportion has grown. In the mid-1980s, women represented about one third of earned doctorates in the US (Caplan, 1994) and since then this figure has risen only slightly. By 1992, of the 38,814 doctorates awarded in the United States that year, 63% (24,448) were awarded to men while only 37% (14,366) were awarded to women (Ries and Thurgood, 1993). The most current data show that in 1993 women represented 38% of earned doctorates (Thurgood and Clarke, 1995). In Canada, the proportion of doctorates earned by women is lower than that of US women, having increased from less than 18% in 1977 to a little over 31% in 1992 (Education in Canada, 1992).
Two problems of concern to researchers in recent years have been the increased time required to complete a doctorate and the rate of attrition in doctoral programs. While these trends affect degree completion by both men and women there is much evidence to suggest that degree completion by women may be affected adversely in comparison to men. Problems in Doctoral Education
Increased Time to Degree
Over the past several decades the length of time students take to complete the doctorate has been the focus of much research (Baird, 1990; Berelson, 1960). According to Berelson (1960) the length of time required to complete the doctorate remained quite stable between 1930 and 1960. However, based on their study which analyzed the Doctorate Records file of the National Research Council, Tuckman, Coyle and Bae (1989) have suggested that it is now taking longer to complete the doctoral degree than at any previous period in US history, a trend which is parallelled in Canadian higher education (Caplan, 1994; Cude, 1988; Yeats, 1991). In the US, between 1962 and 1992, the median registered time to degree (the time actually enrolled in graduate school, including the master's degree) for doctoral recipients across all fields of study increased from 5.4 years to 7.1 years while the median years to degree (the years between receipt of the baccalaureate and the Ph.D.) increased from 8.8 years to 10.5 years (Ries and Thurgood, 1993, p. 23). In both registered and total time to degree, the increase represents nearly two additional years of schooling over the past thirty years.
There is reason to question whether the increased time to degree might be affecting women's progress to a greater extent than men. Ries and Thurgood (1993, p. 13) reported that when financing their education, US women doctoral students were more likely than men to be self-supporting and while university funds provided the primary source of financial support in traditional male fields of study such as physical and life sciences and engineering, in traditional female fields like education, humanities and the social sciences where women enroll in higher numbers than men, personal resources were most likely to provide the primary means of financial support.
Whether Canadian women doctoral students also are more likely than men to be self-supporting is unclear. Data from Statistics Canada (Education in Canada, 1991) indicate that between 1982 and 1992, the part-time enrollment of graduate women increased by 5% while the part-time enrollment of men changed little during this period. It is not known whether this increase in women's part-time enrollment was distributed evenly across master's and doctoral levels. Nonetheless, given that Canadian men were not equally affected by this trend, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether time to degree for women as a group is affected adversely by enrollment patterns and funding practices that differ according to field of study and by the need to supplement income with part-time employment.
Attrition in Doctoral Programs of Study
There has been growing concern among educational researchers that the rate of attrition in doctoral programs, which in the US is estimated to be about 50% (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992; Tinto, 1993), has reached an unacceptably high level.
In most countries, the more selective the level of education, the higher the rate of student completion. In the United States the reverse is true. The higher, the more selective, the level of education, the lower the rate of completion. In nonselective secondary schools of America, approximately 25 percent of all students fail to graduate. In more selective four-year colleges and universities, between 35 and 40 percent of entering students fail to obtain a degree. In the most selective institutions, the graduate and first-professional schools, our best estimates is [sic] that up to 50 percent of all beginning students fail to complete their doctoral degree programs (Tinto, 1993, p. 230).
Such claims give faculty, administrators and students cause for concern. However, broadly painted statistics, such as a 50% attrition rate, can have the effect of concealing more information than they reveal. For example, this statistic does not make clear what relationship, if any, exists between attrition and variables such as field of study, gender or ethnicity. Despite a plethora of available statistical data on graduate education we know very little about those who leave doctoral programs prior to degree completion. In Canada, particularly, there is very little in the way of systematic data collection across institutions with respect to doctoral students, their programs and rates of completion or attrition (Cude, 1991; Holdaway, 1994).
The literature on graduate school attrition [in the US] reveals two consistent patterns: women are more likely than men to drop out, and students of both sexes are more likely to fail to complete doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences than in the physical sciences (Patterson and Sells, 1973, p. 84).
One way of understanding how women may be affected differently than men by attrition is to examine the gender patterns of doctoral degree production across various fields of study. In Canada, women in traditional male fields have increased their presence significantly at the undergraduate level; however, women at the master's and doctoral levels continue to be underrepresented in these fields (Bellamy and Guppy, 1991). Of the 5,852 total doctorates awarded in Canada in 1994, over 75% (4,482) were awarded in the life, natural and applied sciences where men enroll in far greater numbers than women. Only 23% (1,370) of the total doctorates were awarded in the humanities and social sciences where women enroll in greater numbers than men (Canadian Association of Graduate Studies Statistical Report, 1994).
In the United States a similar pattern exists. Of the 20,908 doctorates awarded to men in 1987, 55% earned degrees in the physical and life sciences and only 25% earned doctorates in the humanities and social sciences (Touchton and Davis, 1991). In contrast, of the 11,370 doctorates awarded to women in the same year, only 27% were awarded in the physical and life sciences while more than 67% were awarded in the humanities and social sciences. In 1987, in the field of education, which typically records the longest time to degree of any field, women doctorates outnumbered men by more than 2 to 1. In 1993, nearly 60% of US education doctorates went to women with a total time from baccalaureate to doctorate of 18.4 years for men and 19.7 years for women; in contrast, only 9% of the engineering doctorates went to women (Thurgood and Clark, 1995).
Historically, attrition at the doctoral level has not been viewed as an important issue; in fact, it has been quite the opposite. Doctoral attrition, reflected in the idea that 'only the best will survive' (Sternberg, 1981), has been understood to be normal, and even desirable, as part of the 'cooling out' process. This 'cooling out' process is invoked through the use of broad admissions policies and then counterbalanced by the "slow killing-off of the lingering hopes of the most stubborn latent terminal students" (Clark, 1959, p 547). Why the Concern about Attrition and Time-to-Degree?
A 'survival of the fittest' model of doctoral education is becoming increasingly vulnerable to criticism for a number of reasons. First, as Clark has suggested, the cooling out process functions as a low quality substitute for weak and/or unstructured admissions policies. Second, because graduate education is the most costly form of education (Baird, 1993) and because it is becoming an increasingly lengthy and costly process (Baird, 1990; Caplan, 1994; Cude, 1988; Ploskonka, 1993; Tuckman, Coyle, and Bae, 1989), there is concern, in this period of unprecedented global economic restraint, as to whether we are making the most effective use of campus resources (Baird, 1990; Huber, 1992). Third, the increasing financial debt loads that doctoral students are accumulating in both the US and Canada (Hauptman, 1986; Yeats, 1991) combined with a shrinking job market, provide reasons for doctoral students to be concerned that the social and economic rewards of a higher degree may not continue to be commensurate with the personal investments they make in their education (Cude, 1988; Yeats, 1991). Fourth, also cited frequently in the literature as reason to be concerned with attrition and increasing time to degree is the anticipated shortage of university professors and researchers (Berger, 1989; Bowen and Sosa, 1989). Doctoral education is uniquely positioned as the training ground for future faculty of the academy. It provides the most advanced level of training for a wide range of professions and disciplines and the quality of undergraduate programs hinges directly on the success of doctoral programs (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992). Should adequate numbers of graduates not be available to fill the anticipated vacancies, access to higher education for future generations of students will become increasingly competitive. What is less clearly understood about this argument is the extent to which the current period of retrenchment will impact on these predictions and in effect further reduce the anticipated number of vacant faculty positions.
It has been demonstrated that even at the doctoral level the rate of participation by women in higher education has improved steadily in recent years (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992). However, in both Canada and the United States, fewer women than men complete doctorates in most academic disciplines and women generally take longer than men to complete their degrees (Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, Statistical Report, 1994; Ploskonka, 1993; Thurgood and Clarke, 1995). These trends are occurring despite the fact that "in terms of academic achievement, women demonstrate equal if not superior performance levels" (Bellamy and Guppy, 1991, p. 174). Women have higher grade-point averages than men (Solmon, 1976), they score slightly higher than men on the verbal portion of the Graduate Record Exam, and, on average, score higher than or the same as men on virtually every objective measure (Simeone, 1987). If women's abilities are at least equal to those of men, why then are fewer women completing doctorates and why are they taking longer than men to complete their degrees? In view of these seemingly contradictory indicators, the available statistical data do little to explain why these trends might be occurring.
To address some of the 'why' questions about attrition and increased time to degree, educational theorists have attempted to develop models that might be useful in predicting doctoral persistence. Most noteworthy is the work of Girves and Wemmerus (1988) and Tinto (1993). In highlighting a research agenda for the 90s and beyond, Tinto calls for a range of studies that "empirically document the scope and varying character of the graduate persistence process" (p. 241). In particular, Tinto calls for: The Call for New Understandings of Doctoral Persistence
Longitudinal studies of graduate work that use representative samples of beginning doctoral students to track their experiences and differing outcomes. Tinto describes the need for such studies to examine persistence across different stages of graduate study (e.g., during the early phase of course work, during efforts to reach candidacy, during the proposal phase and during the research and writing phase of the dissertation) and the influence that experiences during early phases of the degree process have on experiences in later phases;
Studies of institutional behaviour (particularly those of departments and faculty) and the ways in which these factors influence program completion during different phases of the degree process;
Studies that examine the 'nested effects' of faculty-student interaction and the role of advisor/advisee relationships on degree completion in ways that consider the different experiences of male and female students, older students and students of colour;
Studies that examine the differential effects of 'field of study' on graduate persistence, both within and across institutions; such studies would examine the collaborative and individualistic structures of work associated respectively with the physical and social sciences/humanities to determine their influence on persistence and degree completion. Tinto further suggests that such studies need to examine the influence of department-specific norms in contrast to norms associated with particular fields of study and the degree to which the norms of one might influence the other;
Studies that examine the influence of personal factors on graduate persistence including commitments to family, work and community, particularly as they affect older students who have dependent families;
Studies that examine the influence of institutional behaviour and policies on graduate persistence including residency requirements, various forms of financial aid, e.g. teaching and research assistantships and the benefits and limitations of each form of assistantship during different phases of study.
Tinto (1993) stresses the need for studies that employ both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry. He suggests that quantitative research is necessary to develop longitudinal studies which track and link student experiences to eventual outcomes and to enable researchers to make generalizations that are applicable to other populations as well as institutions. Tinto argues just as strongly for the need for qualitative studies. He suggests that strategies to improve degree completion rates and the development of useful models for predicting doctoral degree persistence must be based on something more substantive than "informed speculation." They must emerge from an understanding of the graduate experience as it is understood by doctoral students themselves. Qualitative methods "are needed to probe the meanings differing individuals attach to their experiences ... [and] ... more than any set of longitudinal path equations, help us to make sense of why it is that particular types of experiences lead to differing types of outcomes" (Tinto, p. 243).
McKeown, MacDonell and Bowman (1993) criticize much of the current research on student attrition for beginning with assumptions about the nature of the student experience that are based on constructed variables such as Tinto's concept of 'social integration.' Such variables, they suggest, are based on the experiences of the researchers and lack any fixed or uniform indicators. However, like Tinto, these authors argue that our understanding of the doctoral experience must "be more firmly grounded in an examination of the worlds of the actors than is the current practice" (McKeown, et al., 1993, p. 83). The voices of students, particularly those of women, have been absent from the research literature on doctoral education and the current study was designed with this critique in mind.
This study, which focuses particularly on the experiences of women doctoral students, is intended to respond to calls in the literature for a new understanding about the nature of the doctoral experience. The following questions guided this research: Research Questions
What is the nature of the doctoral experience as it is understood by graduate students themselves?
What experiences and factors are understood by students to influence their doctoral progress?
What meanings do students attach to these experiences?
How does our understanding of the meaning of student experiences contribute to our knowledge of doctoral persistence?
About the Study
This study examined the nature of women's doctoral experiences and the meanings women attach to these experiences. This research is intended to advance our understanding of the factors that contribute to persistence in women who pursue the doctorate. Storytelling, as a narrative method of research and inquiry, was used in conjunction with open-ended questioning techniques to probe women's understandings of their experiences and to promote further reflection on their experiences through individual written exchanges with the researcher.
Private, one-to-one exchanges of electronic mail between December, 1994 and December, 1995 served as the primary means of communication and method of data collection. This method was designed to simulate an open-ended, face-to-face interview that encouraged and supported women's written reflections of their doctoral experiences while at the same time maximizing the women's control over their participation in the study.
A critical feminist perspective (Agger, 1993; Olesen, 1994; Young, 1990) provides the theoretical framework for the study and, in conjunction with the grounded theory method (Conrad, 1982; Glaser and Strauss, 1967), was used to analyze the women's stories and develop richer understandings about the meaning women attached to their doctoral experiences.
Theoretical Framework of the Study
The function of theory as "an integrated body of propositions, the derivation of which leads to explanation of some social phenomenon - is to give order and insight to what is, or can be, observed" (Denzin, 1978, p. 6).
Theory, founded on a particular set of assumptions, provides us with a lens through which we interpret our universe. My lens, my personal perspective of the world, emerges from a set of beliefs grounded in my own experiences and my own understandings about my world. In naming this perspective, I connect my own experiences and beliefs to the larger body of established literature developed by those who explore similar questions about our understandings of the universe. This provides me with a framework - a congruency of assumptions - for linking theory with practice. This larger body of literature to which I refer reflects a critical feminist perspective.
A Critical Feminist Perspective
While in many respects the underlying epistemologies of feminist and critical theory share common assumptions, their histories reflect important differences. Feminist theory originated with the Suffragette Movement in the United States in the mid-1800s. The feminist movement was given new impetus in a second wave during the 1960s and '70s, first through President Kennedy's establishment in 1961 of the President's Commission of the Status of Women and second, by the subsequent formation of the National Organization of Women (Rossi and Calderwood, 1973). During the early days of this second phase feminists and feminist researchers focused on "the absence of women from or marginalized reports of women in research accounts ... [and stressed] a particular view that builds on and from women's experiences" (Olesen, 1994. p. 163). Later feminist researchers were concerned with ethical issues and focused their criticisms on the research act itself questioning many of the assumptions central to the positivist paradigm.
The critical theory school of thought emerged in the 1920s in Germany through a group of writers, all men, who were associated with the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, the most notable of whom included Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. When Germany fell under Nazi control these researchers immigrated to California where it has been said that they produced some of their most significant work (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994). Agger (1993, p. 15) suggested that the most important contribution of the Frankfurt theorists was to broaden "Marx's concepts of exploitation and the alienation of labor into the category of domination, hence explaining aspects of structured social inhumanity unanticipated by Marx." Following in this similarly broad interpretation of critical theory Kincheloe and McLaren (p. 140) offer their definition of a critical theorist as someone
who attempts to use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions: that all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted; that facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological inscription; that the relationship between concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption; that language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness); that certain groups in any society are privileged over others and although the reasons for this privileging may vary widely, the oppression that characterizes contemporary societies is most forcefully reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable; that oppression has many faces and that focusing on only one at the expense of others (e.g., class oppression versus racism) often elides the interconnections among them; and finally, that mainstream research practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and gender oppression.
Critical theory in the Frankfurt tradition attempts to discover the ways in which power and privilege are institutionalized in a culture. Agger (1993, p. 18-19) uses the term 'original critical theory' to distinguish critical theory as a grand critique of domination and social inequity from subsequent genres of critical theory in which postmodern perspectives have abandoned the construct of a 'grand narrative' and deconstruction has been used (1) only to disqualify existing theoretical statements rather than generate new theory or, (2) as a theoretical critique of language.
Of central importance to critical theory is the continuing need to question the role of logical positivism which represents the objectification of human experience. Critical theory challenges the traditional binary perspectives of positivistic science such as "the knower and the known, the researcher and the researched, the scientific expert and the practitioner" (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994, p. 150) and asserts that the "notion of self-reflection is central to the understanding of the nature of critically grounded qualitative research" (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994, p. 147). In contrast to the empirically generated proofs offered by positivistic research, critical theory assumes that findings are always tentative and provisional in nature (Tierney, 1991). Similarly, critical theorists view the role of the researcher differently, not as one who is objective and detached or apparently neutral, but as one who is inseparable from the personal values and assumptions that one brings to research as part of life's experience. Critical theorists assume the position that such biases and presumptions are to be made visible to the reader rather than assuming they are non-existent or can be controlled. In this respect, critical reflection is understood to be an essential means by which critical theory can transcend the limitations of both instrumental reason, a rationalist orientation which ignores or seeks to discount political and ethical thought since they fall beyond the realm of a rational decision-making process, and hermeneutic reason, which has been criticized for neglecting reason or rationality in the elevation of one element over another (Young, 1990).
Feminist theory reflects a broad range of perspectives held by women with regard to their position in society (Jaggar and Struhl, 1978) but it also shares many of the perspectives central to critical theory which question epistemological assumptions about what constitutes knowledge, about the nature of power, about who can be the 'knower' and about methodological approaches to the search for understanding and knowledge. Perhaps the singular distinguishing feature of these perspectives is the central focus 'on' women, 'by' women, that so dominates feminist theory in contrast to the central focus of power relations which characterizes critical theory. This is not to say that feminist theory does not focus on issues related to differentials of power within relationships, only that the issue are expressed in different ways and from gendered perspectives. The absence of a gendered perspective as a central focus is readily apparent in the work of Habermas (Young, 1990).
Habermas, a critical theorist, has received much recent attention from educators, in large part because of his belief that educational processes lie at the center of possibility for human progress. Higher education is viewed by Habermas as an ideal medium in which, as a learning species, we can better understand ourselves and our own method of learning (Young, 1990). Habermas has suggested that the modern crisis in education manifests itself as a motivational issue in the schools where "fewer young people are making either a relatively conflict-free or even satisfactory transition to adult life" (Young, p. 48) and this in turn reflects a larger social crisis characterized by economic, political and motivational dimensions. It is a struggle in which
two tendencies are at war with each other. An education which stresses the emancipation of the individual and through the universalisation of that emancipation, the development of autonomy-promoting social institutions, nationally and internationally, and an education which seeks to meet the more urgent economic and political needs of the nation in its contemporary situation
(Young, p. 47-48).Habermas suggests that this crisis is distinguished by the prevalence of an educational rationality and by the resultant loss of motivation and meaning that is associated with learning. As society moves forward into the 21st century in search of a moral foundation for educational praxis, the struggle for individual freedom comes into direct conflict with the needs of government and business. In an age driven by technological advancement, both government funding practices and increased demands by the business sector for specialized training of its workers are mechanisms that have the effect of "starving suspect disciplines like the social sciences and humanities" (Young, 1990, p. 53). Young provides an example:
seemingly neutral changes, such as the shift from funding student input to funding on the basis of graduate output creates a pressure for changed educational practices likely to reduce student choice in the curriculum .... The part that educational policies play in this process clearly identifies the educational theory of neoconservatism as one of those theories of education which places the needs of the state first and the needs of the individuals and their fullest development last (p. 53).
"Enlightenment," or the questioning of "blind tradition," which is fundamental to a critical theory of education, is neither valued nor protected within the neoconservative tradition. However, in his observations of the differential funding practices in education and the deleterious effect on the social sciences and humanities, Habermas forsakes an opportunity to focus on the differential effect such practices might have on women in academe. Such an examination would not escape the attention of feminist scholars. A critical feminist perspective addresses this important discontinuity by connecting original critical theory as a critique of domination with feminist concerns about the status of women in social institutions and rejoining a commitment to the possibility of a grand narrative (Agger, 1993).
Such a perspective involves first developing a critique by understanding the contradictions within an existing state of affairs; this critique and the insights gained therein then are communicated in such a way that authenticity of the critical vision can be tested; and finally, learning and change are actively promoted through ethical and democratic action (Young, 1990). It is this last element which Young claims extends the Habermasian perspective of a theory of self and society into the arena of activism and moves beyond the simple capacity to make moral judgments.
Gilligan's (1982) seminal work in moral development provides an important feminist critique of Kohlberg's research which she saw as limited in its very conception. His theory of moral development was derived from a study of boys whose development he followed for some 20 years. On the basis of this work Kohlberg claims universal applicability of this theory and he attributes differences in women's conceptions of reality to their own developmental shortcomings rather than to any deficiency in his model. In contrast to Kohlberg's model, a critical feminist theory, as a means for understanding self in relation to society, is inclusionary with respect to our understanding of gendered perspectives. Young suggests that, through critical reflection, we can achieve new levels of understanding "where feminine and masculine elements can be acknowledged in every person" (p. 28). It is this mutual acknowledgment of, and concern for, gender-related differences in perspective, and for the roles that power and privilege play in marginalizing sectors of society that critical theory and feminist critique share.
Our way of knowing is a part of our way of being and an expression of our culture and our time; it is not a separated history and subject-free product to which we can relate from the outside (Young, p. 72).
Gilligan (1993) and Belenky et al. (1986) have suggested that this pattern of using the male experience to define all human experience is particularly apparent when models of intellectual development are considered. Mental processes such as thinking and feeling are conceptualized as binary activities and, in a culture which values rationality and objectivity, the processes stereotyped as feminine are devalued. Feminist critique asserts that this masculine bias is embedded in the heart of our institutions and in the theories and methodologies of the academic disciplines (Gilligan, 1993).
Gilligan, currently a professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with her writing of In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, is said to have pioneered a revolution in psychology and the social sciences. She began this work some 25 years ago at a time when she was still co-authoring publications with Kohlberg. In her work Gilligan discusses how girls and boys experience the growth process differently in terms of both psychological and moral development and how, as adults, this influences understandings and feelings about relationships. She says
... relationships, and particularly issues of dependency, are experienced differently by women and men. For boys and men, separation and individuation are critically tied to gender identity since separation from the mother is essential for the development of masculinity. For girls and women, issues of femininity or feminine identity do not depend on the achievement of separation from the mother or on the progress of individuation. Since masculinity is defined through separation while femininity is defined through attachment, male gender identity is threatened by intimacy while female gender identity is threatened by separation. Thus males tend to have difficulty with relationships, while females tend to have problems with individuation. The quality of embeddedness in social interaction and personal relationships that characterizes women's lives in contrast to men's, however, becomes not only a descriptive difference but also a developmental liability when the milestones of childhood and adolescent development in the psychological literature are markers of increasing separation. Women's failure to separate then becomes by definition a failure to develop (p. 8-9).
In support of this theory, a 1982 study by Pollack and Gilligan compared the stories written by male and female students in response to four pictures. They found that men, as a group, "projected more violence into situations of personal affiliation than they did into impersonal situations of achievement .... In contrast the women saw more violence in impersonal situations of achievement than in situations of affiliation" (Gilligan, 1993, p. 41). In the subsequent analysis of these findings and throughout the myriad examples in her book, Gilligan suggests that the feminine ethic of caring stems from an effort to prevent aggression and maintain a nonhierarchical sense of connectedness in relationships. For both men and women, then, Gilligan suggests there exists a paradoxical truth about the nature of human experience:
we know ourselves as separate only insofar as we live in connection with others, and ... we experience relationship only insofar as we differentiate other from self (p. 63).
A feminist perspective recognizes that there exists
a tension ... an endless counterpoint between two ways of speaking about human life and relationships, one grounded in connection and one in separation (p. xxvi).
However, it must be recognized that neither voice within this bifurcated counterpoint is understood to have particular affinity to either gender in all cases. While power and privilege may evolve through gendered behaviours, they are not, in and of themselves, gendered constructs.
For the purposes of this study a critical feminist perspective acknowledges the bifurcated nature of the human narrative and focuses on an examination of the ways in which power and privilege are intertwined in the fabric and culture of graduate student life.
Why is it important to understand women's perceptions of their experiences as doctoral students? The answers to this question have both practical and theoretical importance. Significance of the Study
Although there is a significant body of research on undergraduate retention very little research has focused on the doctoral process, particularly as it relates to women (Heinrich, 1991; 1995). Existing research on doctoral education tends to be embodied in statistical data or is specific to particular issues and institutions (Holdaway, 1994; Tinto, 1993). These data would suggest that women's progress is being affected adversely and disproportionately in comparison to men (Feldman, 1974; Patterson and Sells, 1973; Thurgood and Clarke, 1995).
While factors such as adequate financial support, satisfactory advisor/advisee relationships and departmental structure appear to be related to student progress (Hauptman, 1986; Scott and Bereman, 1992; Tentoni, 1992), Tinto (1993), in his research on undergraduate attrition, found that students' decisions to withdraw from college were significantly influenced by events which took place during the college experience. It may be that events which take place during doctoral programs have a much greater influence on students' decisions to withdraw prior to degree completion than heretofore has been understood. The doctoral experience is a process that is intended to be transformational. At each stage of the process - from course work to committee formation (including committee negotiations and restructuring), to candidacy, proposal development, data collection, analysis, writing and the final defense - students are presented with a number of unique challenges which must be negotiated and mastered. However, we know little about the way in which students' entering expectations, beliefs, goals and identities are influenced and changed in the process.
The current high rate of attrition from doctoral programs would tend to suggest that either admission processes are failing to adequately screen students, and/or as Baird (1990) purports, that students are withdrawing for reasons other than those related to academic ability. Given the high cost of doctoral education and increasing demands for institutional accountability, we need to develop a better understanding of why women with proven academic abilities, who are among the brightest students in the nation, are withdrawing prematurely from their programs.
If future policies and institutional practices are to be implemented with the goal of reducing attrition, the length of time to doctorate, and ultimately, reversing the 'leaking pipeline' effect for women in higher education, such changes must be grounded in robust theories that are developed within the context of a full and deep understanding of women's experiences. This study, by giving voice to women's doctoral experiences, begins to address this critical gap in the literature. Through an understanding of the factors that both enhance and impede women's doctoral persistence this study lays important groundwork for the development of a more comprehensive theory of doctoral persistence.
Three primary assumptions were fundamental to this study: Assumptions Underlying the Study
Androcentrism represents the dominant character of the academy.
There exists more than one 'right' model for graduate education.
The telling of one's story depends, in part, on the storyteller's audience (Tierney, 1993).
The Androcentric Character of the Academy
Fundamental to this study is the underlying assumption that the dominant character of the graduate academy is 'male' oriented. Historically, the academy was defined by men and organized around the male life-cycle. Women were excluded from and only later admitted to higher education primarily for the purpose of meeting men's needs.
... Oberlin College enrolled men students who produced crops to help pay for their education. It became apparent, however, that a domestic labor force was necessary to clean, cook, launder, and mend clothes - and women students fit the bill. Once admitted, women students attended no classes on Mondays when they did laundry, and each day they cooked, waited on tables, and served meals. They were also regarded as a 'balance' to men's mental and emotional development, altogether duplicating the conventional role of women in the family (Conway, 1974 in Fox, 1995, p. 222).
The shortage of male students and dwindling enrollments during the Civil War encouraged administrators to open their doors to female students (Graham, 1978 in Fox, 1995, p. 222).
In the United States, the post-war introduction of the G.I. Bill further advantaged men, largely to the exclusion of women, by financing a college education for one-third of the returning veterans. Only 3% of all veterans were women (Fox, 1995). And, prior to 1972 and the introduction of Title IX to the Education Amendments Act, women applicants were subject to blatant discriminatory admission practices: for example, a male applicant at Pennsylvania State University was five times more likely to be accepted than a female applicant (Fox, 1995).
Attitudes and conventions, grounded in practices and traditions that favour men, persist in the academy today. The years of graduate study and pre-tenure employment, during which scholars must give primary attention to their research, coincide precisely with women's most fertile child-bearing years. Women who attempt to balance child-rearing and academic pursuits are sometimes thought to be less serious than men about their academic careers and in practice, they are treated differentially (Breslauer, and Gordon, 1989). In contrast to men, women graduate students experience limited opportunity to find same-sex mentors, earn higher degrees, obtain financial support, attend full-time, access child-care, and obtain post-degree employment in tenure track positions (Braun, 1990; Clark, and Corcoran, 1986; Dagg, 1989; Dagg, and Thompson, 1988; Fox, 1995). "Women are disproportionately likely to be part-time students and faculty and, concomitant with part-time status go a host of disadvantages, ranging from scarcer financial resources to difficulties in getting to know the politics of the department" (Caplan, 1994, p. 22-23). Caplan goes on to point out that "women graduate students in many fields are disproportionately unlikely to receive financial support .... [that] women are disproportionately likely to work in lower-status institutions [that] women faculty tend to have heavier teaching loads and family responsibilities than do male faculty ... [and that] women are severely underrepresented in administrative positions" (p. 23). "Men tend to occupy the highest ranks in academe" (Astin and Bayer, 1973, p. 339). These diminished opportunities disadvantage academic women primarily on the basis of their gender.
In addition to diminished opportunity, the learning climate in the academy can be unfriendly and unwelcoming for women. The use of sexist language serves to perpetuate sexist thoughts and beliefs (Black, 1989). Sexual harassment continues unabated and women often feel unable to seek redress for fear of being targeted further.
In summary, men have defined which subjects are acceptable to study and which methods of research are preferred and women's activities and beliefs are often excluded and/or judged to be inferior when they differ from those that are commonly accepted. This androcentric character of the academy disadvantages women by failing to recognize that their needs, interests and orientations to research may be different from those of men (Caplan, 1994; Dagg and Thompson, 1988; Fox, 1995).
More Than One 'Right' Model for Graduate Education
Different cultures depend on competition to different degrees in structuring their economic system or schooling or recreation. At one end of the spectrum are societies that function without any competition at all. At the other end is the United States ... Not only do we get carried away with competitive activities, but we turn almost everything else into a contest. Our collective creativity seems to be tied up in devising new ways to produce winners and losers. It is not enough that we struggle against our colleagues at work to be more productive; we also must compete for the title of Friendliest Employee... No corner of our lives is too trivial - or too important - to be exempted from the compulsion to rank ourselves against one another. Even where no explicit contest has been set up, we tend to construe the world in competitive terms (Kohn, 1986, p. 1-2).
For two centuries, our educational system has been based upon competitiveness and the laws of survival. With very few exceptions, we do not teach our kids to love learning - we teach them to strive for high grades (Aronson, 1988, p. 192-3).
This study is premised on a second assumption, that there is more than one 'right' model for graduate education. It has been suggested that the traditional model of the Ph.D. is grounded in an ethic of the "survival of the fittest" (Kerlin, 1995a; 1995b). This ethic is based on a competitive model of learning in which there are clear winners and losers. But there exists a tension in higher education between traditionalists who would cling to the competitive ethics embedded in an androcentric model of the academy and those who promote a feminist model of learning in which the struggle is not for superiority, but for an equality of vision. These emerging paradigms suggest new ways of relating and understanding and may provide the foundation for new structures and models of graduate education - models that are inclusive rather than isolating, collegial rather than individualistic, and collaborative rather than competitive.
Storytelling and the Role of Audience
Tierney (1993, p. 130) writes, "a story is always told to someone. The postmodernist assumption is that the telling of that story in part depends on the storyteller's audience." Before reading this passage from Tierney's work, I had a long-held belief that the role of audience as active listeners has significant interplay in one's evolving understanding and multifarious concepts of self in relation to society. This stems, in part, from research in online learning communities and from my own experiences with online learning and instruction in which the social self is, in some ways, much more strongly integrated as part of the learning experience than might normally occur during regular classroom, face-to-face, instruction. It has been my observation in online learning environments that it is through interaction with others that we come to know ourselves. In this study and others like it, I believe this is a construct which applies, not only to the participants, but to the researcher as well. Tierney (p. 120) says,
in coming to terms with our subject's reality, we in turn help define our own ... how the author defines the self represents a dialectical process between author and subject to the extent that both interviewer and interviewee shape and are shaped by one another. In the final analysis, 'narrative product' is thus mutually defined and shared.
The concept of dialectically constructed text, mutually defined selves and the role that audience plays in this construction may have roots in Festinger's (1957) theory of social comparison. The underlying assumption then, is that through our interactions, both the participants in this study and I as researcher will be changed in important ways by the experience.
This is a qualitative study of the voices of women doctoral students in which I examined women's understandings of their doctoral experiences and the meanings they attached to these experiences. Participants were encouraged to reflect on and write about their experiences in the context of their own life circumstances. Limitations of the Study
Narrative and open-ended questioning techniques were used as the primary method for investigating the complex understandings women have about their doctoral experiences. While survey and telephone methods with large numbers of respondents are useful for collecting data that are broad in scope, the narrative method is used more appropriately over an extended period of time with smaller numbers of participants to elicit deeper and more complex understandings. This study focused on an in-depth examination of the understandings women had about their doctoral experiences and for this reason was limited to seven participants.
This was a study of women doctoral students' experiences. It was not a study of institutions, programs, curriculum or academic disciplines. The in-depth nature of the study and the small number of participants necessarily limits the degree to which the findings can be generalized to women doctoral students as a whole. The grounded theory method, in conjunction with a critical feminist conceptual lens, was used to develop deeper understandings of women's doctoral experiences and the meanings they attached to these experiences. The findings emerging from this methodological approach serve to enhance our understanding of the factors that influence women's persistence in ways that would otherwise be impossible to discover using traditional survey techniques. A further comment with respect to the limitations of the findings is worthy of note. The findings in this study reflect the women's recollections of their doctoral experiences and therefore carry all the limitations of any self-reported data.
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