--- breaking the silence ---Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
The women in this study had two types of committees. Some had two different committees, one for the candidacy exams and a second committee that guided their dissertation work. Only one woman, Sarah, had an all male dissertation committee; three women had dissertation committees that consisted only of women; and three had committees of mixed gender. In addition to regular faculty, Helen also had another doctoral student on her committee and Camila included a teacher from the classroom where she conducted her research on her committee. In most instances the women in the study chose the members of their dissertation committees. The Dissertation Committee
When Sarah formed her dissertation committee she first sought the advice of her advisor. He suggested likely members in other departments who might be interested in her topic. Ironically, the chair of another department requested to serve on her committee; this was the same department that earlier had declined to admit her to the program. Sarah gladly added this department chair to her committee; he also recommended some courses for Sarah to take and later she asked one of those professors, Matt, to serve on her committee as well.
Sarah admired Matt. He was organized and well versed in theory but he was also a successful practitioner who had proved he could survive in the 'real world.'
Matt was very fair, answered questions well, and seemed to respect the students without going overboard. If a question was REALLY basic, or showed a true lack of thought or comprehension, he would let you know that but without being insulting. Since several of his classes were combination upper-division undergrad and grad, you never knew what sorts of questions students would come up with. But he handled it quite well.By the fall of her second year, Sarah had her full committee in place and they met that quarter to approve the course selections she had outlined for her program. It was Sarah's belief that most committees "stay together throughout the process" but as she was collecting her data she found that one member had moved to the southwest without telling her. She'd sent her committee members a progress memo in and had touched base with three members but was never able to contact the fourth. When she stopped by his office in early August, she was told by the secretary that he had moved the previous week. Not long after that she found she couldn't keep another member of the committee because of a conflict of interest related to his employment outside the university. Suddenly, Sarah found herself with only two committee members and she needed a minimum of three. She approached one faculty member from whom she'd audited a course.
When I pitched the idea, I let her know that I was a "short-timer." I knew she was trying to get her stuff together for a tenure review, and didn't have a lot of time to spend on committees. She was interested in my subject (which of course by that time had changed again), but was concerned that I only had "an n of 4." Well, when she said that, *I* was concerned about whether I was making a big mistake. I gave her my proposal (which was the first three or four completed chapters of the d) to read and she seemed to have a better understanding of what I was doing after that. I don't think she was ever quite comfortable with my qualitative focus, though. However, she pretty much did what I wanted her to, which was to be on the committee, not be much of a hassle, and provide some focus or cites if I needed them. She did turn me on to a couple of good books, but other than that she was a very marginal committee member (which was precisely what I wanted).Her second member was marginal as well. Sarah had talked that over with him at an early stage and he said he "wouldn't be any trouble -- you'll have enough trouble dealing with Ben."
Although I did try to go see him more often he was not very accessible, and rarely returned phone calls. I can't estimate how many times I left a chapter or two, or a list of questions, on his desk or chair and never heard from him. And yet, when we did get together, he was very helpful and had great suggestions. But mostly my committee was Ben. And that was enough!Tracy's dissertation committee consisted of all women with the exception of one member. In addition to her advisor she chose the professor who had supervised her master's thesis because "she was so wonderful to work with and has always given me lots of constructive input and support." She chose the third member because they shared a common interest in gender and related topics. The male member of her committee, a professor with whom Tracy had studied previously, was added only because she needed another person who specialized in 20th century literature. She described him as "not much help as a prof, kind of bitter. But I do enjoy talking with him about politics at times." The final person on her committee is a woman from outside the department, as required by the grad school. "I chose her without knowing practically anything about her except through referrals from other students." After adding this last professor to her committee Tracy audited a course offered by this professor on 20th century literary theory which she enjoyed a lot. She gave Tracy some "constructive input" and Tracy was glad to have her on the committee.
Tracy described some of the unwritten rules -- the informal understandings shared by students in her department about choosing committee members.
In my dept you have to carefully choose who goes on your examination committee. There are certain profs who have reputations for failing you or just being assholes all around, so you try to avoid them. I didn't have any of those professors on my committee.In another department within her faculty, Tracy didn't seem to think there was this same kind of problem even though "the professors are mostly male and the students still mostly female." She had no lofty expectations of her own committee members. She was satisfied knowing they wouldn't sabotage her progress.The profs with the worst reputations are male. All in all in my dept there seems to be more confidence in the female professors than in the male professors who are about equal in number. Perhaps that is because most of the students are female? I wouldn't know.
I have been a little disappointed with how distanced my advisor is and even the co-chair seems fairly absent. I have been happy with the input of some of the other committee members though. I sort of expected, when I chose my committee, that I would be basically on my own ... They're not super supportive. But I'll get my work finished with their help and not despite them or something like that. They don't try to get in the way, they just don't really think about trying to help out where the job market is concerned. No one is going out of his way to find out if they can put a good word in for us in depts where they may know someone etc. My advisor is always collecting articles and titles and such for suggestions for reading which is supportive. She also reviews the work I turn in to her in a timely fashion and with constructive comments. That's good enough for minimum, I think.Tracy feels professionally supported by some members of her committee but she doesn't have any sense of "family" with them. She described her desire for a more collegial relationship with her committee.
Though I really feel professionally supported by some of my committee members, I do not have any sense of "family" with them. They do not seem to communicate as members of the same group other than professionally and so I don't really feel like we're a team working together. I feel more like I'm alone in this with individual support from different professors. When I want to feel like I'm not alone, I seek out my friends who are doing the same kind of thing. If there is any analogy between my doctoral study and my family relationships, it is that in both arenas I have sought support from my friends when I did not find it from those to whom I was most directly responsible.At one point during her program Tracy's advisor added another member to Tracy's committee and made her co-chair of the committee because she felt the professor's theoretical background would be an asset and because, Tracy said, she was a new professor and the chair felt "this would help her get points toward tenure." Tracy had no real input in the decision to create co-chairs on her committee.
I'm okay with the change but I would have appreciated being specifically asked or at least told before the changes were made. I found out through the mail--a piece of paper that had been signed by everyone in my dept (it seemed) except for me.Like Sarah, Tracy anticipates that she may have to restructure her committee before she finishes. One of her committee members, the most helpful member, had recently been denied tenure and would be leaving the department and although Tracy will be finished, or close to finishing her degree before this member leaves, Tracy is anticipating that she may have to do some restructuring of her committee. She has already thought about who she would choose as a replacement, but for the time being Tracy continues to benefit from her input and support.
Camila's committee structure was unusual in that it included three professors as well as a classroom teacher with whom Camila worked for three years. She found the teacher gave her a lot of "significant feedback." In exchange for serving on her committee, Camila volunteered time in the teacher's classroom. Camila also described having an improved relationship with one of her committee members by the end of her program.
As already discussed, Camila's relationship with her advisor was sometimes rocky. At one point Camila called her committee members together to discuss some changes in her research plans.
my adviser controlled things pretty much and i had to negotiate with her. she got mad at me once cos i called a meeting up to tell the committee how my plans had changed. she said i should never do that again. i still don t agree. she was threatened by her fantasy i think. her own trip of what is it that i wanted changed.There were strong expectations in Camila's program for students to present conference papers and to publish their work. Camila described these expectations as a "big time unspoken rule." Camila also described the unspoken work ethic that was prevalent.
informal requirements are a work ethic that says you are - must be overworked to consider yourself a true grad student or academician, that you must attend and present in conferences and being accepted is a big honor ... that you must sort of slave for certain people if you want them to be kind to you [e.g. advisor or people working with advisor] etc.Denise's dissertation committee consisted of all women. She had complete freedom to choose who she wanted on the committee, with the only restriction that she must have four members, including at least one member from outside her own department. Denise had two women from her department on the committee, one of whom served as chair. She also had another professor from the English composition program and another woman from a well-known university in the north mid-west U.S. This last member is well known in the field of composition studies and has produced a few articles in Denise's area of experimental academic writing. All of the women on her committee were 10 to 15 years older than Denise.
i learned about these slowly and mostly thru my adviser and thru seeing other people do it. these are usually presented as opportunities and i agree with the concept in general but not with the specific ways of carrying these opportunities out.
In Denise's experience students often fail to recognize that the relational aspects of student/committee interactions are at least as important as the knowledge the committee brings to the student.
It seems to me that committees are critical and students don't recognize that the kinds of relationships and expectations on both sides are at least as critical as the "knowledge" the committee member can add to the pool.Denise even theorized that students are more likely to be successful when committee members are not experts in the student's area of study.
This provides more of a balance in the relationship. The faculty member has the bureaucratic power but the student has the knowledge power. I don't know. My chair certainly understands the feminist dimension and theory behind the work I'm doing, but she doesn't know most of the texts very well. Then I have a committee member who I call my thinker, she knows another dimension of where my work comes from, but as it turns out I won't be doing much that fits that area. My third member at my home institution is my "method" person and an encourager. She doesn't know much at all about my stuff but finds it interesting. All of these women are interested. I believe they see me as bright and capable and think that my pushing of the boundaries is important work, though work that most of them would not venture into. And I have a fourth member [at another institution] who is one of few people to write about the kind of work I'm doing. But she's more of a name for job getting than anything. And her work in the area is limited. Again, interest, but her expertise is limited to an aspect of what I'm doing. I know others who have gone this route of having a committee they know they can work with, but who may not be "well read" in the actual area. In my experience they make faster progress. There's less fear, more encouragement, more excitement.Despite the generally positive working relationship Denise had with her committee there were some difficult transitions that required negotiation. When Denise began submitting chapters of her dissertation to her committee. she agreed to send materials to her chair and get her approval before sending them on to other members. Each time she sent material to her committee members Denise conveyed to them, her advisor's approval of the material. "Two of my committee of four did not respond as things arrived." When Denise received a disapproving response to her work from one of her committee members, she believed that it had been her own failure to adequately convey her advisor's prior approval of the work.
Though I probably wasn't clear enough, I tried to convey this to committee members. Each time I sent them a chapter I mentioned [my advisor's] approval.The package Denise received from this committee member included five chapters of her work "with many pages containing marginal commentary and a single-spaced, two-page note."
The note apologized several times, but basically disapproved of my whole approach. She seems to have a misimpression of my dissertation project all together. She remembers an early idea that I had but sees it as the whole project which it never was. My response to this is mostly that she's off about my topic, and I haven't written an intro which would help her get the context of it all. But there's all kinds of politics now. How do I deal with her? How do I point out that what she disapproves of has already been approved? She surely knows I can't please four very different readers. She's not even in my department. (Of course, that's probably part of the problem here, her uncertainty about parameters and her need for some authority.) Oddly, her letter ends with saying that we should call my defense a presentation rather than defense because there's no need to be defensive.After receiving this feedback Denise felt very "defensive" and worried about what might happen at their next meeting, but she tried not to dwell on her own feelings and chose to view this member's response more as a reflection of her committee member's "stuff" rather than as a reflection on herself or her dissertation.
Will she attack me? Try to get me into a corner? I don't have any big insights here. I just wanted to pass along the story. Both my partner and a friend at work commented on how well I was taking it. The friend, a woman, pointed out that this kind of criticism is the reason she could never do what I'm doing. (She's almost got an MA in education.) She says she's not confident enough about her writing to handle something like this. My partner just says that he's been waiting for this moment and that he thinks my response that it's mostly her stuff and not about me or my dissertation seems positive, proper, sane.The impact of this event receded from our correspondence when only two days later Denise wrote to tell me she had received a call from a university inquiring as to her present interest in an academic position she'd applied for. Later that summer, Denise returned to her home university to meet with her chair and her disgruntled committee member.
I met with my chair first to get her input on how to handle it. It all seemed so delicate. But when I met with the committee member who had been unhappy with my work, she stressed that she had just needed to say these things. She resisted getting into any particulars. She told me that she was sure that my chair and I would work out the details. Said she hated dissertation committees. Said I should not send her anything else until it was all done. Which is what I did. Then she didn't say anything about her displeasure with it until the actual defense, even though I made sure she had over a month between receiving it and the defense in case there were problems.Whatever this professor's concerns had been, it seemed beyond Denise's ability to resolve them at the time and as Denise hinted above, these problems would be revisited at her final defense.
Maggie's dissertation committee also was comprised of three women, all in their forties, two sociology professors and another faculty member in her department. Generally, Maggie found her committee members to be encouraging and supportive.
I am fortunate to have all women on my committee because they were all so responsive to each other as well as me in such a positive tone. I really felt that all of these women were there to see me succeed.Over the years Maggie worked closely with three of her committee members but she didn't feel that her fourth member was quite as in tune with her research. Although Maggie thought this professor's knowledge of feminist perspectives to be very narrow, Maggie always admired her and found to be "nothing but encouraging and supportive."
I have the best of circumstances. I have a great committee. These women are wonderful, supportive, and they want me to succeed. It has helped me grow more self-confident. The entire experience has been positive up to a point.When Maggie began to develop her proposal she approached one of her committee members about the possibility of setting up a meeting.
She was not sure she would be able to read anything else this semester when I mentioned I wanted to try and get together this semester. I know I was inconsiderate in the timing. I didn't think my proposal would be anywhere near ready for committee. Anyway, I had my proposal all ready to hand to her and got her signature on the necessary committee form. She said, "You are prepared." She agreed to read it and we would meet [in two weeks] at 9 am. I managed to make contact with my other committee member and she said she was looking forward to it. She said, "Now you can really get underway and move forward."As Maggie anticipated a committee meeting about her proposal, she expressed "a certain trust in the women."
They will be tough, but they will not destroy. Perhaps I am also open to the possibility of returning and re-writing on their request. I feel the two sociologists on the committee will keep my advisor on her toes as well. I have three very intellectual published scholars on my committee whose work I respect and admire. My advisor likes these women also and I believe she wants to include them as much as possible in the department. I know one of my committee members is already on another doctoral candidate's committee.Helen also experienced very positive relationships with her committee members. This was something she attributed, in part, to her own age.
I escaped a lot of red tape and written how-to's because the program was so new. Then too, I'm older than most of the folks in the department -- than two of my three committee members and the same age as the third -- and that lends me a certain advantage.However, as she was putting her committee together, she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the process.
I've started writing, trusting, as I told my chair, there'll be someone there to read it when I'm ready to share it .... I seem only to be more and more overwhelmed. Perhaps when I get my committee officially in place and settle into a routine --Helen also had a committee consisting of all women -- three who are around her age and her chair who is about eight years Helen's junior. She also has a "peer reader" on her committee, a 'category' she added by "playing with the forms." He is about 25, gay, -- "which he makes a point of" -- and also a Ph.D. student, although at the time he hadn't written his comprehensive exams.
Helen hasn't experienced any conflicts with the members of her committee but her committee is "operating on a somewhat different model."
All members are active in the process, sharing drafts, making comments, talking about the shaping of the project. We've met once as a whole group, and I hope to continue the pattern.Initially her committee was doubtful about whether she could complete her course work requirements in only one year.
... after looking at my initial course plans [the committee] granted I could probably manage my fall plans, but that what I'd planned to take for winter and spring wouldn't be possible. (Later they said I was "terribly disciplined" :-) )Helen felt she'd gotten fairly good at judging what she could and couldn't accomplish and was "reluctant" to throw herself into a project that was too much, so her committee's doubts about her program of study didn't deter her from her goal. If anything, she was somewhat surprised to realize they thought she might have misjudged her capabilities. Beyond her committee's initial expressions of doubt about her program of study, Helen has found her committee to be very supportive of her goals and they seemed more than willing to make personal adjustments to accommodate her needs.
The kind of support Helen experienced was not limited to her committee. It reflected a climate in the department in which faculty expressed their support for the program and the students in a number of different ways. Among the faculty there was a voiced pride at the placements of previous graduates and there has also been concern expressed about students in fields other than composition who are having a more difficult time finding employment. Helen also finds there is a lot of support for the quality of student work; there is concern about the courses students should take, the papers they should read -- and there is the kind of talk among the faculty that indicates they think their colleagues are doing good work; in fact, there is "outright 'bragging' about the quality of the students, the faculty and the program in forums outside [the university] -- but bragging in a good sense."
They put on quite a reception at [one conference], encourage us to take departmental information packets to other campuses we visit, carry on quite a publicity campaign about the quality of the students the program draws -- which is different than supporting individual students it seems.Helen felt the faculty also demonstrated genuine concern when unresolved processes led to problems with some of the students. For example, one student did not pass his comprehensive exams after receiving good marks on all the papers he'd written prior to his exams.
... there was a flurry of effort to make sure we knew how to write comps! A couple of lecture / seminars, help sessions. Prior to that time, people had simply worked with their committees -- meeting when they or the committee wanted.Helen also found the department to be flexible, open and willing to work around some of the "quirks" of her life. In part, she attributed her committee's support to the quality of her own work as well as to her committee's respect for her research.
But I attribute much of my insight, my ability to juxtapose things meaningfully, certainly my skills at writing to the fact I've been doing this sort of thing for a fairly long time. My work twenty years ago would not, I'm reasonably certain, have impressed folks as much or in the same way, though I still got A's. One of the women I've asked to be on my committee, for instance, ended her comments on a paper something like, "You do think well" in spite of having made comments about a number of points with which she disagreed. I wouldn't say my earlier work deserved such comment.Without this kind of supportive climate in the department and from her committee Helen felt the experience would have been more difficult.
When Helen reflected on factors that contributed to the supportive climate in the department she saw it emanating from an ethic of "very strong personal caring and friendship." However, the ethic of caring seemed to reflect more than an individual or personal ethic on the part of a few select faculty; it seemed to be embedded in the program itself.
Part of what they care for is the program itself -- relatively new and unproven. It will graduate its second and third Ph.D.s this spring. The people I work with, and who have been so supportive of me, are the ones who shaped, birthed the program. So in a way, my "success" -- completion -- seems to me to be an affirmation of their project. part of a feminist ethic? _I_ think so.The faculty in Helen's program had a personal investment in the program itself and they saw the students' successes and failures as reflections on themselves. Helen saw this quality as the ability of both individuals and programs to "stay young."
... staying young is difficult for people and programs, I guess, but equally important. Perhaps as more women get higher up and have more to say about things, it will be easier to maintain a youthful approach. A male friend and I were talking about gender-reactions to mid-life. The spur of the moment conclusion was that men in mid-life tend to retract while women expand.When queried further, Helen expanded on what it might mean to maintain a "youthful approach" to the program.
Being willing, perhaps eager, to take risks; resisting routines; maintaining a fair amount of trust - though these sound pretty standard. I want somehow to explain this by explaining that when I was a child I used to climb up into the bing cherry tree in my backyard and sit eating cherries, breaking them open first to pick out the worms, but not minding that the worms were there. I was intimately connected to that cherry tree, knew it, loved it and appreciated it, but once I climbed down I wasn't possessive or fearful or preoccupied with it. I would go on to be just as intense about something else, not even thinking about the cherries or the tree. It seems almost as if I'm saying youthfulness requires a intense focus that contradicts or works against the kind of context-richness I think my age has given me. Perhaps the difficulty is in keeping the immediate focus and the context awareness in tension.Like Sarah, Zoe also faced a major restructuring of her committee -- a challenge she recognized even before she completed her candidacy exams. There were two reasons for this. She was a TA for "the dragon lady" and Zoe realized she didn't want to use her research as a springboard for her dissertation; it would be a time-consuming project that would require additional course work. Zoe also realized that disengaging from and replacing the dragon lady on her committee would be "difficult at best." The other member Zoe wanted to replace was her theory instructor who had served as the specialist for her comprehensive exams.
I had not appreciated his teaching style (which was really non-existent) *and* he had at all times given me the message that he found me to be of lesser capabilities than my colleagues. Some of these messages came through in very curt responses he wrote on my exams, others came through in his conversations with me.As previously discussed (see The Advisor/Advisee Relationship) Zoe ended up with co-chairs on her committee, a supportive 'qualitative' co-chair with whom she worked most closely and a quantitatively oriented male co-chair who assumed a secondary role in directing Zoe's committee.
Before Zoe defended she would restructure her committee at least twice as various 'quant' members of her committee had increasing concern with the "credibility" of her project. Rather than expressing their dissatisfaction directly, Zoe only became aware of these problems when she began getting "subtle" messages from other grad students and from her 'quant' co-chair that one of the women on her committee was "concerned" and had reservations about the credibility of her work.
It's hard to describe the impact of this on me because nothing was ever explicitly laid out to me. there was a lot of innuendo going on (and communicated to me) about my research being "less than" the standards the university normally adheres to and i was picking up a lot of rumor mill/grapevine stuff about how committee members were receiving my work. So, i contacted my other co-chair who said that she had concerns about the comments being made. She also led me to believe that there was even *more* talk going on in the halls than i was privy to.Within a few days her co-chair suggested to Zoe that it would be in her best interests to replace the disgruntled committee member with someone who would be more "sympathetic" to the type of work she was doing. Zoe's co-chair "felt so strongly about this that she took it upon herself" to locate a professor in another department who had just finished serving on a committee for another qualitative study related to prostitution. Without ever having met this professor, Zoe accepted her co-chair's advice to place this professor on her committee and her co-chair took the initiative to contact the committee member and let her know that she was being replaced. It was agreed that in a few days Zoe would follow up with a diplomatic communication to the ex-member. Zoe did and it was then that "the proverbial shit hit the fan."
she was pissed that i had replaced her, claimed we had breached protocol in the way it was handled, and the rumor mill reared its ugly head once again and my "un-professionalism" was now the topic of discussion. But, i now had what would be my final committee.The committee Zoe ultimately had in place consisted of the male co-chair in his early to mid-fifties and approximately 10 years older than Zoe, a female co-chair in her mid-thirties about eight years younger than Zoe, a male member in his mid- to late fifties, a female member in her late seventies and a female member in her mid-thirties, approximately seven years younger than Zoe. However, Zoe's problems with her committee were not yet over. She soon learned that her female co-chair who had been so supportive of her work from the beginning had accepted a position at another university. Shortly after her co-chair left the university to assume her new position, Zoe received an email message from her 'quant' co-chair asking if she had heard any student complaints being levelled against her female co-chair. Zoe sent her 'qual' co-chair an email responding in the negative and asking what these events might mean. Her co-chair had no idea what might have precipitated such allegations and angered that Zoe had been drawn into the middle of this, she contacted her colleague, Zoe's other co-chair, only to learn that two female students had made allegations of sexual harassment against her. Because of these events members of Zoe's department were advised not to engage in any conversation that included Zoe's chair. Zoe dealt with this problem by first passing everything to her female co-chair via email. Once Zoe had her stamp of approval, she systematically forwarded all her writing and chapters to individual committee members for their feedback and comments.
As the date for Zoe's defense drew closer it became apparent that the department and the university administration were both fearful they had "blown it" with their handling of the allegations leveled against Zoe's co-chair. The university had violated her right to due process and the administration was cognizant of the fact that she had grounds to initiate some pretty devastating legal action of her own against them. Because of this, Zoe found everyone on her committee treating her quite differently than they had in the past.
in some respects it was as if they pulled so far away from my work that i became a "non-person" and in other respects their detachment was good as i could just keep working and writing. Of all on my committee, the co-chair who had committed the original faux pas when he notified me before talking with my co-chair about the allegations, distanced himself *completely* from the end process of moving toward my defense. I had literally *no* contact with him directly. Occasionally, i would get second-hand information about his reactions to my chapters from another committee member, but nothing from him.The strained relations with her committee and the climate that existed in her department added to Zoe's stress as her defense drew closer. Her co-chair's lack of communication often left her wondering if there might be another "surprise" waiting for her at the next turn, yet in the back of her mind, Zoe also knew that the university was fearful of what her female co-chair might do legally.
i was, in reality, in a pretty good position as the department would not want to give her anymore ammunition for claims of differential treatment, even if it was treatment meted out to her dissertating student.The drama surrounding Zoe's committee continued to the end when only two days prior to her defense, she learned that one of her committee members was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and would be unable to attend her defense.
the day of my defense my co-chairs were scrambling to get special permission from the graduate college for me to defend with one committee member absent! Surprises and glitc
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