Subverting and Minding Boundaries: The Intellectual Work of Women

ABSTRACT

Using various methods and analytical angles, researchers consistently show that members of non-dominant groups, including women, experience academia as a hostile and marginalizing space. Such work is important, and yet, it is equally important that researchers approach the study of women’s academic careers by elevating their intellectual labor. In this study, I take up two questions: (1) What are the origins of women's intellectual work and (2) How do women go about doing their intellectual work? My findings suggest that women tend to locate the origins of their work in the everyday rather than in formal educational sites, such as disciplinary contexts or classrooms. In terms of the doing of their intellectual work, I found that most women utilize subversive tactics, as they challenge disciplinary and professional boundaries that have historically governed the recognition and legitimation of knowledge within academe. However, drawing from critical race feminism, I also find some notable distinctions between Women of Color and White women, and suggest that future researchers attend more carefully to how power and privilege yields particular conditions and consequences among women. This paper offers important insights for peer reviewers (e.g., hiring, promotion, disciplinary award committees, and publication reviewers) as to the grounding(s) and distinctive contribution(s) of women's intellectual work.

KEYWORDS:

• Boundary work
• critical race feminism
• epistemology
• faculty evaluation
• intellectual work
• knowledge production
• women academics

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to all the women for sharing time with me. I am also thankful to the reviewers for providing the kind of commentary that is necessary to improving writing while honoring the intellectual aims of my work.

Notes

^1. Disciplines vary in terms of their porosity. For example, sociology is considered to be more open to cross-discipline work than economics, which is considered the most insular of all disciplines (Jacobs & Frickel, 2009).