CRonEM Annual Conference – Reflections and Thoughts
I have spent the last two days at the Centre for Research on the European Matrix Annual Conference in Surrey. The conference was titled Sex Gender and Europe and was run in conjunction with the ESRC International Network: Unintended Gender Consequences of EU Policies. The programme is online here
I am writing this on the train home as I reflect on the last two days and just let my – rather full – mind wander. It might therefore be the case that I change my mind about the thoughts captured here, that I think differently in a few day’s time when I have slept, processed ideas and reflected further. For that I make no apologies, it’s all part of the process!
Day one was long and intense but at the same time inspiring and encouraging in the sense that it created a really productive environment for sharing ideas. As Roberta Guerrina introduced the Gender network and the work it had been doing over the last two years it struck me (not for the first time recently!) how creative, innovative and productive a bunch of people with similar interests can be when given the time and space to talk to each other, to think, to challenge and to support. The work that comes out of these collaborations have had the benefit of feedback at all levels – from basic idea to finished paper and it is amazing work for it. What that means is that the network is significantly more than the sum of its parts and this is something to really think about in research funding. Academics, or at least this bunch of academics and I suspect many others too, need to be able to engage with each other in a meaningful way over a sustained period of time to be able to produce their best work
The papers on day 1 were all great, many given by PhD students who are engaging in some really interesting work which made me more hopeful that there is a bright future for gender and EU studies. I really enjoyed Muireann O’Dwyer (University College Dublin) speaking on the EU democratic deficit and although I am still grappling with her use of some of the concepts (like intersectionality) I am sure she has tapped into something which can push our understanding forward – I am looking forward to reading the full paper. I also enjoyed Gill Allwood on the prostitution debates and whether we should construe prostitution as sex work or violence against women. While I have on occasion picked this theme up in discussions in my Law and Society module, I hadn’t particularly thought about this in an EU context but I think it might be worth re-visiting some of the worker case law involving prostitutes in the light of the discussions we had. Koen Slootmaeckers spoke about Pride in Serbia which made me think about Pride and what it means – this will continue to whirl through my head for a while because here the personal does turn into the political. I can so absolutely see the political and symbolic importance of Pride in some contexts and yet Pride is not something that I have ever particularly engaged with. On day 2 the panels related mostly to gendering the economic crisis and I found Rosalind Cavaghan and Emanuela Lombardo’s paper helpful because it pointed me in the direction of literature which will help me get my head round some of these issues more. Denise Amram presented from Italy via Skype and by outlining the legal position of married couples where one spouse changes their sex in several European Countries, she made me think about what a European Union response might be and how this might then play out in a free movement context. Wow!
The highlight for me however was Carl Stychin who gave the plenary paper on Day 1: Status Symbols: European Same-Sex Couples on the Move. The absurdity that can arise where people marry in one state, live in another, move to a third, potentially divorce…. It’s complex for heterosexual couples who usually do not have to worry about their marriages being accepted as valid (although of course, these issues could also come up!) For same sex couples these questions are even more complex. I started trying to reason this out in a paper published in 2011 but Carl’s reasoning takes this debate further and is rather more sophisticated than I managed!
So, here I am on the train reflecting on a really packed but great 2 days which were full of conversations, excitement and a mutual belief that the work we are doing is important and worth persevering with and that is something to hold on to as we all go back to the everyday grind of the academic job.
Privilege and the lack of diversity
I attended a seminar on Open Access Publishing yesterday. The seminar was actually very good and the organisers Taylor and Francis packed a huge amount into one day but that’s not what this post is about. From the minute I arrived I had that ‘this isn’t for me’ sense that still strikes every now and again. I walked into the room at Lord’s Cricket Ground (it was tempting to go watch the MCC women play the rest of the world women instead) and instantly felt far too young. Most people in the room, nursing their coffee cups and trying to eat pastries without getting crumbs everywhere, were men, all were white. And not just that, they all seemed so much older than me and they were all in suits of varying shades of grey. I got a glass of water and sat at a round table where there was still lots of space and buried my head in my phone to check twitter. I didn’t feel like this was a crowd I wanted to network with. Once in the seminar room I had the chance to look around and was surprised to see that there were actually quite a few women in the room. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the gender balance was close to even. It didn’t feel like that though and I have been thinking about why. For starters the first panel after the welcome was all male and somehow that set the tone. There were lots of people there that clearly knew each other and it felt a little exlcusive and it was difficult to break into the little groups which had formed. It felt very old boys network. There was also a big difference in average age between the genders. On average the men were far older than the women. The other thing that bothered me was that there were almost no non-white faces amongst the particpants but almost all the staff at Lord’s were non-white creating quite an uncomfortable sort of dynamic which was exacerbated by an unfortuantely rather typical rudeness towards the staff. Mostly they were not acknowledged at all and if they were it was with a sort of superior impatience which I see far too often. When I thanked one of the staff clearing our table, he actually did a double take.
So why am I rambling on about this, what’s my point? I’m not sure really. I have not felt that out of place and uncomfortable for a long time. And it didn’t have anything to do with the content of the speeches etc, the seminar itself was very good. Objectively, I did belong there, as deputy editor of a learned society journal as well as as an academic but it just didn’t feel like it. I did speak to a couple of people and they were very pleasant but… I felt uncomfortable. I wonder whether that was more about me than the other participants? Was it more about my own insecurities than what was actually taking place? But then what triggered those insecurities? When I walked into the room it was (white, suited) male dominated, they knew each other and were not welcoming to anyone they didn’t know entering the room. The atmosphere was not hostile or unwelcoming by any means, it just wasn’t inclusive. Walking into a room like that and feeling at home takes a particular sort of attitude and maybe that’s a male attitude or maybe it’s not male, maybe it’s a privileged attitude and while I am privileged in a lot of ways, yesterday I felt very keenly that there are areas of the academic and related worlds that are a very very long way away from even contemplating equality and diversity, never mind engaging with those ideas in any meaningful way.
Time Out
One of our lambs with its head in a bucket. She cheered me up no end today and after a crap few weeks I really needed time out with the sheep – I blogged about it on our sheep website here: http://www.riddlesdenjacobs.moonfruit.com/blog/4583580613/Time-Out/8030172
My Conversations 