They can't take it away!

I wrote this post during the beginning of my second year in a Masters in Social Work (MSW) program (2012-13 academic year). Reading it now, I think I must have written it before I had interviewed and accepted my current job as an assistant professor, both of which happened in November 2012. I started my new job in fall 2013. The position I was hired for sought someone with a PhD in Sociology and a MSW, which I achieved, but not by taking a “normal” path.

I share my story here on Feminist Reflections to empathize with the struggles of graduate students and post-PhD adjuncts who are trying to find a job, most likely on an academic tenure track. Know that it took me two degrees and five years post-PhD in Sociology to find my fit in an academic institution. I also share this writing because I believe that in our academic field we tend to tie “success” to obtaining the much-coveted tenure track position. In reality, should this be a scholar’s only “measure” of success? Can we support and encourage a feminist sociological perspective beyond the traditional academic job?


August 2008 I become Dr. Smith
August 2008 I become Dr. Smith

I am a feminist sociologist, post-PhD, who is an instructor and a student.

I stared a draft of this article in a much better state of mind than when I first wrote it. Initially I wanted to make a proclamation that feminist sociologists should look back to our history with social work and to the people, such as Jane Addams, that both fields lay claim to. Yet my mood is buffered. I have experienced the difficulty of having a PhD tied to my name, and going back to school, and understanding the historical roots of the professionalization of social work into the clinical field it has become, a competitive endeavor. Alas, my point of this writing has changed from acknowledging the attributes of social work to public feminist sociology, to a more complex one of how we as feminist scholars can support each others’ professionalization in a time of insecurity in higher education and in applied work.

As a feminist scholar, I feel that I should be proud that I have earned a PhD. Anyone with a PhD is part of a very small fraction of the population.

Graduate Commencement December 2008
Graduate Commencement December 2008

Despite this exclusivity, graduate school socialization tells me that I still haven’t “made it.” I didn’t land that tenure track job I was supposed to get. For the past 3 1/2 years, I traveled from visiting scholar / assistant professor to unemployed, to contract market researcher, to applied work in a business school, to adjunct instructor at a community college. The latter remains my primary work. But my stint in business school along with the still troubled economy, poor academic job market, need for stability in my life, and desire to be a positive role model to my children fueled my decision to go back to graduate school to obtain a MSW.

What’s life like as a MSW student with a PhD?

Difficult. I hear that I am doing things backwards. Apparently, the trend is to get a MSW, work in the field, burn out, and then get a PhD. I also feel stuck between in how I talk about my education and advanced degree. To omit my PhD on a resume would make it look I was quite unproductive for eight years of graduate school. But to list my PhD opens me up to unseemly questions about why the change, or being overqualified, or about why I should instead be placed into internships where my PhD would be an asset. But these options would not provide the learning opportunities to gain what I need in the field.

And there are times, understandably so, when it is not appropriate for me to claim my “title.” But let me back up and explain.

A MSW program is qualitatively different than a PhD program in sociology (or even Master’s degree in Sociology, unless it is applied). First, it has two years of coursework, starting with foundational areas from the history of the welfare state, policy/macro social work, human behavior and the social environment, research methods, and social work methods with individuals, groups, and families. Then one moves on to focus either on community or direct practice. But with each year, an internship is required (taking 16-20 hours a week). The internship for the second year is supposed to be the most important for career placement. But yet in a large metro area with at least three schools with MSW programs, things get very competitive.

Second, a new curriculum change means that one now does not just pick direct practice but chooses among the options of clinical mental health, children and families, and disabilities, health, and aging, with the other option of community practice. While as a young college student, I never knew a MSW could lead to working as a therapist. As with my Bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology, I thought one must go on to a post-secondary degree in psychology to work as a therapist. In my heart and based on personal experience, I believe MSW’s who obtain the licensure of Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker make great therapists. They start where the client is at, examine the personal and environmental contexts, and advocate for a person’s self-determination and also social justice, while bounded by the ethics of the National Association of Social Workers.

I have spent much time talking about the requirements of the program, but again, like when I finished my PhD in sociology, fear about future job stability grips me and I retreat to a state of fear. To alleviate this fear, I remember that as a “non-traditional” student, my time is limited to find my dreams and a stable job to support my family while doing something I enjoy. Where does one fit sociology into this? How do I reconcile my structural understandings of the world with working with people in their everyday situations? Why don’t I just decide to work for a non-profit with my MSW and pretend I don’t have a PhD in sociology and eight years of teaching experience? Because, as a feminist, I also have to be true to myself and my own desires. I am 34 years old, and I need a career that supports a family, not just me.

A time of calm with my children during a difficult time.
A time of calm with my children during a difficult time during my MSW program & family crisis.

I searched for a mentor, but this has not been easy. I think to myself, “I can’t be the only one who took this path!” I know I am not. I know one other person, but she chose not to speak about her degree and moved out of state to attend school. I talked to my previous sociology professors, who support me. I feel like their colleague. But I have few professors in the Social Work program who believe in me. The irony of a MSW program in a PhD granting R1 institution is that professors do not have much time for mentoring as they work on their publications. And as a MSW student, I feel less important because the time spent with me is not contributing to their tenure portfolios. I reach out to fellow students, the ones with children and jobs who understand the stress of parenting, working, and studying. It is not enough. It just is.

Throughout this process, I learned that I have to believe in myself and make use of the skills I have. I am a passionate instructor. I am a trained sociologist. I am an excellent student. I am an empathetic person. I am not a young 22-year-old student in graduate school for the first time. I don’t have the time to wander and find myself. I need a career. I need some sort of stability. I have to fight the insecurities that became ingrained in me during my first graduate school experience and the pains of the job market after I graduated when I found myself feeling inadequate and realizing that my desire to learn was not enough. I embrace who I am and accept these challenges as growth points. But like others, sometimes I wish the path had been smoother. I have to learn to forgive myself; seek a mentor and support.

I leave you with a question: How can we as feminist sociologists support each other in holding onto our sociological selves, while also searching, and learning about new possibilities, while perhaps even changing careers and trying to manage the real-world effects of a recession? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What are your favorite feminist quotes or quotes about gender and/or feminism? What do they tell us about women, men, our society, misconceptions, and backlash feminism may still face?


Gender SymbolsIn thinking about these questions let’s reflect on the idea of a “feminist perspective” and the stigma that, believe it or not, still exists for many people studying and researching in the field of Women and Gender Studies (WGS)

We share several quotes from years ago that were filed away in a class materials folder from 1996. These were found though a random search using various search engines and pages devoted to the collection of quotes. At this point the sites and URLs are insignificant, but the quotes themselves are still meaningful.

How do the quotes below relate to what we know about gender? What we advocate for when it comes to gender equality? Why Feminism and Women and Gender Studies may be misunderstood and thus stigmatized? Or, as the last quotation suggests, whether this “gender thing” is history?

Defining Gender

“There is no original or primary gender …. gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.” ~Judith Butler

Gender Socialization

“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.'”  ~Shirley Chisholm

“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”  ~Lois Wyse

Gender Identity for Women in Male Dominated Fields

“I appreciate the sentiment that I am a popular woman in computer gaming circles; but I prefer being thought of as a computer game designer rather than a woman computer game designer. I don’t put myself into gender mode when designing a game.” ~Roberta Williams

Feminism is not about Hating Men

“You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman.”  ~Jane Galvin Lewis

“Defining men as the perpetrators of all violence is a viciously immoral judgment of an entire gender. And defining women as inherently nonviolent condemns us to the equally restrictive role of sweet, meek, and weak.” ~Katherine Dunn

Does Gender Still Matter?

“But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.” ~George H.W. Bush

A Reflection:

Many colleges and universities now offer courses, concentrations, majors, and minors in Women and Gender Studies. These courses may be part of core curricula or cross-listed with other departments. Yet some students interested in these courses have reservations about enrolling in them because of perceived stigma.

Feminist Reflections contributing editor Trina Smith was shocked when she attended a Women and Gender Studies meeting to learn that while many students take core and cross-listed WGS courses at her campus, they do not declare the WGS minor. A student involved in feminist activities told her that some of the students were afraid of what might happen to their career prospects if employers or graduate schools saw Women and Gender Studies on their transcripts.

Are these students’ fears warranted? Are they based on rumor or myth? If such concerns are realistic in a contemporary society in which a former U.S. president called “this gender thing history,” we might ask ourselves why social institutions would view the systematic study of gender as a deficit? Are such sentiments regionally based? Would I want to study or work in such environments?

One thing is certain, if we are still asking these kinds of questions in 2014 this “gender thing” is not yet history.

When I was a child my father never let us put bumper stickers on our cars. So my very first “bumper sticker” was actually a parking permit. This fall, I put the first real bumper sticker on my car, “I’m Ready Hillary.” Let me explain why I put it on and also why, ultimately, I took it off.

I did not think deeply about bumper stickers as an expression of identity until I moved to a small town in the deep south. I had preconceived notions about the conservative political and social climate here. Without generalizing, some of these —at least from my vantage point—were true, expressed not only though state level policies but within the public institutions of education, newspapers, and yes, bumper stickers.

I put a bumper sticker on my car to proclaim my liberal identity, not in reaction to a generally conservative environment but in response to an accumulation of events. The last straw, so to speak, was when my neighbor, with expletives, yelled “Yankee move back North!” (Read the full story here.) Why you might ask did our “preacher” neighbor scream this at us? He was upset by our dog, Bean, who would jump by the fence incidentally scaring his grandchildren.

Bean (Photo Credit of the Author)
Bean (Photo Credit of the Author)

This is Bean (left), a black lab and golden retriever mix, who can be obnoxious, but not vicious.

Had our neighbor just asked us to keep our dog away from the fence, we would have taken care of the issue. But after such a hostile interaction with our neighbor (while in the presence of my spouse who had been holding our four-year-old son at the time), I was angry and scared.

We were already outsiders to a small community. I am affiliated with the university in town and we were (are) “liberal Yankees from the North.” Confederate Pride is still strong in many places. If you Google “Yankee transplants to the South” you’ll see message boards and groups talking about us northerners. Many places here regularly feature “Sons of the Confederacy” flags and similar promotions. I took the photos below at a local parade a few weeks after I arrived in town.

Confederacy Pride- Boy Solider (Photo Credit of Author)
Confederacy Pride-Boy Soldier
(Photo by Author)
Confederacy Pride (Photo Credit of Author)
Confederacy Pride (Photo by Author)

Four days after “the altercation,” my spouse and I were both working from home when Animal Control arrived. During a conversation in our backyard (which could truly be another story in itself), the employee told us that our neighbor did not call animal control to complain but went in person the day after the incident, screaming about us “Damn Yankees” and our dog. We had already taken care to keep Bean away from the fence but were reprimanded just the same.

An example of religious messages displayed everywhere  (Photo courtesy of the author)
An example of typical religious messages
(Photo courtesy of the author)

By this time I had already been asked over several months to attend a certain denomination of church that I do not believe in. This was the case even after I started going to a church of my choice, one that does fit with my social justice values. I also felt like my children, through everyday interactions and the public schools, were being indoctrinated into beliefs that were contrary to those of our family. (There is more to this story too, as the ACLU became involved in a religious controversy in the public schools).

My noticeable car (and this is the "good side" (Photo courtesy of author)
My noticeable car (and this is the “good side”
(Photo courtesy of author)

I’d had enough. The incident with the neighbor was the tip of the iceberg. Just then, I received an email about getting a free “I’m Ready for Hilary” bumper-sticker. As soon as it came in the mail, I immediately slapped it on my bumper. My car is already noticeable, with dents and duct tape displayed proudly. I was not going to be afraid. I wanted my bumper sticker to say, “I am a liberal and I live here too.” I wanted people to know my identity. And I knew it was noticeable, as folks I know told me they knew my car by its bumper sticker. (Read more about this in my blog.)

I liked being honest and open about my liberal and social justice identity. I even thought about having a contest and asking friends across the country to send me all the liberal, social justice focused bumper stickers they could find so I could truly decorate my car. Full expression! But then I started to question having this bumper sticker both in terms of safety issues and well, as my partner asked, if people even knew who Hilary was. Thus, I wrote at the time:

But the other part of me wonders, and a lot of this stems from teaching sociology and criminology/criminal justice courses and students and their biases, will I get pulled over just because of my sticker? Will someone try to hurt my children because I have this bumper sticker? Or maybe as a few friends have asked me, do people here even know what this means?

I eventually took the sticker off. Why is is a hard question for me to answer, as a feminist, as a social justice advocate, a mother, and a spouse.

When I see injustice or inequality, I have a hard time not speaking up about them. I thank my parents for lessons on this as a child, and my sociology, women’s studies, and social work training. I would never say I am oppressed in the South—I am a middle class, cis-gender, white woman who is highly educated. But the politics are hard for me, as I am a liberal, pro-choice, LGBTQ ally, pro-immigrant rights, racial justice ally, supporter of welfare rights, and among other things believe in paying more taxes to help the common good. And I live in a small town where I am an outsider, not only because I am a “Northerner” who speaks differently and has different views on politics, but because I am not “from here.” I’m not oppressed, but there are times I feel like I don’t fit in.

While all these social justice issues are core to my work as a sociologist, activist, how I raise my children, and my own identity, I’ve come to a decision that I must engage in “Quiet Activism.” While some may say I should be speaking up more, I’ve decided that I do not want to display my identity through a bumper sticker. I’ve decided that my activism has to be “quiet,” and I must find ways to make a difference without sacrificing the safety of my family or my career.

I do not dislike the South. There are many things to like. But I stand strong by my social justice ideals that do not always match the visible environment here. There are many folks standing strong for social justice here. With permission from a colleague, there are those who are not covert about their identities.

(Photo courtesy of author)
(Photo courtesy of author)

In a small town people know your car. You learn quickly through small social networks the political and religious leanings of your children’s teachers and classmate’s families. And many times they are not the same as ours. And when you live in a state with “guns everywhere” laws and you find out that parents can have guns in their cars in the drop-off line at school, it is rational to question your difference and your safety. You learn that as a Northerner you can be seen as suspect as you are trying to change the social and political climate. There are other ways, through something as small as conversations with my children about our beliefs compared to what they hear, what and how I teach my courses, and mentoring my students who believe in social justice causes and have experienced oppression. Each day I live here, which is starting to feel less like a foreign country, I know my sociological imagination is stretching. In doing so, I am learning ways to make a difference without putting my kids, family, or career at risk.

For myself, as a dear friend told me, you have to learn to do the dance, which I am learning as a newcomer and Northerner. As I learn to do this dance, I reflect on my identity, outsider status, social justice, and how to teach my kids about diversity, oppression, and tolerance, I enjoy the long lasting warm weather in the South and creating my own oasis.

Photo courtesy of the author
Photo courtesy of the author
Photo courtesy of author
Photo courtesy of author

I often write from a personal perspective when I blog, and my research also relates to questions I am interested in personally. I’m not a specialist kind of expert with a long list of formal publications. I’m what you might consider a “generalist” sociologist with a wide range of interests. I love to teach and do research. I worked as an editor for a short time. Yet I find that after finishing graduate school, I now approach writing with trepidation. Blogging has been a way for me to rediscover my voice, to write what matters to me, to overcome my fears. I associated with Feminist Reflections because when I write about personal experiences I already tend to think about them from feminist sociological perspectives.

As one of most junior scholars in this blogging group I’ve published the least, but I write a lot. I started my own blog,Ms Knowledge Speaks,  a few years ago after I left a job in the business world where I felt silenced and needed an outlet. My blogging was sporadic for a while. Then after a major change in my life – landing a tenure track job and relocating my family from a liberal metropolitan area to a small town in the Deep South (what sometimes feels like a foreign country to me) – I felt compelled to blog again. This was in part for my own sanity but also to get back to the practice of writing. Still, I sometimes feel like I’m not getting it right.

On Facebook I am connected to colleagues all over the world who often share links to academics’ blogs in Sociology and related fields. It’s all great and interesting commentary on news and academic articles. When compared with these, I wonder if my personal reflections on my own blog appear to be just “naval gazing”? Is there a risk in exposing too much about myself, even though I do put limits on what I write? If I write about personal experiences within a more formalized sociological feminist framework, will this make me a legitimate feminist sociological blogger? Or am I an imposter?

I feel like an imposter when I blog because I do not always write about my research or offer a sociological analysis of current events, nor do I have my research cited in other’s blogs. I also feel like an imposter since I do not see myself as a “specialist” like many of the colleagues in my discipline. Gender is one of my areas of concentration, with a focus on reproduction issues, but I had to become a generalist when I worked as an adjunct instructor for many years and teaching any class available. After receiving my PhD in sociology, I continued to teach as an all-things-for-all-people adjunct. I worked as an analyst in market research, was a research manager and managing editor for a Center in a business school, and spent a summer working for the U.S. Census. Subsequently, and prior to my current academic position, I obtained a Master’s Degree in social work with a focus on clinical mental health, at the time intending work in mental health rather than academia.

Now that I’m back in the Academy, being a generalist is a plus for teaching because I’m using these experiences and education to teach sociology and social services courses. But it sometimes seems like sociologists who have general knowledge of the field or an ability to speak to other disciplines are not recognized for these skills. Someday I do hope to be seen as a specialist in an area that few sociologists study. I’ve already started a project on maternal mental health, specifically mental illness during pregnancy. But at times I feel like I know too much about the many subfields of sociology, feminist studies, and the related field of social work to be valued in a traditional way. So, to blog from this generalized, but well-informed perspective, scares me, especially when I talk about personal experiences. I’m afraid that I will be seen as a writer who lacks “expert legitimacy.”

Nate Palmer of Sociology Source, wrote a post titled, “I May Be an Impostor, but…” that also speaks to this self-doubt. He writes about how he felt like a fake because of his position in the hierarchy of academia and how the “imposter syndrome” held him back, resulting in missed opportunities. He also explains why sociologists, academics, applied sociologists, and activists do not blog more. First, we have a readily available platform to share our research and perspectives. Second, academics may have a harder time blogging because these writings are not published in a scholarly journal, which equates with polished work and prestige. Still, he believes we should take this risk and to share our research, teaching, and perspectives, to start a conversation.

To follow Nate’s advice, I need to get over my fears, overcome feeling inadequate or like an imposter, and write about what I find meaningful and relevant. A conversation could start. New ideas could be generated. Yet I still ask, is there room for my kind of blogging within these feminist and sociological spaces? To answer this, I refer to the first post on Feminist Reflections by Gayle Sulik, ” A Feminist Reflection on the Discipline of Sociology.”

Gayle begins with a story about speaking at a “woman’s” university and ties this back to the history of women in sociology. Many of the women sociological theorists analyzed social inequality because they wanted change it. They faced discrimination for this and for simply being women. This was also a time in sociology, where being “objective” was equated with being “academic.” Supposedly the discipline has moved on to become more inclusive of different perspectives and “more connected with the real world” as we do “public sociology” and applaud “public intellectuals.” However, as Gayle argues, and as I think most of us in Feminist Reflections would agree, we still need a feminist sociological place. In her words,

“We need a formal communal setting that is open to intellectual curiosity, the musings of everyday life and the emotions that set their tone…. We need to examine power, influence, and the construction of knowledge… We need to reflect, with a feminist perspective, on our lives as sociologists and human beings.”

In thinking about Gayle’s post on “needing a feminist room of our own,” Nate’s post on the “imposter syndrome,” and our rationale for starting Feminist Reflections, the notions of legitimacy, risk, and space come to mind. Even if other “academics” or “public intellectuals” blog about their specialty areas and their research, or have others blog about these and are therefore viewed as “legitimate,” those of us who teach, who are generalists, and/or who write from a personal perspective are also legitimate sociologists. We may be taking greater risks when writing about the personal, especially if we are not tenured or on a tenure track, but from a feminist perspective the personal matters. It is vital that we make more room for feminist sociologists of differing perspectives who write about different things. Feminist Reflections is a place to do this.