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Jenny Saul 'Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat and Women in Philosophy'

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All content © 2018 Leeds University Library. All Rights Reserved

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This field of inquiry attempts to understand why and how we as humans discriminate subconsciously/without realising.

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why are even women biased against women?

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Why Are Even Women Biased Against Women?, Analysis - BBC Radio 4

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Women are sexist too, often unconsciously. Where does this implicit bias come from?

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Patricia Hill Collins

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The event may yoke itself to issues like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, but when it comes to actual awards, women and hip-hop continue to be overlooked

xpecting radical action from an awards ceremony is like expecting the weather forecast to rearrange the skies. These events reinforce cultural norms rather than setting them, even if institutions such as the Oscars and Golden Globes are trying to reinvent themselves in the aftermath of Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Black Lives Matter. But rarely has that culture of affirmation been more apparent than at this year's Grammys, which rode numerous political moments without contributing to or rewarding them.

The Grammys' 60th year boasted two advance headlines. One was that hip-hop might finally get its dues at the ceremony. The first hip-hop record to win the album of the year category was Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999; the second, and latest, was Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2004. This year marked the rare occasion when no white men were up for the award, populated instead by Bruno Mars' 24K Magic, Childish Gambino's Awaken, My Love!, Jay-Z's 4:44, Kendrick Lamar's Damn and Lorde's Melodrama. Yet Mars won with his third album of cosy funk and R&B. His acceptance speech nodded to its retro influences - 80s and 90s stars Babyface, Teddy Riley, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis - putting him in stark contrast with his more progressive, political competitors.

Elsewhere in hip-hop, Jay-Z received the most nominations of any artist, with eight nods for 4:44, but won no awards. Lamar won in the rap categories for album, song, performance and collaboration, but lost in the top-billing general slots for album, video and record. The Grammys' failure to recognise hip-hop undermines its flashy overtures to the genre, and fails to reflect its status as the most popular genre in the US.

The ceremony's other advance headline was that this year's Grammys might provide music's inexplicably overdue "#MeToo moment". Following the campaign for Golden Globes nominees to wear black in solidarity with victims of sexual violence, a group of female major-label employees under the name Voices in Entertainment suggested that attendees wear a white rose as a symbol of "hope, peace, sympathy and resistance". Host James Corden said he thought it would be "a moving moment". The Recording Academy had also booked Kesha to perform her song Praying - implicitly understood to reference her allegations of sexual and physical abuse against former producer Dr Luke - as a way of recognising the ongoing cultural dialogue.

Kesha's performance was wrenching. Backed by a choir including Camila Cabello, Cyndi Lauper and Julia Michaels, she cried in her collaborators' arms after the final note. Yet it also felt exploitative on the Grammys' part. Kesha lost her case against Dr Luke, who is now suing her for defamation, and she cannot discuss the case directly; the Grammys put the burden of representing a new era of zero tolerance in entertainment on a woman who remains trapped in its grey areas.

This hypocrisy was further entrenched by the awards' failure to recognise women. Out of 86 categories, only 17 were handed to women, or female-fronted bands. The televised ceremony only featured one female winner, Alessia Cara for best new artist. Lorde was the only album of the year nominee who wasn't asked to perform solo, but reportedly was invited to join a tribute to the late Tom Petty, which she allegedly declined. "We have a box and it gets full," Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich said of the snub. "She had a great album. There's no way we can really deal with everybody." And yet, Sting and Shaggy - Sting and Shaggy - performed two - two! - songs from their forthcoming collaborative album.

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Kesha performs Praying. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

After the ceremony, Variety asked Recording Academy president Neil Portnow about the #GrammysSoMale hashtag circulating throughout the broadcast. He put the onus of change on women "who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level ... [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don't have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face, but I think it's upon us - us as an industry - to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists."

Few things leave a bad taste like powerful men undermining their immense influence to suggest that it's up to marginalised groups to better their own fortunes, wilfully ignoring the systemic barriers that women, people of colour and the LGBTQ community face when navigating any establishment. Just last week, a number of reports were published confirming music's gender inequality issue. A study by the University of Southern California analysed 600 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 between 2012 and 2017, finding that women accounted for just 22.4% of artists and 12.3% of all songwriting credits. It also found that women comprised just 9% of Grammy nominees from the past six years. Billboard published its 2018 Power List, ranking the most influential people in the music industry. Universal Music Publishing's Jody Gerson was the only standalone woman in the top 25 (four other women shared billing with male colleagues).

Never mind the Recording Academy's hopes of kickstarting music's #MeToo moment; by systemically underrepresenting women's achievements and contributing to a lack of female visibility, they're helping to entrench its absence. There is a direct correlation between a lack of opportunity for women in music and the underreporting of abuse that is a widely acknowledged failure of the industry. When men such as Portnow admit to not having "personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face", how can they know where change needs to happen? When men predominantly occupy positions of power, and a woman has been exploited by a powerful man, who can she trust with her allegations? Unrelated to the Grammys, I was struck by DJ Annie Mac's comments in a recent Guardian webchat when asked if she could name "three male allies" to women's rights in the music industry. "I have been racking my brains and the answer is no," she said. "I cannot name a man who is publicly pushing forwards women's rights and making a point of appointing women."

My version of a white rose - THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM - an excerpt from the greatest of all time, jenny holzer 🕊🌹

A post shared by Lorde (@lordemusic) on

There have been many conversations in recent weeks about whether entertainment and symbolic protests can constitute activism. Many of the performances on the Grammys' stage last night felt like arguments in its favour: Kendrick Lamar's radically black work, Kesha's liberationist balladry, and Alessia Cara, Logic and Khalid's anti-suicide anthem 1-800-273-8255. These displays have provided a necessary image rehabilitation for the Grammys, long dogged by accusations of irrelevance. But image is all it is until the members of the Recording Academy reflect this aesthetic change in their list of winners. Their time to do so is running out.

Rather than wear a white rose, Lorde pinned an edited version of feminist artist Jenny Holzer's "THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM" manifesto to the back of her dress. She left off the line, "do not support palliative gestures", perhaps aware that her placard could be read as one when she still turned up (albeit defiantly swigging from a hip flask). But it was one of several signs of unrest coming from inside Madison Square Garden last night. Lorde's statement was obviously in reference to the reckoning awaiting the entertainment industry's exploiters, as was Janelle Monáe's introduction to Kesha's performance. Both contained subtle messages for the Recording Academy. "Just as we have the power to shape culture, we also have the power to undo the culture that does not serve us," Monáe said.

More and more artists aren't bothering with the event at all. Drake declined to submit anything from his 2017 "playlist" More Life for the Grammys' consideration; Frank Ocean similarly withheld music from his 2016 releases Blonde and Endless, telling the New York Times: "That institution certainly has nostalgic importance. It just doesn't seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down." By glomming on to the flattering aesthetic of protest, the Grammys has made itself a target.
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Why the Grammys continue to fail women and hip-hop

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The event may yoke itself to issues like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, but when it comes to actual awards, women and hip-hop continue to be overlooked xpecting radical action from an awards ceremony is like expecting the weather forecast to rearrange the skies.

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We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston

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The Handmaid's Tale: The Handmaid's Tale - Episode Guide

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US drama set in a dystopian society. The next episode will be available on Thursday night.

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The President's Club Scandal

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Thu 25 Jan 2018 13.35 EST Last modified on Fri 26 Jan 2018 05.40 EST

h come off it, what did they think was going to happen? A men-only dinner full of suits in an expensively discreet location, with rivers of booze supplied, could only mean one thing. They must have known what they were getting into, surely. And even if they genuinely didn't have a clue at the beginning of the evening, the outfits provided should have given the game away: skimpy black dresses with heels to match, like backing dancers in a 90s soft rock video? It's all very well feigning shock now, but they made their choice on the night.

I mean the men, of course. It's the men now frantically dissociating themselves from the Presidents Club's "charity gala " at the Dorchester - not the young women paid to put up with the pawing - who should have known where it would lead. Those hostesses may or may not have realised, as they signed non-disclosure agreements, that they were about to be groped and propositioned, and asked hopefully if they were prostitutes, at the self-styled "most un-PC event of the year". They were certainly free, depending on how much they needed the money, to choose not to take the gig.

But men have choices too, and in these post-Weinstein times they can expect to be judged on those choices. A man is very much free to make a charitable donation without necessarily whipping his penis out, or demanding that the waitress rip off her knickers and dance on his table. And he is also free, before accepting an invitation, to pause and ask himself who goes to a men-only dinner in 2018, and why. For these days "men only" sounds dated and grubby, not alpha and aspirational. It screams stag nights and strippers and 70s porn mags, rather than: "This sounds like an opportunity to raise money for Great Ormond Street, while mingling with like-minded tax accountants."

In 2018 'men only' sounds dated and grubby, not alpha and aspirational. It screams strippers and 70s porn mags

And deep down they must have known it, which is why the whole pack of cards collapsed so astonishingly fast. Within hours of the Financial Times publishing its undercover reporter's account of the night, charities were returning their donations. Frosty conversations no doubt ensued over marital breakfast tables. The chief whip carpeted Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for children and families, for attending (even though Zahawi says he left early because he felt "uncomfortable"). David Meller, the club's co-chair, had to resign as a non-executive director of the Department for Education. Journalists began questioning exactly how much money had been raised. And the club rolled down its shutters for good, presumably realising that no chief executive would dare be seen at next year's bash. Time, gentlemen, please.

And in doing so the club has left its high-profile members looking almost as exposed and vulnerable as those hostesses. One wonders how many are struggling to look their female colleagues in the eye, as they sign off on the latest boardroom diversity initiative; and whether some are secretly dreading the arrival of reporters on the doorstep. These aren't historic allegations, to be excused as relics of another era. To be caught out like this in 2018 just makes a man look painfully behind the curve, too dim to realise when the game is up. How could they not have seen the writing on the wall before they got caught?

That so many seemingly did not is a mark of just how fast things have changed. Before Donald Trump became US president, before sexual harassment scandals forced a string of resignations in Silicon Valley, before Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, the Presidents Club got away with it. Without all these exposés, someone might not have thought to tip off the FT reporter Madison Marriage that this event was worth a look; the City's favourite paper might have hesitated over a story that its sniffier readers would have deemed downmarket; parliament might not have weighed in.

But in the current climate, the condemnation was so overwhelming that the club's supposedly powerful members barely tried to defend themselves. The only visible resistance is online, where anonymous men in the FT's comments rail furiously against the "new puritanism". Which is ironic, because what the Presidents Club seems to offer is just a more expensive version of what is free on the internet: the chance for a grim minority of men to do and say things to women that they can no longer do and say in everyday life.

The unspoken deal with charity events, from the fabulously swanky to the school fundraiser, is that it's not just about the good cause. It would be easier for everyone concerned just to write a cheque, but left to themselves people don't bother - so you offer them something in return for loosening their wallets. What the Presidents Club seems to have offered is the sort of good time that City men increasingly struggle to have now that banks have begun to frown on expense claims from strip clubs, and make their executives attend endless businesswoman of the year dinners instead. It was essentially selling the chance to go back in time, to an era when rich men could still make themselves feel bigger by making poorer women feel small.

And that's where the Presidents Club differs from the slowly dying world of working men's clubs, Pall Mall gentlemen's clubs, and men-only golf clubs. It wasn't really men-only at all. Had it been so, nobody would have come. The whole point was that the room was stuffed full of women, but crucially a certain kind: women the men were allowed to treat as objects, not equals; whose feelings they didn't have to care about; who couldn't complain to HR, and who were paid to take whatever the men threw at them. Women like women used to be, before feminism came along and ruined all that.

Nights like this feed a particular form of male fantasy, one that these days leaves many younger men as well as women cold. But for some, the fantasy will endure long after this club is forgotten. The party may be over. The clearing up, one suspects, is going to take a while.

* Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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The Presidents Club has gone. But the grim male fantasies live on | Gaby Hinsliff

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Thu 25 Jan 2018 13.35 EST Last modified on Fri 26 Jan 2018 05.40 EST h come off it, what did they think was going to happen? A men-only dinner full of suits in an expensively discreet location, with rivers of booze supplied, could only mean one thing.

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Sara Ahmed

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Showing how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist, Sara Ahmed highlights the ties between feminist theory and living a life that sustains it by building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship and discussing the figure of the feminist killjoy.

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Sara Ahmed

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In my first ever blog (not that long ago, but already it feels like a long time ago!) I created a list. We might call this a list of the tendencies that feminist killjoys share, or a list of points that feminist killjoys tend to make (if feminists have to sharpen our tools just to get through the walls of perception, no wonder we tend to be heard as sharp!).

I suggested that you might be interested in a blog on feminist killjoys if you as a feminist killjoy tend to do x. One of these tendencies relate to citation. Feminist killjoys " will point out when men cite men about men as a learned social habit that is diminishing (ie. most or usual citational practice)."

I am of course describing this feminist killjoy tendency in my own terms here. But so many of my feminist killjoy experiences within the academy relate to the politics of citation: I would describe citation as a rather successful reproductive technology, a way of reproducing the world around certain bodies.

These citational structures can form what we call disciplines. I was once asked to contribute to a sociology course, for example, and found that all the core readings were by male writers. I pointed this out and the course convener implied that "that" was simply a reflection of the history of the discipline. Well: this is a very selective history! The reproduction of a discipline can be the reproduction of these techniques of selection, ways of making certain bodies and thematics core to the discipline, and others not even part.

I have noticed as well that these citational practices can occur even when the topic is one that feminists have written extensively about. I recently attended a conference in which there was a panel on reproductive justice, a topic that feminists have written rather extensively about, and two of the three papers were entirely framed around the work of male philosophers! Or take the case of scholarship on the body. Feminists have been writing about the body (and critiquing mind-body dualisms) for well over a century. But how often have I heard utterances in which such-and-such male theorist is identified as the origin of the turn to the body!

Indeed men can even cite only men when critiquing male privilege, as we can see here:

I also stated that this citational structure is "most or usual citational practice." And I think within feminist and gender studies, the problem does not disappear. Even when feminists cite each other, there is still a tendency to frame our own work in relation to a male intellectual tradition. And there is certainly an expectation that you will recognise your place through giving your allegiance or love to this or that male theorist.

I mentioned this problem in my earlier blog post: "Creating Feminist Paths".

I have noticed when giving talks or hearing other female academics giving talks how often the first question is 'how does what you are saying relate to such and such a male theorist?' as a way of slotting you into an established male intellectual genealogy. I think it is hard to convey how this works in the abstract; but it's a style of questioning (where you almost become "the but" of a rebuttable, but what about, but what about) and you learn to hear the trouble they have in hearing you.

We are not just talking about citation within academic contexts. We are talking about what I think of as screening techniques: how certain bodies take up spaces by screening out the existence of others. If you are screened out (by virtue of the body you have) then you simply do not even appear or register to others. You might even have to become insistent, wave your arms, even shout, just to appear. And then of course how you appear (as being insistent) means you still tend not to be heard.

When we think this question "who appears?" we are asked a question about how spaces are occupied by certain bodies who get so used to their occupation that they don't even notice it. They are comfortable, like a body that sinks into a chair that has received its shape over time. To question who appears is to become the cause of discomfort. It is almost as if we have a duty not to notice who turns up and who doesn't. Just noticing can get in the way of an occupation of space.

When I think back to my own experience as an academic many of my most uncomfortable moments have been as a result of asking this question: who appears? And: who does not appear? There was one conference on Australian feminism for example, when only white women were invited as speakers. Hey: I was used to this, you come to expect this, and I didn't say anything. Whiteness is wearing.

But then many of those speakers began talking about native title. They did so without referring to any Indigenous scholars; indeed they were talking about native title almost entirely in relation to the European philosophical tradition (Derrida, Delueze etc.) There was no discussion of the politics of that framing; no discussion of whiteness; or of what it means to speak from the position of occupying stolen land. When I pointed this out, it caused quite an upset. It became very uncomfortable. And then a special issue of a journal was published (again with all or only white non-Indigenous feminists) and the introduction stressed how Australian feminism was "good" with questions of cultural difference. Up against it, you come up against it. The wall keeps its place so it is you that becomes sore.

I am obviously giving my own account here, told from my point of view. But I want in this blog to think about as well as through these situations.

I am sharing below some paragraphs from the conclusion of On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. I will develop these arguments in Living a Feminist Life and will blog more about the politics of citation as I go along.

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When the restrictions governing who can occupy a category become explicit you are noticing what is around you, what gathers, but what does not ordinarily come into view. When you realise that the apparently open spaces of academic gatherings are restricted, you notice the restriction: you also notice how those restrictions are either kept out of view or defended if they come into view. Over and over again, it is revealed to me: this institutional lesson, which is also a life lesson, of coming up against a category in the very attempt to make the restrictions more explicit. How many times have I had male colleagues defending all male reading lists, all male speaker lists, all male reference lists! To give an account of these defences is to account for how worlds are reproduced.

An open call comes out for an academic event on power and resistance. A number of speakers are named on the call: all male speakers but one, all white speakers, but one (is this "but one," a way of holding onto the "all"?). Some of us point out the restriction. A wall comes up in the very denial of a wall. We begin with a friendly openness. It's an open call, they say. Come along, they say. Take our places, they even say. Note here how the gesture of inclusion, which is also a promise of inclusion, can be offered in a way that negates a point about exclusion. To suggest incorporation as potential (come along as you can come along) blocks an acknowledgement that the open call was restricted as a call. How to respond? We point out publicly that the publicity of the call suggests the event is not open. We didn't mean anything by it, they say; it's unfair to assume we did, they say. You have hurt our feelings; you have presumed knowledge of our intentions. That's just who turned up. I respond: if privilege means going the way things are flowing, then letting things flow, will mean that's who ends up going. The friendly tone ceases. You are the problem, they say. In assuming we have a problem, you are the problem.

It is not noticeable this "all" to those who pass through this "all" until you point it out, becoming a feminist killjoy, making sore points, assumed to be sore because of your points. I do not even usually bother to point out that the "all male" is often "all white," though I could make that point, becoming an angry person of colour. Sometimes we have to take the risk of fulfilling the fantasies other people have of us! I should note as well that I have experienced the most defensive reactions to such points from white male academics who think of themselves as "critical." When criticality becomes an ego ideal, it can participate in not seeing complicity. Perhaps criticality as an ego ideal offers a fantasy of being seeing. Critical whiteness might operate as a way of not seeing in the fantasy of being seeing: critical white subjects by seeing their whiteness, might not see themselves as participating in whiteness in the same way.

At one moment I express my fatigue at the repetition of these gatherings, where the all is hidden by the assumed generality of a particular (open to all often translating into all male, all white; or all but one). I express a sense of what is lost when academic gatherings are restricted to certain kinds of bodies. And someone replies that they thought I sounded "very 1980s," and that they thought we had "got over" identity politics. Not only might we want to challenge the use of identity politics here as a form of political caricature, but we might want to think of this "over." What does it mean to assume we have "got over" something? This claim might participate in a genre of argumentation I describe as "overing." In assuming that we are over certain kinds of critique, they create the impression that we are over what is being critiqued. Feminist and anti-racist critique are heard as old-fashioned and out-dated, as based on identity categories that we are assumed to be over.

It is not always the case that "overing" arguments are made explicitly. I would say that in the landscape of contemporary critical theory there is a sense - sometimes spoken, sometimes not - that we need to "get beyond" categories like gender and race: as if the categories themselves have restricted our understanding; as if the categories themselves are the blockage points. Those who point out restrictions and blockages become identified with the restrictions and blockages they are pointing out, as if we are creating what we are describing. The hope invested in new terms (movement, becoming, assemblages, capacities) can thus be considered a way of "overing" as if these terms are how we "get over" the categories themselves. And in turn, academic work that works on questions of gender, or race, or which works with existing social categories (whether are not these categories are the starting points, and whether or not the categories are assumed in advance of starting), becomes associated with stasis.

An example of how categories are understood as "blockages of thought" is offered in the following statement here:

those of us who want to build on struggles in a way that embraces and amplifies the capacity to act instead of storying every momentary gain as 'cooptation,' -no wonder there is still a lingering melancholia of the left in some corners!-or those who want to think beyond the narrow categorizations of gender race and class (and ableism, ageism, et cetera) to new configurations and alliances. I think Hegel or Spinoza provides a kind of metaphysics that helps us move beyond current blockages in thought."

Here race, gender, and class (and all that is relegated to the bracket, as well as all that is pointed to by the et cetera) enter theoretical discourse as "narrow categorizations." The implication is that to exercise such categories would be to restrict not only the "capacity to act" but our capacity to think that capacity. Category thinking becomes seen as a narrowing of vision, associated with a lingering melancholia, as what is holding us back, stopping us from moving on. Perhaps those who point to such categories are the ones who linger, who are stopping the forward movement we might attach to progression. This is how those who "stay behind" can get in the way of a forward progression. I am not saying here that we need to dismiss these new theoretical vocabularies: we need resources to think differently as we encounter worlds. I am suggesting that the hope invested in "new terms" can mean turning away from social restrictions and blockages by identifying restriction and blockages with the "old terms" that we need to move beyond. And indeed, we need to note the narrowing of the descriptive or analytic potential of the old terms is part of this narrative of overcoming; a caricature of the work done by these terms allows the terms to be as it were, "given up."

We can also consider how the language of critique and how that language is also assumed to be dated. I think even within some feminist writing, the idea that we should be critical of sexism has indeed been seen as rather dated and even as a habit that is blocking us, holding us down, or keeping us back: stopping us from reading or engaging most positively and affirmatively and creatively with the texts that are the objects of critique. It would be timely to re-state the arguments that sexism and racism are not incidental but structural, and thus to understand sexism and racism, requires better, closer readings of what is being gathered. Attending to the restrictions in the apparently open spaces of a social world brings us into closer proximity to an actual world. We need feminist and anti-racist critique because we need to understand how it is that the world takes shape by restricting the forms in which we gather. We need this now; the time for this is now. We need this critique now, if we are to learn how not to reproduce what we inherit.

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In my first ever blog (not that long ago, but already it feels like a long time ago!) I created a list. We might call this a list of the tendencies that feminist killjoys share, or a list of points...

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Has equality for women been achieved? Feminism has apparently achieved many of its aims. Some of the obvious inequalities between men and women seem to have been removed in recent decades.

But have they? Angela McRobbie from the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, discusses her research on this topic.

Click HERE to download a PDF transcript of this conversation. The full text also appears below.

To directly download this podcast, right click HERE and "Save Link As."

Social Science Bites is made in association with SAGE. For a complete listing of past Social Science Bites podcasts, click here.

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David Edmonds: Has equality between men and women been achieved? Many people argue that all the big battles to achieve equality, have already been fought and won. Some say that feminism has gone too far. The sociologist Angela McRobbie, of Goldsmith College, has analyzed the backlash to feminism.

Nigel Warburton: Angela McRobbie welcome to Social Science Bites.

Angela McRobbie: Hi.

Nigel Warburton: The topic we're going to focus on is the illusion of equality for women. I wonder if you could begin by saying a little bit about your research on that topic?

Angela McRobbie: Well in the last 10 to 15 years I became incredibly interested in the way in which there seem to have developed a kind of an illusion of equality. There was something very specific, something different from the previous period where it was quite easy as a feminist to point to areas where it was absolutely obvious that young women were discriminated against, and where there was obvious inequality. And what really prompted my attention was the way in which actually quite the opposite seemed to be the case. It almost appeared as though people genuinely thought that women, particularly young women, had somehow gained equality. And I wanted to interrogate that as a social scientist, because it felt very dubious.

It's difficult to see anything like a united women's movement, but what I'm impressed by is the way in which ... it's almost as though feminism recognizes itself to be fragmented, dispersed, contradictory and defined in terms of difference.

Nigel Warburton: So what we're talking about here is equality of access to jobs, equality of earning potential?

Angela McRobbie: Well I would say really that what happened - let's say in Britain, in Western Europe and also in North America - from the mid-1980s onwards, is that indeed feminism did have an impact across society. The very hard work, and the many battles fought by women of my generation, did begin to reap some kind of rewards. There were many debates about negative images of women in the media, over-sexualized images, stereotypes and advertising, you know, the whole history of sociology and cultural studios and media studies - as soon as feminists began to become involved in these fields of study they were driven towards interrogating, decoding, analyzing the field of media and representation. So it was quite clear that something had to change. And I think for feminists of my generation, somehow that work had a momentum. And it forced people in positions of power, editors of magazines, people in government to actually take some steps. The same thing then also happened, I would say, in specific fields such as education and also in law. So the whole range of key social institutions came to be challenged by feminism. And I think that lasted for a good decade, from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. Then I think something different happened.

Nigel Warburton: OK, that's very interesting. So what did happen in the 90s, and how did you set about researching it?

Angela McRobbie: I think from the mid-1990s there was a kind of backlash. Of course there had always been a backlash, there had always been forces of opposition to feminism. And something definitely shifted in the mid-1990s. And the term I used was, "complexification of backlash", because it wasn't simply as though there were feminists on one side of the fence still making the same arguments, and there were more and more people saying, "No women should be back in a home or just being mums" and so on. There was a decisive shift, and I used the term "complexification of backlash" because I think what happened was that the forces that were opposing gender equality, and opposing, if you like, the visibility of women in positions of power, many of them actually agreed that, at a kind of commonsense level, that feminism did have a role to play but that it had gone too far; or that it had backfired, and that it had been responsible for breaking up too many homes; or it had caused the rise in the divorce rate; or women were taking men's jobs, and so there was a crisis of masculinity; or, most specifically, that the kind of what was called the, "feminisation of the curriculum in schools", meant that boys were alienated from schooling, and so consequently feminism was 'to blame' for the underperformance of boys at school.

Nigel Warburton: Now is this just your assessment from reading around, of speaking to people, or was there some kind of empirical research that your conclusions are based on?

Angela McRobbie: It's a good question to put to me, what kind of sociologist I am. When I was writing the book, The Aftermath of Feminism, what I was doing was constantly drawing on contemporary feminist empirical research. And I was kind of filtering it, re-reading it, or I was drawing from a whole field of 20 years of research, for example on feminism and gender in education. So in many ways I would say that the analysis I came up with was more concerned to develop some concepts that I could develop out of empirical work. I'm not really the kind of sociologist who takes part in surveys or questionnaires, or the kind of governmental research looking at girls aged 14 to 16 and eating disorders. You know, that's not quite me. What I like to do is to take the results, or to take the reports, and then really look at them in close detail. I suppose really you could say that that reveals my preference, or my expertise, as a kind of textual analyst. You know, I like analyzing texts, in many ways - my training originally was in English Literature primarily, and then a bit of sociology, and then cultural studies. And so I'm most competent at that kind of interpretative, or qualitative approach. And having said that, I also should say I'm not really an ethnographer. You know I have in my life done quite a lot of work, that could be seen as having an empirical basis. I did a study of the British fashion industry, and I'm currently working on young women fashion start-ups. But I would say my methodology is deeply humanistic. I like talking to people, and I like kind of doing unstructured interviews, and I like observing and immersing myself.

Nigel Warburton: I'm interested to know what your conclusions have been about the fashion industry, because obviously that's a popular focus for criticism in terms of the role models it presents to young women.

Angela McRobbie: Oh absolutely. So I think there are two answers to the question about the role of the fashion industry. One of the arguments that I developed in The Aftermath of Feminism, was really very much about how in a post-feminist society the key way in which power works, is that it seems as though young women have become equal, and it seems as though they've become visible, and that they've occupied prominent positions, jobs and so on. And it also seems as though that old kind of benchmark of what used to be called "patriarchy", or "male domination" or "masculine domination" as Pierre Bourdieu would put it, seems to have kind of faded out of the picture. And what I argued in the book is that that threshold, or horizon of authority, has been replaced by the fashion and beauty complex. Now obviously Naomi Wolf said something similar many years ago, but I think what I do is to look at the fashion and beauty complex in more substantial, theoretical terms. My argument is drawn on Foucault and on the idea of governmentality. And how does every day governmentality work for young women? Through notions of governing the self: looking after the self, the self as a task. And I argue that consumer culture, and the fashion and beauty complex, together with consumer culture - they're really in separable, come to function as a kind of displaced substitute for old fashioned patriarchy. And in some ways that's all the more effective, because nobody can say, "Well it's the fault of men" or "There's still patterns of male dominance", because actually the young women seem to be choosing to impose this kind of structure of perfection, of body consciousness, of doing it for themselves.

Nigel Warburton: Just to get this clear, are you saying that young women who have, are focusing on shaping their body and appearance and how they look to other people, are guilty of a kind of false consciousness? That they believe that this is their choice, but actually something else is pulling their strings?

Angela McRobbie: No. I think the idea of false consciousness is completely mechanical, and one-dimensional, and also it's based on the idea that, "Well if only they could see the light, and see the truth which feminists would give to them, then the problem would be solved." It's much more complicated than that. What I'm talking about is the way in which everyday forms of power are organized, and function to both create the illusion of equality and the idea of activity, and the idea of choice, and the idea of empowerment. This is a kind of multi-faceted, multi-stranded set of activities which become the ways in which young women become, as Judith Butler would put it, "Culturally intelligible."

So the presence of this fashion-beauty complex comes to be oddly obsessively about femininity, at a time when it seems as though there has been the chance for women to actually achieve a greater degree of equality. And what I see this kind of orchestrated, hyper-femininity doing, is absolutely limiting the possibilities that young women have to participate in political culture. And the argument I make is that we can trace this through practices of government. The everyday kinds of concepts and ideas, that particularly emerged in the UK from the mid-1990s, and then from the days of New Labour, where there was a great emphasis on, if you like, allowing young women to feel that they were, as I put it, subjects of capacity, the "can do girl" - you know, "You can do it, you'll no longer be held back". And what I argued was that we could trace the contours there of a kind of new sexual contract to young women. The sexual contract said to young women, "Do well at school and university, and then you are achieving a great deal. Gain access to employment, because there will no longer be obstacles.With your own wage, you have achieved already a degree of financial independence". And this is very helpful to the national economy on a variety of ways, because it means first of all that from a feminist perspective it means that young women will no longer be absolutely dependent on a male breadwinner. Plus of course it's good for the economy. And it's good for the economy. Why? Because it gives young women a disposable income. Now I see that moment in time where there's a meritocracy, achievement in education, and then access to employment. And then the idea of a disposable wage, which can be then spent on older items he Grazie magazine or The Evening Standard or the makeover programs recommend. Plus then alongside that there is the ending of the sexual double standard which says to young women, "You know what? You can have an active sexuality with impunity, as long as you don't become a teenage mum." This is government policy, this is what I mean by governmentality. So there was a kind of 'no blame' ethos in sexuality, "Go out, have fun, have as many partners as you like but don't, please don't get pregnant outside marriage and partnership". And this is all good for the economy, because with this disposable income you can buy shoes, you can keep the fashion chains in business, whether it's Primark or Uniqlo or whatever.

So that all together I argued comprised a kind of sexual contract. And the underpinning was locking of young women into a kind of prison of activity, without that entailing a real political, an involvement. Young women were not being invited into formal politics. This process of governmentality was absolutely not saying, "Get involved in community politics, certainly not get involved in feminism, get involved in childcare debates, get involved in industrial debates about equal pay, which is still, of course, by the way, not equal pay at all. So there was a kind of cutting off point that government was saying, "You know what? We'll look after you". And who is we? Well "we" is pretty much the same old male hierarchy with a few odd women.

Nigel Warburton: Often in that sort of situation where there is oppression, there's a reaction. There's a kind of avant garde or subculture that comes out with a different vision.

Angela McRobbie: A very good question, did people just give into this new regime where it seemed as though feminism was no longer needed, and that government was sort of somehow looking after women? When I say "complexification of backlash" I think in popular culture, in popular media, there was also subliminal hostility to feminism. Feminism came to be kind of despised, joked, ridiculed. The last thing girls were encouraged to do was to be identified with feminism, and what I argued was that to be culturally intelligible as a girl at that point in time meant saying, "Oh I don't like feminism, I'm not a feminist. I'm up for it. I'm happy to go to strip clubs with my boyfriend. I'm fine with lap dancing bars. I can prove my equality virtually on the basis of not needing feminism" - indeed despising it. I often think that Tarantino was to blame, really, with his clever post-modern, multiple referenced, "It's a joke, no harm intended." But a whole bunch of comedians then locked into what was actually a kind of clever and complex new form of misogyny.

I also began to recognize that there was a kind of fearfulness on the part of a younger generation of women. They somehow feared male disapproval: it was as though the idea of sexual politics itself had got lost. And that then induced this kind of timidity or fearfulness, on the part of young women. It certainly wasn't my book alone, but I think me saying it in a theoretical kind of way, using Judith Butler, using Foucault, and other things were happening at the same time, but I do think that gradually there were kind of voices of anger again. In some ways I think that one of the reasons there seem to be less contestation than there might have been, is that Queer Theory and Queer Politics soaked up quite a lot of that energy, which is all very good, fantastic, but I actually wanted to see it to be something that was crossing the boundaries of sexual identity as well.

Nigel Warburton: Isn't one of the issues that there isn't just one feminism, there are many feminisms, so that there are arguments within feminism which are quite often quite angry and difficult arguments. So to say there's a feminist position on any particular topic is open to contestation itself?

Angela McRobbie: Oh absolutely, but I think it's a kind of media cliché to, anyway, imagine that ever was one feminism. I would say in the US by and large liberal feminism really did have a very profound impact. In the UK it was actually socialist feminism. For me the more types of feminism that exist the better, that doesn't mean to say I'm going to agree with many of them. But I think really the question now is not so much, "Is there one feminism or many feminisms?" but, actually "What in the world of globalization, hegemonic, neoliberalism, what kind of feminism can there be?" It's difficult to see anything like a united women's movement, but what I'm impressed by is the way in which ... it's almost as though feminism recognizes itself to be fragmented, dispersed, contradictory and defined in terms of difference. And so I quite like the way in which Pussy Riot have their kind of activities in Russia, and I like the way in which there were Muff Marchers against cosmetic surgery in London. I, kind of, quite like the idea of event politics, you know, the kind of dramatization of gender issues. I think that's quite an effective strategy.

Nigel Warburton: One thing I've noticed in interviewing a range of social scientists, is how often they've drawn on several disciplines. It's not as if they're simply sociologists, or theorists, or sometimes they're scientists. Sometimes they're, they're more literary in their approach. And there's a whole range of sources for what they do. Now that's obviously apparent in your work, do you find that you ever get criticized for not being easy to categorize?

Angela McRobbie: My answer to that question would be really one of kind of age and longevity in that, you know, I've kind of been doing this for such a long time. I'm kind of drawn to the world of culture, you know, I think I'm a sociologist of culture. The people who influence me most in my writing, tend to be people like Pierre Bourdieu, obviously Foucault, who was a historian and a philosopher and so on, and Judith Butler. My kind of inclination is to work more with cultural forums, and to be able to develop political arguments based on those, reading those cultural forums, rather than to embark on huge, big EU funded projects that involve monitoring interviews carried out in ... you know I mean I just think, "Oh my God". I just, it's just not me really.

Nigel Warburton: Many social scientists think that their work should influence policy. Do you think the kind of work that you do is of that kind? I mean you've talked about the importance of protest, and standing up for what you believe. But do you think you should influence actual political policy?

Angela McRobbie: Well I think that's a really good question. There have been several occasions where I have been invited into breakfast Cabinet for body image summit. Or I think there was one moment during the Blair period where Patricia Hewitt decided that feminism did have some kind of existence, and she invited 10 of us round her table in the DTI. So you know it's not as though I'm so far removed from policy. And I think in relation to looking at the fashion industry, looking at fashion start-ups, looking at young women's employment I'm more than happy to take part in discussion and debate. But I think there's a kind of question mark. And it's a theoretical question as well, about where does one invest one's ideas? And how do the kind of ideas that you develop in sociology find an audience? And find a receptive audience? I mean I think I would have worked in public policy, if I had really wanted to be somebody that was shaping legislation. That would have been great to do that, but I think also quite frustrating as well, and easy to feel disappointed, so I prefer to be slightly kind of further back.

Nigel Warburton: Angela McRobbie, thank you very much.

Angela McRobbie: Thank you.

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Has equality for women been achieved? Feminism has apparently achieved many of its aims. Some of the obvious inequalities between men and women seem to have been removed in recent decades. But have they? Angela McRobbie from the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, discusses her research on this topic.

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