Ahmed Alhassan - A03 - Week 5

       The stress and pain that women in academia experience may not be a topic that is often discussed as Cindy Nhi Huynh describes in An Offering: Healing the Wounds and Ruptures of Graduate School. She describes how difficult it was for her to write about her experiences and what she faced while attending graduate school. Her description of how the faculty reacted to her changing the topic of her research evokes sentiments of how the universities are engineered to produce specific results. While the mental health effects of the environment she had to work in might be dismissed due to our society's negligence towards this issue, the effects may be extremely detrimental to one's physical health as Cindy describes. I personally feel that even as an undergraduate, students often bottle up their anger and their pain rather than share it or critique the environment that might be contributing to that pain. The figure below shows the widespread stress that affects students and workers, with the highest percentage given as women in conducting and publishing research, with around 85% reporting feelings of stress. The data illustrates the severity of the problems that Cindy discusses, and despite the fact that it is not widely discussed, and more often than not these emotions are repressed, we must address these issues. Attention must be brought with respect to hostile educational environments and action must be taken to reform institutions and the systemic corruption that exists within them.

References:

“Stress and the Female Faculty Member.” Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/23/stress-and-female-faculty-member.