Xinyang Xu, A02, Week 6

In Akiko Takeyama’s article, “Opening the Box: An International Asian Woman Scholar’s Fight”, she introduces her experience of fighting for tenure as an international scholar. It was a very tough process, and finally she made it.

There is a difference in her experience comparing to other professors’ article we read before. She was facing difficulties with book publishing. The first trouble was that she was struggle with writing her book manuscript because English is her second language and her manuscript was not quite comprehensible to English native speakers. The second trouble was the closed mentorship on campus regarding to publishing. She called the trouble as “unnecessary and yet systematic struggles”.

In addition, a rejection of tenure is not a simple matter for an international scholar like her because a failure of getting a tenure or promotion in time would result in leaving the country. And during the process of fighting for tenure, she also depicts her erratic mental status that she had panic attacks several times. It was too struggle and miserable for a women with color to fight for her own rights.

After fighting for the tenure, her fights did not come to an end. An obvious gender inequality among associate professors is a serious problem for the university system. There will be still some fights to go to achieve gender equality.

Question: how could women with color continuously fight for gender inequality among associate professors?

Reference:

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ling, E. (2018, March 6). Gender Disparity in Harvard Faculty. Retrieved from https://medium.com/harvard-open-data-project/gender-disparity-in-harvard-faculty-b253ae949a56