The election manifesto is nearing completion, but it’s taken up so much time in recent weeks that we didn’t have time to present a ‘Whiny Feminist of the Month’ award in November. We thank J for pointing us towards a sterling candidate, who has duly won the award.

Dr Heather Savigny is a senior politics lecturer at Bournemouth university, and clearly academia’s answer to Laura Bates. In a forthcoming piece in Gender and Education she’ll be presenting a collection of anecdotes from unnamed whiny female academics. From the start of an Independent article on the matter:

Female academics are trapped in the “ivory basement” in universities across Britain, where sexual discrimination is rife, according to a new study. They’re being treated as sex objects, turned down for promotion, and penalised for having children, are examples of the “‘cultural sexism’ which characterises the working lives of many women in British academia”, says the paper, which will be published in the journal Gender and Education early next year.

Women are far less likely to become professors than men, only accounting for one in five of such posts. And those who do make it to the level of professorship face further discrimination – being paid on average 13.5 per cent less than their male counterparts.

Hmm, could there be an explanation for why only one in five professors are women, other than gender discrimination? Could it possibly have something to do with gender-typical work ethics? We know from Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory that while only one in seven British women is work-centred, four in seven British men are. On this basis, all else being equal, we’d expect the proportion of professors who are women to be… one in five, exactly as it is. It’s not rocket science, is it?

The assertion that the ‘professorial gender pay gap’ reflects anti-female discrimination is too silly to merit comment.

In any group of professional people, there will be a spectrum of how highly the group regards the historical contributions of individuals in the group. So if a person speaks up and is ignored it’s probably because he/she isn’t held in high regard. I’ve never heard a man who’s ignored by his peers complain about this phenomenon. But women have been taught that if their views are ignored, it’s because they’re women. How many men or women would dare to tell such women WHY their views are being ignored? No, women must be left in their delusional bubbles. Their feelings must not be hurt.

A representative whiny tale from the article:

Another academic, “Leanne”, says: “The body language of my male colleagues makes it clear my voice is not worth listening too, I am made invisible in meetings. If I do get to speak, then people look out of windows, or hold their hand up to shut me up.”

Dr Savigny’s award certificate is here: