[AGTRT-BF9] Lack of diversity in gender studies hinders open discussion

Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team

A lively discussion about gender has erupted in the Netherlands, but we notice that the knowledge institutes on gender at universities are hardly involved in this discussion, if at all. We also see little sign yet that gender studies (commonly called gender studies) as a discipline has begun a critical self-examination about the state of academic freedom, and whether there is enough room for different perspectives. How does that actually happen?

To explore this further, we take a critical look at one such institution. Utrecht University has a “Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies,” abbreviated as NOG (Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies).

We took a look at the NOG website, and we noticed a few things. The organization of the NOG has (as of September 2023) a board with 9 members, and an advisory board with 10 members. As far as we can tell, these 19 people are all women. In no case did we see any mention of the desired pronouns on the site.

There is a curriculum committee with 3 men and 3 women, although that cannot be determined with certainty on the site and its linked information page and personal websites. There is also a PhD council whose members are 4 women, 2 men and 1 member of neutral gender. With this council, pronouns are explicitly stated though.

What conclusions can be drawn from this now? First, it is apparently the most normal thing in the world for NOG to exclude men from managerial responsibility. This is remarkable because gender is as much there for men as it is for women.

We also notice that making pronouns explicit is still seen more as something “for the young.” Only those on the PhD board do. Perhaps this still reflects too lightly on the problems one can face today with the incorrect use of pronouns in concrete cases. In this way, the board leaders are not exactly role models in pronouns, even though they probably strive to do so (and we would expect them to). We have no problem with people not using pronouns; we don’t do that ourselves. We merely note that it is inconsistently handled.

Furthermore, the term gender theory appears prominently. The announcement of the Doing Gender Lecture Series states, “These lectures stress the importance of doing gender work combined with an active involvement in the practice of gender theory and research.”

It is thus no luxury that we label our work with the addition “formal”: formal gender theory. We assume and pursue that formal gender theory can similarly serve the interests of men and women, as well as the interests of persons of neutral gender (see AGTRT-1 and AGTRT-3 for our rationale for using neutral rather than non-binary).

Read more about why we are developing formal gender theory:
Why gender science may pay more attention to formal gender

We believe we see in the structure of the NOG a resounding lack of gender balance, and we cannot help but feel that if the NOG itself has not seen this, or has seen it and after many years still maintains it that way, the importance of inclusion in that milieu hardly counts.

It is no wonder then that people fail to see the problem of a lack of open discussion of gender within the social sciences at the UvA (and no doubt other places in the Netherlands). The expectation that an NOG, which has Dutch explicitly in its (English) name, would speak out critically about this is an illusion. And that while, in our opinion, there would have been both cause and reason for it.


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