A ‘proper’ woman? One woman’s story of success and failure in academia

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(Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Author and Director, MA in Creative Writing, University of Limerick, Ireland)

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(Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, plant ecologist and feminist activist)

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(Paul Walton, Professor of Chemistry, University of York, UK and international gender equality advocate)

This book, written by an insider, explores experiences over a 46-year career in five academic organisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from contract research assistant to full professor and line manager (Dean). Highlighting success and failure, strength and fragility, it challenges ideas about what it is to be a 'proper' woman. It describes the subtle and relentless processes of devaluation, marginalisation and disempowerment that are often 'normalised.' Written in a clear accessible style, with flashes of humour, it asks whose interests are served by taken-for-granted ideas about what it is to be a woman - ideas which deny the reality of many women's day-to-day experiences. Who wants us to think that all women find identity and satisfaction in housework and child care? Who wants us to think that universities are meritocratic institutions? The book will inspire and entertain all those who have struggled in any male-dominated organisation and wondered if they were the problem.