Why couldn't she just have written 'Dear My-first-name'?

[strange_complex]

I've just received an email from a female student, addressing me as 'Miss X' - not at all an uncommon occurrence. I like to think I'm not the kind of person who would feel the need to go round with a stick up my ass about people getting my title wrong like this - except that the rest of her email goes on to demonstrate perfectly why, nevertheless, I do. Within three sentences, she has gone on to mention (in the context of possible dissertation supervisors for next year) two of my male colleagues - and both of them are referred to, entirely correctly, as 'Dr. Y' and 'Dr. Z'.

Just for the record, it's not that she hasn't had every opportunity of noticing that I am a Doctor, too. She took one of my modules last year, so would have seen it on the module documentation. Meanwhile, this year she is studying in Italy, and as such has received numerous emails from me in my capacity as Study Abroad coordinator, all of which included my full name and title in the signature file. Also, one of the male colleagues she mentions is of a very similar age to me - so this should rule out the possibility that she is assuming I am too young to have become a Doctor yet. All that's left is an apparent unconscious assumption that female academics are not equivalent in status to their male colleagues.

It's not the first time I've seen this, or the first time I've seen it coming from someone who is female themselves. I recognise that a lot of people don't really understand what academic titles mean, or how you earn them. But even if you don't know the fine details, I think it's generally clear enough that 'Doctor' is an honorific, earned title. Seeing female academics regularly stripped of it by underlying assumptions about their intellectual status, while their male colleagues are not, is just one more sign of how unbalanced gender relations continue to be.

Comments

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

Are you pointedly going to reply by signing yourself as Dr. Penny Goodman? Because that's where I'd be heading right now.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've done that plenty of times! And at least once I've actually edited their own email, beneath my reply, to show the correct title. Which is a very passive-aggressive thing to do, of course, but I'm all for passive aggression when it gets me the results I want!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't feel remotely bad saying, "Please address me as Penny or Dr G, and be very careful that you do not strip female academics of their professional qualifications whilst simultaneously attributing them to male academics!" But that might not be your style.

I obviously haven't worked in an academic job since getting my PhD, but I did get an email to Mrs Macsomething last term and immediately emailed back to tell the student in question that he could address me as Mary or Ms Macfarlane, but NEVER Mrs or Miss!

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agree with the first part of this. I co-teach two large undergraduate lecture courses with two different male colleagues, both (slightly) junior to me, and student e-mails are quite often addressed to us both, sometimes stripping me of my doctorate but almost always carefully retaining it for the male colleague. Whom I also include in my replies. I always address it at the beginning of my response e-mail. I have sometimes done so by using bold and a larger font.

I have no problem at all with taking students up on this. I think of it as also constituting something of a public service to other female academics. It wasn't a thousand years ago (I recently heard, to my unmitigated horror, from a female colleague in her 50s) that there was an assumption that the women in the department would provide refreshments when the externs visited. Because, obviously. what else would they be worrying their flighty heads about - research?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've replied to her email now, and I did decide to make a point about it. I answered her questions about dissertations and post-graduate study first, and then finished off with this:

"Finally, I would just like to draw your attention to something which you did, almost certainly unconsciously, in your email below. If you read through the opening and first paragraph, you will find that you have addressed me as 'Miss G', yet referred to two of my male colleagues only a few lines later by their correct title of 'Dr'. I'm sure you didn't mean any offence by doing this, but I wanted to mention it because, as a woman yourself (and particularly one who is contemplating doing an MA), I'm sure you would not like to think that we live in a society where female academics are not given credit for their professional qualifications, while male academics are. Please have a think about the implications of these forms of address, and be sure in future that you refer to all academic staff, whether male or female, by the titles which they have earned."

Maybe I'll move on to bold and a larger font the next time!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Oh, good on you!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Thanks! She replied apologising for calling me by an incorrect title, but did not really say anything to suggest that the wider gender issues had sunk in. Still, I tried!

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love this response. It's polite, pithy and pointed.

Permission to cut and paste in times of stress, need and incoherent rage?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Sure, no problem!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Just clicked through from your Silurians post. Good for you!

When I was going through customs at a US airport last year, the woman checking my passport goggled at it, goggled at me, and said, in bewildered tones, "You're a doctor?" I'm not sure if it was because I was female or scruffy or travelling economy or all three at once.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oh, three cheers for your icon of sheer genius!

But 'Gah!' about the passport lady. :-(

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

there was an assumption that the women in the department would provide refreshments when the externs visited

WHAT? ARGH!!!

* tries to calm blood pressure *

* fails *

GAH THAT'S HORRENDOUS!!