Academic Women: Different Ways of Knowing. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

This paper examines the degree to which women faculty and administrators are able to engage in connected knowing and interdependent definitions of self and reality within an institutional environment that values and rewards individualism, separateness, competition, and objectivity. The paper notes that connected knowing is essentially the process of working within groups, investing in empowering others, and focusing on the process rather than the outcomes. Separate knowing, conversely, involves greater isolation of the individual from the group in order to maintain objectivity and the interpreting of relationships hierarchically. Results are presented from interviews with 17 women faculty members and administrators at one state university designed to determine the struggles of these women to remain connected knowers in an environment that most felt supported and rewarded separate knowing. The interviews reveal that, while administrative women seemed more successful at integrating their independence and connected ways of knowing, most women faculty speak of their concern and frustration with this conflict. It is suggested that such conflicts should be considered as important retention and vitality problems for both women and men in collegiate systems. Contains 15 references. (GLR)