Women Speaking on Their Behalf: On Autobiographical Narratives of Women on Stage

Femininity and masculinity are the outcomes of a social reproduction rather than a biological one. It is
possible to see the traces of this social reproduction in issues as to the positioning of the woman in the
social life, working life, and domestic labor. The structure that works against the woman with regard to
the domestic division of labor, also affects the working life of the woman, in this context, the genderbased pressures experienced by women in the academia constitute the subject matter of this study. It is
the main purpose of this study to reveal the role conflicts of women in academic life through gender in
general; and through motherhood, in particular. I have drawn upon Walby’s patriarchal theory and
Acker’s theory of gendered organisation to achieve this aim. I carried out in-depth interviews with six
female academicians from various departments of the Faculty of Letters at Ege University, a longestablished university in a professional sense of belonging has been developed and my experience about
femininity has been shaped. In accordance with the feminist methodology, I descriptively analyzed their
gender-based experiences throughout their academic careers. The findings of the field research
indicated that the women may well encounter with masculine domination even in academia, which is
expected to be relatively democratic throughout the whole process in which they entered to the
academia, they pursued their academic careers, they got married and they had children.