126 CJHE / RCES Volume 39, No. 2, 2009 climate in many North American community colleges, and despite the predominance of American examples their argument will resonate for Canadian readers, particularly for those who, like me, are experiencing the rapid re-branding of many Canadian colleges in an increasingly market-driven environment. As an instructor at one of the British Columbia colleges searching for its mission following the B.C. Liberal government’s creation of five new universities in April, 2008, I endorse the authors’ recommendation that Canadian community college faculty must work both to resist the neo-liberal agenda and to create a distinct identity for themselves within and beyond the academic community. Wagner, Anne, Acker, Sandra, & Mayuzumi, Kimine (Eds.). (2008). Whose University Is It, Anyway? Power and Privilege on Gendered Terrain. Toronto: Sumach Press. Pages: 232. Price: 28.95 USD (paper). Reviewed by Stephanie Hazel, doctoral student, Institute of Higher Education, University of Georgia. Whose University Is It, Anyway? is a collection of essays and original research that explores the complexities of women’s place in the university. The chapters draw from a diverse selection of writers and scholars, all of whom are affiliated with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and focus specifically on their experiences in Canadian universities. The editors contend that while many women have gained ground in the academy, others continue to be marginalized based on characteristics or experiences that are deemed to be incompatible with academic success. They conceptualize the university as a contested space in which gender, race, Aboriginality, disability, sexuality, and class intersect with power and privilege to create inequalities that are often invisible to those who view gender equity through a singular lens. Through the frame of intersectionality, the editors seek “to challenge conventional dominant conceptualizations of the category ‘women’ and to delve into some of the realities for women navigating academic terrain that are less frequently brought to the fore” (p. 16). A primary thread throughout the volume is the struggle for inclusion in the unwelcoming culture of the academy. Patrice White examines the “chilly climate” for racialized minorities, specifically critiquing progressive educators for putting so much focus on studying and teaching about the Other that Black student bodies and culture are overexposed, “provoking exhaustion” for those students (p. 87). Cyndy Baskin’s research shows how university social work curriculum and faculty tend to avoid the history of colonization, and how this silence effectively denies the complicity of social workers in the subjugation of Aboriginal peoples. While Aboriginal students have had positive experiences with some non-Aboriginal educators, they express a desire for acceptance and inclusion in the curriculum of Aboriginal ways of knowing and helping. Book Reviews / Comptes rendus 127 A second theme centers on the challenge of meeting the expectations of the disembodied scholar (read: healthy, white, male, and able-bodied) while inhabiting a body that is constantly interrogated. Of particular note is Susan Ferguson and Tanya Titchkosky’s analysis of the disability accommodations process, which reproduces difference through defining and delimiting the individual with disability, rather than challenging the academy’s disembodied system of knowledge production. The authors illustrate how disability is experienced not just as a physical impairment, but is produced through social relations that create narratives of absence, lack, or void. Wayne Martino’s essay reveals how the gay male body as a site of difference and feminine denigration incites a level of fear and anxiety for the gay professor whose actions and pedagogies are circumscribed by his students’ scrutinizing gaze. Several authors interrogate the ways in which support roles are gendered, with women taking responsibility for the emotional work of the institution. For instance, students often rely on female faculty as counselors and mentors (see chapter by Wagner and Murray), and women in senior administration are expected to be role models or “wonder women” (see Martimianakis). Ann Pearson’s essay on the invisible labour of administrative staff illustrates the complex and highly personal nature of support work. Administrative staff experience expectations for accuracy in the midst of student or faculty crises, report to multiple and often demanding supervisors, enforce convoluted institutional policies, act as faculty confidantes, and all in the context of the corporate university that imposes strict efficiency standards while reducing budgets and cutting positions. Sandra Acker’s reflections on her three years as department chair highlight the extra performance expectations to which women leaders must attend; Acker found herself paying more attention to her appearance, the appearance of her building, and to interpersonal relations with the faculty and other administrators than did male department chairs. Pearson and Acker’s essays are reminiscent of Joan Eveline’s “ivory basement”, in which the relational “glue work” that women do, both in the basement and in leadership roles—the continuous work on relationships, networking to solve problems, and the management of others’ conflicts and emotions—is crucial to the functioning of the institution, but is largely unacknowledged and unappreciated (2004). The most important contribution this book makes is the representation of new voices. While stories of marginalization in the academy have been told before, this volume features perspectives from individuals who are variously situated in the university. Chapters by and about Aboriginal Canadian women, contingent faculty, administrative support staff, graduate teaching assistants, and female academics living and working with disabilities expand our understanding of the gendered nature of universities. And while one volume cannot possibly represent the full diversity of women’s experiences, the book’s title suggests an exploration of relations of power and privilege on which it does not fully deliver. With the exception of Acker’s essay, none of the authors write about the complex interactions of power or privilege for many women in 128 CJHE / RCES Volume 39, No. 2, 2009 the university. Although universities are still run primarily by men, there are growing numbers of women in the professorial ranks, as well as in positions of leadership. Who are these women, and how have they negotiated the “gendered terrain”? Current postmodern and post-colonial feminist writing focuses on women’s multiple subjectivities, in which power is a process that is constantly negotiated within the context of various social relations; for instance, an Aboriginal woman who is revered as a leader in her community may have no voice in her position in the Eurocentric university. Analyses of this nature would make a significant contribution to the discourse of contested spaces. Wagner, Acker, and Mayuzumi selected the pieces in this volume to integrate different perspectives in an intersectional approach, but the authors have varying levels of success in conceptualizing intersectionality. This is an admittedly difficult task for scholars who attempt to analyze how gender is mutually produced with other experiences of difference. Several of the authors, while they are women, center their analysis on their experience of race, class, or disability, while neglecting the ways in which their experience shapes and is shaped by the interrelationship with gender or other categories of difference. Wagner illustrates this well in her discussion of how women’s choice to disclose experiences of interpersonal violence is mediated by the individual’s identity; for instance, a racialized woman may carefully guard her presentation of abuse by the hands of men in her family when she is in a white classroom that may view the violence through the context of racism. Understanding the complexities of this woman’s experience is to comprehend how the violence is mutually forged through racialized and gendered societal structures, processes, and social relations. Njoki Wane writes about the struggle to teach the concepts of diversity and intersectionality to students who actively resist, questioning whether her identity as a Black African woman shapes their unwillingness to trust her as a source of knowledge and authority. Whose University Is It, Anyway? is a useful addition to the narratives of gender in the university, but does not offer a groundbreaking critique of the academy, nor does it extend any theoretical insights. The book would be a welcome introduction for new students of higher education, or for those who are unfamiliar with feminist writings in the academy. The essays and articles expand our understanding of diversity in the university, but perhaps do not go far enough to challenge the ideology and structures that reproduce inequality. REFERENCE Eveline, J. (2004). Ivory basement leadership: Power and invisibility in the changing university. Crawley, Western Australia: Western Australia University.