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Book Review
Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia
by Emily
Toth, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, $15.95
Reviewed by Catherine Shepard-Haier, M.L.I.S.
What do you do...When a drunken male colleague drops an olive down
the front of your blouse at a department party?...When a boorish
know-it-all tries to grab the floor during your presentation?...When your
dissertation advisor wants you to drop by his house after hours? For women
in academia, a breach of etiquette can end a career. Enter Ms. Mentor,
slogging through the trenches with you, pointing out invisible land mines,
teaching hard truths about survival in academe.
Professor of English and Women's Studies at Louisiana State
University, Emily Toth created Ms. Mentor in 1992 for Concerns, journal of
the Women's Caucus for the Modern Langua-ges. The quantity and variety of
questions she received led her to expand the column into a comprehensive
book for women academics and other voyeurs of academic culture. Ë la
Judith Martin's Ms. Manners, Toth flavors her advice with wit drawn from
wide life experience and research.
Ms. Mentor, supremely confident and piercingly truthful, takes an
"eyes on the prize" approach to academic life and dishes out the political
savvy women need to "fit in," the unspoken but real measure by which many
women are judged. For instance, on the importance of appearances, she
discusses: class perceptionsÑhow to look like you belong to the right one;
what to wear to conferences; whether to bring your baby to work; the
liability of overweight and how to turn it to your advantage; what
collegiality really means; and charm as a factor in fitting in. The reward
for keeping comments discreet and heads down is tenure, of course. Ms.
Mentor gives advice for the tenured and emerita years, too.
Each chapter's Q & A sections provide comic relief and morale
boosters, and the book's real meat. You will recognize department
personalities such as Dr. Mean, "a savage full professor who,
machine-like, cranks out nasty, ranting, belittling memos to his
colleagues," and learn how to defuse their attacks. Her suggestion to
consider Dr. Mean "a wild, loud dog with a desperate need for obedience
school" strikes a familiar chord.
The plight of untenured Professor No Pimento illustrates the mix
of humor and serious concern in many of the questions. With the olive down
her blouse, NP fails to escape before Drunken Colleague II fishes it out
of her bra and eats it. Ms. Mentor advises her to ignore the incident to
avoid making enemies and jeopardizing tenure, promoting survival as the
first law of academia. Toth accompanies this advice, which first appeared
in her column, with a reader's response arguing Professor NP should file a
complaint. Toth's diligence in offering alternatives and discussing why
each may or may not work is a principal asset of the book and helps the
reader find the best answer for her own situation.
Toth also identifies repeated patterns of discrimination such as
"peacocking," the man who can't stand a woman having the floor and resorts
to predictable tricks to discredit her, and "the sexist stutter step," the
support letter that goes missing or other not-so-little glitch in the
tenure process. And when the latter leads to litigation, Ms. Mentor's
advice is right on target. She provides a comprehensive list of resources
and contacts. Her delightful use of language makes bitter realities a bit
easier to swallow.
A few minor nit-picks: UC women may question Ms. Mentor's advice
about seeking assistance within the campus chain of command or from the
Title IX officer, though it may work better at other universities. In
future editions Ms. Mentor may also wish to change "Employers...cannot"
refuse to make accommodations for or discriminate against the disabled to
"Employers are not supposed to..." As WAGE knows, universities can and do
discriminate, in spite of the law. Some may also disagree with a few of
Ms. Mentor's points in the chapter "When Cultures Collide."
Other plusses in brief: fictional professors Nova and Sophia and
their strategies for success; the all-important Tenure Diary; how to come
out of the closet; how to de-stress your life so you can concentrate on
your career; and an excellent bibliography.
Toth's jaunty advice and real life examples show the sad truth for
women in academia. In addition to superior scholarship, you need to dust
off your seventh grade social skills and get into the tenure clique before
they figure out you're not always going to keep quiet about wayward olives
and worse. Then, gentle reader, Ms. Mentor will embrace you with open
arms, for you will have earned the power to make academia a better place
for women.
-wage@wage.org-