This volume of essays brings together papers from seventeen contributors (including two men) who range from a well-known Emerita Professor, Dorothy Smith, to doctoral students at four different Canadian universities. The book covers a wide spectrum of geographical locations and types of institutions across Canada, and the experience of women at smaller universities, especially in the Maritimes, is particularly well represented. In her editorial introduction, Marilee Reimer, a sociology professor at St Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, tells the story of attempts to prevent publication of her earlier work on pay equity in the public service. She interprets her experience as part of a wider movement to stifle criticism of the current shift in academe towards a business model, a shift that has particularly affected the freedom of women working in universities to speak out about the ongoing barriers to advancement they discover. The remainder of the volume provides ample evidence of how systemic discrimination based on gendered suppositions and expectations, compounded by intersecting categories of ‘othering,’ continues to prevent women from reaching their potential in university contexts.

The first section of the book, entitled “Working in Corporate U,” begins with Dorothy Smith’s analysis of the loss of professional autonomy in the academy, particularly in areas like the health sciences, education, and social work where women are more numerous. The three chapters that follow provide examples of this phenomenon, focusing on changing perceptions of what constitutes ‘academic freedom,’ the questionable role of ‘equity offices,’ curriculum development (especially in Faculties of Education), and corporate control of scientific research, as illustrated by two notorious cases at the University of Toronto. The authors conclude that when funding for research is tied to partnerships with business and industry, programmes like Women’s Studies suffer, as does any research critical of the corporate model and agenda.

Section Two, “Women’s Careers in the Gender Stream,” adds more detailed examinations of these issues. A comparison of programmes at three universities, based on information supplied by their calendars over several years, confirms that female faculty tend to be relegated to the lower ranks: contract, sessional, or part-time employment. Similarly, Women’s Studies programmes suffer from ‘volunteerism,’ which is based on problematic assumptions about activism in relation to ‘academic research’ and ‘feminine’ dedication to idealistic causes. Given this context, it is not surprising that feminist professors suffer a high rate of stress-related sickness. In addition, despite the fact that there are now more women in high-level positions in university administration, the ‘chilly climate’ has not improved: one step forward seems often to be followed by two steps back. Claire Polster’s look at intellectual property rights and women’s inequality does, however, suggest some useful strategies for resistance and hope for solutions.

The following section, “Employment and Educational Equity in the Corporate University,” opens by looking more closely at how ‘equity’ discourse can function as window dressing and thereby fail to protect outspoken critics from intimidation. This critical view is countered somewhat in Chapter 10, which draws attention to some instances where equity practitioners can function as agents of change. They can do little, however, to eliminate the teaching/research dichotomy that gives sessional instructors less time to engage in the research they need to produce in order to obtain a tenure-track position. Earlier analysis (presented in the volume’s introduction) of the inequitable gender distribution of Canada Research Chairs (CRC) is also relevant to this discussion. A two-tiered system is becoming increasingly entrenched, one that is based on gendered expectations that were only briefly acknowledged and criticized during the rise of feminist research and during a period of what now appears to have been fleeting governmental support for equity principles.

The volume’s last section allows students to convey their perspectives by revealing how the consumer model of education affects their options and opportunities. They argue that the delivery of courses and the provision of on-campus accommodation have become commodities marketed to the highest bidders by lowest-waged service providers. In addition, technological change, which is touted by university administrators as a new avenue to accessibility, is far from value-neutral: Computerization of services in and out of the classroom not only depersonalizes the university experience and the learning process, it may run counter to the principles of feminist pedagogy. Can we rise to the challenge to use new tools strategically to strengthen our presence, as women and as feminists, in the academy?

This volume should be required reading for all female academics and their allies as it provides a wealth of well-documented information and analysis for us to consider in relation to our own institutions. The CAUT Bulletin of 6 April 2006 (published by the Canadian Association of University Teachers) gives a summary of the most recent statistical report on the status of women in Canadian post-secondary institutions (9). Canada ranks behind Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in overall representation of women. The figures confirm that we are still less likely to have tenure or to reach the academy’s top ranks, that we earn less than our male counterparts, and that we are still waiting to experience effective equity policies that would ensure the inclusive and family-friendly work environment necessary to encourage more women to pursue an academic career. Government programmes that at first appeared to redress the balance (like the CRC) are in fact working to maintain, or even aggravate, existing imbalances. No doubt this also applies to the hiring of visible minorities and other categories recognized by earlier equity guidelines as subject to systemic discrimination.

For those of my generation now close to retirement, it is distressing to see that the issues we raised twenty years ago are still with us and that the gains we achieved are constantly threatened. My own impression is that there may now be fewer full professors in the Faculty of Arts at my university (the University of British Columbia) than when I was hired in 1979. No one, to my knowledge, has questioned why many successful women academics have chosen early retirement or pursuits outside the academy. While there are more women now at the assistant professor or early associate ranks, who will replace the senior women now retiring in droves that have sat on countless committees representing women’s perspectives, embodying institutional memory, and recalling previous commitments? A follow-up is needed to this very valuable book on women in the ‘Corporate U,’ one that documents both the failures that many of us have witnessed – in the hope that they will not be repeated – as well as the resistance strategies that have allowed us to survive.