A union's and university's responses to violence against a woman professor: Neoliberal restructuring, hypermasculinity, male privilege and hegemonic inequality

Abstract

Although Eastern Canadian liberal arts universities are portrayed as progressive work environments that cultivate inclusivity and diversity, the corporatisation of these public spaces has transformed them from institutions that once encouraged pluralism and acceptance among all social groups to spaces that unevenly distribute privileges among faculty and students based on ascribed characteristics, social class, and adherence to cisnormative and heteronormative expectations. Under neoliberal reforms, universities and unions adopt their own policies and procedures that legitimate institutional power abuse over marginalised women Contract Limited Term (CLT) assistant professors. Using material evidence from complaints filed with a province's Human Rights Commission and Labour Board, this critical autoethnographic case study explores the institutionalised responses to a disenfranchised woman CLT's discrimination and harassment by a student, departmental chair, faculty and university staff. A theory of genocidal mobbing is developed to conceptualise the organisational processes and practices that maintain the status quo of white heteropatriarchy and disentitle women CLTs to safety, equality and fair representation by their unions. Genocidal mobbing is efficient, because misogynistic administrators only require weaponising one disgruntled student, and effective, because administrators utilise the most fatal and insidious of gendered narcissistic abuse: gaslighting. The current neoliberal climate within academia puts marginalised women faculty at increased risk of genocidal mobbing from those with institutional power and from students with ethnic/racial and/or economic privilege. This article illuminates the union's culpability in the genocidal mobbing of women CLTs disenfranchised by multiple marginalised intersectional identities. Implications for future research and on policy are presented.