Croning academics: menopause matters in higher education

ORCID

Abstract

This writing is born out of our experiences of becoming older women, academy hags, facing the performative demands of the neoliberalising patriarchal university. We are raging. With the figure of the Crone, and feminist-killjoy-croning as our creative and livid research method (Ahmed, 2023), we squeeze time out/with impossible university spaces and schedules to tend to grey matters. The paper traces the normalisation of menopause policies in workplaces and universities, following the social trending and capitalisation of menopausal and ageing matters. We question what menopause policies do and argue they constitute a failed project for the advancement of gender equality and should be abandoned. Inspired by Barad’s (2021) call to engage in ‘spacetimemattering’, we create webs of entanglement through the objects of university menopause policies. We grey, fade out/ fit in, sweat, bleed, scowl. Powered by fury and frustration, we scrape away the genealogical underpinnings of menopausal bodyminds.

Publication Date

2024-01-01

Publication Title

Gender and Education

Volume

36

Issue

8

ISSN

0954-0253

Acceptance Date

2024-05-31

Embargo Period

9999-12-31

Funding

We would especially like to thank the members and visitors to the University of Plymouth\u2019s Adventures in Post-humanism group for their lively contributions and debates, all of which are woven into the fabric of this paper.

Keywords

Crone, age, menopause, policy, university

First Page

967

Last Page

982

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This item is under embargo until 31 December 9999

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