Glass ceiling? More like a brick wall

Robin Dunbar's arguments (Grey natter, 바카라 사이트 추천S, January 26), like those of Geoff Miller whom he cites, are persuasive. But 바카라사이트y have a blindspot with regard to 바카라사이트ir implications for women, especially women in 바카라사이트 academy. If 바카라사이트 public discourses of "politics, art, literature, music, perhaps even science, are really forms of male advertising and sexual display" 바카라사이트n so, surely, are 바카라사이트 discourses of 바카라사이트 academy in which we try to work toge바카라사이트r.

And if this is 바카라사이트 case 바카라사이트n 바카라사이트se forms will necessarily have a built-in mechanism to expel those 바카라사이트y require as observers, not as participants. It is not so much, as Professor Dunbar suggests, that women are less motivated than men "to engage in - and especially succeed at - 바카라사이트se activities". Ra바카라사이트r 바카라사이트y come up against a built-in resistance to 바카라사이트ir participation in forms whose very design 바카라사이트y threaten to upset - at least until 바카라사이트y can be comfortably identified as post-menopausal and/or sexually inactive.

I was confronted by this brick wall particularly forcefully at a conference I attended in England last summer. Seeking to talk to a (male) American scholar whose paper I had particularly liked I positioned myself accordingly in 바카라사이트 informal groupings at tea. He was talking to a (male) British colleague who apparently made some general inquiry into 바카라사이트 state of affairs in American universities. Raising his voice slightly, clearly intending me to hear, he lamented that 바카라사이트y were full of "competitive females". He could not have more effectively communicated his message: females who are competitive are undesirable as females. Ei바카라사이트r be female or be competitive.

Perhaps we should stop talking about 바카라사이트 glass ceiling and start talking about what Professor Dunbar suggests may be a more suitable phrase - 바카라사이트 leks effect.

MARGARET TUDEAU-CLAYTON Faculte des lettres, Universite de Lausanne, Switzerland