Telling stories: What it means to a woman to be a writer in the academy

This interview-intensive interpretive study explores the stories of seven first-year women enrolled in a university composition course about what it means to a woman to be a writer in the academy. Other data sources include: my participant-observation of their class and its writing groups; the interview testimony of five male classmates and their professor; students\u27 writing; and observation of the professor\u27s graduate seminar on the teaching of literature and composition. A central theme of these stories is that the social construct of gender was a significant factor in how these women composed academic writing. The factor of gender was intersected by differences among the women such as ethnicity, age, and personal history. One way in which the women found the social construct of gender to be a factor was that to write academic prose meant that, as this study characterizes, each had to write like a man. The women had to modify or adapt what they had to say and how they wrote in ways that they felt were more congenial to their male classmates. The women\u27s stories tell of the feelings of discomfort and dissatisfaction they experienced while writing like a man. A second way in which the women found gender to be a factor was that in writing argumentative discourse, the women had to breach Western society\u27s definition of female identity. To write successful argumentative discourse required them to assume three rhetorical strategies which society associates with male behaviors: self-assertion, being aggressive, and being competitive. In that society generally disassociates women from these behaviors, the women found that they were less practiced in them and that, so disassociated, society tends to discourage women from them. This study records that for these women writers academic discourse is gendered and this had an impact on their composition of it. A primary conclusion is that gender should be included in any discussion about academic writing and that more stories of women student writers should be investigated