A WORKING DRAFT OF CHAPTER ONE

The female gaze

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”

(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, p. 11)

Many people interpret this famous quote from Hamlet as an absolute truth. This

popular interpretation captures well androcentric thinking. At the same time, this popular

interpretation reflects also the androcentric epistemology of the dominant discourse. The

work of this discourse based as it is on the privileging of male experience (while

simultaneously making men the norm for human experience), is premised on the belief that

certainty is possible, this assumption of certainty promulgated and internalised through rules,

procedures, and practices initially adopted in childhood and strengthened through continued

practice. Furthermore, this privileging of male experience and assumption of male

superiority in human meaning systems, is premised on the acceptance of an objective reality.

This androcentric/objective reality alliance has for many thousands of years been the source

of our Western social world constructions and as well the foundation of its historical

development, particularly the shared world as constructed by governments and business.

The assumption of an objective reality serves well the agendas of those in power,

where the promulgation of rules and the certainties embedded in the uptake of our practices is

the stuff of our socialisation as good citizens. These largely unexamined ‘certainties’

underpinning our social practices construct a world in which citizens are shaped to act as

docile individuals, as good citizens, receiving the many benefits of living in a civilized

society. However, what is glaringly obvious (but not addressed by people in general) is that

people of the status quo do not receive as many distinct advantages and benefits as the ones

who make up, maintain, and sustain the rules. Those rule makers can be generally seen as
receiving generous incomes, live in comfortable surroundings, and in the main experience

what the people of lower socio-economic status might consider ‘the good life’. This

inequality between the few rich and the majority poor arises largely from gender being the

basis for our social ordering. Historical gender constructs and their uptake can be shown to

be a work of the male gaze.

The quote from Hamlet posited at the beginning of this paper, is meant to bring into

question the determinism, the assumption of certainty that presently rules our shared

understanding of the world. Are things only good or bad because of the way we think about

them? Is it possible that what this quote might want to convey as truth, be true for all

humanity? Or does this quote emerge from a rich, privileged, male view of the world that

assumes a singular view of humanity? Could such an assertion be true for all humanity? Is it

possible that a woman as a single parent with five children from a low socio-economic

context is able to think of her struggle to raise a family as simply caused by her wrong

thinking? On the other hand, can her inability to provide well for her children be changed by

thinking differently? For women there can be no direct co-relation between their thinking

and their experience of the world in which they live as a man might make. This is because

girls and women’s identity, roles, and lives are mediated through male norms and male

constructs, i.e., through the male interpretation and promulgation of narratives around who

and what girl and woman is. Uptake of these narratives by girls and women is ensured by the

discursive as well as the hegemonic effect of language. This uptake is different for girls and

women as women and men enter language differently (Kuhn, 1981). So while a woman’s

response to the challenge that Shakespeare has put before us so long ago cannot be one of

simple agreement, it is possible for a woman to have more control over her life and to

flourish according to the intuitions of her femaleness. For women there is a psycho/social

journey to be taken that can move her out of the androcentric consciousness that she
internalised in her early socialisation. Women can grow towards greater authenticity as a

female person.

From birth, women are socialised into the world of men (Jensen-Clayton & McLeod,

2017). Female socialisation means that women take on a male centred consciousness.

Without intervention, throughout a woman’s life androcentric forms of thinking will continue

to reinforce and determine boundaries that compromise her female self. These cognitive and

affective boundaries continue to shape her decision-making and so her life situations and

circumstances to fit an androcentric world. Most women rather than benefitting from social

norms are instead locked in to ways of making meaning that belong to times past and to other

people. During their social development, female persons are often challenged to move

beyond their present conceptualisation of the world, a world that compromises female

experiences at every turn.

Journeying out of an androcentric consciousness however is for most women long and

hard. Part of the difficulty is that this journey does not immediately solve a woman’s needs

e.g., to gain control of her life to be able to raise her children well. This journey to female

greatness can only be entered into if a woman dares to rise above the social constraints and

limited imaginary that have held her thinking and her experiences of life bound. It is a

journey into the unknown that often requires serious leaps in the dark and long walks in

isolation from significant others. If often means bearing their wrath as she is no longer the

same person, the one that accommodated others for the sake of peace or that used to fit her

‘self’ into others’ ideas of life. A richer, fuller life awaits women who struggle to have own

expression and experience of femaleness that has not been the product of the male

gaze/interpretation. Having been born into a world built by the male gaze, our socialisation

into an androcentric epistemology need not be the end of our story. Neither need it be the
end of the story for male experience. Journeying out of an androcentric consciousness

towards appropriating a female gaze is open to all who wish to take up the challenge.

Book Chapters

Jensen-Clayton, C. M. (2018). Women Writing to Ourselves: Rescuing the Girl Child from
Androcentricity. In A. L. Black & S. Garvis (Eds.), Women Activating Agency in Academia:
Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir. Abingdon, Oxon. UK.: Routledge.

Jensen-Clayton, C. M., & Macleod, R. (2017). Female pleasure in the academy through erotic
power. In S. Riddle, M. Harmes, & P. A. Danaher (Eds.), Producing pleasure within the
contemporary university. Rotterdam, NLD: Sense Publishers.

Jensen-Clayton, C. M., & Murray, A. J. (2016). Working Beyond the Research Maze. In D.
Rossi, F. Gacenga, & P. A. Danaher (Eds.), Navigating the education research maze:
Contextual, conceptual, methodological and transformational challenges and opportunities for
researchers. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Jensen-Clayton, C. M., & Murray, A. J. (2016). Working in the research maze: At what price? In D.
Rossi, F. Gacenga, & P. A. Danaher (Eds.), Navigating the education research maze:
Contextual, conceptual, methodological and transformational challenges and opportunities for
researchers. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Murray, A. J., & Jensen-Clayton, C. M. (in press). Tiptoeing around the

institution? Doctoral supervision in the knowledge economy. Submitted to T. Machin, M.
Clarà, & P. A. Danaher (Eds.), Traversing the doctorate: Reflections and strategies from
students, supervisors and administrators.

Journal Articles
Clayton, C. (2010). A ‘paradigmatic earthquake’ in SLA [Review of the book The psychology
of second language acquisition by Zoltán Dörnyei]. rEFLections, 13, 58-60.
Clayton, C., & Ma, S. H. (2009). Sorry, excuse me or pardon. 中小学英语教学与研究 English
Teaching and Research for Primary and Middle School.