the feminist librarian reads

When pushing is unevenly distributed as a requirement, pushing becomes a form of political work. I want to turn to an example from my study of diversity. One of the practitioners I interviewed was not called the equality or diversity officer at her university. She was a human resources manager and she had diversity and equality amongst her many duties. The person who had been in this post previously had been called the equity officer. Why the new job title? She explained to me the reason for this decision: “our general manager did not want me to be seen as the equity person.” In On Being Included (2012) I explored the problems of becoming “the equity person,” how it can mean that equity stops and starts with a person. When one person becomes the equity person, other people do not have to become equity people. The logic being used here was that of mainstreaming; equality and diversity were now treated by the university as what all those employed by the university should be doing. There was no longer going to be an officer or an office for equality and diversity; what they were “trying to do was share it across the board.”