The Thin End of the Wedge: Foreign Women Professors as Double Strangers in Academia

The impetus for this study was an observation that many of the first women to obtain chairs at European universities were foreigners. Our initial attempt to provide a statistical picture of this proved impossible, because there were numerous problems deciding the contents of such concepts as ‘first’, ‘university professor’ and ‘foreigner’. We have therefore focused on four life stories. It turns out that being a ‘double stranger’— a woman in a masculine profession and a foreigner — is not, as one might think, a cumulative disadvantage. Rather, it seems that these two types of strangeness might cancel out one another, permitting these women a greater degree of success than was allowed their native sisters. This situation however, provides little psychological comfort, hence the metaphor of the wedge: opening the doors but suffering from double pressure.