Here’s a Look at Struggles of DU’s Women Ad Hoc Faculty

The Delhi University Teacher’s Association (DUTA) General Body Meeting recently announced that it would extend its strike, which is part of a series of agitations that have rocked the University since the beginning of this year, to the 8 of March. One of the main demands of the strike, which included a march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar, is the regularisation of Ad Hoc faculty.

An interesting paradigm to analyse the issue of regularisation with is gender. Female representation in higher education has historically been abysmal in India, with gender equality in admissions levelling up as recently as 2016, according to UNESCO study.

But according to a 2018 paper by Mike Thelwall and others, gender inequality remains stark in research with 1.5 male first authors per female first authors in India. The 2018 UN Human Development Index ranks India 130th out of 189 countries. The results reflect a poor female labour participation (27.2% female vs 78.8% male).

Devika (name changed), an Ad Hoc faculty who has been shifting between colleges incessantly over the past 4 years owing to her Ad Hoc status, alleged,

“Permanent appointments are not being made. The process began twice in the last couple of years but it was always stalled. Only some colleges like JMC, Stephen’s went ahead, but these are just a few names.”

This contractual appointment of Ad Hoc faculty takes place for a period of 120 days, following which a new recruitment process is kickstarted. Ad Hocs, on account of being contractual employees, are also subject to fewer benefits than the permanent faculty. These issues snowball into huge obstacles along their way, especially when women are concerned.

“It’s a lot of flux, it’s a lot of insecurity because you can never tell whether you will be retained or not in the next round of interviews and this creates a very docile workforce, you know you always have to be subservient to the principal, senior teachers and that is an unfortunate thing. Do we want to see highly qualified people who are doing research and also good at teaching to languish like this semester after semester?”

Maya John, a faculty of History at Jesus and Mary College

The situation at DU is quite bleak. According to a report by The Hindu, data collected from 34 of the 80-odd DU colleges shows that out of a total of 4,242 teachers, the proportion of permanent and ad hoc teachers is 57.35% and 42.64% respectively, a clear violation of the University Grants Commission norm of the latter not exceeding 10% of the overall staff strength. This is the pattern that the University, which has over 1,00,000 odd regular students and over 2,00,000 other students, has been following for over two decades much to the chagrin of those who aspire to get into academia.

Harassment

Namrata*, who worked as an Ad Hoc for almost a decade before finally shifting abroad, said,

“For the newly appointed ad hocs, the harassment is not limited to dealings with seniors. It can be gender based and done by students as well. The fact that we are new, not permanent and the fact that we don’t have much control gives students the impudence to treat us disrespectfully. I remember being locked up in my class during a lecture by some male students of the college, and I knew that the students inside were in on that plan. You feel ganged up on.”

Ad hocs, due to the lack of permanency, are unable to command the courtesy of the students in many cases. Students, who realise that control lies with the permanent teachers, many a times, maintain a nexus with them to further subjugate ad hocs. Namrata was frustrated at the recurrence of the pranks played on her.

Harassment often takes horrifying turns.

“Sexual harassment is rampant. From high level officials to peers in your departments who misbehave. Cases get hushed up because ad hocs are afraid to speak up. I am fed up with ICC. There is no white paper, no report. We don’t know how many cases get reported and in how many they are acting on. The committee members are permanent faculty. It makes us more subservient and does not help either the women teachers or students. We create a culture of impunity in our institutions.”

Maya John

(This is the first in the three part series on everyday struggles of women Ad Hocs in Delhi University.)

(The authors are students of journalism at IIMC, New Delhi. All 'My Report' branded stories are submitted by citizen journalists to The Quint. Though The Quint inquires into the claims/allegations from all parties before publishing, the report and the views expressed above are the citizen journalist's own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for the same.)