Student Voices From ‘Within’: EDI, Women Students and the University of Cambridge

Abstract

A commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) can be found as a statement on the websites of most UK universities. As women have increasingly entered higher education—comprising more than 50% of the undergraduate student body—a discourse of the feminisation of higher education has been evident in media and policy responses for over a decade. This feminisation thesis assumes that women are not only now in a numerical majority but are also changing the culture of the system. From an EDI perspective, we might therefore assume that in relation to women students, at least, there is little work to be done. There is evidence, however, to query the feminisation thesis. This article contributes to the field by giving attention to the students' ‘voice’ as a valuable equity and inclusion strategy, in addition to exploring how inclusion might be understood within an elite context. Methodologically innovative, this article analyses the student press of the University of Cambridge in the year that sexual consent workshops were introduced. Drawing on the theoretical framework of ‘space’, the article will explore how students use the student press as a ‘space’ within which to draw attention to women students ‘representational’ space and the coupling of particular spaces with specific bodies. The article will argue and present evidence to demonstrate that the critique from ‘within’ challenges notions of equality, diversity and inclusion.