A Question of Membership

Abstract

Recently I was invited to be the external examiner for a PhD where the candidate was a member of staff and so had two external examiners. The other external was a man, like me a professor, and the supervisor was also a man, also a professor. We assembled in a small room to discuss the thesis and the supervisor began by asking the other external, ‘Well, how many PhDs have you examined?’ Prof X pondered for a moment and then said, ‘How many have you?’ to which the supervisor replied, ‘Four’. ‘I have examined seven’ was the response. To this the supervisor said, ‘But, if you count internal examinations, I have examined eight’. ‘I have examined seven external PhDs’ was the confident riposte. A pecking order was established and the male external examiner had announced himself as the chief cock. They didn’t ask me. They weren’t at all interested in how many PhDs I had examined. This was purely a male game and I wasn’t invited to play. Later, after the viva had taken place and when we were summing up the report I did say, ‘Actually, having examined over fifty PhDs, I would like to comment ...’ but it didn’t mean anything to either of them. I was irrelevant to their game. I could have examined five or 500 for all it mattered to them. This was a male competition. They were totally oblivious to excluding me from their power play.