With all the talk about feminist theorizing, workplace reform and changing societal norms, it could be expected that much has changed for women in the workplace. But despite all the rhetoric of how ‘far’ gender reform has travelled, academic women in many instances still negotiate increasingly hostile workplace environments where the process of researching women educators is fraught with risks and dilemmas. This paper explores the discursive terrain of a regional university where I focus on two key issues. Firstly I argue that formal institutional discourses construct a symbolic figuration of the sexually neutral ‘good academic’. These discourses disguise the fact that, in this site, this figuration is more likely to fit a male body. Secondly I argue that dominant informal discourses constitute a kind of phallocentric smog that positions academic women in precise ways in relation to this symbolic figuration which, in turn, substantiates that this ‘good academic’ is indeed a male body.