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WOMEN THRIVING IN ACADEMIA
Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook
Surviving and Thriving in Academia provides short, accessible books for navigating the many challenges, responsibilities and opportunities of academic careers. The series is particularly dedicated to supporting the professional journeys of early and mid-career academics and doctoral students, but will present books of use to scholars at all stages in their careers. Books within the series draw on real-life examples from international scholars, offering practical advice and a supportive and encouraging tone throughout. Series Editor: Marian Mahat, The University of Melbourne, Australia In this series:
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Achieving Academic Promotion Edited by Marian Mahat, The University of Melbourne & Jennifer Tatebe, University of Auckland Getting the Most Out of Your Doctorate: The Importance of Supervision, Networking and Becoming a Global Academic Edited by Mollie Dollinger, La Trobe University, Australia Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development By Kay Guccione & Steve Hutchinson
Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook
WOMEN THRIVING IN ACADEMIA EDITED BY
MARIAN MAHAT
Copyright © 2021. Emerald Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
The University of Melbourne, Australia
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China
Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook
Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2021 Editorial matter and selection © Marian Mahat, individual chapters © the respective Author/s. Published by Emerald Publishing under an exclusive licence. Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Author or the publisher.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-83982-229-2 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-83982-226-1 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-83982-228-5 (Epub)
Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print
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Praise for Women Thriving in Academia
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“This is a book every early career woman in academia needs to read. The higher education landscape has been reformed in the last few decades; however, there are still hostilities, subtle and not so subtle, that need to be understood to navigate a career in this field. The book uses personal reflective narratives of women in academia to provide an account of intersecting roles of race, gender, and class. The journey to the top is full of obstacles and needs strategies such as those that are provided in the book. This book underscores the value and the importance of networks and support structures that women need to succeed in their academic careers.” –Professor Teboho Moja, New York University, USA “This little book is a veritable treasure chest, complete with a compelling foreword written by Dr Jane den Hollander, AO. The contributors show that there is no academic fairy tale for women (spoiler alert!). Instead they draw on their collective wealth of knowledge and experience to offer relatable accounts of what flourishing in academia entails and how to transform some of the gritty realities of academic life into success. Read it and learn how to navigate the snakes and ladders of academic life with nous.” –Dr Sarah Healy, The University of Melbourne, Australia
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“An empowering book that deeply reflects on gender challenges and opportunities in the contemporary academy around the world. The international, real-life examples were fascinating and serve as an inspiring read.” –Dr Maryam Aldossari, University of Edinburgh, UK
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CONTENTS About the Contributors
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Preface
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Acknowledgments
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Part 1 Personal Reflections on Women Thriving in Academia
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1. Women Thriving in Academia: Exploring the Terrain Marian Mahat
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2. Making Work Count: The Journey Toward Meaning in Academia Chin Ee Loh
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3. Legitimacy and Collegial Relationships for a Woman of Color in the Academy Zukiswa Mthimunye-Kekana
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4. Women Leading in Academia: Voices from within the Ivory Tower Marian Mahat, Rita Hardiman, Kate Howell and Iderlina Mateo-Babiano 5. Learning to Lead by Saying Yes A. Lin Goodwin
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Part 2 Support Structures for Women in Academia 6. The Power of Networks in the Gendered Academy Emily Yarrow 7. Women’s Work: Education-focused Academics in Higher Education Pauline M. Ross 8. The XCHANGE Festival: Small X, BIG CHANGE? Kate Carruthers Thomas 9. Using a Portfolio Approach to Navigate Academia Elizabeth Hartnell-Young
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Index
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10. What Now for the Modern Female Academic? Marian Mahat
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
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A. Lin Goodwin is a Professor and the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on teacher and teacher educator beliefs, identities, and development; equitable education and powerful teaching for immigrant and minoritized youth; and international analyses/ comparisons of teacher education practice and policy. Rita Hardiman has worked in higher education for over two decades, in numerous roles: academic, professional, casual, and full time. As a Melbourne Dental School Senior Lecturer, her interests include mineralized tissue research and anatomy education. Like many colleagues, she had career interruptions while creating and growing her family, and due to a lifethreatening traffic incident. Elizabeth Hartnell-Young has designed many leadership programs for women and is the co-author of Digital Portfolios: Powerful Tools for Promoting Professional Growth and Reflection (Corwin Press, 2007). She has written numerous journal articles on portfolios and technology for learning. In 2017, she co-founded Honour a Woman (www.honourawoman.com). Jane den Hollander AO was the Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University from 2010 until retirement in July 2019 and the Interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western
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About the Contributors
Australia from February to July 2020. Jane received an Order of Australia for distinguished service to tertiary education in 2017; she was awarded the Business Higher Education Round Table Ashley Goldsworthy medal for individual leadership in 2018 and in 2019 was named in the Victorian Honour Roll for Women. Kate Howell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, with research interests in yeast biology, microbial ecology, and food chemistry. She heads a research laboratory, collaborates widely to provide multidisciplinary perspectives to her research, and is the Director of Research Training for the School of Agriculture and Food.
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Chin Ee Loh is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Research) in the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests are in the area of literature education and literacy practices at the nexus of globalization and social class. You can find out more about her research at https://www.lohchinee.com. Marian Mahat is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Drawing on multiple fields of inquiry, her work focuses on student learning and outcomes in various educational contexts, innovative quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and interdisciplinary collaboration. She is series editor of Surviving and Thriving in Academia published by Emerald. Iderlina Mateo-Babiano has a background in architecture, urban planning, and transportation. She teaches urban design and place making for the built environment. Her research is concerned with improving our understanding of how people interact with place, creating challenges and opportunities for
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About the Contributors
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positive place-based change, also advancing transportation research, with theory and policy implications in Australasia. Zukiswa Mthimunye-Kekana is an Adjunct Faculty at GIBS Business School, University of Pretoria (South Africa), and a development finance professional with a focus on investment in education in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has research interests in contextual leadership, organizational development and education innovation.
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Pauline M. Ross is a Professor of Biology, Associate Dean (Education) at the University of Sydney, a National Teaching Fellow of the Office for Learning and Teaching, and a Principal Fellow of Advance HE. Pauline has led several STEM curriculum redesigns in complex and diverse contexts with multiple awards for educational excellence. Kate Carruthers Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow and Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University, UK. She specializes in interdisciplinary enquiry into contemporary higher education, inequalities, and gender and has a particular interest in spatial methods and analyses. Kate also uses research poetry and graphic social science as methods of disseminating her research (www.thinkthreeways. weebly.com). Emily Yarrow is a Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Portsmouth Business School. Emily’s research focuses on the impact of research evaluation on female academics’ careers, gendered networks, and inequality regimes. Her work contributes to understandings of gendered organizational behavior and women’s lived experiences of organizational life.
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PREFACE
I am a first-generation university graduate. My mother made sure my application to Wits in Johannesburg was correct and sent. I got a place and left a small mining town for a new life and a new world. I am what I am because of her determination that her three daughters would have better opportunities than she ever did. Many women in academia are just like me, standing on the shoulders of our mothers and grandmothers, who got us through school and to the door of a university somewhere in our world. Women Thriving in Academia is about the journey and experience after stepping through the door, with hope and optimism, to join the global academy. The joy of this collection is the personal truth telling of the authors, all different, most experiences are instantly recognizable and unsurprising to most of us. Progress has been made and we celebrate that progress, but here is the testament to the glacial pace of change in the deeper parts of our global academy, especially to the upper echelons of the ivory towers. This collection is in two sections: Part One has a range of ruthlessly truthful Personal Reflections from women across our global community – Singapore, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Australia – describing their journeys through and up the system as academic staff. The issues raised in this section include
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PhD topic selection and supervisor support as well promotion strategies and, for many, especially women of color, having to repeatedly explain and justify their right to be present and to be heard. Part Two is focused on Support Structures and Strategies and due mention is given to Athena SWAN and the progress that has been enabled under its umbrella. The focus on the nexus of equity and excellence – they are not mutually exclusive and indeed the evidence is that equitable practice begets excellence – who knew? All the essentials – how to cope with patronization, exclusion and belonging; how to gain sponsorship; and how to connect with good interested mentors – are discussed coherently and sensibly. These chapters were written on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. We must take care that women in academia do not pay a higher price than our men as we progress back to normality – there is danger that much of the progress of past decades could be undone. Insecurity is a theme through the collection, and the pandemic will add a layer of intensity for the next period, probably for some years. Casualization is a current and increasing threat. Reduced funding for research in Australia and most other countries means many will lose early career positions and will have nascent research careers stalled and, in many cases, ended. We must pay attention, find solutions, look for strategies, learn from the experiences we have here, and speak up so that the other side of this pandemic sees women still thriving and surviving. This book is a good read, relevant, personal, and optimistic. Marian Mahat deserves special mention, and congratulations to the authors who have contributed their experiences and views at this critical time in our history. I commend all women who have ambition for their futures to take note.
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Thriving in academia matters – perhaps more now than it ever has as our daughters and granddaughters take their tentative steps to the door of a career and life in a university somewhere. We must not let them down. Dr Jane den Hollander AO Hon Doc (Deakin), PhD (Wales), MSc/BSc Hons (Wits)
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the women contributors in this book. My understanding of thriving in academia has benefitted from a wide network of voices from around the world. Thank you. For our families who have stood behind us cheering on every deadline, every late night, and every time away from home, so that we can continue to thrive. Thank you. For the two women in my life – my mum who inspires me to thrive regardless of what life throws at me and my daughter who moves me to thrive not only as a mum and as an academic but also as a person. Thank you.
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Marian Mahat
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PART 1 PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON WOMEN THRIVING IN ACADEMIA
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1 WOMEN THRIVING IN ACADEMIA: EXPLORING THE TERRAIN Marian Mahat
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INTRODUCTION Drawing on a rich array of research literature, many scholars have argued the importance of bridging the gap between men and women in leadership and management. Particularly in a male-dominated (and Anglo-Saxon) higher education sector, this has not been an easy endeavor. Overt and subtle forms of adversity abound, which lead to discouragement and pessimism for many women academics. Understanding the differing systems of values and being open to the opportunities that can move higher education institutions beyond the constraints that have held highly competent women back for far too long, this chapter provides profiles of academics that link challenges and opportunities in higher education, leadership and management, and gender studies. It is hoped that these narratives and the stories they tell can help empower women academics to thrive in academia.
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THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY Betty’s Stor y
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Betty’s full-time employment at the University began with a lecturing role in the Department of Psychiatry in 1980 while she was completing a PhD. She continued to hold an appointment in Psychiatry until 2012 where she was promoted to Professor in 1998 and then took on leadership roles that included Head of the School and President of the Academic Board. For the first twenty years of her academic life, Betty felt that she needed to stay ‘local’ and provide the much-needed stability for her two school-aged children. Now that they are older and have families and responsibilities of their own, she feels like she can be more mobile but thinks it is too late for her career progression.
Veronica’s Stor y Veronica worked as a teacher and then principal for fifteen years before she decided to complete a PhD in education. She is passionate about educational leadership and in helping others lead schools and school systems. As a mature-aged student, she grappled with the ‘loss of income’ and ‘security’ of a full-time role. Upon completion of her PhD and not being able to secure an academic role, she embarked on multiple sessional teaching roles, research assistant roles and undertaking consultancies at the side. Now fifth year post-PhD, she has more work
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than she could ever undertake and have the luxury of choosing what she works on. However, due to the precarity of the profession, she sometimes wonder whether she has made the right move going into academia. Consider the profiles of the two academic women. One began her academic work early on in her career and the other as a mature age student. Both have reasonable success but grapple with opportunities for career progression and stability. Your story may not sit in either but possibly has commonalities of experiences that every woman grapples with. Every story is different, and we have come to appreciate that one size clearly does not fit all in academia – not along a single pipeline or in the same pace. It is how you navigate the many different paths through academia that is important. Your story is important. There are many good and wonderful things about embarking on an academic career. As an academic, you have the freedom and autonomy to determine what you want to research (things that you are passionate about). You are free to choose how you spend your time. For the most part, your hours are not being tied to the standard 9-to-5 work hours, which allows you to spend your time on the things where they can add the most value. You have an opportunity to have a long-term impact, not only in research and knowledge creation but also in teaching and helping students succeed in their careers and professional development. Opportunities to travel (going to places you have never been before), making lifelong friends with similar passion, and opportunities to meet scholars whose work you teach or research you emulate are perks that come with the job. At the same time, there are characteristics of an academic career that make it particularly challenging. As an academic,
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you must fulfill multiple roles – teaching and learning, research and research training, engagement and impact, and leadership and service both to the university and to the profession – that increase the level of demand. While the longterm impact of your work can be fulfilling, it also leads to what Weick (1970) calls high overload – the academic goes through long periods before outputs materialize, from doing field work to writing a book. As an academic, you are also supposed to be an expert in your field. There is pressure, therefore, always to appear knowledgeable and to never to have to ask for help, which increases the psychological demands on you. “Imposter syndrome” – a psychological pattern in which you doubt your own accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud” – is real in academia. While there is flexibility in terms of where and when you work, this is also harder to preserve as you maintain relationships and family time. While it is challenging for any individual to navigate and thrive in academia, it is tougher as a woman. Despite considerable progress over the last few decades, barriers to women’s academic careers persist. Among salient factors that are well documented in the literature, there is this constant pressure to prove your competence, to prove that you belong, to prove that you are serious about your scholarship (and not just interested in teaching or service), and to prove that you can be a good leader. We have much to learn from women academics as they provide tangible evidence of how it is to really “thrive in academia.”
EXPLORING THE TERRAIN Let us stop for a minute to reflect on the term “thrive.” The word “thrive” is derived from the Old Norse word thrifask,
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meaning “to grasp or get hold of.” To “thrive” is to “increase or grow.” It is used synonymously with positive terms like “prosper” and “flourish.”1 In this current context, thrive can be seen as an intransitive verb to mean “to progress toward or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances.” It is intransitive because it is not used with a direct object – it does not answer what? or whom?, rather it answers a question like where, when?, how?, or how long?.2 Thriving in this context also involves resilience in overcoming obstacles and barriers. It involves evolution in practices and growth in mindsets. It is temporal – not a moment in time. It involves learning, unlearning, and relearning. It involves ongoing personal and professional development. It involves making explicit meaningful and relevant academic work regardless of contexts.
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Matthew’s Stor y Matthew is a Research Fellow and a Data Scientist at a Faculty of Education. He completed his PhD in 2016 under the supervision of a renowned academic in Informatics and Computer Science. As a result of various successful research grants received by his supervisor, Matthew was able to work on multiple projects and published as part of a large research team. In 2018, two-years post-PhD, he applied for a senior role at another university. Using this application as leverage, he was promoted to Senior Research Fellow at his current University without having to go through an academic promotion process. He continues to thrive, now serving as Deputy Director of a Research Hub in the Faculty.
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Matilda’s Stor y
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Matilda is a Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics. Since the completion of her PhD in 2011, she has received numerous awards and accolades, and contributes to leadership and service in various institutional committees. In 2018, her department embarked on a global search to appoint a senior academic known for research in this area. After failing to recruit someone for the role, Matilda, through the urging of colleagues, put herself forward as a possible candidate for the role – someone with extensive evidence of research leadership and service to the institution. She was eventually offered the position, a recognition of her contributions to academia, but went through a long drawn-out process to negotiate a contract with the University. She continues to thrive, now serving as Deputy Director of the Centre. Consider the profiles of these two academics. Both have reasonable success in their academic work except that Matthew seemed to have gotten “there” faster than Matilda. This phenomenon can be described in the New Testament which reads, “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath” (Matthew 25:29). There are two components to this verse: the first, aptly coined by Merton (1968) as the “Matthew effect” refers to “the overrecognition of those at the top of the scientific profession” (Rossiter, 1993, p. 326); and the second, coined by Rossiter (1993), in memory of American Martha J. Cage, as the “Matilda effect” refers to the “systematic under-recognition
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[of women’s work]” (Rossiter, 1993, p. 337). Both Matthew’s and Matilda’s profiles above may not exactly meet the glorification of men’s work or discrediting of women’s work, but they show in some ways some of the prejudices occurring in the academic workplace. Small biases lead to big biases, and it is in this alone that these “M&M” effects unravel like a self-fulfilling prophecy – an individual’s expectations about another person or group of individuals eventually result in the other person or group acting in ways that confirm the expectations. At an individual level, overstating someone’s achievements tends to strengthen their self-esteem, in the same way that undermining someone’s achievements tends to weaken their self-esteem. These lead to significant impacts on future performances, which in turn justifies the initial recognition or neglect. This perpetuates at the collective level. Universities provide remarkable examples of precarious workplaces of gender bias, and challenges for women in academia are well documented in the literature. Many of the challenges are familiar and translate into institutional barriers such as the lack of clarity or consistency in promotion and tenure expectations, a lack of mentoring by senior faculty, expectations for excessive service, and devaluing of research interests and scholarly work; cultural barriers such as isolation and lack of community; and personal barriers such as balancing work and family demands, role overload, and the need for increased skills, without the necessary mentoring, for time and priority management (Boyd, Caraway, & Flores Niemann, 2017, p. 47). Yet the undercurrent is reassuringly positive – see the profiles of Matilda, Veronica, and Betty as examples – these challenges, somehow and in a variety of big and small ways, have been managed and negotiated – women have thrived in academia.
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STRATEGIES FOR THRIVING Lucy’s Stor y
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Lucy is an Associate Professor in Corporate Governance and Regulation and has held appointments in renowned institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as adjunct, visiting and honorary appointments in Canada and the United States. She has a stellar career with significant research outputs and delivers keynote speeches all around the world. Unbeknown to most of her colleagues, Lucy suffers from multiple sclerosis. She uses many strategies – lifestyle ones to manage her condition, and institutional strategies to manage her work-life balance. She has to – in order to ensure that she has success in life and at work. In 2019, she was promoted to Professor, a recognition of her strong research leadership. Still only a handful of people know of her condition. Sally’s Stor y Sally is a Lecturer in the School of Language and Linguistics although she completed her doctorate in strategic leadership in the School of Business and Economics. She is an “accidental” academic in Language and Linguistics because of her interests and proficiency in languages, but continues to dabble in projects in leadership and management. She is a prolific writer and in addition to her scholarly research, maintains a blog site about language in the workplace – a site that she feels espouses her interests
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in leadership and languages. She attends networking events and takes part in professional development programs for early career academics. Sally is quietly confident that she is ticking all the “academic boxes” but feels that she does not a have a coherent academic career narrative. As a result, she lacks the confidence in pursuing an academic promotion. Consider here the profiles of Lucy and Sally. Again, both experience success in their academic work. Lucy and Sally consider both personal and institutional strategies to help them navigate their academic work. Strategies are aplenty in academia – some are institutionalized within academia, some are anecdotal, and others provide critical evidence of success. But what are these strategies meant to achieve for a woman in academia? Are we seeking equality for women – where everyone in academia, regardless of gender, creed, and background, is treated in the same way, without giving any due consideration of their individual needs and requirements? Are we seeking equity, where we develop specific strategies and build bespoke tools to identify and address the inequality? Or indeed perhaps we are seeking justice, i.e., fixing the system to offer equal access to strategies, tools, and opportunities. The raison d’etre is important, as is the vision. But while senior university executives may have a vision of what it is they like to achieve, what they fall short of is the execution of that vision. When it comes to executing strategy, the old saying “the devil is in the details” holds true for many universities (Hrebiniak, 2013). At the individual level, the same applies. If you are clear about what it is you want to achieve, if you have a vision of the academic you want to be, the detail is in the execution. There is no one right way to thrive in academia. Under the right circumstances, you know you are capable of great things.
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With the right ingredients, you can accomplish incredible things. All you need to do is transform yourself into the academic you want to be – it is a journey of self-discovery. What works best for you is for you only.
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CONCLUSION For many centuries, women academics have thrived regardless of the system (perceived or otherwise), the rules (written and unwritten), and the challenges and barriers (acknowledged or not) in academia. Women have developed the capacity to perceive their personal and professional life through a lens of possibilities, opportunities, and prospects, rather than through a filter of obstacles and limitations. Women who have thrived in academia look for why things can transpire, not on why they cannot. They have developed the ability to be present to what is happening in the moment, rather than agonizing about the future or musing over the past. Drawing on philosophies of positive psychology, the conceptions of thriving can be understood from a strength-based perspective (Benson & Scales, 2009). The academic profiles of women illustrated in this chapter are semi-true biographies, gathered from multiple sources and with embellishment to preserve anonymity and privacy. I know that they resonate with many –– across disciplinary boundaries and contexts – who are navigating the academic landscape. Similarly, the chapters in this book, individually and collectively, provide a strength-based perspective focusing on the inherent strengths and capabilities of academic women who can transform the lives of individuals in positive ways. The narratives in each chapter seek to deploy personal strengths to support and encourage empowerment and growth. They provide strength-based ruminations of leadership and management
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and gender issues that are current and valid in academia today. Despite the daunting social, cultural, and historical complexities and academic contexts, these stories provide evidence that women can and will continue to thrive in academia. NOTES 1. See website: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/thrive. 2. See website: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thrive? utm_campaign5sd&utm_medium5serp&utm_source5jsonld.
REFERENCES
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Benson, P. L., & Scales, P. C. (2009). The definition and preliminary measurement of thriving in adolescence. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(1), 85–104. Boyd, B., Caraway, S. J., & Flores Niemann, Y. (2017). Surviving and thriving in academia: A guide for members of marginalized groups. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/ resources/brochures/surviving.pdf. Accessed on July 1, 2020. Hrebiniak, L. G. (2013). Making strategy work: Leading effective execution and change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press. Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science: The reward and communication systems of science are considered. Science, 159(3810), 56–63. Rossiter, M. W. (1993). The Matthew Matilda effect in science. Social Studies of Science, 23(2), 325–341. Weick, K. E. (1970). The twigging of overload. In H. B. Pepinsky (Ed.), People and information (pp. 67–131). New York, NY: Pergamom Press.
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2 MAKING WORK COUNT: THE JOURNEY TOWARD MEANING IN ACADEMIA Chin Ee Loh
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INTRODUCTION This chapter is, unfortunately, not a story of determined ambition, grit, and single-minded focus on the goal of obtaining tenure within a short period of time. It is, however, the story of how I negotiated the road toward tenure, making decisions along the way that prioritized my family, my passion, and my teaching while managing the demands of scholarly research and writing. Scholarly work is draconian, demanding full immersion in the work but then, so is parenthood. Much of my personal struggle was about how I could be both a good mother, scholar and teacher while meeting the time pressures of the tenure system, a situation shared by many female academics. I do not assume that my stories are shared by all female academics but provide one narrative that may resonate with some. More practically,
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I hope the tips about how I came to make my work count for me personally as well as for university tenure standards will be useful, making the path clearer for those who embark on a similar academic journey. I was fortunate to begin my career at a time in my institution when there was a longer runway for an Assistant Professor to make Associate Professor with tenure. That gave me more time to learn the ropes and discover through trial and error how best to balance the demands of the university with my own personal goals. The constant re-evaluation, what ¨ (1991) calls “reflection in action,” was and remains Schon necessary for me to reaffirm, modify, or reframe my work in the course of my career to ensure that I was daily engaged in meaningful work that counted personally and by the university’s standards. In my early days as an Assistant Professor, I tended to make a clear distinction between my teaching, service, and scholarly work, seeing them as contradictory pulls on my time. However, along the way, I have come to realize that the best way to grow myself and contribute to education and society is to ensure the integration of my scholarship, teaching, and service in my area of expertise. Today, my younger colleagues feel far more time pressure to meet promotion criteria and may not have the same luxury for self-discovery. In this chapter, I share what I have learnt along the way, in the hope that others will benefit from these insights. The four guiding principles that structure my chapter are as follows: 1. Have conversations with others 2. Do not be afraid to fail 3. Dictate your own goals, pursue your passions 4. Constantly reconsider your priorities
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HAVE CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHERS In academia, it is easy to feel alone, particularly if your colleagues in your university do not share the same areas of interest. It is important to build a community, whether within the university or across institutions and borders, to facilitate conversations to encourage and learn from each other. It is perhaps more commonly known as networking, but I prefer the concept of dialogue to emphasize the point of making such connections. We are experts in our own areas but seek to learn from each other through our conversations. When one starts out as junior faculty in an institution, it is easy to be intimidated by the many experts who are your colleagues. However, I have found that there are many senior faculty who are willing to share and to informally mentor younger colleagues. Some reached out to me by inviting me for lunch. These gestures are appreciated, and I often learn much about scholarship, teaching, and academia from these informal gatherings. Other colleagues may not lunch with you but are more than willing to give you their time to provide advice, read your writing, and give critical, honest, and friendly feedback. Have conversations with female colleagues who may not share your area of research but have gone through a similar stage in their life experiences with their work and family as they will have ideas and suggestions for how to better manage work–life balance. These support structures are vital because it is the presence of such colleagues, who often become friends, that encourage and motivate. One of the most daunting tasks for junior faculty is the publication of a scholarly book. While I had edited a university text and a poetry anthology as a resource for schools in my early days at the university, it took me a while before I ventured to think about publishing a scholarly book. I was fortunate that a senior colleague encouraged me and even
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provided critical commentary on my book proposal so I could improve on it. Later, after I had completed writing my drafts of various chapters, I approached three senior faculty working in literacy education to read different chapters of my book and provide critical feedback so I could improve. My colleagues were very gracious to extend their time to help me. The only thing I had to do was ask. Their feedback took some pressure off me as I knew I could rely on their honest and critical feedback to do a better job. It is not just the colleagues within our department or university who are happy to help. I like to think of myself as being part of an international, interdisciplinary team who support each other, build conversations, and develop research around related areas. I have collaborated with visual ethnographers, architects, linguists, librarians, and literacy scholars and educators from Australia, the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. These partnerships have enriched my knowledge and growth. While we may meet other scholars and educators at conferences, we can also email colleagues whose work resonate with ours. I am often pleasantly surprised by how colleagues whom I have not met respond with advice, feedback, and a willingness to dialogue. I have invited some of these colleagues to Singapore as consultants or speakers. I have also had the opportunity to visit their campus to share about my work. These international conversations can be continued through online platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Finally, as a teacher educator, keeping close to schools and stakeholders is important for understanding the needs of the education system. My research is made meaningful when I share them with educators, and the findings are put to good use. Conversations can occur during lunches and informal conversations in school cafeterias during research visits,
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invited talks to schools and at national conferences, and when teaching and conducting workshops. I would encourage colleagues to generate and maintain open dialogue with colleagues, peers, and academics from their own and other disciplines as these interactions encourage collaboration and growth. Academia is not about locking oneself in an ivory tower to read about the latest research. We require solitude for writing, but we need to engage in dialogue to fine-tune our understanding of the world and our work.
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DO NOT BE AFRAID TO FAIL The first thing I had to learn as a doctoral candidate was how to deal with rejection. I remember writing a term paper that one of my professors said was “good enough to be published,” so I sent it to a Tier 1 journal. It was rejected after my first revision, and I felt so dejected that I did not try to rework the paper (it still sits in a folder in my storage, the data too dated and my interest too weak for the article to be revived). However, I have since learnt that rejection is part and parcel of academia and that feedback can only improve your paper. I appreciate the detailed feedback from experienced reviewers whose comments help shape my understanding of how a particular paper may fit into a field and/or journal. A senior colleague once told me that he would put a rejection aside and return to the paper again a few weeks later to reconsider whether to rework it for the journal or submit it elsewhere. I have taken this good advice and have tried not to give up on any of the papers I started working on. Rather than take the perspective that my work is poor because it has been rejected by one journal, I see a rejection as an opportunity to develop the paper further and find a more suitable home for it. Often,
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reviewers would give very clear and insightful feedback that can redirect and help improve the original paper. Some of the toptier journals review a potential manuscript internally and provide feedback for improvement before sending it out to external reviewers. I was fortunate to experience that with one of my earlier post-dissertation manuscripts (Loh, 2013), which I sent to Anthropology & Education Quarterly. The detailed feedback from the internal reviewers really made a difference to the quality of the manuscript I submitted for external review. I have also learnt to be more circumspect yet adventurous about the journals I publish in. I am more circumspect in that I scrutinize the journal’s aims carefully, reading articles published in the journal to ensure a good fit with my proposed manuscript before starting work on my paper. I am more adventurous in that I am more open to publishing in journals I did not consider in my earlier days, largely because my research has become more interdisciplinary in its approach and I have become more confident in my evaluation of where I want to publish my work. I constantly evaluate my publications to ensure I have a number in both scholarly and practitioner-oriented journals. I choose to publish in practitioner-oriented journals to communicate with educators I work with. These practitioneroriented journals are often most significant for policymakers, schools, and educators as these journals allow them to understand the research for practical implementation in their local contexts. The translation of my research to actual school contexts makes my work meaningful because I can see how it benefits teachers and students. My doctoral supervisor, from the State University of New York, Albany, gave me the following piece of advice that I have carried with me: “don’t throw away research you have done but keep it well-filed and labelled.” For example, in
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2015, I started on a literature review of Bourdieu’s cultural capital, habitus, and field, but did not write the review due to a heavy teaching and research workload. However, I was later able to revive my literature review, update the literature, and use it together with my project data for a journal article (Loh & Sun, 2020). I am often pleasantly surprised to find that I have already done some work previously when starting on a project or a piece of writing. Grant writing is another area where academics have to learn to deal with rejections. While grants may be more important for some fields than others, universities often place significant emphasis on faculty obtaining research and teaching grants for their work. I did obtain a few grants in my earlier years but learnt along the way that it was not necessarily the grant quantum that made a difference to my research and work. While large-scale research grants afford manpower and technology support to conduct research, a small planning grant providing money for part-time staff may be sufficient for writing a literature review or conducting a pilot study as a precursor to a larger grant. In fact, one crucial factor for the successful use of grant monies is how one uses the grant to put together a research team. I have hired students who are willing to work to learn, and they are by far the best research assistants for any project because they are driven by intrinsic interest. I also find great synergy working with researchers who are invested in the field and who are willing to put time aside to learn together. Similar to writing for publication, one should not be put off by a failure to obtain a grant but analyze the reasons and improve the grant proposal for the next application. I know of quite a few colleagues who failed in their first grant application but succeeded in the second application. A failure just means that we should examine the grant objectives more
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carefully and ensure alignment between the project aims and grant objectives. Finally, we learn by immersing ourselves in scholarly communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). As part of my scholarly service, I serve as a reviewer for conferences, peerreviewed journal articles, and book proposals. I have also supported my department by organizing conferences, as a convener or member of a team. I am also Book Review Editor and Associate Editor of Pedagogies. As an editor, I attend meetings and updates organized by the publisher, Taylor and Francis, which have helped shape my understanding of the publishing field and informed some of my choices about where and how to publish.
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DICTATE YOUR OWN GOALS, PURSUE YOUR PASSION As mentioned earlier, I wanted to do my PhD because I wanted to work with teachers as a teacher educator and find ways to improve our education system. When I first returned to Singapore as an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education (NIE), I felt a pressing need to support educators with resources that would help them with their teaching of Literature. In Singapore, English language and Literature in English are taught as two separate subjects. I had been awarded an Overseas Graduate Scholarship by NIE to pursue Literature curriculum and instruction and felt compelled to create resources that would support the preservice literature teachers I taught. I initiated a co-edited university text, Teaching Literature in Singapore Secondary Schools (Loh, Yeo, & Liew, 2013), which was the first university text targeted for Singapore literature teachers and provided a useful
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view of the Literature teaching and learning landscape. I also initiated a National Arts Council supported poetry anthology, Little Things (Loh, Poon, & Vincent, 2013a), and an accompanying teachers’ guide (Loh, Poon, & Vincent, 2013b) to support the teaching of poetry in Singapore. However, I only realized I really wanted to focus on reading rather than just literature when I conducted a study in one Singapore secondary school based on findings of my dissertation study (Loh, 2015). I do not regret the earlier resources I had initiated with my colleagues as they fulfilled my desire to create resources to help teachers. I still continue to develop such resources as they are ways to practically translate what I have learnt from research into practical applications for teachers and students. However, I would advise younger faculty with a shorter runway to consider how to be more focused in figuring out their research identity in the early stages of their career. Being able to articulate your research identity clearly allows you to focus your energy and resources more strategically. Upon reflection, I realized that my interest in reading had always been driven by the need to understand how to help disadvantaged students learn to read better, and that social class figured strongly in my research, even in my dissertation study (Loh, 2016). Knowing very clearly that there was a need in Singapore to do research that could help the disadvantaged and identifying the problematic spaces energized me to spend more time on my research. I then learnt to integrate my teaching, research, and service so I could be more focused in the way I approached these three areas of academia. For example, I took on the challenge to teach a Masters course on reading and worked with my other colleagues to lessen my teaching load for Literature education modules. Teaching about reading ensured I constantly revised my materials and current research, and I was able to share my
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research when teaching. While it is not always possible to ensure a 100% fit for one’s teaching and research, ensuring that some of our teaching align with our research helps to fuel the passion and make connections between the different segments of our academic life. After my study, I spent a good year “evangelizing” to the people I felt needed to know about the gap between our ambitious reading aims, social inequity, and the role of school libraries in plugging that gap. I wrote my first opinion paper in the national broadsheet, The Straits Times (Loh, 2014), and connected with relevant stakeholders such as the National Library Board and Ministry of Education to share my findings. It helped that there was a renewed emphasis on reading at that time, with the launch of the Singapore Reading Movement (Salleh, 2016), and my findings struck a chord with the various institutions I approached. Later, these individuals from these institutions would be my collaborators in my Building a Reading Culture study. Thus, much of the work I do as an education researcher is outside the university, with stakeholders who share my passion and support my work. It is a symbiotic relationship as the stakeholders learn about the research findings, which inform their policy directions, and I get critical feedback about the important needs on the ground. Negotiating university demands with one’s personal goals for research and teaching is vital for making work meaningful. I had started work in a climate where scholarly publications counted most, but I personally believed that my work would only count if it had real-world impact, whether at the level of policy or practice. As a former teacher and current teacher educator, I wanted to ensure that the research I did would be perceived by educators as something they could apply immediately in their sphere of influence, whether at policy or practice level. Thus, I took care to ensure that the study
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findings were disseminated to the public and educators as well as through the more typical scholarly route of journal publications. Sending my work to journals for peer-review ensures the soundness of my research within the wider international scholarly community, while focusing on effective research communication expands the reach of the research in complementary ways. I knew that successful educational innovation only occurs when there is both top-down and bottom-up buy-in (Looi & Teh, 2015). To achieve my goal of influencing policymakers and educators, I spent time on creating outreach documents such as public-friendly reports (e.g., see Report on Reading Habits of Singapore Teenagers, Loh & Sun, 2018), sharing with policymakers in the Singapore Ministry of Education and the National Library Board, and organizing roundtables where we report on key findings along the way, rather than at the end of the study. The Office of Education Research (OER) at NIE also supported my work by providing resources to record the roundtables and create a video, which were then disseminated through the OER YouTube channel and my project website. At the same time, I ran workshops for teachers and spoke at national keynotes for English teachers and library coordinators so they would be aware of the research findings and implement them at ground level. I evaluated the success of my research not just by the number of articles or books published but by the actual impact on policy and practice. More recently, this need for impact at a real-world level is being recognized at international levels. For example, the Research Excellence Framework in the United Kingdom assesses higher education institutions’ research quality through three factors: quality of outputs, impact beyond academia, and the environment that supports research (REF, 2020). What counts as impact beyond academia might differ
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for different fields (e.g., public service, intellectual project rights, and development of useable vaccines), but it is certainly important to determine what counts as impact beyond one’s academic and scholarly pursuits and to devote some time to ensuring your research is communicated to stakeholders for greater impact. Being clear about goals of your research contributes to your sense of purpose and helps to shape your priorities for making your work meaningful to yourself and your community.
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CONSTANTLY RECONSIDER YOUR PRIORITIES I recently listened to a Freakonomics podcast titled How to Be More Productive,1 where Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better, mentioned the importance of having stretch goals to get beyond your own current capabilities and performances, along with more practical specific measurable goals to get to the stretch goal. It was interesting to me as I realized that I had been doing just that, at least since I figured out I really wanted to make a change in the area of reading and school libraries. To help me visualize my research direction, I had created a table in a word document where I systematically noted down possible writing goals, dissemination goals, and follow-up grant goals. I examined the table every six months, noted goals met, and revised goals that had shifted, sometimes based on new knowledge and new directions. These goals met both my personal and academic commitments. While deadlines were necessary, I was willing to be flexible to shift certain goalposts to meet more pressing needs. I also had a notebook where I constantly penned down my ideas and revised my shorter term goals.
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My personal and research goals shift depending on the season of my life. Family comes first and then meaningful work followed by other work. I make a distinction between meaningful work that contributes significantly to my research, teaching, and service in ways I find rewarding and other work that is more administrative in nature, which I may not like but have to do. I have found it simultaneously easier and more difficult to manage work–life balance as my children grow up – while I no longer need to change diapers and entertain active toddlers, my primary school–going children still need my attention and time to listen to them and grow with them. I remind myself that I do my work because I want my children to grow up in a world where other people’s children matter, but I should not, in that process, forget to spend time with my own children. Because family is most important, I have had to constantly find creative ways to ensure I spend enough time with my family. I block out time for my husband and children because it is very likely a workaholic like me will spend every possible minute thinking about and doing my work. One rule I have more or less successfully managed to maintain in recent years is to avoid checking my emails on weekends, as far as possible. One of my mentors who is herself a well-known and published academic gave me valuable advice – spend time with your children, but let them know when you have an important piece of writing. Do everything to focus on that writing for a period of time but get back to your family after that. To do that, family support is vital. Communicate to the people around you when you need time to work so they can leave you to focus on your work. But return the time by dedicating time to the family. For example, when I am on holiday with my family, I make it a priority to not bring my work with me. With the
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coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and a default work from home situation, I have found it harder to tear myself away from my work. Thus, setting aside dedicated time for the family on a daily basis becomes imperative. Another thing I have learnt to do is to prioritize time for writing. Unlike some colleagues for whom writing seems to be a breeze, I find writing hard work and need a lot of time to get into the rhythm of a piece. Some practices I have set for myself include blocking out writing time on my calendar, devoting at least two days a week for writing (during which I try very hard not to check my emails until the late morning), and working with colleagues to organize my teaching in such a way that I get “breaks” for writing. For example, I may try to overload one semester with more teaching in order to have longer unbroken periods for writing in another semester. If you are fortunate enough to have a research grant, ensure you have a research team with individuals who complement your strengths and weaknesses to support your project needs. Different research assistants have different strengths: some are better at literature searches and reviews, some are good with people and interview well, and some are administrative angels. While this may seem like common sense, I have encountered research staff who did not match the team’s needs. Email colleagues who have worked with the applicants to find out about the potential research assistant’s strengths and weaknesses to better help you establish the person’s suitability for your team. If it is not your university’s protocol, invite an experienced colleague or research team member to join you in the interview for another opinion. Sit down with team members and set goals with them, helping them grow even as they help you with the research.
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Finally, learn to say no. Having a clear focus and research identity was helpful in guiding my choices as more and more things piled up. For example, as my work in reading and school libraries became more visible, I received many invitations to speak at schools and public events. However, I also received many invitations to share about literature education. To cope, I told myself one year to say “yes” to reading-related things and “no” to literature-related things. Since I had many colleagues working on literature education in my institution and nobody working on school libraries, I figured out it was best if I concentrated that specific year on my reading and school library research. It made sense, and it helped me not to become overwhelmed. As educators, we often feel compelled to help out whenever and wherever we can, but there is a need to ensure enough space for reflection, creative work, and personal time.
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CONCLUSION Contexts change as do indicators of success with time and experience. How our work counts and is made meaningful also shifts across time, though more often than not, some fundamentals will stay the same. For myself, it is important that I do educational research that identifies problems and works toward improving literacy access for disadvantaged students. Understanding that central goal helps me to determine which aspect of my work is primary and which is secondary in order to organize my time around things that really matter. Ultimately, it is crucial to set your own measures for success and evaluate your achievements against your personal goals as well as the university goals in order to make your work count in different ways.
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NOTES 1. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-more-productive/.
REFERENCES Loh, C. E. (2013). Singaporean boys constructing global literate selves through their reading practices in and out of school. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 44(1), 38–57. Loh, C. E. (2014, June 3). School libraries levelling playing field. The Straits Times. Retrieved from https://www. straitstimes.com/opinion/school-libraries-levelling-playingfield
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Loh, C. E. (2015). Building a reading culture in a Singapore school: Identifying spaces for change through a sociospatial approach. Changing English, 22(2), 209–221. Loh, C. E. (2016). Levelling the reading gap: A socio-spatial study of school libraries and reading in Singapore. Literacy, 50(1), 3–13. doi:10.1111/lit.12067 Loh, C. E., Poon, A., & Vincent, E. (2013a). Little things: An anthology of poetry. Singapore: Ethos Books. Loh, C. E., Poon, A., & Vincent, E. (2013b). Teaching poetry to adolescents: A teachers’ guide for little things. Singapore: Ethos. Loh, C. E., & Sun, B. (2018). Report on the reading habits of Singapore teenagers. Singapore: Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University.
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Loh, C. E., & Sun, B. (2020). Cultural capital, habitus and reading futures: Middle-class adolescent students’ cultivation of reading dispositions in Singapore. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41(2), 234–252. Loh, C. E., Yeo, D., & Liew, W. M. (2013). Teaching literature in Singapore secondary schools. Singapore: Pearson. Looi, C.-K., & Teh, L. W. (2015). Towards critical discussions of scaling up educational innovations. In C.-K. Looi & L. W. Teh (Eds.), Scaling educational innovations (pp. 13–30). Singapore: Springer. REF. (2020). Research excellence framework 2021. Retrieved from https://www.ref.ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/
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Salleh, N. A. M. (2016, April 11). Parliament: First national reading day to be held on July 30 to help nurture love of books. The Straits Times. Retrieved from http:// www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/parliament-first-nationalreading-day-to-be-held-on-july-30-to-help-nurture-love-of ¨ D. A. (1991). The reflective turn: Case studies in and Schon, on educational practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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3 LEGITIMACY AND COLLEGIAL RELATIONSHIPS FOR A WOMAN OF COLOR IN THE ACADEMY Zukiswa Mthimunye-Kekana
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INTRODUCTION South Africa, a 24-year-old democracy, is a nation of 58.7 million people, 80% of whom are people of color (StatsSA, 2019) or “Black,” which incorporates Black African, colored, and Indian people according to the Broad-Based Black Economic Act of 2013. Economic and social transformation remains a critical agenda as the country continues to redress the historical injustices of the apartheid system. The task of transformation permeates across various sectors of society, not least of which are higher education institutions (HEIs), where inequitable distribution of students and staff remains in spite of the strides made since 1994 (CHE, 2000). To systematically transform HEIs requires deliberate replacement of racial discrimination cultures with more inclusive and democratic
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institutional cultures, particularly in Previously White Institutions (PWIs), to be replaced by more inclusive, democratic institutional cultures (Akoojee & Nkomo, 2007). In 2016, Black Africans only accounted for 1.7% of doctoral enrollments nationally (DHET, 2019). By contrast, women made up 58% of doctoral enrollments. Yet, less than a third of professorial positions at the top HEIs in South Africa are occupied by Black Africans, compared to more than 50% representation of Black faculty in junior lecturing roles at these institutions. Similarly, women still make up only 26.4% of all professorships (HEDA, 2015). These trends indicate, firstly, that the pipeline for Black female talent remains limited in spite of progress in enrollment rates. Secondly, the poor promotion rates from junior lecturer to full professorship for Black female academics are indicative of a lack of urgency for transformation in the academy. The pace of deracialization processes in HEIs is concerningly slow (Kessi & Cornell, 2015; Kiguwa, 2014). HEIs have a strategic imperative to invest extensively in building inclusive, enabling environments that attract and retain underrepresented students and academics of color. It is concerning, therefore, that one of the prominent debates that still surfaces in South African HEIs is that centered on the perceived tension between transformation and quality (Breetzke & Hedding, 2016) – the idea that racial and gender transformation equates to decline in education quality. The underlying assumption in this debate is that equity and quality (principally measured by institutional integrity and international competitiveness) are inherently at odds with each other. The documented experiences of Prof. Mamokgethi Phakeng, the first Black female Vice-Chancellor and Principal (equivalent of a President) of the University of Cape Town in
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2018 (M&G, 2017), are an example of this misconception. Phakeng’s academic qualifications and scholarship were called into question upon her nomination for the Vice-Chancellor role, notably by prominent members of the university’s own academic community. In this chapter, I use the accounting framework of organizational legitimacy to explore how the social contract between South African PWIs and society on transformation influences the experiences of exclusion and questioned legitimacy among women of color in the academy. I adopt Dowling and Pfeffer’s (1975, p. 122) definition of legitimacy as:
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… a condition or status which exists when an entity’s value system is congruent with the value system of the larger social system of which the entity is a part. When a disparity, actual or potential, exists between the two value systems, there is a threat to the entity’s legitimacy. My intention in this autoethnographic narrative is to interrogate, make sense of, interpret, and narrate (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000) my observations of the phenomenon of legitimacy in HEIs in South Africa. I describe my experiences of incongruency between the high value for my blackness and gender in South African HEIs and the questions of quality and legitimacy my identity and presence have attracted. Maseti (2018, p. 345) describes autoethnography as especially meaningful in race and identity narratives such as this one because “… it is an empowering and healing discourse that allows the emancipated to represent their own story as they experienced it, using their own voice.” This method is personal, empowering, and attempts to persuade women of color that there are mechanisms by which we can be supported to thrive in the academy.
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Zukiswa Mthimunye-Kekana
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RACE, BLACKNESS, AND GENDER I grew up in the latter decade of the apartheid regime in South Africa. I learnt at an early age that I was Black. I have a vivid memory of the day I truly learnt what it meant to be Black, and that this was problematic in most social spaces outside of the safety of my family home, and the Black community of Soweto, Johannesburg. I was about 10 years old, on the playground of a majority white school where I was among the minority Black children who were admitted to the school on a generous scholarship. Most of us came from surrounding townships. In a typical playground disagreement, a peer confidently let my friends and I know that we had no right to use a piece of sport equipment on the field because his parents were paying for us to be there, and we would not be there were it not for this generosity. What stayed with me from that day was the notion that I was different and only belonged by virtue of the white people who “let me” attend the school. My experience of whiteness and specifically white males is equally vivid. Until the age of seven years, I had not traveled to the inner city of Johannesburg. On this first trip, I saw a white child in person for the very first time, and, as my mother jokingly tells the story now, it was a sight to behold to my unwise eyes. The only white people I had encountered till that day were the armed military officials and policemen who patrolled the streets of Soweto day and night. Today, in my adulthood, white males still exist in my consciousness first and foremost in a place of fear, assumed and unquestioned authority, and power. It has taken me many years in my professional experience to learn to confidently look a white man in the eyes when conversing with him. In my childhood, I had learnt to avoid locking eyes with white men to steer clear of trouble and any direct exchanges with violent law enforcement. I also learnt in my childhood that being a female in my society was problematic, particularly in the streets of a
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township. Growing up in a predominantly female household meant I knew women to be capable, independent, self-reliant protectors. Even though few of the adults in my childhood had completed high school, every child in my family was expected to attend school. By contrast, the streets of Soweto in the 1980s were unsafe for girls, and the education of girls was perceived as optional, or at least of little value to the social fabric. In many societies, cultural expectations of women and girls are that they be passive and subservient to men, which affirms a gendered power dynamic (Carter, Blumenstein, & Cook, 2012). My adverse experiences of being a female in society extend well into my adulthood, often affirming my worth, competence, self-authorship, and belonging. I invoke these memories and references to my childhood experiences of race and gender for a reason. They permeated into my experiences first as a graduate student in a foreign country and then as an academic professional in a HEI where I still occasionally feel a strong sense of unbelonging. They continue to color my daily experiences as a teacher and scholar in a PWI, a business school whose most valued student and partner network, South African businesses, remains predominantly white and male, given only 3.3% of Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies have female CEOs and only one is a Black female (PWC, 2020). These are the organizations whose managers and senior leaders I have the joy of teaching and learning with.
BIAS AND INVISIBILITY AS A DOCTORAL STUDENT My academic career took me to the United States where I lived and read my doctorate for several years. What a memorable time it was for me – a remarkable journey of coming into my own as a scholar while learning from a national societal context
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so different to my beloved South Africa in some ways, and similar in other ways. Apartheid was not a widely known or personal part of history for most people I met, studied, and worked with there. As a result, the first perception bias I quickly had to unlearn was the assumption I had held that all social experiences are informed first and foremost by race and racism. As a foreign national without any financial support for my doctoral studies in an Ivy League school, I had to work to pay my way through my doctoral studies. Among the challenges female students of color in PWIs face, insufficient funding and an unsupportive environment are among the most critical factors (Dortch, 2016). I paid for my studies with the financial support of my husband and a full-time role I held in the same institution where I was a doctoral student. The additional responsibility of an incredibly demanding and exciting job saw me move from a full day of work until 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, straight into class attendance until late into the nights. This added to the challenge and learning in my doctoral experience. With no mentor or role model in my family or social circle for this academic undertaking (I was truly the first person I knew in my network who had pursued doctoral studies, not least in a foreign country), I had no reference point for whether the pace at which I was running with these dual roles was commonplace, sustainable, or a recipe for success in any way. I was among very few in my courses who did both, and, although already a racial minority in the program and institution, I quickly became aware of this fact as an added layer of exoticism associated with me. I experienced added pressure to perform as a result, if only to “represent my people.” This was undeniably self-imposed in some sense. It was certainly also in response to an unspoken assumption I observed particularly among my white colleagues who were full-time students that I would battle to be effective at being a student while working full time. This was apparent to me in
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statements such as, “Don’t worry about this task if you did not get a chance to read it before class, Zuki…” in small group discussions. Often group project meetings were scheduled during the day with unsolicited suggestions that I could dial in if I wanted to. I felt alone and lonely in these groups. I felt alone and lonely as the only African in many classrooms, workshops, and social events. I also felt alone and lonely as one of very few students who were working full time while studying full time. When I had my son in the spring semester of my third year of study, a new layer of alone and lonely surfaced in my doctoral student life. I was a new mom, desperately juggling work and staying on track with my program schedule to ensure I could graduate “on time.” I returned to work when my son was eight weeks old because of the maternity leave policy of the school at the time, which provided only six weeks paid leave. I recall attending an evening class via Skype when my son was seven days old. I thoroughly enjoyed it if only for the joy of an important piece of myself taking precedence without any sense of guilt for a few moments amid a whirlwind of a new experience called “mothering.” The course Professor and Teaching Assistant were incredibly supportive throughout this class session. It was not lost on me, however, how many of my classmates, with whom I had sat in the same classrooms on campus the entire preceding fall semester, made mention of the fact of never having noticed I was pregnant and their surprise that I had a baby. It dawned on me that on top of alone and lonely, I was also seemingly invisible to many of my colleagues.
LEGITIMACY AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ON TRANSFORMATION Legitimacy is about validity, authenticity, and acceptability. It beckons the question, “Is this phenomenon truly what it claims to
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be?” An extension of my oversimplified proposition is that once the question of whether it truly is what it claims to be is addressed, who authorizes and confirms this is equally important. Early in my days at the PWI where I started my academic career, I was thankful to have arrived into an instructional reorganization process that was underway. The objective was to redesign the curriculum of the flagship Masters program and adapt the program schedule to the changing needs of students. As a result, courses that were exclusively allocated to and taught by specific faculty were opened up for teaching teams to collaboratively deliver. This would broaden the depth and experiences each faculty member contributed to the course. This reorganization was monumental for new faculty who no longer had to endure systematic barriers to teaching the most coveted and highly subscribed courses. I landed in an incredibly talented team of lecturers, all with more years under their belts as scholars than my entire adulthood. I learnt an incredible amount and grew extensively as I watched, listened, and participated. As the youngest on the team, newest to the school, only Black person, and one of only two females (the other was on the cusp of a professorship), I felt incredibly inadequate at the best of times. I also knew that I had joined the team on the “strong suggestion” of the department head to promote diversity and the development of new faculty. One individual on the team, the de facto leader in this new experiment of collaborative teaching, was not as supportive as other colleagues were. Our first meeting was a coincidence as we bumped into each other in the hallway. He asked if I could step into his office briefly. I assumed it was an informal discussion given the coincidence. He opened the conversation with, “So… how is your teaching?” Caught off-guard and unclear where the question was headed, I asked for clarity. The monologue that followed, in summary, included a
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detailed narrative of his own academic development and career success; advice about the brutality that students unleash on faculty they do not perceive to be credible; his reflections that excellence in teaching at a renowned business school takes time to build; and his awareness of himself as an astute peer coach for new faculty such as myself to thrive in that environment. In another incident, a colleague advised me he would not be able to introduce me to a cohort we were about to teach without my written biography in hand. As he put it, “I will not be able to tell students that you have a doctorate from an Ivy League school if I do not have your bio.” Statements such as this are abundant in my experience in the academy. They are in good company with loaded questions about whether I am “really” a Doctor, accompanied by informal concerns raised (through formal channels) about the institution’s quality and high standards in light of the number of faculty of color teaching on a particular program. My very presence seems to invoke feelings of uncertainty, questionable quality, and untrustworthy qualifications to some. I have come to understand that something about me in a place of knowledge authority symbolizes a breach in the social contract and, by extension, the institution’s legitimacy among some stakeholders.
HYPER PERFORMANCE FOR BELONGING Kiguwa’s (2014) study of racialized subjectivity in South African HEIs revealed that Black students strongly identify with and experience feelings of affirmation in their relationships and interactions with Black academics they perceive to be excellent. Students further perceive these academics to hold the academic capital they consider to be
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beneficial for their own success as students in PWIs. This finding resonates with me as a student who often held great anxiety when a course was led by a Black lecturer. Together with other peers, we held great hope that the faculty, presumably “one of us,” would defy the presupposition that he or she is inferior or incompetent. It takes incredible effort for a Black lecturer to be trusted, never mind admired by students of color in their classrooms and institutions because just like the students, they too carry the burden of representing their race. Perhaps since I remember this anxiety as a student, I too carry the same anxiety as an educator today – consciously invested in an unspoken contract with other Black students and colleagues to “represent my kind.” I can now recognize the proverbial moments when Black students in my classes finally breathe a sigh of relief, immediately replaced by what I can only describe as pride. Just as with Black women in my classes, which carries the greatest value to me personally. By contrast, I encounter white males as suspicious and sometimes curious. Admittedly, I am sometimes equally distrusting, particularly of older white men. Due to my childhood experiences of white masculinity as militant and violent toward Black bodies, I am highly self-aware and invest intensely and consciously in building positive relations with white male students in particular. Across these interracial and gender relations in the academy, the question of belonging and legitimacy is true for many women of color (Maseti, 2018) and commonly experienced as a burden in varied ways.
HYPER PERFORMANCE AS THRIVING Racialized experiences with colleagues make it difficult for Black women to be vulnerable and develop relationships of
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trust with colleagues. What spurs me forward in this relational challenge is deep investment in my performance. Perhaps an exercise in proving that I belong. I spend an inefficient number of hours preparing for class sessions in my courses. I read excessively on theories and frameworks about which I intend to teach. In executive education where practice from the field is especially critical, I schedule designated time in my instructional design process to think through and write down multiple possible examples from my corporate and consulting experience that accurately illustrate each specific theory or concept. Every second invested in my scholarship, especially for the benefit of students and knowledge creation, is truly fulfilling for me. Many seconds invested were possibly not necessary, however, and certainly taken from elsewhere in my life, most notably my family. In my experience as a graduate student and subsequently as academic staff, this is the innumerate cost of being Black and female in HEIs. It is a psychological cost – the conscious effort to hyper perform merely to belong and be perceived as legitimate. It is a physical cost, given the documented physiological impact of Black bodies’ experiences of their race in relation to whiteness (Kiguwa, 2014). There is of course the more elaborate social cost that is one uniquely experienced by women, that of a tension between gendered social identities such as mother, wife/partner, caregiver, and family “uplifter.” Too often, these social identities seem to be at odds with a career that does not observe traditional office hours, demands solitude in times of scholarly publication, and is most opportune the more willing to travel and mobile a woman is. Msimanga (2014) describes that for her, this tension resulted in a stop-and-start career that saw her pause her career ambitions in the academy to attend to family responsibilities, returning to the academy in her 50s as an early career scholar once again.
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SELF-EFFICACY AS THRIVING Bandura (1997) proposes that self-efficacy is made up of four critical factors, namely (1) performance outcomes; (2) vicarious modeling or experience; (3) verbal persuasion of feedback; and (4) physiological or emotional feedback. For me, vicarious experience has had the most profound impact on my ability to thrive as a woman of color in the academy. I identify and intentionally build relationships with women who noticeably hold academic capital, either by virtue of their seniority and legitimate power in their departments or institutions, or my own admiration and affinity with a career-related characteristic they possess. I deliberately research the key women in the departments or institutions I am joining. I make a point of introducing myself and being curious about their own journey in the institution or others. Seldom have I been met with resistance or a negative response in this regard. I believe there is something of an unspoken code among female scholars to empower and support each other as much as possible, in a way I did not experience in my corporate career previously. Adopting the inquiry disposition of “What is going on here?” has also been instructive in my journey. Stepping into department meetings, private conversations, classrooms, academic supervisions, and research collaborations with this disposition forces me, firstly, to do a conscious body check of what I am experiencing and feeling in my body about particular spaces. It opens my encounters beyond not only what I bring in but also what others bring in. In some ways, this is also a mechanism by which I check my sense of safety and belonging in certain collegial interactions. In my earlier example of a conversation that began with, “How is your teaching?” my body went into the association of distrust and unsafety I had with white males. For that reason, I was aware of when I was being defensive and feeling threatened, and
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when I had eased into the interaction and could be more objective and assertive. The question of “What is going on here?” therefore, serves as both a self-awareness physiological feedback tool in the way that Bandura (1997) describes it, and what I often refer to as a “space awareness” tool for my own sensemaking of the dynamics and encounters I have. Feedback is a gift and a burden simultaneously for me as a woman of color. Student feedback in particular is heavily weighted as a performance evaluation input for faculty in my institution. Unfortunately, in my experience, this makes an inaccurate assumption that all students are well equipped and knowledgeable about how to provide meaningful and constructive feedback. One student feedback I have only heard shared by other female colleagues is feedback about my dress code or appearance. Students also commonly include feedback about how “well” I speak in my classes, as though it is a skill whose mastery surprised them. When I inquire with other colleagues if they have similar experiences, or if my analysis of these incidences as problematic is accurate, I have often been dismissed and advised that I should take these as compliments. In my interpretation, such feedback renders me invisible as a subject-matter expert, a qualified educator, a scholar, and a colleague of intellectual substance. In this way, feedback can be onerous for me as a woman. However, feedback is a gift precisely because it has always been instructive in my development and growth. Because of the inevitable question of legitimacy that has followed me in my academic profession, I am deliberate about building a small community of more experienced colleagues as my coaches and feedback resources. I often invite colleagues I trust with my development to sit in my classes, observe, and provide me objective feedback and recommendations. I share course outlines or test instructional design approaches I adopt with colleagues before taking a class. I also often request attendance of other
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colleagues’ classes as an observer where I take note of where and how they excel as educators. This group of people that I refer to as my “Personal Board of Directors” have been crucial for me to thrive safely and authentically in more recent years.
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TRANSFORMING A GENDERED AND RACIALIZED SYSTEM THROUGH COLLEGIAL PARTNERSHIPS Those of us who are already within the academy in South Africa have the responsibility to challenge and nullify the fallacy that there is a dearth of talented Black and female scholars given improving doctoral graduation rates among females. For this reason, I remain committed to the task of building meaningful partnerships within South Africa and internationally. Some experienced and renowned colleagues in HEIs in the United States, Australia, and Brazil, for example, generously open doors for research and publication for myself and many other women of color, recognizing that partnerships with more renowned scholars is critical for aspiring and early-stage professors. Through them, I have had conference papers accepted with greater ease than I had experienced on my own. Co-authorship opportunities with experienced scholars have given me exposure to the publication review process (sometimes successful, sometimes not) with which I was increasingly disillusioned in light of my individual publication processes that were marked by incredible difficulty. In South Africa, partnerships that are equally empowering have been harder to come by, yet deeply meaningful. To achieve systematic transformation of HEIs in this country is a dual responsibility for Black and white academics – inclusion demands both the excluded and those who occupy positions of authority in exclusionary environments to participate. Just as it is a dual responsibility for female academics and male academics.
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Collegial partnerships with women of color in research publication are critical to remove the barriers and defeating delays Black and female scholars experience repeatedly. Inviting women of color into teaching collaborations is instrumental, firstly as a literal foot in the door and secondly to lower the barriers to thriving in classrooms at leading HEIs. Joining research funding teams led by women of color and those progressing research that centers women’s scholarship demands the participation of men with equal fervor. Sponsorship of colleagues nominated for tenure, promotion, and appointment to senior administration roles is crucial to systematically improve authentic diversity across all levels of the academy. White male scholars and administrators must be committed to transformation in these tangible ways to truly ensure HEIs, particularly PWIs, become places of inclusion and belonging for students, scholars, and administrators of color.
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CONCLUSION In the proposal that transformation in South African HEIs must include the duality of access and quality, Bergquist (1995, p. 26) suggests: … the more diversified the people and resources of an educational institution are . . . the greater the potential quality of education, research, scholarship and community service at the institution. This could not ring truer in an era where there is growing global impatience with the slow pace of transformation in society in general. The #RhodesMustFall student movement that attained groundswell in 2015 and subsequently gave rise to the economic inclusion movement of #FeesMustFall was a significant indicator of the level of impatience with untransformed HEIs. Progress is taking place. Yet, the
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incessant questions of individual and institutional legitimacy and quality associated with the presence of Black female bodies are grossly problematic. It slows down the pace to realizing diverse institutions in the way Bergquist (1995) described. In reflecting on my experiences in this chapter, I offer an invitation to white and male colleagues across the globe to increase awareness of the challenges that women face in general and Black women in particular in the ivory towers designed, occupied, and sustained by them. At the same time, I offer this as a statement of solidarity and affirmation to other women in the academy, particularly women of color in whatever context they find themselves in their careers. We are qualified and taking up well-deserved places in the academy. We are legitimate and contributing to the critical social contract of promoting race and gender equity in all societies. Finally, I offer these reflections as a confident declaration to aspiring and early-stage women at that cusp of deciding whether to continue to venture into the resistant and delegitimizing spaces they perceive or have experienced the academy to be. Thriving in the academy is possible and well within reach for every single one of these scholars. It is a task to which many are committed unwaveringly – hence, the publication of a book such as this. It is a task whose success requires your presence. It is a task that is collectively underway in collaborations across the global community of academics and HEIs.
REFERENCES Akoojee, S., & Nkomo, M. (2007). Access and quality in South African higher education: The twin challenges of transformation. South African Journal of Education, 21(3), 385–399.
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Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. Bergquist, W. B. (1995). Quality through access, access with quality: The new imperative for higher education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Breetzke, G., & Hedding, D. W. (2016). The changing racial profile of academic staff at South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), 2005-2013. Africa Education Review, 13(2), 147–164. Carter, S., Blumenstein, M., & Cook, C. (2012). Different for women? The challenge of doctoral studies. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(4), 339–351.
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Council on Higher Education. (2000). Towards a new higher education landscape: Meeting the equity, quality and social development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century. Pretoria: CHE. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1–28). London: Sage. Department of Higher Education and Training. (2019). Statistics on post-school education and training in South Africa. DHET. Retrieved from www.dhet.gov.za. Dortch, D. (2016). The strength from within: A phenomenological study examining the academic self-efficacy of African American women in doctoral studies. The Journal of Negro Education, 85(3), 350–364. Dowling, J., & Pfeffer, J. (1975). Organizational legitimacy: Social values and organizational behavior. Pacific Sociological Review, 18(1), 122–136.
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Higher Education Data Analyzer. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.heda.co.za/indicatordashboard/default.aspx. Kessi, S., & Cornell, J. (2015). Coming to UCT: Black students, transformation and discourses of race. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 3(2), 1–16. Kiguwa, P. (2014). Telling stories of race: A study of racialised subjectivity in the post-apartheid academy. Unpublished thesis. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Mail & Guardian. (2017, October 11). UCT Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng and accusations of fake qualifications. Retrieved from https://mg.co.za/article/2017-10-11-uct-professor-mamokgethi-phakeng-and-accusations-of-fake-qualifications/.
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Marwell, G., Rosenfeld, R., & Spillerman, S. (1979). Geographic constraints on women’s careers in academia. Science, 205, 1225–1231. Maseti, T. (2018). The university is not your home: Lived experiences of a black woman in academia. South African Journal of Psychology, 48(3), 343–350. Msimanga, A. (2014). Too late to come back? The paradox of being a 50-year-old ‘early career’ black female academic. South African Journal of Higher Education, 28(6), 2013–2026. PWC. (2020). Corporate SA needs to focus more on increasing the number of women at leadership level. PwC Women in the Boardroom. Retrieved from https://www. pwc.co.za/en/press-room/women-in-the-boardroom.html. Statistics South Africa. (2019). 2019 mid-year population estimates. Retrieved from https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0302/P03022019.pdf.
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4 WOMEN LEADING IN ACADEMIA: VOICES FROM WITHIN THE IVORY TOWER Marian Mahat, Rita Hardiman, Kate Howell, and Iderlina Mateo-Babiano
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INTRODUCTION It is a widely known fact that the progression of women into positions of leadership, generally, has been slow. In particular, women find it more difficult to rise to positions of leadership in environments that are highly male dominated, irrespective of the sector of employment (Piterman, 2008). In academia, the proportion of female academic staff in Australian universities is less than 50%, and only 30% of professors (Level E) and associate professors (Level D) are women (Universities Australia, 2017). At the University of Melbourne, for instance, men consistently outnumber women at senior levels, with a sharp drop in the proportion of women academics at Level C and above (University of Melbourne, 2020). This is also true internationally, such as in the United Kingdom where male professors outnumber female professors
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three to one (Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA], 2020). These numbers are not changing, despite the strong representation of women as undergraduates, postgraduates, and early career academics across all disciplines. After years of institutional and individual efforts to right the wrong, women in academia are still failing to break the glass ceiling. Effective leadership should be gender neutral, but it is not. Men tend to take a more direct and intentional approach, while women navigate the leadership journey in subtle but perhaps more transformational ways. Women tend to face challenges different from men – and navigate these barriers in very different ways too. The path to leadership is gendered, and as a result, good talent does fall through the cracks. With the higher education landscape in a state of flux, good talent is crucial to provide not only good leadership but also innovative approaches to good leadership that provide a positive influence for institutional success.
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EMPOWERING WOMEN TO LEAD IN ACADEMIA Providing women with the skills to navigate the gendered path is key to promoting gender equality and diversity in the upper echelons of academia. Universities are tackling these and similar objectives in different ways and with differing levels of enthusiasm, using techniques such as training programs, childcare centers to help reconcile women’s careers with family responsibilities, higher degree scholarships, and sexual harassment policies (Milligan & Genoni, 1993). Many universities, however, have not had a holistic view and sense of responsibility to develop university leaders, let alone female university leaders. At a national level, this is even much less prominent. Below are some examples of initiatives that aim to empower women to lead in academia.
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Athena SWAN is a charter established and managed by the UK Equality Challenge Unit in 2005, which recognizes and celebrates good practices in higher education and research institutions toward the advancement of gender equality: representation, progression, and success for all. Some best practice examples include the following (Advance Higher Education, 2020):
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• Development of a new policy that implemented the rotation of senior administrative roles every five years. This was particularly targeted at junior members of staff in order to increase their chances of promotion by developing their professional, organizational, and managerial activity skill sets needed to meet the school’s criteria. • A pilot mentoring scheme was initiated for female academics aimed to “matchup” women to facilitate ‘‘free and frank” interactions among colleagues. An evaluation of this mentoring scheme was conducted through review meetings with both mentors and mentees and a questionnaire, with an external report written up and distributed to relevant staff. • Increasing the number of staff moving from fixed-term to open-ended or permanent contracts and ensuring that there was no significant gender disparity on either contracts. Practical measures were taken to review contract types by gender and length of service, with a clear commitment to improving job security and its staff’s work–life balance. The Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) initiative is a partnership between the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. Its vision is to improve gender equity in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) disciplines
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in the Australian higher education and research sector by building a sustainable and adaptable Athena SWAN model for Australia. In Australia, 45 higher education and research institutions have completed the SAGE pathway to accreditation, with the majority 39 institutions being awarded the Athena SWAN Institutional Bronze Award (SAGE, 2020). The award recognizes an institution’s commitment to advancing the careers of women, transgender, and gender-diverse individuals by providing a four-year action plan to address gender inequity in these disciplines. The New Zealand Universities Women in Leadership Programme (NZUWiL) was developed to support, encourage, and contribute to the development of women who are, or aspire in the future to be, leaders within the university sector. The goal of this nationwide program is to increase women’s leadership capabilities and influence by enhancing their personal, professional, and national-level skills and networks. Much of the success of the NZUWiL is due to the postprogram initiatives, involving two five-day intensive, interactive residential programs, designed to stimulate, engage, and boost the skills, leadership capacity, and capability of women who attend, and a one-day regional roadshow held biannually (Universities New Zealand, 2019). Harris and Leberman (2012) noted five factors for the success of the NZUWIL program, including start with the top, link leadership development directly to the business, build an integrated leadership strategy, drive consistency in the executive of leadership programs, and hold leaders and the organization accountable. (p. 40) Building on the success of the NZUWIL program, WATTLE (Women ATTaining LEadership) Program is a
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residential program aimed at empowering women to attain senior university leadership roles in Australia. It is owned entirely by eight participating Australian universities, with all surplus funds reinvested into the program. Among its goals are to increase the pool of women in senior academic and managerial positions in the tertiary sector; strengthen and augment the pipeline of women for leadership; and address, in a cost-effective manner, the lack of women in leadership and at the same time the gender imbalance in senior academic and managerial positions at a time of public interest and of tertiary sector reform (WATTLE, 2020). The Australian Higher Education Women’s Leadership Summit provides a national platform for women at all levels across the higher education sector to connect, share ideas, and enhance their leadership skills. It is an initiative of the Women & Leadership Australia who collaborate with more than 500 hundred Australian industry associations and professional bodies to create deeper awareness and action around gender and leadership. The annual forum connects and develops Australia’s academic female leaders to create a powerful groundswell of awareness and action that will benefit academia (Women & Leadership Australia, 2018). At the institutional and departmental levels, women in leadership programs are an increasingly familiar feature of the higher education landscape. These programs tended to have a number of core workshops covering key areas of leadership approaches, career design, personal branding, governance and management, and career decisions. Some may include mentoring programs, executive job shadowing series, elective internal leadership program options, and ongoing networking opportunities (e.g., Griffith University’s Women in Leadership Program and the Leneen Forde Future Leaders Program,1 University of Wollongong’s Leadership Program for Senior Academic Women,2 and the University of
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Queensland’s Career Advancement for Senior Academic Women Program3). At the University of Melbourne, the Academic Women in Leadership program is one of several strategies aimed at addressing women’s underrepresentation in higher level academic appointments and on key policy, decision-making, and governance bodies. The program is conducted under the auspices of Academic Board, sponsored by the Provost, and supported by a reference group whose role is to guide and advise the contents of the program and actively advocate for the program. The program runs over eight months and targets women academics at Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor levels. The aim is to enhance their understanding of leadership in the university context; affirm and enhance existing strengths, leadership and management skills, and abilities; increase organizational knowledge of the university; extend networking opportunities; facilitate engagement with both internal and external senior role models; and explore through a gender frame of reference. Generally, the program involves approximately eight half- or full-day development sessions; a shadowing component of three to five days; two one-hour individual career coaching sessions; and group project planning meetings, as arranged by the project groups.4 Women-only programs and initiatives that aim to inspire and support emerging and current leaders provide acknowledgment that the challenges and barriers for women thriving in academia are different. These programs and initiatives demystify leadership roles in higher education and give academic women opportunities to engage and learn from others, as well as build confidence to step up and step forward. For institutions, it provides them opportunities for succession planning and tap into a pool of talent and expertise that can help transform innovative ways to lead in the twenty-first
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century. Some of these programs have been running for many years. This should be enough time to see movement within the hierarchy and see more women reach higher levels of leadership within the institution. The question is if these programs are working to empower women (we would argue yes), is this enough to reshape the role of women in higher educational leadership?
VOICES FROM WITHIN
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In this section, we offer several brief narratives from our experiences. All four of us have participated in one or more of these programs at the University of Melbourne and offer insights and perspectives that embody many of the best attributes of empowerment and engaged citizens of the academy. We hope that these brief narratives provide some inspiration about your own effort and thinking as you thrive through academia.
Mentoring and Sponsorship – Rita Hardiman The world of academia can be bewildering, particularly for those at the beginning of their academic journey. There is no clear, common path to a fulfilling career. This is particularly the case for female academics in male-dominated fields or in fields with a gender imbalance at the lower and higher academic levels. It is difficult to think about your career progression strategically if you are trailblazing your journey. In addition, the gendered barriers in leadership pathways may not be apparent to women starting out. Good mentoring and attention to sponsorship can become a key determinant of success and enjoyment of academic life. A
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good mentor is someone who can help identify positive career directions from an external perspective. A good sponsor is someone who will unselfishly and specifically promote a candidate’s abilities. I was fortunate that I did not have to work hard to find a good mentor and sponsor. My doctorate supervisor could see what I needed and what would work in my favor before I was able to see it myself. He had so much experience and a wide network and usually found an appropriate opportunity for me. Later in my career, a colleague really pushed me to apply for awards and to participate in projects to boost my profile: she saw potential in me that I still didn’t recognize. Sponsorship of academics is important to having a sense of ownership and belonging in academia. To be suggested for roles commensurate with your academic abilities builds confidence and allows others to see skills you have developed. At this point on my path in academia, I have a clearer idea of how to support colleagues than I did for myself. That is an important part of the process: the ability to then mentor others who can benefit from such support. After completing the Academic Women in Leadership program at the University of Melbourne, I am more aware of the aspects of gender that can hinder approaches to leadership. It’s really important to make female mentees aware of these issues early so they can tackle leadership pathways with these issues in mind. My mentorship involved lots of conversations about my thoughts on different topics, showing confidence in me to troubleshoot challenging research issues, encouragement to apply for grants and awards, and involving me in decisionmaking so that I could practise thinking strategically in a research context. One of the biggest lessons I learned from this particular mentorship was that I could “be myself” in academia. I didn’t feel like I must change my real self to
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progress (that doesn’t mean personal development didn’t happen – it certainly did, still does, and should). Rather than direct advice, mentorship involves focused reflection, and workshopping thoughts and plans. It was always refreshing to exchange ideas and perspectives with my mentors: to hear their experiences and how these defined their values made me reflect on my development. Mentorship and sponsorship involve the development of a wide network of colleagues, collaborators, and peers so that you can start to support and be supported by a larger group of people than your immediate colleagues. A wide network helps you to look outside your close environment (Department, School, Faculty, and University) for ideas and strategies and helps develop your own sponsorship abilities. In the late stages of my supervisor’s career, I was once mistaken for his daughter. His reply was that I was his “academic daughter,” and that is exactly what mentorship and sponsorship felt like, within a now much larger academic family.
Teaching as an International Academic – Iderlina Mateo-Babiano Universities around the world have increasingly recognized the benefits that internationalization brings into teaching and learning. One notable feature of internationalizing higher education in Australia is the dramatic rise in the recruitment of academics from overseas into the country. Figures from the Australia’s Department of Education and Training show that almost one in two academics working in an Australian university was born overseas (DET, 2016 cited in Oishi, 2017), clearly demonstrating that international academics comprise a significant proportion of Australia’s higher education sector.
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I am an international academic. I was very fortunate to take on a Level B lecturer position a few months after migrating to Australia. Indeed, my international background and experience became a distinct advantage when I went for a teaching and research role. Moreover, having studied and worked in several international settings enabled me to embed my experience into my teaching. In research, international collaborators helped strengthen my grant applications. Yet, adapting to a new normal – a different social, cultural, and academic environment – was very challenging. Australian academia is distinctly different from the way that I have been accustomed to working and doing things. For instance, I perceived an air of “casualness” in how students behaved in the classroom, which I misinterpreted as a general lack of respect. I experienced a steep learning curve in understanding different teaching and learning strategies, and the need for me to learn a learning management system contributed to my feeling of inadequacy. Navigating a higher educational setting with implicit rules of engagement and research expectations brought more stress to my professional as well as personal life. I experienced academic culture shock that persisted beyond my first year in academia, resulting in significant personal cost, affecting both my teaching and research. It took me a significant amount of time to purposefully navigate ways to better integrate into the Australian academic setting. On hindsight, I feel that more time and resources are required for Australian higher education to better understand the issues of international academics and to provide more responsive social support systems to help international academics like me make the necessary transitions to thrive in a new academic culture. One of the strategies I found helpful was completing a teaching in higher education program. The program gave me an authentic classroom experience. It provided an example of
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what an Australian higher education classroom could look and feel like. The strategies shared by other participants in the program gave me ideas and helped improved my teaching strategies and skills. The workshops also allowed me to network with several colleagues across the university, while the materials and research we completed as part of the program opened up opportunities to publish a number of refereed publications. Another helpful strategy was being able to find formal and informal mentors and sponsors. I proactively sought mentors who helped me make better sense and judgment on major decisions that I needed to make. I valued their sharing of experience and their feedback when I went for promotion, when I applied for grants, and even seeking feedback on journal manuscripts. Sponsors were also helpful in introducing leadership opportunities. Australian higher education has already made significant headway in diversifying academia and promoting equality in the workplace. However, international academics, particularly those from an Asian background, continue to be underrepresented in leadership (Saltmarsh & Swirski, 2010). Asian countries have become important source nations not only in attracting international students but also attracting skilled academics (Hugo, 2010), yet the study of Oishi (2017) highlighted the persistently low representation of Asian Australian academics in higher education leadership. For Australia to play a leading role in this Asian century, it is important to recognize the value of our academic’s international experience, backgrounds, and networks as platforms to engage Australian higher education institutions more closely with our Asian neighbors. Positive outcomes can only be achieved if we are able to transform Australian academia into more inclusive places for all academics to thrive.
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Finding an Authentic and Moral Voice – Kate Howell Women leaders are not common in STEMM disciplines, but in my field of applied microbiology, there are more women moving into the higher levels of leadership. The key to success as a graduate researcher and postdoctorate fellow in laboratorybased life science research is attention to detail, careful experimental design and interpretation, and long hours in the lab. Looking around as a junior researcher, the laboratory and university leaders I interacted with were big, charismatic personalities of formidable intellect and physical presences. Seeing a place for myself and imagining that I have the characteristics of a leader has taken time and reflection. It is important to recognize that the same strategies that make you successful in laboratory-based research do not necessarily translate to leadership strategies. The role of the strong personality leading a lab, winning big research grants, and leading a complex team is a “type.” I believe there is a lack of role models displaying different modes of leading in a highly competitive environment. Perhaps, women have not broken through some leadership barriers because of the perception of the big and loud leader. As I started on a reflective practice about leadership in my role as an academic, and to see that indeed, there were different strategies displayed to leadership and that some of the people I admired the most were displaying and actively practicing “authentic leadership” traits. Three central themes emerge from the literature on authentic leadership, and those are appreciating that the leader must be self-aware, there is an emphasis on the true self, and authentic leaders have a strong grounding in moral leadership (Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, & Dickens, 2011). Indeed, self-reflection and understanding of principles and motivations are central to moving toward authentic leadership.
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Empirical studies have noted that displaying these characteristics have positive outcomes for trust in leadership, satisfaction with supervisors, leader and follower well-being, and organizational commitment (Hopkins & O’Neil, 2015). Clearly, embracing these characteristics have important and measurable outcomes for the leader in the workplace. However, this journey does not come easily. Long-term training in the norms and expectations of a scientific discipline constantly undermine my leadership journey as the “think leader, think male” mindset to encourage, enhance, and reward assertiveness and competitiveness continues to dominate leadership. Using a quieter and less assertive voice in the hurly-burly of the academic department may mean less immediate impact, but as I am finding can have considerable long-term benefits as I build a leadership profile that emphasizes collaboration and discussion underpinned by strong moral considerations. The pendulum swings and I find myself adjusting, reassessing, and examining my attributes and leadership qualities. Becoming self-aware of my position as an AngloAustralian, straight, and rather left-wing academic in a large public university is ongoing. I read with interest and some discomfort of the career challenges experienced by other women, particularly of color, socioeconomic classes different to my own, women from recently arrived immigrant backgrounds, and women who identify as LGBQTI1. These stories are emerging, with strong voices and compelling conundrums. The academic establishment, including the nascent women leaders in STEMM disciplines, need to listen, learn, and welcome these stories. Leadership should include a diversity of female voices to ensure that the academy is truly inclusive and diverse and to reflect the society in which it serves. Becoming self-aware of positional power in the
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academy is necessary and should be embraced by women as they embark on their leadership journeys.
Step Up, Step For ward: Leading in Academia – Marian Mahat If leadership is about initiating and mobilising change, we have much to learn from women.
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(Nixon & Sinclair, 2017, p. ix) Leadership facilitates changemaking, and in academia, where the landscape keeps shifting, this becomes more important than ever. For women in leadership, the challenges are complex and well documented in the literature. These challenges include gendered institutional cultures, formal and informal gendered practices, individual factors, and caring responsibilities. Whatever the challenges, women in academia know it too well – we live it, experience it, and develop coping strategies to overcome it. Experiences gleaned from discussions with senior women academics – at conferences, over food and beverages, along corridors – are that there is no one right way to build a leadership career. There are rare examples of those that had taken a “whole of career” perspective, planning research and teaching activities and identifying roles and experiences they needed to get there. In most cases, leadership careers were unplanned, and women go about different routes and journeys to get where they are. The point here is that someone else’s success does not diminish your value and accomplishments. Advices are a plenty when it comes to leading in higher education. But what might work best for some might not work for others. You choose the path and develop strategies that work for you – one that fits not only with your values and
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your interests but also with how you want to balance your professional and personal lives. Coming from a more positivist view of the world – understanding and interpreting the world around me through reason and logic – I took a more deliberate (some might say tactical) perspective of my career. Barriers – limited opportunities, limited mentoring and sponsorship, and internal thoughts and feelings (impostor syndrome, feelings of lack of readiness, etc.) – were had. This was resolved through ongoing reflection and “picking” myself up off the floor every so often. Leadership is not just a role. It is lived and practiced through one’s daily actions and interactions. One can practice leadership in whatever role one occupies – be it a Research Assistant or a member of a committee – leadership is not only about the ability to lead others but the ability to lead oneself and to amplify your impact as an individual. As an individual, you bring many strengths to leadership that you will leverage to address your identified challenges. These “markers” provide me point of references for stepping up and stepping forward in academia. • Remind yourself of your values – Your values are your road maps. Pay close enough attention to what your values are trying to tell you and always stay true to them. • Tackle issues not people – Take an evidence-based approach that addresses the underlying issues, not simply throwing faults or confronting individuals. • Assume positive intent – When you assume positive intent, your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.
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• Do not take things personally – This relates to assuming positive intent. When you’re defensive, you stop listening. And when you stop listening, you shut out critical information that could benefit you. • Engage, be present – It is hard to be present in a cluttered head space. Genuine freedom comes from learning to be mindful and present in each moment.
STRATEGIES FOR THRIVING
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We all aim to attain a successful career in life. The target and focus might be different, and success can be measured in myriad ways. If you ask others what success looks like, you will find numerous answers. But there is one common element in those answers – do what you are most passionate about. The following tips can help you make progress toward doing what you love: • Be open and be self-aware. Being self-aware means we focus our attention on ourselves, and we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves. Self-awareness is a critical tool to help you reach higher levels of job satisfaction, become a better leader, improve relationships with colleagues, and manage your emotions better. • Try to find collaborators in academia (in research, learning and teaching, and leadership roles) who are aligned with your principles. It is a rewarding experience to find others to work with on a particular project, who share the same or similar attitudes to ethics, education, equity, and passion for the work we are doing. When you find like-minded individuals, the “bundle of twigs” can do more than a single twig.
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• When you find a trusted mentor, do not be afraid to talk about the inevitable crises of confidence. The right mentor can provide advice and connections that help you reach heights that would be impossible alone. Find others to help with mentorship and sponsorship: work together. The larger your network, the more you will hear others’ concerns as well. Listen to them – you’ll feel less lonely!
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• Be vocal about your career aims and desires, and ask for help. People will help you if they know where you want to go. Women, more often than not, fall into the trap of believing that leadership skills need to be polished and prominent in order to “start” leading. Practice makes perfect, but you cannot practice if you do not give yourselves opportunities to lead and empower others. One way to step into leadership is to surround yourself in a circle of support. Support has to be genuine in order for it to work. If we are divided, we will be no stronger than a single twig in that bundle. Collectively, we have impact. NOTES 1. See website: https://www.griffith.edu.au/staff/learning-development/programs/women-in-leadership. 2. See website: https://universe.uow.edu.au/community/uows-aca demic-womens-leadership-program-named-australias-best/. 3. See website: https://staff.uq.edu.au/information-and-services/ development/career-progression/advancement-senior-academic-women. 4. See website: https://staff.unimelb.edu.au/human-resources/car eer-development-training/training-courses/academic-leaders.
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REFERENCES Advance Higher Education. (2020). Athena SWAN good practice initiatives. Retrieved from https://www.ecu.ac.uk/ athena-swan-good-practice-initiatives/ Gardner, W. L., Cogliser, C. C., Davis, K. M., & Dickens, M. P. (2011). Authentic leadership: A review of the literature and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 22(6), 1120–1145. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.09.007 Harris, C. A., & Leberman, S. I. (2012). Leadership development for women in New Zealand universities: Learning from the New Zealand women in leadership program. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 14(1), 28–44.
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HESA. (2020). Higher education staff statistics: UK, 2018/19. Retrieved from https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/23-01-2020/ sb256-higher-education-staff-statistics Hopkins, M. M., & O’Neil, D. A. (2015). Authentic leadership: Application to women leaders. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(July), 1–5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00959 Hugo, G. (2010). The Indian and Chinese academic diaspora in Australia: A comparison. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 19(1), 87–116. Milligan, S., & Genoni, L. (1993). A report of an evaluation of the women in leadership program. Churchlands, WA: Edith Cowan University. Nixon, C., & Sinclair, A. (2017). Women leading. Melbourne, VIC: Melbourne University Publishing. Oishi, N. (2017). Workforce diversity in higher education. The experiences of Asian academics in Australian universities.
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Retrieved from https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/194185/AA%20Report_Final%20Copy_ Web_5Nov.pdf?sequence51&isAllowed5y Piterman, H. (2008). The leadership challenge: Women in management. Parkville, VIC: University of Melbourne. SAGE. (2020). What is SAGE?. Retrieved from https:// www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/ Saltmarsh, S., & Swirski, T. (2010). ‘Pawns and prawns’: International academics’ observations on their transition to working in an Australian university. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 32(3), 291–301.
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Universities Australia. (2017). 2016 selected inter-institutional gender equity statistics. Canberra, ACT: Universities Australia. Retrieved from https://www.universitiesaustralia. edu.au/uni-participation-quality/Equity-and-Participation/ Women-in-universities/Selected-Inter-Institutional#.WvzIM EiFPD5 Universities New Zealand. (2019). New Zealand universities women in leadership programme (NZUWiL). Retrieved from https://www.universitiesnz.ac.nz/about-universitiesnew-zealand/expert-and-working-groups/new-zealand-universities-women-leadership University of Melbourne. (2020). Key findings. Retrieved from https://about.unimelb.edu.au/careers/diversity-and-inclusion/ athena-swan/key-findings WATTLE. (2020). The program goals. Retrieved from https:// wattleprogram.org/our-program-goals/ Women & Leadership Australia. (2018). The Australian higher education women’s leadership summit. Retrieved from https://www.wla.edu.au/highereducationsummit.html
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5 LEARNING TO LEAD BY SAYING YES A. Lin Goodwin
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INTRODUCTION I am currently the Dean of the Faculty of Education (i.e., School/College of Education) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Prior to that I was Vice Dean at Teachers College, Columbia University (TC) in New York City. Before that I was Associate Dean and Director of the Office of Teacher Education, also at TC, and before that I was…. The point is that I have been in leadership positions for most of my life, going back to primary school in Singapore when I enjoyed a memorable stint as class monitor and was a regular flag raiser at the school assemblies that occurred each day. I am not sure how this happened, if I could even explain the process of becoming/being a leader. However, I am at the point in my career that I am able to discern many important lessons about leadership and can say I have definitely survived the role(s) and even experienced many thriving moments.
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There is, of course, much about leadership in the literature, be it academic, corporate, or commercial. Some literature offers discrete qualities or characteristics that good leaders should possess, such as empathy, communication, or integrity (https://www.ccl.org/blog/characteristics-goodleader/). Some of it leans toward the more philosophical, suggesting, for instance, that being a good leader means first being a good follower because “without followership, leadership is nothing” (Peters & Haslam, 2018, para. 3). Still others describe good leadership as doing for others, i.e., those they lead, through “servant leadership” (Eva, Robin, Sendjaya, van Dierendonck, & Liden, 2019, p. 111), or by ensuring employees feel heard, trusted to do the job, and have opportunities to learn (Arruda, 2020). I would agree with all these experts; at the same time, general qualities/labels such as empathy or doing for others, while important for good leadership, provide little insight into actions to be taken or decisions to be made. This is probably because very different actions or decisions could lead to the same results – for example, team members feeling cared for or heard – or because it likely takes consistent repeated actions or decisions before a leader can establish trustworthiness and integrity – i.e., enough credibility to move people or groups forward. Ultimately, it is the personal narratives of practice and experience that shed light on how leadership comes to be enacted, when, and how. These cannot be generalized, but they can offer windows into not just behavior or skills, but the foundations of leadership, the antecedents of current realities. EARLY ANTECEDENTS I am a firm believer that our past – no matter happy, ugly, deprived, or smooth – has led us to be the person we are
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today, that all those past experiences have shaped us, instructed us, and brought us to our present. That includes choices we made along the way as we exercised our agency and weighed options, (s)electing one path or way of being over another, as well as events and roles we did not choose, but were chosen for us by fate, powerful others, or circumstance. Good or bad, free choice or not, they are all part of us and cannot be disentangled. Thus, it seems illuminating to consider early antecedents as a way to discern the why we are behind the who we are now. Each of us is a unique story with a distinct foundation. When I look at my own story, I see some clear patterns and building blocks in my foundation that pointed me toward leading and perhaps prepared me for leadership. I am the eldest daughter of three daughters; my mother was the eldest daughter of four daughters. My grandmother raised her children on her own when her husband was arrested by the communists – she did not see him again for about 50 years. The stories of my grandmother’s courage and endurance were ones I heard many times over in my childhood: how she vaccinated all her children (and nieces and nephews), practicing on oranges to get it right, because doctors were unaffordable; went temporarily blind from the stress of being called into the police station for several months after my grandfather’s arrest, forced to wait the whole day, only to be sent home and recalled the next day; managed to find her way to Hong Kong and then the United States; supported herself as a Macy’s salesgirl (yes, in those days it was girl), poor English and all; learned to drive a car at 60 years; started to paint at 70 years; and even had an exhibition of her paintings in a local bank at nearly 80 years. She was our role model, the family icon of the fearless, independent woman.
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My mother left home at 17 years as a refugee to Hong Kong. Her second sister followed a year later and became my mother’s responsibility. My mother married at 19 years and had her first child a year later, all the while working to help support the family, both nuclear and extended back in Shanghai. Her life as a single mother started from the time I was 12 years, after (but truth be told, before too) my parents separated and then divorced. She was an anomaly, a divorcee in an era when being divorced carried a stigma, working outside the home at a time when hardly any women in Asia did, certainly none of my schoolmates’ mothers worked outside the home. She lived in a world dominated by men, with Asian men on the bottom and white men on the top, but with women always beneath all of them. But she fought and spoke up and resisted. She was nicknamed “the dragon lady”, of course, isn’t that always what happens to women who refuse to be cowed? No man would have been disparaged by being called “the dragon man” for speaking up and pushing for justice – equal pay for equal work, fairness for women and minorities. My father paid no alimony, so keeping three children in food and clothes and home was a struggle. I remember a daily budget of $5.00 (Singapore) for food for all four of us. There was a posted list in the kitchen where we recorded our daily meal costs. We ate a lot of canned food in those days but were always so proud to stay within the $5.00 limit, treating it as a contest. As the eldest daughter, it was expected of me to help with household chores and mind my two younger sisters while my mother was working, and she worked very long hours. So, to be in charge was normal. From my mother, just as from my grandmother, I watched a woman fearlessly take hold of her life, and ours too, with discipline and responsibility. My mother seemed ageless to me then, but I know now she was only 33 when my father left.
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Like/through her, I was given responsibility at an early age and was expected to manage it. I think that was an early lesson – accept responsibility, which meant take care of yourself (and your family), uphold commitments, and get the job done. These qualities are imprinted in me, modeled by powerful women in my life. They have guided my leadership trajectory from the time I was a child.
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SAYING YES (AND PAYING THE BILLS) A fellow doctoral student once asked me what I was like in high school. One description I offered was that “I was in charge of things.” I remember him falling out laughing because at the time I was also the acting director of the preservice elementary program at TC, leading a team of instructors all older than I was, which earned me the nickname “baby boss.” But what does it mean to be in charge of things? It was not that I was officially the boss or wanted to control others, but rather that I consistently stepped up and said yes. If there was an opportunity, I applied; if a volunteer was needed, I raised my hand; if there was a chance to do something interesting and fun, I joined. Saying yes became an important avenue into leadership roles, saying yes made me a participant, someone who was engaged in the mix versus sitting on the sidelines. I will say that I never sought to lead, I just was always ready to join in and collaborate, to do, and to act. And so from my youth, especially secondary school days, I was seen as someone who could be counted on to move things forward, a team player who would work hard to advance the collective agenda, whether it was writing and producing an original play for my school’s spring concert, being elected as President of the Historical Society, participating on the debate team, and so on. Saying yes meant that
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you became known to those who had access to opportunities, or were in control of them, and were therefore more inclined to think of you the next time they were considering who to select or invite. Saying yes to opportunities does not necessarily mean leadership, but it might, depending on how you make use of the opportunity. This leads me back to the first lesson – accept responsibility. By saying yes, I was, naturally, assigned tasks to complete and batons to carry, since many activities were group affairs involving many students, so we all depended on one another to reach the finish line. Accepting responsibility, living up to commitments, and getting the job done well and on time, all led to more responsibility, more opportunities, more chances to demonstrate dependability, teamwork, creativity…or not. This is a crucial point, opportunities are simply that, a chance at something with no guarantee of continuation or reward. Sometimes opportunities are close-ended and don’t lead to anything else. But whether short term or continuous, opportunities are always a chance to demonstrate competence, the ability to work well with others, to develop plans and follow them, to pivot as needed, and to revise as appropriate. I remember being interviewed about 101 years ago for a doctoral study about mid-stage women academics at a certain level of accomplishment and leadership in their careers. One question stumped me: a metaphor to describe my professional trajectory; another was equally difficult – to tell a story of how I came to where I had arrived at the time. Huh? I searched for a metaphor but could not find one. A story of how I got here, what? I realized that the study, which was looking at women leaders from the four so-called racial(ized) groups in the United States, was implicitly framed by white sensibility and middle-class lives that afforded the indulgence of metaphors and self-chosen life dreams. The assumption was that it was
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natural to chart one’s destiny, picture oneself in a chosen future, and just follow that storyline. In the interview, I stopped struggling and simply said, I have no metaphors and no story, that I was propelled forward by simply saying yes, and paying my bills. As a first-generation immigrant from Singapore, first-generation college attendee, SE Asian, Asian (American) woman who came from modest circumstances and worked her way through college and graduate school, I never had the luxury (or safety net) to ponder metaphors or imagine possible selves. I had to take care of myself and pay the bills. So, from college on, I focused on saying yes and paying the bills, and that mindset and philosophy have served me well. It brought me wild and very memorable adventures in Afghanistan, Siberia, and Mongolia, and many more fascinating countries, connected me to collaborators all over the United States and the world, graced me with so many wonderful friendships, and offered me multiple opportunities to lead, both internationally, such as when I took on a leadership role in the design of a new Graduate School of Education with the University of Warsaw and the Foundation for Quality Education, and locally when I said yes to becoming the first Associate Dean for Teacher Education and School Support Services at TC.
SAYING YES TO LEADING My appointment as Associate Dean came by happenstance. Again, as is my wont, I had not set my sights on being a university administrator, had never thought about it, just as I had never thought about getting my doctorate or becoming a professor. TC had just appointed a new Dean and we teacher education faculty pressed her to appoint a director of teacher education such that the many diffuse teacher preparation
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programs across the university could be brought together under a designated leader. Up until that point, there had been no leader for teacher education at the university, even though teacher education constituted a very significant and hefty part of TC’s mission and work. I was one of the vocal faculty calling for this change, given my rank as a tenured associate professor. I remember the Dean calling me in for a meeting to tell me that she had decided to appoint an Associate Dean versus a Director because she saw the need for academic leadership. She also told me that she had asked faculty who would be a good person to tap for this role, and I had been nominated by several peers. She invited me to take up the position, and my first reaction was to say no. But upon reflection I thought, one cannot agitate for change and then be unwilling to step up and do the work when change is invited. So, saying yes to leading is first about accepting the opportunity to lead when invited and to be willing to pay things forward, even when it was not in your plan or even imagination. However, saying yes to leading is not just about accepting the opportunity to lead when expressly asked; oftentimes opportunities to lead are not so apparent nor are they invitational. At TC while an assistant, untenured professor, I held five different leadership positions officially (associate director of the preservice elementary teacher education program plus co/associate/director of several funded projects), coordinated or led components of the preservice program (admissions, recruitment, student teaching supervisors), served on several college-level leadership committees including Faculty Executive Committee, and was appointed to the committee that advised a (then) new president on the academic restructuring of the entire institution. I also taught a full load of classes, supervised student teachers in their field placements, and developed a research agenda. In addition, I took on consulting
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work, taught in the summer (paying the bills was not just a grad school reality), and served on national committees with the American Educational Research Association and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. If this all sounds like a lot to manage, it was. However, this glimpse into my life as an untenured professor is not an attempt to spin a sorry saga about exploitation in the academy, the (ab)use of power by senior faculty over junior colleagues, gender discrimination in terms of workload and compensation, or the “invisible tax” (King, 2016) on faculty of color, especially women faculty of color. While I can say honestly that they all were lived realities for me, I did also exercise (some) agency in that I did choose to say yes when I was given a choice; even when I wasn’t, each additional task or responsibility hoisted onto my plate also became a door into opportunity. First, through responsibilities assigned versus selected, I came to know colleagues across the university – and their programs; I came to know faculty in other institutions and leaders in other organizations, as well as donors, school-based colleagues, etc. I also learned a great deal about how things work – networks, relationships, quid pro quo, alliances – as well as just the technicalities and regulations associated with getting things done. I became acquainted with the histories and skeletons and heard about past mistakes and pitfalls, as well as glorious stories of inventive risks and productive failures. Most importantly, I developed relationships with the many “invisible” workers who keep the machinery of any organization running – the secretaries and clerks, assistants and coordinators, middle managers, and deputies – these administrators, both high and low, became my friends, as well as my friends in need, so when something had to be pushed through quickly, signed off, approved, or stamped, they helped me because we were connected personally. And when I advanced up the leadership ranks, they were also the people I
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was charged to lead, and could, because they knew me and had already learned I could be trusted to lead them fairly. So yes, sometimes we are tapped for leadership by supervisors or peers who see potential in us; sometimes we apply for and get leadership positions that are predefined. But more often than not, opportunities to lead are invisible and must be discerned or created and brought to conscious action. One leads by leading. This means seeking to lead, i.e., searching out and leaning into avenues for leading no matter what the task or your position, by fully participating, deeply engaging, learning all there is to learn about the task, connecting with all walks of people along the way, and becoming the dependable person everyone knows they can rely on, and therefore will want to rely upon again in the future.
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WOMEN WHO LEAD I was recently invited to participate in another doctoral study on leadership (I’ve actually participated in several, a popular topic it seems, perhaps because the search for the secret to leadership is never ending?). As this study focused on deans, I was not surprised to hear that I was one of only two women Deans in the sample – in general, there continues to be a disproportionate imbalance of female to male leaders. As to be expected, I was asked about leadership from a woman’s perspective – what difference does being a woman make? It is a very typical question posed of women, but not one that is typically posed of men since they are perceived to be the norm for leadership, nor are men asked to consider what is different about a leader who is a woman? It is also an impossible question to answer since the woman I am cannot be separated from all the other identities I embody; I do not put on my woman’s hat for some actions or decisions, or consider the
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“woman’s” strategy I should follow according to the particular circumstance. Does it make a difference that I am a woman Dean/leader? Unquestionably, but it is an integrated, encompassing, explicit, and implicit aspect of who I am and what I do. Does it make a difference in how I am perceived and treated? Unquestionably, we live in a gendered, maledominated, patriarchal world where men have dominated by force, socialization, fiat, finances, and assumption. We also live in a raced and colonized world, where, as I stated earlier, men who are white are typically in front and on top, ahead of men of color, men of more color, etc., until we descend to women of color. When I was interviewed for the position of Dean at HKU, I was asked how I felt about/would handle being the only woman in a group of 10 deans. My response was that I was well accustomed to being the only something in every group I am in – the only woman, Asian, Asian American, immigrant, educator, person of color, and so on. That also means being subjected to all kinds of (mis)perceptions and assumptions, racism, sexism, silencing, Orientalism (Said, 1978), xenophobia, patronizing behavior, and the list goes on. But the way things are is not the way things need to remain, certainly times have changed and with them laws, institutions, and cultural norms. Still, there is much work yet to be done. At a recent conference for postgraduate students at HKU, a question came up about leadership, why most deans continue to be men and what would increase the number of women deans. The speaker addressed the question, but then passed onto me, the woman Dean, for further insight. I offered four thoughts: (1) Say yes, put your hand up, be a participant; this comment reiterates what I have already said but bears repeating over and over because one cannot lead or learn to lead without being involved, without jumping in, never blindly but always fearlessly or at least
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confidently and optimistically. Trust that you know and are capable of more than you believe and that openness to learning will buoy you when you falter. (2) Speak up and speak out, actively resist the stereotypes that keep women silent and “nice.” I know this is not easy and often feels uncomfortable, especially in the beginning. But speaking up is a learned behavior, and the only way to get better at it is to practice it, a lot. Don’t let the blank ZOOM™ screen be a metaphor for you, show yourself, be visible. (3) Support other women, engage feminist practices that consciously center women in the story – for example, make an effort to cite women scholars or tap women for ideas; assess your participation structures to ensure that women get the floor as often as men; and mentor women coming behind you, forward them for opportunities to lead and grow. There are many ways to equalize gender imbalance, but they begin with an ability to notice inequity and challenge the normative. Learn to unsee the taken for granted. The final thought I offered was for men in the audience, that they needed to be feminists as well. A common misconception is that only females can be feminists or that being feminist means being female-like, effeminate (if you’re male), aggressive, and malelike (if you are female). Misconceptions such as these stop well-meaning people from being engaged in the fight for justice. Being a feminist means advocating for gender equality and equity, fighting for justice for women and girls, actively intervening in and speaking out against unjust practices that demean women and hold them back, and being conscious of male privilege and leveraging that toward equity and fairness for women and girls. If everyone were a feminist, we could possibly make sexism, misogyny, and gender bias our history, not our continuous present.
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A CLOSING STORY – FINDING MY VOICE I am a good Asian daughter, raised in Asian schools within an Asian society. As a child and adolescent, I was expected to listen and receive, and I was not expected to offer my opinions or have a point of view. School was a place for absorbing facts, and assignments and exams were for giving those facts back. When I went to the United States for university, I was not accustomed to speaking in class or airing my thoughts. I remember getting 100, a perfect score, on a history test (because I had been trained to take good notes and memorize facts), and the professor making it a point after that to constantly ask in class – what do you think Ms. Goodwin? Ms. Goodwin had no idea what to say or what she thought. I dreaded his class from midterm on. I also remember skipping the final oral presentation that all students were required to give for a Philosophy class because I was too afraid to speak in front of others. I had an A average before that presentation, I ended up with a C for the class. I was not silent in other parts of my life, but in front of classmates, superiors, teachers, and Americans, I was mute and timid. When I entered graduate school at TC, that pattern continued, I was a good student who never said anything in class, although I did speak in small group discussions. It seemed hard to break into large group conversations, impossible to find the right entry point into the discussion. Everyone seemed to speak so freely and fluently, with such eloquence, it seemed. I would mentally compose the right response (i.e., not stupid), only to have someone else make “my” point before me, literally taking my breath away while I was gathering my courage to speak. And then I took a class with my advisor, Professor Karen Zumwalt. Karen was an amazing teacher who really paid attention to our learning – tough, fair, interesting, deep, and super smart. Midterm, she arranged each
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student to have an individual conference with her about their progress. I was surprised when she told me that if she were to give me a grade, it would be a B1. Now B1 is a good grade, but I had been doing excellent work with As on all my assignments; I never missed class, was never late, and I participated in everything. I said all this to her and she said, “but you never speak in class.” But I do, I said, I speak in the many small group discussions she organized, and she said, “but you never speak in the large group.” So I murmured something about how hard that was and that I was shy (yes, I am an extroverted introvert), and she said, “but you have things to say that the whole group should hear.” I will never forget her response, and in fact, I have echoed it many times with my own students. That was a lesson I will always hold close to my heart. From that day forth, I made it my goal to speak. I took little steps, vowing to speak at least once in every class, even if it was something fairly meaningless. I asked about due dates and how many pages were required. As trivial as these comments were, they allowed me to hear my own voice in the classroom space, to belong, and to claim a place of ownership for myself. I progressed to more than one utterance per class as well as more substantive contributions. It all felt very hard in the beginning, but speaking became easier, more comfortable, until suddenly it was an expectation, not from others, but for myself. I have shared this story with Karen and thanked her for helping me to find my voice. She enabled me to open up in ways I never imagined and surely helped me to progress further on the leadership path. I often also joke that now people wish I would shut up – kidding aside, although I am sure they often do wish I would stop talking, I am no longer afraid of speaking truth to power, advocating for others, advancing a different perspective, and smashing the passive Asian girl stereotype. Speaking up, like
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leadership, is a skill (or set of skills) that must be developed and strengthened through practice over time. The first time it feels excruciating, the second time it feels horrible, the 10th time it feels like a very stupid idea, but by the 100th time, it feels just right.
REFERENCES Arruda, W. (2020). 15 traits of today’s effective leaders. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2020/06/14/15-traits-of-todays-effective-leaders/ #15cd4dcf1d19
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Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111–132. King, J. (2016, May 15). The invisible tax on teachers of color. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washington post.com/opinions/the-invisible-tax-on-black-teachers/ 2016/05/15/6b7bea06-16f7-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_ story.html Peters, K., & Haslam, A. (2018, August 6). Research: To be a good leader, start by being a good follower. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/ 08/research-to-be-a-good-leader-start-by-being-a-goodfollower Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
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PART 2 SUPPORT STRUCTURES FOR WOMEN IN ACADEMIA
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6 THE POWER OF NETWORKS IN THE GENDERED ACADEMY Emily Yarrow
INTRODUCTION If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others Copyright © 2021. Emerald Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
– African Proverb This chapter investigates the role of academic networks and social media in the context of research evaluation in the gendered academy. Primarily, it focusses on the linkages between social media engagement and academic networks in the United Kingdom (UK). Recent research into women’s lived experiences of research evaluation in the UK, and academic networks is drawn upon. It takes a two-pronged approach, drawing on empirical academic research into women’s lived experiences of networks, social media as a networking tool, as well as the author’s own reflections and experiences of UK
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academia, and the inclusion of vignettes from other women scholars. The use of and engagement with social media as an academic networking and awareness raising tool is being increasingly recognized, not only by academics themselves, but also by universities and funding bodies, and as means whereby to enhance teaching, learning, research, and professional practice (Doyle, 2020). However, the main focus of the chapter is to explore the role of networks and social media for women academics in the gendered academy, with attention also paid to the notion of the strength of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973, p. 1360), i.e., the notion that relatively weak ties such as an acquaintance can still be powerful and helpful, and build fruitful bridges to other networks. Through vignettes, colleagues illustrate ways to navigate the [gendered] academic networks. Anecdotally, there is often a misconception that a network and/or connection needs to be deeply established to be fruitful, but oftentimes, even a very loose connection or small number of interactions can be helpful (Granovetter, 1973), particularly when navigating a context such as academia ¨ which is deeply nepotistic (Mahlck, 2003; Morley, 2005; Van ˚ & Wold, 1997). This den Brink & Benschop, 2012a; Wenneras chapter deliberates some recommendations and success stories, which may be insightful for others and help mitigate against gender inequality in academia. It is essential to be clear that this chapter is not about “fixing the women” but rather serves to highlight the deeply engrained nature of gender inequality in academia, how to navigate the gendered landscape, in part through networks and social media.
THE GENDERED ACADEMY Vertical gender segregation remains a constant and deeply engrained issue, and women continue to be underrepresented
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not only in the professoriate but also in senior academic management and full-time academic positions in universities both in the UK (Yarrow, 2017), and countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and indeed, around the globe. A commonly used informal description of the upper echelons of academia is a network of “old boys’ clubs,” and it can be argued that this is a unique way of networking and, critically, gaining access to tacit information, as well as gaining access to an exclusive club-like network. Given the insidious nature of gender inequality, we know that these “old boys clubs” remain highly effective for their members, exclusionary to women, and that they play a tacit role in recruitment and selection, and the furtherance of [some] men’s academic careers, to the detriment of their women counterparts (Acker, 2006; Davies, Healey, & Cliffe, 2015; Yarrow, 2017). Indeed, much change is needed not only in the academy, but in wider society, and social media increasingly plays an integral role within this. It has been important to build in the voices of other women scholars and their experiences, not only in navigating the gendered and racialized academy in the context of research evaluation but also to gain insight into their experiences of social media and online networks to not only build their profiles but also to engage with various communities. Three scholars have contributed their views and experiences in the form of short vignettes in the chapter. In the final sections of the chapter, the prevalent and insidious role of [gendered] informal networks will be discussed, and some practical guidance surrounding the navigation of academic networks and social media/online networks will be provided. The following section explores the dominant role that research evaluation in the form of the Research Evaluation Framework (REF) plays not only on academic work in the UK, but critically also academic networks, in order to situate the [gendered] landscape within which networks are operant.
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THE CONTEXT OF RESEARCH EVALUATION IN THE UK Research evaluation in the UK actively contributes to the continuance of gender inequality regimes (Acker, 2006),1 though it may potentially be used as a career-path clarification tool, and so also holds advantages for some women (Yarrow, 2017). Aspects of the literature suggest that the use of research evaluation tools and performance management has led to the academy becoming increasingly masculine (Shaw & Cassell, 2007; Parker & Jary, 1995) and that even in contemporary areas of research evaluation, such as research impact evaluation, women continue to be underrepresented (Davies, Yarrow, & Syed, 2019). It is here where social media may also play an important role in the generation of impact through dissemination (Rogers, 2019) or pathways to impact. Research evaluation exercises, as with other modes of evaluation in higher education, are becoming increasingly and worryingly gendered (Davies et al., 2015, 2019; Morley, 2005; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012a; Yarrow, 2017). What is clear is that not only can such systems and modes of evaluation be gamed and manipulated (Stern, 2016), but that they are undermined by informal interactions and gendered networks. While there are different ways in which research evaluation can be, and indeed oftentimes, gamed, it is the role of networks, on- and offline, that this chapter focusses on.
LINKING THE NAVIGATION OF RESEARCH EVALUATION, NETWORKS, AND SOCIAL MEDIA Ultimately, academic careers are being increasingly governed by research evaluation (Yarrow, 2017) in a context where gender inequality is rife, but also where informal networks, as is the case in wider society, can be very powerful, useful, and
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shape an individual’s career experiences considerably. While the REF in the UK does not draw on metrics for individual academics, three distinct elements are assessed: the quality of outputs (e.g. publications, performances, and exhibitions), their impact beyond academia, and the environment that supports research (REF, 2020). It is clear that what binds these three elements together is communication, collaboration, and interaction. The three elements are contended here to be linked to, and potentially enriched by, the use of social media [as another tool of academic networking] which is potentially more accessible than other more traditional forms of networking, such as conferences. It may be that social media serves as a fruitful tool for those who cannot travel, have limited funds, or have caring responsibilities, but who still want and indeed need to engage with their scholarly communities.
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NAVIGATION OF ACADEMIC NETWORKS The role of networks in academic careers cannot be downplayed, and it is clear that networks can be, and oftentimes do, shape lived experiences of the academy significantly. Informal networks and their effects often result in not only hindrances for women, but also, critically, privileges for men, which come together and further intensify, thereby producing extensive (gendered) inequalities in the construction and perceptions of excellence (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b) which are then oftentimes materialized through outcomes of research evaluation (Yarrow, 2017). However, there are also aspects that can be harnessed to leverage in an increasingly competitive academy. The following vignette provides insight into some of the tensions surrounding the navigation of gendered academic
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networks and the important role that informal networks play in the academy and organizational life: …it has taken me all my time in academia (9 years) to start to build contacts outside of my own immediate work environment. It has been a slow and often very uncomfortable experience for me, I think primarily because I am an introvert by nature, but also because I feel a sense that ‘being an academic’ is an identity that can encompass one’s whole being, rather than being compartmentalised as a ‘job’. I think I have let it in to more areas of my life than ‘being a job’ but I also am vehemently protective that I don’t want it to subsume me completely so that ‘being an academic’ takes over 7 days/week. One of the key ways to build networks seems to be conferences/ workshops, but these can be a nightmare for introverts like myself and not least because many start to stray over into evenings/weekend time, which I try to protect for my ‘non-academic’ life. This is not always possible when there are pinch points (e.g. books to be read, marking to be done) but for the most part, I try to park the day at 7pm and keep Saturdays/Sundays mostly for my non-academic pursuits. Contacts are definitely important, the few that I have are very precious in terms of having a very specific and direct connection to each other’s’ interests. Most have come about through smaller workshops rather than larger conference spaces. I particularly enjoy the virtual interactions through groups such as VIDA2 Dr Victoria Pagan, Newcastle University Business School, UK
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Notably, also the following vignette from an anonymous lecturer provides insight into the importance of developing not only networks, but also developing and maintaining community: With regard to navigating gendered (and racial) networks – my strategy thus far is mainly to try to create spaces beyond them. I think that is far more useful and nourishing, than trying to make space in contexts that I don’t especially make sense in or, in fact, don’t especially want to be subsumed by/assimilated into. So, examples of that would be:
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• Creating a Women of Colour network, which is informal, social but has already been really successful just in terms of creating togetherness and solidarity. • When I started at my current university, I cold-emailed a bunch of folks of colour and/or people doing similar research in other departments – introducing myself and asking to meet-up. That has led to the creation of friendships and intellectual alliances – plus, it has had a snowball effect – i.e. the people I reached out introducing me to more folk, etc. And that’s honestly been brilliant! Solidarity, friendship, and the development of supportive networks both in “real life” and online play an important role in feelings of connectedness, academic community making, and can also be beneficial to women in navigating the gendered academy. These are all elements which can also serve as important support mechanisms, and sources of strength and hope.
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REFLECTIONS ON AND EXPERIENCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA Visibility in the academy of the work that you are doing as well as creating a reputation for yourself is becoming increasingly important in a globally connected world, where positive social media presence can be a real boon. Moreover, in the context of social distancing in the COVID-19 era, and changing patterns surrounding working from home, more broadly, one may argue that the role and importance of social media engagement, contacts, and online networks in navigating the gendered academy is further amplified. Increasingly, there is a requirement for academics to have a strong online presence and anecdotally, for many this can, in the first instance, be an exasperation or additional burden to an already “maxed-out” schedule of academic work, child, and/or other caring responsibilities and disproportionate domestic labor in the home (Yarrow & Davies, 2020). However, it is argued here, drawing on the ongoing experiences of the author and the three scholars who kindly gave their insights for the vignettes, that social media can not only boost an individual academic’s visibility but also serve as a valuable and efficient networking tool, a navigational compass for academic networks and “scoping out” what is happening in a particular field. This holds the potential to side-step some of the damaging effects of women’s exclusion from some academic networks. Additionally, and perhaps more notably, engagement through, for, and with social media can provide us with valuable and enriching communities, and a sense of a belonging, and place in the world. As a PhD student and then a precariously employed Teaching Fellow, it was oftentimes difficult to gain access to research funding, to attend academic conferences, or travel to attend academic networking events. It was imperative to find other
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ways to engage with the research community in an affordable/ free way. Scarcity of resource is a great driver for creativity and innovation and given that most social media platforms are free for the end-user, this is a key aspect of social media which serves as an effective and efficient platform and propellant of, and for, change. Henceforth, social media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and ResearchGate, provide a platform through which to engage with peers, research participants, senior academics, policy makers, and other research stakeholders, which is both free, in real time, and allows for profile building, as well as the navigation of what often feels like a complex and deeply gendered world. This in turn can help open up face-to-face conversations, which can often be the hardest part about networking; being able to say ‘oh, I recognize you from Twitter’ or ‘we had a great conversation online about x, let’s grab a coffee’ can be helpful, but also potentially less daunting, and in turn, more inclusive and accessible. Twitter, in particular, has proved to be a useful resource for becoming involved in conversations, and critically also in conferences, through the use of hashtags. By finding out the particular hashtag/s of a conference or event it is possible to be a part of the conversation without being there. You can find out what is going on, as well as have the opportunity to interact with scholars who are at the event, thereby interacting with and developing your network. On several occasions, tweets, the use of the appropriate hashtag for the event conference and/or network led to further conversations or even as a conversation opener when meeting colleagues in person elsewhere, thereby planting the seed for longer-term relationships and potentially also collaboration opportunities, and indeed, friendships. It is here that social media can be a real boon. Interacting with other scholars, despite not physically being at a conference, but being a part of the conversation online, meant
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that it was possible to know what conversations were not only happening but also critically to have a presence and then later, a voice in them. Having voice in academic conversations is important for individual scholars to find co-authors and collaborators, particularly in an academy where networks are so important not only for the creation and co-creation of knowledge but also for its dissemination. Interestingly, many universities in the UK also include elements of ‘being known internationally as an expert in the field’ for promotion to Professor, and social media presence arguably plays a role in this. It may be argued that in a pandemic and post-pandemic world where travel is restricted, that engagement through and for social media will further increase in importance. This is important for academics at all levels, not solely Professors. Maythe Han, a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology, provides us with some insights into how she uses Twitter to connect with academics around the world, without leaving the comfort of her own home, as well as the [unexpected] effects on her writing: When I started my PhD in 2018, I made a Twitter account. I wasn’t sure how I was going to use it then, but it somehow organically developed into a place of academic networking and engagement for me. Because I’m quite introverted (which makes inperson networking an anxiety-inducing nightmare), too, I’m especially thankful for the opportunities to connect with academics all over the world in the comfort and safety of my own home. I’ve recently connected with some scholars who are interested in starting an international and interdisciplinary project with me, which is such an exciting prospect; it’s surreal that this was done while I was on my couch, lazily petting my dog.
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Tweeting also had an unexpected impact on my writing process. Usually, when I feel pressured to write something academic and I’m just staring at an empty Word document, I rarely feel any inspiration or motivation. The pressure to write in ways that are academically ‘acceptable’ – theoretically robust, and often at least a little bit pretentious and inaccessible, unfortunately – actually tends to stifle or censor the voice that I’d like to project in my writing. But on a platform like Twitter where I can take on any tone I’d like as long as it fits within the character limit, I don’t feel the pressure to write perfectly academically. This often produces more accessible writing that’s hopefully more enjoyable to read. I genuinely hope that Tweeting will serve as good practice for writing my dissertation, which I am determined to turn into an exercise in affective ethnographic storytelling
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Maythe Han, PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology, The University of Edinburgh, UK. Twitter has become a principal platform for connecting, expressing ideas in a less formal context, and where one can build a voice quickly, freely, and internationally. This also holds the potential to overcome parochialism and distribute access to online academic audiences (Carrigan, 2019). Access to academic audiences is also illustrated in the following vignette surrounding the use of social media and how social media can be used to network and develop one’s voice. I have found Twitter to be the most useful social media platform particularly for building academic contacts and for keeping up to date in my academic field. In particular, I made a connection that began a
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conversation towards the development of some new work in the future. It began as a Tweet about a call for book chapter ideas, which led to me replying to the tweet, followed by private messages and Skype meetings. A second example relates to being able to follow scholars whose work I have read and/or who I have seen present at conferences. There is a sharing of calls for papers, events, and work of interest; a particular outcome of this was a recent ‘trend’ for women scholars to share the Twitter handles of other women scholars who they respect and follow. I used this as an opportunity to follow them and learn more about their work, and retweet where possible to help amplify. The final benefit of Twitter has been to follow key organisations/publications – this has a less personal impact, but it does mean that I have an understanding of the academic landscape and moments that happen in my field of interest.
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Dr Victoria Pagan, Newcastle University Business School, UK It is clear that social media is an integral tool in the contemporary academy, which can aid and develop voice and agency in a way that is geographically accessible, relatively open access and potentially more fluid and accessible than other forms of networking. Social media networks can, and indeed oftentimes do, boost communication and open up potential opportunities for inter- and intradisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, it may provide opportunities to engage with policy makers, share expertise, as well as provide new and different platforms to communicate impact (Alexander, 2019). We know that currently, in the UK context, women continue to be underrepresented in the research impact agenda and that, certainly in the context of Business Schools for example,
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that men dominate the prized impact discourse and agenda (Davies et al., 2019). Social media, such as Twitter, is another outlet for research impact dissemination, which can also simultaneously be used to develop one’s audience and network, as well as hold the potential to disseminate some of the [gendered] online attention and media coverage in the academy (Carrigan, 2019).
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PRACTICAL GUIDANCE AROUND THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA The use of social media can be a daunting task for many people, and indeed there are many “horror” stories of trolls and abuse of women scholars online, and particularly minority ethnic women (McKintosh, 2019). Abuse on social media is a widespread phenomenon, so much so that there are organizations and movements such as “Glitch” – an NGO that works toward ending online abuse and developing positive online citizenship (Glitch, 2020). However, this chapter contends that the benefits associated with the use of social media, particularly for community building, and networking in the context of an increasingly evaluated academy, are significant, important, and outweigh the challenges. The following points are a few tips and guidance as to making your online network work for you: • Never put anything online that you wouldn’t be happy to write in a work email (or be happy to show your Mum/ parent for that matter). This is a good rule of thumb that can help ensure that you communicate professionally in an online environment that can often feel pretty informal • If you don’t have it already, it can be helpful to join LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or academia.edu and/or ResearchGate
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• Identify your social media pages and Twitter handle in particular on business cards and on bios and include it on your email signature • Think about who your key audience is for your scholarly work, and with whom you’d like to interact, this may help the visibility of your work • Link your online profiles to your ORCID iD3 • Find professional groups and topic groups and join them; you can also search by hashtags and be added to “topic” lists on Twitter • Think about the story that you are trying to tell and your “why” – this can help when you only have 280 characters such as on Twitter
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• Stay relevant and maintain your presence regularly – you can maximize the potential effectiveness of this by tweeting, posting, and engaging at times when your audience is most active • Try to engage regularly with your audience and grow your network organically by contributing to, engaging in online conversations, and developing your online voice • Be genuine, be honest, and develop your own online story and voice
NAVIGATING THE ACADEMY IN THE CONTEMPORARY COVID-19 CONTEXT At the time of writing, scholars around the globe are also living through and attempting to work in the COVID-19 global pandemic, a time during which many of us are quarantined in
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our homes, and many academics have a wide range of caring responsibilities such as children and their home schooling, sick or elderly family members, and other responsibilities. There are already patterns emerging that clearly show that it is women who are disproportionately affected by the shift to home working, home-schooling, and other caring responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic (Villareal, 2020), and likely also to be so in the longer term. While it is too early to know the longer-term effects of the current global COVID-19 situation on gender equality in the home, the academy, and in wider society, anecdotally there is vast potential for gender inequality to become even more pronounced (Fazackerley, 2020; Yarrow & Davies, 2020). In a sector which is already marked by ongoing and deeply engrained gender inequality, it is argued that navigating research evaluation exercises and networks in the gendered academy becomes even more important in academic careers and organizational life. This is where the role of, and in turn, individuals’ presence on social media become increasingly important in order to forge, develop, and maintain relationships, networks, and communities around the world, particularly given the disproportionate burdens that women face (Yarrow & Davies, 2020), not only in the academy but also in the home, in caring responsibilities, and wider society.
SUMMARY As we enter unprecedented times of homeworking, and engaging with colleagues and our networks online, different opportunities and challenges arise, though it can be argued that engagement in our networks, and being able to navigate an academy marked by gender inequality, astutely is of even
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more importance than ever. Research evaluation mechanisms such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK, the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), and the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) in New Zealand, and others around the world, appear to be set to stay, and so our ability to navigate those systems, and in turn our networks both on and offline, is imperative. In interacting, engaging, and communicating with and for our networks on social media, it may be that individuals are further able to create, develop, and maintain networks which positively contribute to women scholars’ agency, feminist research, and in turn, gender equality through awareness raising. Nevertheless, it is important to be clear that there is still much work to be done in terms of creating a more egalitarian academy internationally, but the onus must not sit with individual academics to communicate more or “better,” but rather that systemic change is needed at the institutional and policy-making level to tackle inequality and make progressive policy which supports women and people with caring responsibilities more generously and strategically. Working strategically and within the parameters of the various programmes of research evaluation may be bolstered by women’s wider inclusion in networks both on- and offline, and social media can play an important role in facilitating this, as a part of research evaluation and academics’ needs for disseminating their work and raising their profile, particularly when the impact element of the REF is considered, for example. Ultimately, however, networks, even those that are made up of loose ties, both on- and offline, can be powerful, and can provide a useful compass and resource for navigating (and even driving positive change in) the acutely nepotistic, gendered, world of academia.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Maythe Han (@maythehan), Dr Victoria Pagan (@Paggers10), and the anonymous lecturer for their contributions to this chapter, Thank You from @Emilyyarrow1
NOTES
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1. Inequality regimes refer to and are “defined as loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations” (p. 443). Acker also argues that “hiring through social networks is one of the ways in which gender and racial inequalities are maintained in organizations” (p. 450). 2. VIDA is a network of women critical management scholars which provides critical friendship, community, and opportunities for collaboration. 3. An ORCID iD is digital identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers, and links your professional information such as affiliations, grants, publications, and peer review.
REFERENCES Acker, J. (2006). Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society, 20(4), 441–464. Alexander, H. (2019). Do female and male authors share promotion of their work on social media with equal frequency? Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 39(2), NP15–NP17. Carrigan, M. (2019). From hermits to celebrities-how social media is reshaping academic hierarchies and what we can do about it. Impact of Social Sciences Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/12/16/
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from-hermits-tocelebrities-how-social-media-is-reshapingacademic-hierarchies-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/. Accessed on January 4, 2021. Davies, C., Healey, R. L., & Cliffe, A. D. (2015). Scaling the mountain: An exploration of gendered experience of academic staff in relation to the research excellence framework 2014. Retrieved from https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/handle/ 10034/600502. Accessed on January 4, 2021. Davies, J., Yarrow, E., & Syed, J. (2019). The curious under‐ representation of women impact case leaders: Can we disengender inequality regimes? Gender, Work and Organization, 27(2), 129–148.
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Doyle, J. (2020). Social media in higher education: Case studies, reflections and analysis [Book Review]. Australian Journal of Education, 64(1), 91. Fazackerley, A. (2020). Women’s research plummets over lockdown-but articles from men increase. The Guardian. May 12. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2020/may/12/womens-researchplummets-duringlockdown-but-articles-from-men-increase. Accessed on January 4, 2021. Glitch. (2020). Fix the glitch. Retrieved from https://fixtheglitch.org/. Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. M¨ahlck, P. (2003). Mapping gender in academic workplaces: Ways of reproducing gender inequality within the discourse of equality. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from http://www. divaportal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid5diva2%3A142110& dswid5-1174. Accessed on January 4, 2021.
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McKintosh, K. (2019). It’s not just Meghan and Kate-all women need social media protection. The Guardian. January 30. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2019/jan/30/meghan-kate-women-socialmedia-twitter-instagram. Morley, L. (2005). The micropolitics of quality. Critical Quarterly, 47(1–2), 83–95. Parker, M., & Jary, D. (1995). The McUniversity: Organization, management and academic subjectivity. Organization, 2(2), 319–338. REF. (2020). What is the REF? Retrieved from https://www.ref. ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/. Rogers, J. (2019). The use of social media and its impact for research. BioResources, 14(3), 5022–5024.
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Shaw, S., & Cassell, C. (2007). ‘That’s not how I see it’: Female and male perspectives on the academic role. Women in Management Review, 22(6), 497–515. Stern, N. (2016). Building on success and learning from experience: An independent review of the research excellence framework. Government report reference number: Ref: IND/16/9. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications/research-excellence-framework-review. Van den Brink, M., & Benschop, Y. (2012a). Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs. Organization, 19(4), 507–524. Van den Brink, M., & Benschop, Y. (2012b). Slaying the seven‐ headed dragon: The quest for gender change in academia. Gender, Work and Organization, 19(1), 71–92. Villareal, A. (2020). Coronavirus pandemic exacerbates inequalities for women, UN warns. The Guardian. Retrieved from
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/11/uncoronavirus-pandemic-gender-inequalities-women. ˚ C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in Wenneras, peer-review. Nature, 387(6631), 341–343. Yarrow, E. (2017). National research evaluation and its effects on female academics’ careers in the UK-A case study. Unpublished PhD thesis, Queen Mary, University of London.
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Yarrow, E., & Davies, J. (2020). Does working from home exacerbate gender inequalities? Wonkhe Higher Education Blog. Retrieved from https://wonkhe.com/blogs/co-workingco-parenting-covid-19-will-working-from-home-exacerbategender-inequalities/.
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7 WOMEN’S WORK: EDUCATION-FOCUSED ACADEMICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pauline M. Ross
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INTRODUCTION We are in the midst of generational change in the academic workforce. Numerous studies from across the globe provide evidence that the academic role in higher education is changing (Bexley, James, & Arkoudis, 2011; Locke, 2012, Locke, Whitchurch, Smith, & Mazenod, 2016; Marginson, 2000; Marini, Locke, & Whitchurch, 2019; Teichler, Arimoto, & Cummings, 2013). Academic roles, previously a resilient mixture of both research and education, are differentiating into either research or education alone. The value of education-focused academic roles not solely centered upon disciplinary research is gaining commonality and credibility in higher education. Given historic gender bias in teaching roles in higher education, this raises the question of whether such a role will be overly represented by women?
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Will an education-focused academic role be a new form of “pink-collared” women’s work, of lesser value and similar to doing domestic chores? Will educational leadership positions still remain overly represented by men? We need to be sure that a repeat of the practice of the last 100 years, which has been rich with gender bias, does not occur for women in education-focused academic roles. The aims of this chapter are to explain what the changing nature of the academic role might mean for women. This will be done by presenting profiles that tell the stories of women in education-focused roles, and the barriers or challenges (inhibitors) and opportunities (catalysts) or “snakes” and “ladders” they have experienced throughout the journey of their academic careers. The purpose of doing so is to highlight the journeys of women in higher education and caution on strategies which may create a semblance of gender parity, but instead ingrain inequities for women in these complex times in higher education.
WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION? Since the industry’s beginning, women have been underrepresented in higher education. As recently as late last century, higher education was dominated by elite males in secure academic roles, often supported by women at home taking care of family responsibilities and domestic chores. The few women working in higher education in the last century were more commonly in administration and insecure education roles (Bell, 2010; Cass, Dawson, Temple, Wills, & Winkler, 1983). Although the higher education sector is no longer comprised of mostly men, solely pursuing research interests with a supportive wife at home or one at work as a research assistant,
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women are still not equally represented across the disciplines (Bagilhole & White, 2008; Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019; Marchant & Wallace, 2013; Marini et al., 2019). Women are more equally represented in the “pink-collar” fields of education, sociology, and psychology (Bell, 2009, 2010), but they are still seriously underrepresented in all disciplines of science and engineering (Bell, 2009, 2010; Vila Concejo et al., 2018). The problem for women in higher education is that they can find themselves in self-reinforcing cycles which lead to lower research productivity. Lower research productivity leads to fewer grant applications, fewer successful grant applications, and less success for women leads to underrepresentation. Evidence suggests that women also take on higher teaching loads than men (Thomas & Davies, 2002), encouraged perhaps by heads of department who either consciously or unconsciously believe that the nurturing aspect of teaching comes “naturally” to women (Thomas & Davies, 2002). This focus on teaching also leads to less research productivity. Additionally, women often carry more family responsibilities and are less willing to accept the trade-offs that come with choices between work and family. This leads to the blurring of work and home boundaries (Dany, Louvel, & Valette, 2011; Leisyte & Hosch-Dayican, 2016; Ylijoki, 2013), and consequently again to less research productivity (Adkins & Dever, 2015; Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019; Gonzalez Ramos, Fernandez Palacin, & Munoz Marquez, 2015; Thomas & Davies, 2002). The masculine, competitive culture of research has also been found to be unattractive to women, who often “opt out” of research (Forster, 2001; Thomas & Davies, 2002). For all academics, lower research productivity in higher education leads to negative performance evaluations, less job security, lesser reputations, and underrepresentation. While women overall are underrepresented in higher education, they are at risk of being overrepresented in education-
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focused roles. Academic roles are changing rapidly and the academic workforce is clearly differentiating to target specific activities (Bexley et al., 2011; Teichler et al., 2013; Whitchurch, 2009, 2019). In the last decade, the number of academics classified in activities of education- or teaching-focused increased by greater than 300% (Fig. 7.1). However, as current data collection does not classify academic role by gender, it is difficult to determine whether more women occupy education-focused roles. Anecdotally, the numbers of women at conferences on education do appear to outnumber men. While education-focused roles are potentially more attractive to women, as they provide greater flexibility than other academic roles, they also come with trade-offs. Academics in education-focused roles often find careers and reputations more difficult to build, and not solely because promotion policies have lagged behind recognition of these roles. Pervasive perceptions of education-focused roles being “pink-collar” and of lesser value are difficult to shift. Also
Fig. 7.1. Number of Staff Employed in Different Roles at Australian Universities (Teaching Focused, Research Focused, Teaching and Research) from 2008 to 2017 (Department of Education and Training, 2017) with Number of Teaching Staff Plotted on a Second Axis.
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difficult to shift are the measures used to assess academic performance of women in both research and education; for example, perceptions of poorer performance by women in education-focused roles are supported by studies that have found that men achieve top scores on student evaluations more frequently than women (Fan et al., 2019; Mitchell & Martin, 2018).
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WHAT ARE THE INFLUENCES THAT SHAPE WOMEN IN EDUCATION-FOCUSED ROLES? Academic careers are influenced by individual attributes such as confidence and motivation, as well as academic work, the academic environment, professional relationships, and social conditions. Diezmann and Grieshaber (2019) described four career influences that impact women, which they categorize rather like a game of snakes and ladders. Snakes, or inhibitors, include a lack of confidence, isolation, tensions between personal and professional life, negative discrimination from the old boys’ club, and positive discrimination leading to overwork. Overwork, for example, may occur when female academics are repeatedly placed on committees to meet institutional gender equity targets. Conversely, ladders include enjoyment and esteem associated with academic work which can have a snowballing effect and lead to more focus and productivity, support for women restarting careers, and support for women to remain in academia through flexible and family-friendly work practices or affirmative action. Demonstrative of this is that ladders have been constructed by research organizations with policies that monitor gender participation (DET, 2017) and evaluate research performance relative to opportunity. However, snakes are often so powerful on the board game of an academic life that it takes only one in
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a woman’s career to have a serious impact, irrespective of the number of ladders or catalysts available (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019). Snakes can stall an academic journey for decades. An event such as lack of success in a research grant application or nonrenewal of an academic contract can also lead to women leaving higher education entirely. It remains unknown, and it is almost impossible to quantify, how many women have left higher education after meeting a significant snake. At the very least, snakes can change an academic career’s direction. For those women who remain, changes in direction are common, and arguably the most common change in direction is from research to education. The next section describes four career profiles of women in higher education. It explores the snakes and ladders they have encountered and how they responded. They show that responses to snakes and stress are not always negative; they can in fact have a positive outcome and build resilience. These profiles were created from 21 interviews with women in education-focused and teaching- and research-focused roles at a variety of levels across universities in Australia. The interviews were semi-structured and recorded. Interviewees responded to 15 questions over a period of 30–60 minutes. The recorded interviews were transcribed by a professionally accredited transcription service (Pacific Transcription Co. Milton, QLD, Australia).
PROFILE 1: THE GIVER The giver’s career is characterized by numerous instances of helping others and giving more than they receive. The ultimate return for the giver is a life dedicated to the success of students and to other academics also dedicated to student success. Although the driving force of the giver was once disciplinary
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research, over time this has been replaced by teaching students and mentoring colleagues as a primary focus and passion. The giver is kept buoyant through building relationships and rapport with students and colleagues which support her throughout a long and satisfying academic career, whenever small or large adversity arises:
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I actually care about them, and I care about the material. I want them to do well. The confidence that education was the right choice for the giver was not immediate. It developed over time with the support of colleagues and the assistance of influential male academics; often senior researchers, including deans. This support system acted as a career catalyst, creating a pathway of leadership in education. Other career catalysts are institutional, especially promotion policies redesigned often by male champions to include education-focused pathways for both men and women. These career catalysts were, however, not sufficient to remove the snake to promotion. After an almost thirty-year career, the giver had not yet been promoted to professor. Whether this was the result of a system which had not acknowledged the value of education, or due to the giver not judging themselve equal to the leaders in research within the institution, is unclear. Nevertheless, the giver is aware of the lesser value assigned to an education-focused role: …the handmaiden of science but we have the allpowerful guru research and associate with them, is the humble, little education-focused person That scholarship isn’t really very rigorous is it? It’s not very highly valued… it doesn’t have a very high impact factor for those journals. It’s perceived a little here as soft… compared to what they all do is very rigorous.
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The profile and life story of the giver is about work, work, and more work. The boundaries between career and home blur, one feeding on the other in a virtuous cycle. The hope is that this will create a legacy. …if I don’t leave any other legacy, I want to sit down with the education-focused ones and make sure they’ve started collecting the data and they’re recognizing what boxes they need to tick… we’re starting a mentoring program for women… I’ve got something to give back.
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PROFILE 2: THE INNOVATOR The innovator is an education researcher, a minority in the male discipline research world. The innovator has built ladders that has led to career success and promotion, being the first woman in their institution, as an education-focused academic, to reach the level of professor. Over decades, the innovator has had to retain an internal sense of the value of their contribution and education research, while witnessing the support given to and value placed on male academics who were failed researchers, yet protected by the boys’ club or clique: …failed researchers are valued more than educational researchers…. failed researchers are actually kept on because they are part of the clique… they haven’t gone over to the dark side. The innovator has had to wait for promotion, being at first assessed as not reaching the standard of professor via the metrics used to measure academic performance. Being interested and successful in education research in a traditionally male-dominated research discipline, ladders are hard to build
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and slow to climb. The misunderstanding of promotion metrics by committees meant a delay in the promotion of the innovator until they were over 50 years old. They use the metrics that they know and that’s what happened to me, because I wasn’t promoted they said they couldn’t understand what my individual intellectual contribution was. I had leadership, but they couldn’t say I had discovered this in my individual original contribution The innovator responds to stress by strategically finding alternative resources, support, and funding sources. Although isolated as a researcher and in the minority, the sense of uniqueness for the innovator becomes empowering.
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I am non-standard, over 50, female and I have English as a second language, total minority nonrepresentative, somewhat unique is how I would say it
PROFILE 3: THE PROBLEM-SOLVER The problem-solver resolutely believes that, given education is the core business of universities, it should be equal in esteem to disciplinary research. Education and education-focused academics being seen as having lesser value is a problem, albeit complex, to be solved. To do so requires time, persuasion, and policies which will eventually lead to other academics correcting their faulty and erroneous thinking. If left unresolved, the problem-solver sees that the dual system of valuing of one academic role over another will create an even larger problem for higher education. I think that’s what people are really scared about is that you go into this institution of the future where
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you have a whole bunch of people who just do the teaching and a whole bunch of people who just do the research because we can see how it would go that way. I think if you do that then you start to create a bit of a ghetto, don’t you? Over the years, the problem-solver recognizes that the “boys in the corridor” are powerful entities who need to be kept on the side, even though their thinking about the value of education-focused academics is faulty. Part of the problem of education-focused academics being undervalued is the difficulty of finding and building a like-minded community:
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…there’s leadership shown by professors in their research area. That really drives agendas in the community, so whatever my area happens to be and I’m a professor and I get an ARC grant and I get students – students want to come – and the post docs come and that’s the leader. They build up a community around them. Where are those communities in teaching and learning? The problem-solver recognizes that promotion for education-focused academics is not the sole solution to the creation of a level playing field. The promotion process needs to be based on valid standards for both education-focused and non–education-focused academics, with recognition that evidence of quality teaching is more difficult to accumulate. Promotion is critical to building the credibility of educationfocused roles. …how do you evidence your research? Your publications, your graduate students and your research grants. Teaching is harder to evidence than that, …. but you can’t still let the teaching and research people keep getting promoted, when they’re
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barely falling over the bar on teaching. They wouldn’t get promoted if they were barely falling over the bar on research.
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PROFILE 4: THE WORKER/SERVER The worker faces several snakes in her career, without many ladders. The worker manages the workload of teaching and teaching administration, often in units at first year level, which are characterized by large numbers of students, tutors, and demonstrators. She is aware that the workload can sometimes be difficult to manage, as is the expectation that success will be judged on high student evaluations. She has experienced situations where unrealistic expectations have led to breaking points, with other women leaving higher education altogether, but the worker realizes that someone needs to do this role or else the university will not function. The worker is resigned both to the reality of a lower status and to the struggles experienced by women in education-focused roles in higher education. She knows that opportunities and success will depend on whether men are championing women. Being knowledgeable about education is neither necessary for men to be champions nor a requirement of a male in an education leadership position. Women in education-focused positions are often not in education leadership positions, but they lead. You need to have opportunities provided at the school level and at the faculty level and maybe at the university level. So you need someone to be championing you and people who don’t have that, don’t do as well as people who have got someone who is…
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Our new director of education has got no idea. He is really ignorant in terms of what education-focused staff need to do to be promoted and he lacks insight as to how the university works and where those opportunities for growing and developing your skills exist. The worker is also aware of the lesser value and limitations of education-focused academic roles in higher education. Neither education research nor teaching awards have a currency equivalent to disciplinary research, and the limitations are often self-imposed.
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I think they’re just not up with the cutting edge in a particular area of their discipline. We’re good for teaching the breadth and the basics, basic concepts in our discipline, but not actually for taking students right to the cutting edge of the research frontier…. teaching at third year should be done by research active staff because that’s what makes a university. The worker has come to an understanding that they must stop relying on others to recognize the value in an educationfocused role. Instead of being a victim, they must be strategic. From this, perceptions of an education-focused role in higher education can begin to change, although resilience will be required. Teaching focus people may be – for their own good need to learn how to market, or be more strategic or something, but because we are teaching focus people I think we get given a lot of the behind the scenes organising, as well, which is never going to be public or highly perceived – high value perception. The necessary stuff that needs to happen, but it’s not sexy [laughs].
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These profiles tell the stories of different journeys for women in academia. The women interviewed were not representatively balanced in each of these profiles. There were fewer women in the innovator and problem-solver profile and most women were represented by the worker profile. Although many embody adversity, the adversity experienced should not be seen as entirely negative. While several women spoke about either securing or waiting for a man to be their champion or mentor, many also either ignored the boys’ club and clique, or acknowledged that the boys’ club provided a perspective that they may not have considered and could be used to their advantage. Being an education-focused academic was not necessarily the career these women imagined when they entered higher education. The innovator and problem-solver were in traditional teaching and research roles, before shifting either in role or activity to an education-focused academic. The worker was more often in an education-focused role created by the institution and then the academic had made an explicit decision based on interest and passion in education to transfer into this role. Nevertheless, many were “jugglers,” navigating competing demands and managing substantial family responsibilities in addition to their academic workload (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019). Over time, several had taken on educational leadership positions, but this came slowly – often not until they had reached a senior position, were 50 years or older, and had witnessed junior men being ineffective yet supported and promoted. There were relatively few “rare birds,” with the single-minded position of academic and career advancement as priorities (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019); however, the innovator was closest to this position. Snakes and ladders in education-focussed careers were similar to those of disciplinary careers; however, the undervaluing of education research and activity was a long snake which led to isolation.
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Several education-focused academics did simultaneously continue with disciplinary research because of the interest and currency that it provides. For some, this meant maintaining an exhausting dual track record in disciplinary and education research and/or leadership. Although some argue that excellence in each (i.e. research and teaching) is not possible (Bexley et al., 2011; Friedrich & Michalak, 1983), several of these women were managing multiple roles successfully. Such dual track records were not understood by the academic community and acted as a snake for research grant funding in both fields. Ladders were often self-built over many long years. Many of these women had family responsibilities which they juggled through their career, including looking after young children, partners, and elderly parents. Some told stories of the difficult negotiations which occurred to become tenured after decade-long successive casual contracts, or difficulties in reaching a promotion position, always after men, and even men who were education-focused had more readily gained promotion. Many of the women interviewed did not pursue international collaborations. This aligns with other studies which have found that men create and benefit more than women in international collaborations (Uhly, Visser, & Zippel, 2017), and that gendered patterns and barriers, or “glass fences,” exist in respect of participation in international collaborations and mobility. For the minority of women interviewed who broke through the glass ceiling of higher education to make it to professor, several encountered a “glass cliff.” A glass cliff situation is where women are given a difficult job, such as the responsibility for delivering curriculum reform or a faculty merger, within a difficult political climate and accompanied by a high risk of failure; this is similar to being given a “long snake” (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019). Others had experienced a “glass stiletto” – coming up against other women who, instead of providing
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support, did the reverse and sought to protect their position like a “queen bee” (Bronstein, 2001) or “warrior” – effectively pulling ladders up behind them. These experiences left the women interviewed with a lack of confidence to tackle more senior roles. Telling the story of female education-focused academics is similar to the history of work for women. Women throughout history have been in “pink-collar” professions, and for centuries education has been a feminine profession. Feminized professions are generally poorly paid and can be more readily casualized. Studies suggest that the acceleration of educationfocused positions will see more women in these roles (Probert, 2013; Ross, 2019). Education-focused positions are substantial teaching roles involving time-consuming unit coordination, lecturing, and liaison with students. Although the landscape is changing, education-focused roles have been seen as positions which have less expertise. After all higher education historically holds the problematic perception that if everyone has been taught enough to be an expert in their research area, then anyone can teach; it is often thought that no formal training and no specific skill base is necessary to teach well. Some argue that the value of an education-focused role and a differentiated workforce is more attractive to females. In disciplines which already have a substantial unequal representation of women, however, and where few females survive the competitive landscape (Bell, 2010; Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019), a differentiated academic workforce may impact unevenly upon women and lead to lower-valued feminized work, with less academic autonomy and, consequently, pay inequality (Baird & Heron, 2019; Thornton, 2013). This will be a form of horizontal segregation for women, who already experience vertical segregation as men in education occupy more senior levels. Differentiation of the academic workforce is also likely to cause inequality because it is more difficult for
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women to show their value in education- or teaching-focused roles, however effective they are. We are not at the end of the story for education-focused academics. The long journeys of women described here in the search for parity differ depending on their interest and talents. Women who choose education-focused roles need to intentionally create ladders of expertise and communities in which to share their practice. Younger women now coming through the system can leverage these experiences and create more agency in their work. We need to be careful, however, that we do not create a “pink ghetto” or a predominantly feminized workforce that carries the burden of education work with little reward. If so, women will do more of the less-valued and more timeconsuming work, as has been the case in social life throughout history – still carrying the burden of domestic chores, doing women’s work.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Research Ethics was applied for using the National Ethics Application Form (NEAF) process (now replaced by the Human Research Ethics Application HREA) and assessed by Human Research Ethics Committee at Western Sydney University, approval number H11177. Thank you to Vicky Tzioumis and Giacomo Rotolo-Ross for editing drafts of this chapter and Philip Poronnik and Lucy Mercer-Mapstone for their insights.
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Australian universities. Tertiary Education and Management, 14(1), 1–12. Baird, M., & Heron, A. (2019). The life cycle of women’s employment in Australia: Inequality markers. In R. D. Lansbury, A. Johnson, & D. Van Den Broek (Eds.), Contemporary issues in work and organisations. London: Routledge. Bell, S. (2009). Women in science: Maximising productivity, diversity and innovation. Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), Canberra
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Bell, S. (2010). Women in science: The persistence of gender in Australia. Higher Education Management and Policy, 22(1), 47–65. Bexley, E. J., James, R., & Arkoudis, S. (2011). The Australian academic profession in transition, Addressing the challenge of reconceptualising academic work and regenerating the academic workforce. Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) Commissioned report prepared for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Canberra. Bronstein, P. (2001). Older women in academia: Contemporary history and issues. Journal of Women’s History, 12(4), 184–201. Cass, B., Dawson, M., Temple, M., Wills, S., & Winkler, A. (1983). Why so few? Women academics in Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Dany, F., Louvel, S., & Valette, A. (2011). Academic careers: The limits of the ‘boundaryless approach’ and the power of promotion scripts. Human Relations, 64(7), 971–996.
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Department of Education and Training (DET). (2017). Staff full time equivalence, 19/11/2018. Retrieved from https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/2017-staff-fulltime-equivalence. Diezmann, C., & Grieshaber, S. (2019). Women professors: Who makes it and how? Singapore: Springer. Fan, Y., Shepherd, L. J., Slavich, E., Waters, D., Stone, M., Abel, R., & Johnston, E. L. (2019). Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters. PLoS One, 14(2), e0209749. Forster, N. (2001). A case study of women academics’ views on equal opportunities, career prospects and work-family conflicts in a UK university. Career Development International, 6(1), 28–38.
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Friedrich, R. J., & Michalak, S. J. (1983). Why doesn’t research improve teaching? Some answers from a small liberal arts college. Journal of Higher Education, 54, 145–163. Gonzalez Ramos, A. M., Fernandez Palacin, F., & Munoz Marquez, M. (2015). Do men and women perform academic work differently? Tertiary Education and Management, 21(4), 263–276. Leisyte, L., & Hosch-Dayican, B. (2016). Boundary crossing and maintenance among UK and Dutch bioscientists, towards hybrid identities of academic entrepreneurs. In U. Wilkesmann (Ed.), Organising academic work in higher education: Teaching, learning and identities. New York, NY: Routledge. Locke, W. (2012). The dislocation of teaching and research and the reconfiguring of academic work. London Review of Education, 10(3), 261–274.
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Locke, W., Whitchurch, C., Smith, H., & Mazenod, A. (2016). Shifting landscapes: Meeting the staff development needs of the changing academic workforce. York: Higher Education Academy. Marchant, T., & Wallace, M. (2013). Sixteen years of change for Australian female academics. Australian Universities Review, 55(2), 60–72. Marginson, S. (2000). Rethinking academic work in the global era. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 22(1), 23–35. Marini, G., Locke, W., & Whitchurch, C. (2019). The future higher education workforce in locally and globally engaged higher education institutions: A review of literature on the topic of “the academic workforce”. Working paper no.43,1-32, Centre for Global Higher Education, London.
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Mitchell, K., & Martin, J. (2018). Gender bias in student evaluations. PS: Political Science and Politics, 51(3), 648–652. Probert, B. (2013). Teaching-focused academic appointments in Australian universities: Recognition, specialisation or stratification? Report commissioned by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Discussion paper 1, Office for Learning and Teaching, Canberra. Ross, P. M. (2019). The changing nature of the academic role in science (p. 104). Canberra: Department of Education. Retrieved from https://altf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 06/FS14-0232_Ross_FinalReport_2019.pdf. Teichler, U., Arimoto, A., & Cummings, W. K. (2013). The changing academic profession, major comparative findings of a comparative survey. Dordecht: Springer.
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Thomas, R., & Davies, A. (2002). Gender and new public management: Reconstituting academic subjectivities. Gender, Work and Organization, 9(4), 372–397. Thornton, M. (2013). The mirage of merit, reconstituting the ‘ideal academic’. Australian Feminist Studies, 28(76), 127–143. Uhly, K. M., Visser, L. M., & Zippel, K. S. (2017). Gendered patterns in international research collaborations in academia. Studies in Higher Education, 42(4), 760–782. Vila Concejo, A., Gallop, S. L., Hamylton, S. M., Esteves, L. S., Bryan, K. R., Delgado-Fernandez, I., … Splinter, K. (2018). Steps to improve gender diversity in coastal geoscience and engineering. Palgrave Communications. doi: 10.1057/s41599-018-0154-0
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Whitchurch, C. (2009). The rise of the blended professional in higher education: A comparison between the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. Higher Education, 58, 407–418. Whitchurch, C. (2019). From a diversifying workforce to the rise of the itinerant academic. Higher Education, 77(4), 679–694. Ylijoki, O. (2013). Boundary-work between work and life in the high-speed university. Studies in Higher Education, 38(2), 242–255.
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8 THE X CHANGE FESTIVAL: SMALL X , BIG CHANGE? Kate Carruthers Thomas
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INTRODUCTION This chapter reflects on xCHANGE, a month-long festival marking International Women’s Day (IWD) at Birmingham City University, UK. I founded and directed the festival in 2019 and curated it again in 2020. I submitted the proposal for this chapter shortly after xCHANGE 2019 and started drafting the chapter when preparations for xCHANGE 2020 were in full swing. I am writing the chapter while in lockdown, the COVID-19 pandemic having cut the 2020 festival short halfway through. Interesting times, interesting timing! I now have the opportunity to reflect on two iterations of the festival and to offer some practical guidance to others. However, this chapter also considers the festival through a lens of “power geometry” (Massey, 1993) in which female academics are positioned in distinct ways in relation to flows and interconnections
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of power within the university. Does the xCHANGE festival disrupt or merely reflect this power geometry? Does it create conditions for women to thrive in academia? To address these questions, I first consider the institution of IWD and problematize expectations about “celebration.” I then describe the origins of the xCHANGE festival and detail both practical aspects and program content. I reflect on the evolution of xCHANGE from 2019 to 2020, including a change to my own role. In the closing section, I consider the xCHANGE festival in terms of power, space, and gender and the implications for women in the academy. But first, a note about me. I am a white British, cis-female, interdisciplinary social science researcher at a post-1992 UK university. I specialize in critical higher education (HE) studies, gender, and inequalities. I am also the university’s lead for the Athena SWAN Charter, the HE sector’s charter mark for gender equality in the United Kingdom. Established in 2005 as a mechanism to advance the careers of academic women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM), the Athena SWAN Charter now addresses gender equality more broadly and across all academic disciplines (Advance HE, 2020). The Charter was adopted in the Republic of Ireland in 2015, and Science in Australia Gender Equity began piloting an adapted STEMM-only version in 2016. Perhaps unusually, I work “critically on gender, drawing on geographical, sociological and educational concepts and methods … and in gender overseeing and implementing activities in relation to the sector’s flagship accreditation system” (Carruthers Thomas, 2019, p. 187). I call myself a feminist, and I concur with the critique of the Athena SWAN Charter as an example of “moderate feminism, i.e., focusing on changing structures sufficiently to increase the success of individual women within the context of existing institutions” (Tzanakou & Pearce, 2019). I try to use my academic role to bring active criticality
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to my diversity work, to maintain the visibility of continued structural inequalities within the academy.
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“CELEBRATING” INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY IWD has a long history. The Socialist Party of America first organized a “Women’s Day” in New York on February 28, 1909, and Soviet Russia introduced a national holiday on March 8, 1917, after women gained suffrage. IWD has since been adopted by socialist, feminist, and internationalist movements across the world, although what it means and how it is marked varies widely, depending on national context. The IWD website states: “International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality” (IWD, 2020). March 8 has become a key diversity date in the UK university calendar (others include LGBT History Month and Black History Month), and there is an expectation that it will be “celebrated.” Events typically feature high-profile female speakers, successful alumna, book launches, discussions of “women’s” history and contemporary issues, cultural celebrations, or social gatherings. Some UK universities have moved to a week of IWD-badged events aimed at staff, students, and the public. Hosts can purchase an IWD “event pack” from the IWD website, which includes purple-themed posters, postcards, bunting, wristbands, pens, and balloons. Whatever the activity, female visibility is raised and the mood is determinedly positive. When I arrived at Birmingham City University in July 2015, a central Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit had yet to be established. Prior to 2019, IWD events tended to be small scale and localized across our four faculty, multicampus institution. In 2017, I tried my hand at an IWD Pop-Up Reading
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Room, with displays on women’s history and contemporary research. In 2018, a colleague, Professor Diane Kemp and I ran an IWD Big Read throughout the day. Staff and students were invited to sign up to read aloud for 15 minutes from the work of their chosen female author. These events were enjoyable and successful in a limited way, attracting the usual suspects: overwhelmingly self-identifying as female, largely academic. I had no great enthusiasm for jumping on the annual IWD bandwagon. I am wary of the potential tokenism of one-off events raising temporary visibility for any disadvantaged group, and given the glacial rate of progress in gender equality across the globe, the determination to “celebrate” women’s achievements rings hollow. Our universities are keen on good news stories and on corporate narratives that secure the institution as “a site of authenticity … singular, fixed and unproblematic in its identity” (Massey, 1994, p. 5). Yet the HE sector is stubbornly and overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and, at senior level, male dominated (Advance HE, 2020; Jarboe, 2018). A university may announce its commitment to women’s equality on March 8, but on March 9, when the purple balloons have deflated, what has actually changed for the women who work there? My argument is that university IWD celebrations risk being “‘institutional speech acts’ that do not go beyond pluralist understandings of diversity and are nonperformative in the sense that they fail to deliver what they have promised” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 764). Moreover, I would argue that not to tell stories of inequality, anger, pain, and structural disadvantage within and without the walls of the academy is to be complicit in institutional polishing, “the labor of creating shiny surfaces resulting in the fabrication of a ‘textual account’ of diversity through which an organisation can reflect back a good image to itself” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 102).
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2019: STARTING POINTS
My thoughts turned to IWD 2019 in late 2018. At that time, the yawning gender pay gap and #MeToo were in the news, but Brexit swamped UK media coverage. For those living elsewhere, it may be difficult to imagine how Brexit dominated our lives between 2016 and 2020, leading up to and following the European Union (EU) membership referendum in June 2016. The United Kingdom had experienced an ugly tribal division between “Remainers” and “Leavers,” with fault lines emerging between families, friends, and communities. It was forecast that women would be hit hardest by the threatened “no deal” Brexit. Brexit also had serious implications for the academy: for research funding and collaboration and for the futures of European academics in UK universities. In late 2018, the United Kingdom was on a cliff edge leading up to the planned exit date, March 31, 2019. I didn’t feel like celebrating, but here’s what I did want to do. I wanted to engage with the implications of Brexit for women, academic and otherwise. I wanted to reflect the university in its local context, a diverse, multidisciplinary institution in a superdiverse city. I wanted to reflect the depth, complexity, and radicalism of research taking place in our faculties, to hear about women’s lived experiences, ideas, and expertise. I wanted to talk about bad news as well as good. The idea of a festival came to me in October 2018. Every autumn, my home city Sheffield hosts a month-long literature festival: Off the Shelf. I had picked up a festival program, a thick booklet, crammed with a diverse collection of literary events and had bought a ticket to attend an event featuring a lecture and book signing by Helen Pankhurst, feminist activist, great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, and granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, leaders of the suffragette
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movement. 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which enabled some women over the age of 30 years to vote for the first time. Pankhurst’s book Deeds Not Words (2018) charts the changes in the lives of women over the last century. The book’s title recalls the Suffragettes’ slogan, “a demand for action, not just placating promises of equality in due course” (ibid.). The Sheffield venue was packed. Pankhurst was articulate, quietly passionate, and utterly convincing. As I listened to her speak, the festival program resting on my lap, I decided a festival framework for IWD 2019 at Birmingham City University could counter the high-speed treadmill of the academy and allow space for extended conversations. So confident was I in this idea that when I approached Helen Pankhurst to sign a copy of her book, I asked her whether she would come and speak at our festival! She gave me her card and told me to make contact. Kick-starting the festival was initially straightforward, thanks to the fact I have one foot in my academic faculty and the other in Athena SWAN, which involves working with academics, professional services staff, and senior management. As a result, I have developed strong networks across the university, a definite advantage in this situation – as was my budget for equalities work. Even so, the prospect of programming a month-long festival was intimidating, and as usual, my first step was to consult others. I called an open meeting (with a free lunch) at our city campus to gather suggestions and expressions of interest. The usual suspects attended: fellow feminists, diversity leads, members of Athena SWAN teams, and supportive colleagues – but others too, including representatives of the student body and professional services staff. There was great enthusiasm for the idea of a festival. Ahmed (2017) writes “diversity workers can often find people within the organisation … who can build a
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momentum or even a countermomentum, that is, a momentum to counter … ‘institutional inertia’” (p. 97). This was certainly the case with xCHANGE. An informal working group evolved including my co-conspirator on the Big Read 2018, Professor Diane Kemp, and several local leads in faculties and at South Campus. Existing projects and centers also expressed their interest in being involved. These included the VQ Collective, a women’s sexual health and pleasure project; the facilitators of the university’s Menopause Caf´e, and the Centre for Brexit Studies.
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X CHANGE
2019: THE FESTIVAL
By the end of November 2018, we had a skeleton program and a name for the festival: xCHANGE, emphasizing changes that have taken place and those that still need to happen to advance women’s equality. We also had a festival strapline: “A month of presentation, provocation and participation to mark International Women’s Day.” The creation of a festival visual identity was taken on as a “live project” by three secondyear female Visual Communication undergraduates with me as their “client.” Somehow these young women managed to turn my rambling ideas and impulses into superb designs for a logo, banners, social media channels, and, of course, the festival brochure. The forthcoming expiration of the burgundy EU passport, and the production (in France!) of a blue UK passport to replace it, was a hot topic of conversation at the time and together the design team and I hatched a plan for a Festival Passport, a passport-sized, watermarked booklet, containing the festival program, key information, feature pages, and stunning original artwork. The team also designed a stamp featuring the festival logo. Festival goers would be able to collect a stamp in their passport for each event they attended.
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I was taken aback by the maturity, talent, and professionalism of this student design team. Their work was just one example of the way students were centrally involved in key aspects of the festival. I structured the program into three categories: core, big hitters, and local, crosscut by three themes. The Personal Is Political recalled the feminist rallying cry of the 1960s and 1970s. Events in this strand highlighted the politics of identity and inequality in spheres of technology, health, society, media, and cultural industries and political life. Seen and Unseen: Trailblazers, Campaigners and Activists paid tribute not only to the centenary of suffrage but also to contemporary women’s work going on above and below the radar. Where’s the S in HE? focused on experiences, challenges, and achievements of women in HE, as employees, researchers, and leaders. By January 2019, the program included 40 separate events. • The core program provided the festival’s narrative thread, from launch to finale. It featured the IWD Big Read on Friday, March 6, permanent exhibitions, and displays in university libraries and School of Media and a substantial seminar and workshop series. The workshops focused on extending and enriching existing Athena SWAN activity, including two academic writing sessions; Media Coaching for Expert Women and “What’s Athena SWAN Got To Do With Me?” – a men-only discussion about engagement with the Athena SWAN agenda. • The big hitters category featured invited speakers including Helen Pankhurst, booked for the festival finale; Professor Michelle Ryan presenting her work on the glass cliff (Ryan & Haslam, 2005); Preet Kaur Gill, the first UK Sikh female MP; and feminist criminologists Dr. Charlotte
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Barlow and Dr. Stephanie Kewley presenting groundbreaking work on improving responses to domestic and sexual violence. • I took overall responsibility for organizing the core and big hitters categories (booking speakers, rooms, and catering and setting up Eventbrite pages for registration, etc.), but the local program empowered multiple “owners” on both campuses and in all faculties and services to organize events for specific audiences under the xCHANGE umbrella. These included a Midwifery seminar raising awareness of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a concert Early Music Treasures, celebrating 17th and 18th female composers at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and a staff picnic in the School of Architecture and Design.
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I’ve included further details of five selected activities/events to give a flavor of the festival. • Show the Sash In 2018, Big Read participants donned a (rather makeshift) sash in Suffragette colors as they read the work of their chosen author, passing it on to the next reader. In 2019, a final year Design for Performance undergraduate serendipitously doing her dissertation and final project on the topic of Suffragettes created a unique festival sash, embroidered with historical and contemporary slogans relating to women’s rights. It was Diane’s idea to “show the sash” throughout the festival; staff and students would book it out for the day and wear it in class, in meetings, and around campus to raise awareness of suffrage, women’s rights, and the festival. Each “sasher” was required to take a selfie and post it to the
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festival Twitter feed @xCHANGE 2019. Over 25 individuals (including four males), booked to Show the Sash. It also made an appearance at multiple festival events, including the finale, when it was worn by Helen Pankhurst. • Festival Launch and “Ain’t I A Woman?”
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xCHANGE was launched at a reception addressed by Professor Alison Honour, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media. The launch was in tandem with the opening of an exhibition of jewelry and objects created by School of Jewellery undergraduates on the IWD theme. The exhibition’s title “Ain’t I A Woman?” was also the title of a stunning work created by one of the students, which appeared on the exhibition’s poster. All the exhibiting students attended the launch and several spoke publicly about creating their pieces. The exhibition continued throughout the festival.
• Frozen Out of the Debate/Brexit and Emotions The university’s Centre for Brexit Studies co-hosted a Brexit seminar double bill. The first featured a guest speaker discussing the marginalization of women’s voices in EU elections and the second on the emotional impact of Brexit. The latter included a guided mindfulness session focusing on negativity and anger.
• The Feminist Playlist University staff and students were invited to submit their three selected tracks for the playlist subsequently curated by a staff/
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student duo. This was broadcast over two programs on the student radio station Splash and was made available as a podcast. • Festival Finale Diane Kemp, Professor of Broadcast Journalism, interviewed Helen Pankhurst about the issues raised in her book Deeds not Words followed by a Q&A. The event closed with a joyful concert by a local community choir: In Her Shoes, who work with female refugees and asylum seekers in Birmingham.
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X CHANGE
2020
Many assumed xCHANGE would run again in 2020 and were keen that it should. I had mixed feelings. xCHANGE 2019 had been an extraordinary event, difficult to repeat. I was reluctant to reprise the huge workload again so soon, not least because I was now on the waiting list for hip replacement surgery. I didn’t want to commit to the festival then have to withdraw at a crucial moment. I made it known I would be very happy for others to take on the festival and reshape it in whatever way they wished, but there was an absence of volunteers! In January 2020, I held another open meeting, which was well attended with several new faces. I proposed two options: a return to a loose collection of oneoff IWD events or a hub and spoke festival model with some central administration (by me or A. N. Other) and distributed ownership of individual events under the xCHANGE umbrella. There was a clear preference for the latter option, and several aspects of the festival returned by popular demand: The Big Read, Show the Sash, The Feminist Playlist, and the Festival Passport.
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While still involved as the central point of contact and spreadsheet queen, my role in xCHANGE 2020 was more curatorial than directorial. I still wrangled with budgets and catering, but the xCHANGE 2020 Twitter account @XChange 2020 became a significant part of my work. This publicized upcoming events, profiled key people, and, once the festival began, live-tweeted some events. I also developed a #womenofchange hashtag, highlighting women around the world whose work and activism were likely to be little known in the United Kingdom. The festival Twitter account had been essential in 2019 because it had been extremely difficult to get any coverage of the festival by the university’s corporate communications office. My requests for coverage were repeatedly met by “March is very busy.” I wonder whether the corporate indifference may have stemmed from the festival’s independent character, or because there are no quick wins to report in women’s equality, or perhaps because women talking (a lot) about inequality, discrimination, sexism, racism, domestic violence, and FGM is too awkward a fit with a positive corporate narrative. Whatever the reason, when I invited corporate communications to cover the 2020 festival, I had no expectations that they would do so. However, following the 2019 festival’s success, it seemed the university was now happy to “own” xCHANGE 2020 and report it as a “good news” story. The hub-and-spoke model had produced a stripped back 2020 festival program of 20 events with no official launch or finale. It was rewarding to observe the increased sense of recognition, ownership, and even affection for the festival in its second year. One of the original festival design team, now a final year student, generously offered to refresh and reproduce the Festival Passport, which, now that the United Kingdom had finally left the EU on January 31, 2020, had moved on
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from its Brexit origins to symbolize xCHANGE. As our sashmaking student had graduated, four colleagues, from each of our four faculties, formed a Sash Working Group and created two sashes, one for each campus. Show the Sash was once more booked up within several days by staff and students from all faculties and services. There were other continuities. Both university libraries designed and ran exhibitions for a second year; In Her Shoes, the community choir that had performed at the 2019 festival finale, ran a singing workshop with staff and students and performed live at the festival’s most ambitious event, a one-day women’s music festival at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on March 8. The program also reflected developments within the university; the recently formed BCU Women’s Professoriate hosted two seminars by members showcasing their work. xCHANGE began on March 1, 2020. The coronavirus was already wreaking havoc in China and Italy, when halfway through the festival’s second week, the university instructed staff to postpone or cancel large gatherings and public events. That day, the festival event STEM 4 All had been due to welcome over 150 participants to the campus for an industry/ academy diverse STEM careers showcase. Also canceled that week was Speaking for Ourselves: Contemporary Women’s Poetry, an evening celebration of women’s poetry featuring headline poet Jacqueline Saphra, five Birmingham female poets, and a Q&A with the editors of the literary journal Poetry Birmingham. On March 13, I announced on Twitter: “The #coronavirus has proved a killer challenge to our month-long #festival. With all future events now postponed, let’s celebrate the #collegiality #feminism #activism #energy of our first 2 weeks. Thanks to all involved! Stay well.” On March 23, the United Kingdom finally went into lockdown.
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X CHANGE:
POWER GEOMETRY
At the start of this chapter, I outlined Massey’s concept of “power geometry,” the differential positioning of groups and individuals in relation to flows and interconnections of power in particular spaces. I applied this to the positioning of female academics in distinct ways in relation to flows and interconnections of power within the academy. I use this as a lens now, to briefly consider whether xCHANGE disrupted or reflected the established power geometry in the university. To what extent did it create conditions for women to thrive? xCHANGE was inevitably shaped by the power geometry of the university/academy and wider society. I have already noted the marginalization of the 2019 festival by the corporate center. In addition, while the majority of events were open to all staff, the majority of audiences and participants self-identified as female. There is, of course, an argument for creating safe spaces for women, but where this is not the intention, lack of male participation in gender equality initiatives is a chronic issue. IWD is too often, wrongly, perceived as “women’s business,” and the Athena SWAN Charter has a similar image problem. Moreover, the vast majority of xCHANGE event organizers were female, giving time and effort above and beyond their paid roles. Again, this is a classic pattern in equalities work, as if it is the job of a disadvantaged group to do the work of drawing attention to their disadvantage (and to finding solutions). The burden of gender equality work is added to the “second shift” of domestic work and caring (Hochschild, 1989) many women perform. Again, Athena SWAN faces similar criticism in the United Kingdom: female staff undertake a disproportionate amount of the work within universities (Tsouroufli, 2019). When the work of the festival was done, there were no
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material differences to pay, precarity, or maternity benefits. The work has little currency in the accounting system of the academy. This has longer term negative implications for academic women in a career environment that prizes research performativity and narrow metrics of achievement. Why do it then? Within the organization there is a gap between words and deeds, between what organisations say they will do, or what they are committed to doing, and what they are doing. Diversity workers often live in this gap between words and deeds, trying to make organisations catch up with the words they send out.
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(Ahmed, 2017, p. 107) I think colleagues and students responded to the idea of xCHANGE as an opportunity to occupy that gap between words and deeds, to resist tokenism, raise their voices, make visible their experiences and expertise, support other women, and perhaps even thrive in that space. The resulting diversity of xCHANGE can be described as Massey describes space: “as a simultaneity of stories so far” (2005, p. 130), conflicting, contradictory, always in flux. The programming of the festival throughout March deliberately resisted squeezing the issue of “women’s rights” into one prescribed day and maximized opportunities for a range of individuals and groups to organize and participate. xCHANGE was collegiate rather than corporate in character, involving staff and students, academics and professional service staff, and community and external participants in active collaboration within multiple networks and spaces. Several collaborations were intergenerational, drawing on and reflecting women’s experiences throughout different life stages. Colleagues may have been motivated by
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material differences to pay, precarity, or maternity benefits. The work has little currency in the accounting system of the academy. This has longer term negative implications for academic women in a career environment that prizes research performativity and narrow metrics of achievement. Why do it then? Within the organization there is a gap between words and deeds, between what organisations say they will do, or what they are committed to doing, and what they are doing. Diversity workers often live in this gap between words and deeds, trying to make organisations catch up with the words they send out.
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(Ahmed, 2017, p. 107) I think colleagues and students responded to the idea of xCHANGE as an opportunity to occupy that gap between words and deeds, to resist tokenism, raise their voices, make visible their experiences and expertise, support other women, and perhaps even thrive in that space. The resulting diversity of xCHANGE can be described as Massey describes space: “as a simultaneity of stories so far” (2005, p. 130), conflicting, contradictory, always in flux. The programming of the festival throughout March deliberately resisted squeezing the issue of “women’s rights” into one prescribed day and maximized opportunities for a range of individuals and groups to organize and participate. xCHANGE was collegiate rather than corporate in character, involving staff and students, academics and professional service staff, and community and external participants in active collaboration within multiple networks and spaces. Several collaborations were intergenerational, drawing on and reflecting women’s experiences throughout different life stages. Colleagues may have been motivated by
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frustration, anger, determination, passion, and commitment. I was motivated to by a desire to avoid tokenism and to create meaningful exchanges about gender inequality. I think the festival enabled us all to experiment with reframing that power geometry, but it was a temporary disruption. Enduring empowerment and change requires more sustained structural shifts in a gendered geography of power within the university and the sector at large. xCHANGE 2021? It’s too early to say. Oh, and I’m still waiting for that hip replacement!
REFERENCES Advance HE. (2020). Athena SWAN charter. Retrieved from https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/charters/athena-swan-charter. Accessed on June 24, 2020.
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Ahmed, S. (2006). The non-performativity of antiracism. Meridian: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 7(1), 104–126. Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Carruthers Thomas, K. (2019). Genders at work: Gender as a geography of power. In G. Crimmins (Ed.), Strategies for resisting sexism in the academy: Higher education, gender and intersectionality (pp. 187–206). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hochschild, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. London: Penguin. International Women’s Day. (2020). (website). Retrieved from https://www.internationalwomensday.com/. Accessed on June 24, 2020.
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Jarboe, N. (2018). Women leaders in higher education. WomenCount. Retrieved from https://womencountblog. files.wordpress.com/2018/11/womencount-report-2018_ web-version_new-final.pdf. Accessed on June 24, 2020. Massey, D. (1993). Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, & L. Tuckner (Eds.), Mapping the futures: Local cultures, global chance (pp. 59–69). Abingdon: Routledge. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Cambridge: Polity Press. Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage Publications. Pankhurst, H. (2018). Deeds not words. The story of women’s rights then and now. London: Hachette UK.
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Ryan, M., & Haslam, A. (2005). The glass cliff: Evidence that women are over-represented in precarious leadership positions. British Journal of Management, 16(2), 81–90. Tsouroufli, M. (2019). An examination of the athena SWAN initiatives in the UK: Critical reflections. In G. Crimmins (Ed.), Strategies for resisting sexism in the academy: Higher education, gender and intersectionality (pp. 35–54). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tzanakou, C., & Pearce, R. (2019). Moderate feminism within or against the neoliberal university? The example of athena SWAN. Gender Work and Organisation, 26(8), 1191–1211. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10. 1111/gwao.12336. Accessed on June 24, 2020.
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9 USING A PORTFOLIO APPROACH TO NAVIGATE ACADEMIA Elizabeth Hartnell-Young
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INTRODUCTION How do you keep track of your achievements and impact so you can speak confidently in the elevator, in the promotion process, or when applying for grants and awards? How do you present yourself and what you offer? How do you avoid the last minute rush to find details of your relevant work? In the scramble for jobs, promotions, and awards in this world of “evidence,” it’s important to show examples of your work relevant to each purpose. We don’t yet know all the consequential pressures of the post–COVID-19 world, but we can take control of our own lives and be well prepared for the future. This chapter shares some of the ways that academics manage the evidence they need to support professional development and career progress, to better articulate their achievements and impact, and to identify
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gaps for development. Building such a profile is part of developing and communicating your professional identity, but it does not need to be a solitary activity. Women @the cutting edge showed how working together on portfolio development led to increased confidence, self-knowledge, and communication skills.
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WHY TAKE A PORTFOLIO APPROACH? A portfolio is a structured presentation tool that contains evidence relevant to a particular purpose. You might already have some experience in compiling a portfolio of evidence to present for professional registration or entry to a course. Many portfolios have been in hard copy, but it is clear that in a digital world, a portfolio that takes advantage of multimedia resources will provide a richer picture of your contributions. Many of the women I have spoken to lament that female academics feel unprepared to go for opportunities, scholarships, funding, or promotions as they arise. In a busy academic life, it’s one less stress if you are prepared for opportunities, especially those that arise unexpectedly.
Know Yourself Better “Looking at my achievements I realise I’m an enabler,” said Jackie, when we met over coffee for another career planning discussion. This sort of metacognition occurs when you have comprehensive evidence of your output and influence, rather than just a list of positions and dates. As your career grows, it can be difficult to remember the details of your achievements and when they occurred. As one
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otherwise organized mid-career academic said “If only I’d kept a list of my publications.” Suzanne starts preparing for her next performance review the day after the last one. She keeps a Word document handy and makes sure that, each week, she notes her achievements under the relevant criteria. When it comes to submitting her review document, she only needs to edit this file. She also prepares a publication plan and uses another Word file to track publications, including details of her co-authors and potential journals for submission, their impact factor and ranking. Pat, a senior academic with experience in Australia and the United Kingdom, recommends using a database to record all articles, presentations that might become articles, and grant applications. Otherwise it can become difficult to keep track of the progress of your submissions, from first review through modifications to final acceptance and publication (or not). As your stellar career takes off, you only need to select relevant examples from your database for each purpose or opportunity that arises. Of course, being prepared is not the same as being “ready.” Unfortunately, one of the differences often observed between men and women is that women don’t see themselves as “ready” for a position even when they meet all required criteria, while men don’t worry about the gaps in their skills and experience. But if you gather your evidence throughout the year, and reflect on your achievements and impact, your preparation will help you recognize that you are “ready.” As an added extra, if you identify any gaps you can seek ways to fill them. Strategize “Men are looking at their promotion before they even get out of bed,” one senior female academic told me over a light lunch at
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the University Club. Men are being selected over women because they strategically focus on research impact, publications, and citations, rather than teaching responsibilities. Women are often held back because they do more of the teaching and put far more effort into it. “Sometimes,” she advises “you just have to say no.” De Cruz, posting in the Times Higher Education Supplement, agrees: Mid-career academics still have a hard time saying no; I know I have! The motivation for saying no is that you can say yes to projects you really care about...Although we have a duty to others to do some share of refereeing, etc, you can say no to refereeing once you have done your share….
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(De Cruz, 2016) Like this one, many of the websites advertising academic positions (e.g., seek.com.au, jobs.co.uk, timeshighereducation. com) also provide career advice and resources. “Networking is not a dirty word,” say all the women who get noticed. Yet one very competent academic told me if she had a spare hour she would write something in her current paper, rather than attending an event or networking with people relevant to her research. Women often focus on perfecting their work to the detriment of their career development. If you’d like to expand your research profile, you could join a national or international group to find likeminded collaborators. However, you might choose to build the profile of teaching by working with others to provide strong evidence of all the knowledge and skills involved and the value to students. This would be of benefit to many women. Don’t be shy: contact people whose work you admire, as that can be the beginning of a long-term partnership. Business
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cards are still used in face-to-face situations, or you can create a name badge with a QR code that links to further details, like one tech-savvy woman I know.
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Beat the “Imposter Syndrome” with Evidence “You’ve done a PhD so you should know something,” said my colleague as we sat in the sun before a seminar. In fact any one of us is probably the world’s expert in a niche topic. But perhaps you don’t feel your qualifications and experience measure up to the criteria for promotion or a new position. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes coined the term “imposter syndrome” after noticing that many women failed to believe they were truly as capable or intelligent as they appeared and explained their success as due to luck (Clance & Imes, 1978). Perfectionists, who always think that they can do or accomplish more, are often affected by imposter syndrome. Is this why some women put in so much effort? A senior academic suggests, “A word of advice for women: let go of the perfectionism of working so hard. On a couple of days a week you might drop down to 100% instead of your usual 120%.” High achievers might think that they are not good enough, so they are always looking for the next thing that they need to do. I asked Laura, a mid-career high achiever, about imposter syndrome. Quite surprisingly, she replied “I’ve never had that. I’ve had the opposite: Like if someone asked if I’d be willing to run Microsoft, I would say ‘well I have no experience but why not? Let’s try.’” She went on, “I’ve never had that feeling that I wouldn’t be qualified enough. You can always find ways. I would be willing to hire some people. If you need more knowledge and skills, you don’t have to do that alone.”
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Gathering and reflecting on your evidence actually helps overcome imposter syndrome. Many academics developing portfolios have realized not only how much they have achieved but also the underpinning values that drive them. This helps build confidence and self-esteem.
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Clarify Your Professional Identity A portfolio is a form as well as a process, a means of creating new knowledge as well as presenting a professional identity. Twenty years ago, Cope and Kalantzis (2000) saw that maintaining rich and diverse identities across a range of media would be important in the new economy. Identities can be portrayed as narratives or stories or more formally based on a structure of criteria or competencies. The idea of a portfolio can work in multiple contexts, yet it has not fulfilled its promise. Some academics prepare a portfolio for one of the four levels of Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), which provides professional recognition for contributions to university teaching and learning and excellence as defined through the UK Professional Standards Framework: an internationally recognised framework for benchmarking success within higher education. But a Principal Fellow of the HEA revealed “I don’t think we’re very good at portfolios: quite frankly, the Fellowship portfolios can be rather turgid. You’d think we could be more imaginative and more visual in this day and age.” And having sat on many promotion panels, she reflected “applications are often text heavy, not easy to skim, and not very good at curating the information and putting the juicy bits at the top.” Other academics have developed excellent blogs that display their talents and contribute to the scholarly community. Patter
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(https://patthomson.net/) has a wealth of useful information written in a very engaging style. You have the opportunity (and the responsibility) to lift the communication of your evidence to a higher standard and to be proud of what you have done.
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Personal Branding Women are renowned for working too hard and marketing too little. “It’s no time for modesty,” Sara told me, just before the announcement of her promotion to Associate Dean. Laura agreed and shared some advice she had received from a male academic in Finland, a country well known to have an introvert culture: “First you need to work hard, then you need to shout it out.” In a women’s group on campus, one academic with years of experience on panels advised “You’ve got to learn to stop saying ‘we’ or saying ‘I’ve only achieved things because I’m part of a team.’” We value collaboration, and women are often said to be naturally collaborative. They often credit the team they have worked with but find it difficult to articulate their individual role. But when it comes to promotion or selection, panels always want to know about your individual contribution. “You have to start saying ‘I played this role and achieved this result with the team’ because otherwise the panel can’t work out what you’ve done.” Achievement to Impact “Women want to know the impact on students and their lives just as much as they value the impact on research and policy,” said a former Dean. However, men seem to love the bibliometrics, and grant money sways their interest to research.
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Even with some research projects, women display enormous goodwill in contributing, while men see the potential to advance their careers. But rather than chasing the money, you can make a lot of impact with one research project, as one guide advises: The secret of many prolific academic writers is that they get more publications out of a single piece of research. They may, for example, write an article on their research methodology for one journal, discuss theoretical issues in another, and submit preliminary results to a third, before even thinking about a final piece analysing outcomes. So look at past projects you may have considered “finished” and projects that are still in progress, and ponder ways you might be able to get extra publication mileage out of them. Even research that turned out to be a dead end can be valuable material for journal articles.
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(Waltz, M, n.d.) Make sure you include your ORCID iD1 on your work and subscribe to the tools that track your publications and citations, such as ResearchGate, Academia, Google Scholar, and Publons. These are basic data sources that can indicate who is reading your work and who might be influenced. And as Pat, a researcher with many influential projects, suggests “make sure your project websites are up to date, and be cleverer – or more judicious – about having impact. Look out for non-academic users of your work through media monitors and mentions in Parliament.” In my experience, researchers need to write for all sorts of audiences, from discipline journals to professional magazines, the general public, and social media. In that way, you become a valuable spokesperson when evidence is sought.
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CREATING A PORTFOLIO Fundamentally, all portfolio systems work in a similar way, whether hard copy or digital. As Fig. 9.1 shows, they all depend on a systematic collection of evidence, stored in a repository that can be in “the cloud,” on a personal server, or (preferably not) in a box in your office. Whatever you choose, you are in control of your repository, keeping it private until you choose to share selections for a particular purpose.
Collect Evidence
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“You were the best teacher I ever had,” gushed one of my students in a card attached to the beautiful orange gerberas. While it might boost our self-esteem to collect feedback from
Fig. 9.1. The Structure of a Portfolio System.
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happy students or grateful colleagues, it’s not usually appropriate to present this sort of evidence for high-stakes situations. Panels are more interested in the effect you had on improving practice in your professional roles, in representing your discipline, and in influencing change. Don’t just record that you sat on a committee for several years. Give examples of the improvements that resulted from your involvement: perhaps you wrote a paper arguing for new forms of assessment that were taken up or that your team was awarded a prize for community engagement. As one senior academic suggested, “what changed in the world because of your work?” But as you don’t know where some of your ideas will end up, keep systematic records of all your activities and ideas, writing, presentations, video clips, and so on. Then you will be well prepared to select appropriate evidence for particular purposes when the opportunity arises. Your evidence might take the form of print publications, podcasts, and video interviews about your research or teaching, photographs of events, or impact measures such as policy documents. You might have some recorded lectures that can be shared to demonstrate particular skills or knowledge. You can capture just-in-time evidence with your mobile phone. You might also include certificates, awards, or digital badges (microcredentials) from short courses you have completed. Keep a record of the topics of research supervision (with names if candidates agree) and completions. Track the reviews you do and the impact factor of the journals. You might be surprised how many you complete in a year! Some evidence will be purely for you, to jog your memory, while other artifacts will be presented to the audience for your portfolio. Curating the evidence is an ongoing job, not something left until a deadline arises. Check on the privacy laws, copyright, and intellectual property in case you wish to
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make the evidence public in future. Be especially careful if you wish to include student work or capture photos of students. Keep contextual notes with each item or artifact, including location, date, scope of audience, and your role in the team, so that you don’t forget in future, and annotate your evidence to record the context, outcomes, impact, and so on. For the context, it is wise to keep documents such as the university’s strategic plan (download a copy, don’t rely on it remaining easily accessible on the Internet). Evidence of the scope can come through quantitative data showing budget or value of projects undertaken; number of people managed at particular times; and date ranges of positions, projects, and activities.
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Organize Your Evidence Begin with the end in mind. For a portfolio, purpose determines structure. Regularly give yourself time to gather evidence under the criteria that show how you are performing. Look at the criteria that your audiences will be using, and the descriptors of the required performance. Performance standards and selection criteria are common organizing structures. Most universities have similar elements for performance management and promotion, encompassing the following: • Teaching and learning • Research scholarship and the advancement of knowledge and its applications • Leadership and service (contributions to the university and the community offering, e.g., leadership, management, administration, collegiality, knowledge exchange, or pastoral care within the university, or by engaging on behalf of the university with the wider community, including globally).
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Just as we encourage students to look at the assessment requirements at the outset, it’s a good idea to understand the categories for promotion in your institution or the selection criteria for positions you are interested in elsewhere. You can then tag your evidence appropriately for the purpose. It’s important to use systematic file management, depending on the various purposes that you envisage. One academic reported: I quickly decided that LinkedIn and PebblePad were tools that I could use, maintain reasonable control over and appeared to be attractive to a wide range of potential future employers. For the last decade, therefore, I have recorded all my significant professional development activities using a combination of these two tools, augmented with Screencasts, VideoScribe presentations and embedded or linked electronic certificates and badges where available. These have proved very helpful in career progression and much more suitable for recording a wide range of career-relevant data and information than either cumbersome paper-based solutions or proprietary solutions. (Darwent, personal communication, 31/12/2019) Remember, though, that the repository is not your portfolio! No audience will want to look at everything you have collected. And without good organization, the amount of evidence in an archive or repository can quickly become unwieldy. Reflect on the Evidence “Reflection is like a dialogue with yourself,” Maria said enigmatically. “You can create links between past, present and future, between theory and practice, and between vision,
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values and action.” As well as collecting evidence, it is important to reflect on what each artifact represents. What were you trying to achieve? How well did you meet your goals? What influence did you have? What changed as a result? You must be honest, and critical, while being prepared to claim credit. Ask your trusted peers to give you honest feedback to clarify your reflections. Include your emotional responses to achievements and events, as these help to develop insight into your leadership behaviors. Angie wrote as part of a reflection: While I love my subject very much, in the ‘skills v. content’ debate, I have always had a leaning in favour of skills. My instinct has been to seek to equip students to learn for themselves, to integrate their pursuit of a course of Literature with the development of skills and the self-analytical ability which is fundamental to intellectual independence.
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(Hartnell-Young & Morriss, 2007, p. 47.) “It becomes a spiral of learning,” realized one mid-career academic, as “reflection leads to deeper thinking.” In some institutions, mentor pairs use portfolios as a basis for discussion. There are many tools to support these processes. You could use a WhatsApp group for feedback, Google Docs for goal setting and collaboration, and LinkedIn or WordPress for presentation. Present a Selection of Your Evidence Finally, you will create a portfolio for a particular purpose. This is a carefully curated selection of the evidence, usually with introductions and reflections that answer the questions in the minds of the viewers, whether it be for a promotion,
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performance review, or professional registration. Some people present their evidence in multiple languages, especially if English is not their first language. Although Laura had plenty of evidence for her mathematics website, it was mostly in Finnish. To communicate with a wider audience, and secure her dream job in Australia, she needed to create an English version. Carmen Alvarez-Mayo and Marieke Guy provide two public examples of their own e-portfolios (see websites: https:// carmenalvarezmayo.weebly.com/ and https://mariekeguycmalt. wordpress.com/). They were created for accreditation as a Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), a leading professional development body in the United Kingdom. ALT offers accreditation via peer assessment of a digital portfolio to those who are actively involved in understanding, managing, researching, supporting, or enabling learning with the use of learning technology. While the technology platform is up to the candidates, the structure is defined as follows:
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• Contextual statement • Operational issues • Teaching, learning, and/or assessment practices • The wider context • Specialist options • Future plans In the two examples above, Carmen and Marieke have made links to evidence such as images, articles, and presentations and included reflection on their purpose and achievements. A portfolio approach can support communication to a wide variety of audiences, using open sites like LinkedIn or
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password-protected websites. As a former Dean commented, “a website or a LinkedIn page is enough for a presentation portfolio, as long as your beliefs, values and personality show through.”
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WOMEN @THE CUTTING EDGE “It’s a true example of a feminist model of teaching and learning,” wrote one participant after working over several weeks with women @the cutting edge: a group led by women, in a project funded by telecommunications company AT&T. This provided a space for women, and sometimes for men, to collaborate on developing a digital portfolio. Essentially a professional development project, it was designed so that participants would develop technology skills as they created a purposeful product. The original cutting-edge team was made up of teachers in primary, secondary, and tertiary settings who began by creating a group portfolio and then used the prototype to seek funding to develop a program for others. The principles underpinning the group included a sense of sisterhood, a hands-on approach, and learning through play. Some were familiar with hard copy portfolios, and their knowledge of selection and promotion criteria and professional standards provided a structure for their digital version. Participants had a wide range of skills and experience with technology, but they all learnt to create a digital portfolio including multimedia items. Meeting as a group over a period of several weeks, with coaches and mentors, they curated selections from scanned hard copy materials, created video and audio clips, and shared explanations and reflections relating to their artifacts of evidence. Actually they found the technology skills were the easy part: understanding what the audience is looking for and the criteria they will use to judge
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the portfolio and selecting from the rich content available require more thought. Portfolio development can be a deep learning process. As noted above, incorporating reflection is the aspect that makes a portfolio so much more than a mere collection of material. Reflection leads to deeper thinking, about the past and the future. One cutting edge participant said, “through careful reflection, you clarify your individual strengths and how they can assist you, your colleagues and the community.” It can be surprisingly affirming too, as she came through the portfolio process with increased confidence that she was better suited to promotion than she originally thought. Feedback and critical review in a safe environment led to powerful learning. Collaboration and celebration were important too, leading another participant to reflect on the value of working together: The depth and range of our colleagues’ experience, skills and achievements haven’t really surprised me, but seeing them on screen and celebrating them together has been more powerful than I imagined. (Hartnell-Young & Morriss, 1999) Once completed, some participants shared their portfolios with an external audience, depending on their needs. One sent a flash drive to a selection panel in advance of her interview. Another gave a private website address to members of the panel. Outcomes of the cutting edge project reported by the participants included greater knowledge and self-esteem, an ability to articulate achievements, and a greater knowledge of technology applications. As a result, members were invited to develop programs for universities and government, to present in conferences and courses in the United Kingdom,
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Europe, and Asia, as well as to write books and articles, published in several countries. Portfolio development therefore encompassed both product and process.
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WHAT NEXT? Now that you know what you are offer, you will probably want to update your university webpage or your LinkedIn profile. You can make them sing! As a portfolio or website is a communication tool, think of your audience. It should be easy to navigate and authentic rather than too slick. But don’t be shy either. Add links to podcasts or videos about your work. Unfortunately, some university audiences are not yet ready for a range of multimedia artifacts, as they expect text-based submissions. To follow the “law of no surprises,” you could ask in advance if a selection or promotion panel would be interested to look at your digital portfolio. But the more you present multimedia in professional situations, the more you can prepare the audience. Ultimately, even if no one looks at your portfolio, you have done the work of collecting, organizing, reflecting, and producing a representation of yourself that will stand you in good stead in any setting. You have a thorough “script” for any application, interview, or meeting and that will naturally give you confidence. I have argued previously that we should aim for sociable portfolios that cross boundaries, inform others, and add to global understanding (Hartnell-Young & Morriss, 2007). I believe we will benefit by establishing a “portfolio culture” in our institutions. Why not get started with a group of your colleagues, by collecting evidence, reflecting, and giving feedback on the artifacts? You could prepare a team portfolio or
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website capturing the collective store of knowledge in the group. This then has value for the individuals, the team, and even your organization. Whether you call it a portfolio or not, this approach can offer well-ordered communication supported by your evidence to a range of audiences, in a variety of media.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am forever grateful to the women @the cutting edge who collaboratively prototyped the early digital portfolios in the late 1990s and the many academics who have shared ideas with me more recently in the preparation of this paper. Special thanks to the Association for Learning Technology and Certified Members who shared portfolios.
NOTE
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1.
An ORCID iD is digital identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers, and links your professional information such as affiliations, grants, publications, and peer review.
REFERENCES Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy Theory Research and Practice, 15(3), 241–247. doi:10.1037/h0086006 Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London: Routledge.
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De Cruz, H. (2016). Happily ever after? Advice for mid-career academics. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/happily-ever-after-advice-mid-careeracademics Hartnell-Young, E., & Morriss, M. (1999). Using portfolios as a vehicle for teacher professional development in technology. In P. Linnakyla, M. Kankaanranta, & J. Bopry (Eds.), Portfolios on the web (pp. 194–208). Jyvaskyla: Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyvaskyla. Hartnell-Young, E., & Morriss, M. (2007). Digital portfolios: Powerful tools for promoting professional growth and reflection (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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Waltz, M. (n.d.). The essential guide to moving up the academic career ladder. Retrieved from https://www.jobs.ac.uk/ media/pdf/careers/resources/the-essential-guide-to-movingup-the-academic-career-ladder.pdf
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10 WHAT NOW FOR THE MODERN FEMALE ACADEMIC? Marian Mahat
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INTRODUCTION In 2002, I sat at Blackwood Hall at Monash University, about to receive my Masters testamur when I observed soon-to-be minted members of the academic community walk the procession. I heard their citations being read out as they walked on stage to receive their testamur, and then move their tassel from right to left. I was transfixed. In that moment, I knew that I have found my place in the world. It took 14 years, two attempts at the PhD, and two personal family traumas to finally having my own moment in the limelight. As I stood on stage, hearing my name being called out, and my citation being read, I had tears in my eyes. But I did not really know how much it meant to me until I saw my then six-year-old daughter and the pride in her eyes as she clutched the testamur close to her. I knew then as I know now
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that I made the right decision despite the long road it took to get there, and the long road ahead of me. This book was not borne out of strong ideological feminist ideas or with grandeur aims to change the system. It was conceived as a celebration of the many academic women who have contributed and continue to contribute to make academia a home where high quality and impactful scholarship is observed, where teaching and learning is celebrated, and leadership and service to the discipline is honored. It is a celebration of how far women have come and continue to thrive in the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship.
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THRIVING IN ACADEMIA The central premise of this book is how does one thrive in higher education today? It begins, as the first part of the book alludes to, reflections. As Hartnell-Young in Chapter 9 writes, reflection “leads to deeper thinking, about the past and the future” and one aspect that makes tangible a mere collection of thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses and even achievements. Hartnell-Young further writes, feedback and critical review in a safe environment lead to powerful learning, as does collaboration and celebration. This book encompasses all that and more. Mahat, Hardiman, Howell, and Mateo-Babiano in Chapter 4 provide critical reflections in areas of leadership, mentoring, and sponsorship, finding an authentic and moral voice and teaching as an international academic. These provide ¨ both reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (Schon, 1983) that describes how as academics we meet the challenges of our daily work with a kind of improvisation that is improved through practice. They conclude that “practice makes perfect, but you cannot practice if you do not give yourselves opportunities to lead and empower others.”
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Saying yes to opportunities, while providing an avenue into leadership roles, is not only just that. Goodwin in Chapter 5 talks about opportunities to “join in and collaborate, to do, to act.” Saying yes “never blindly but always fearlessly” is a “chance at something with no guarantee of continuation or reward” means that you are open to moving past your comfort zone and embracing a new challenge. And in the case of Goodwin, it is also about paying the bills. “One cannot agitate for change and then be unwilling to step up and do the work when change is invited” in particular resonates with the theme of thriving. Women continue to thrive in academia because they “step up.” How does one flourish in academia? Following your passion is one piece of advice you tend to get whether it is early in your academic career, at a crossroads, or simply in need of making sense of your path. But just following your passion will not necessarily bring you meaning. Contexts change and indicators of success change with time and experience writes Loh in Chapter 2. How your work counts and is made meaningful depends on what you hold dear – it is the authentic connection between your academic work and a broader life purpose beyond the (dare I say, “selfish”) self. Informal networks are another way that one can make meaning in their academic work, particularly in the contexts of evaluations in academia. Yarrow in Chapter 6 writes about the use of social media and online networks to not only build profiles but also to engage with various communities. Harnessing new channels for the dissemination of academic knowledge provides innovative and active ways to becoming engaged scholars and drive research impact. As one navigates through academia, “snakes” or inhibitors and “ladders” or opportunities abound, writes Ross in Chapter 7. However, it takes only one powerful snake in a women’s “snakes and ladders” academic board game to have a serious impact, be it a redundancy at a time of uncertainty or the 200th rejection
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on academic applications (it’s true!). In academia, you become only as good as your last grant or publication or award and your value goes up and down, just like stocks and shares on Wall Street. Both men and women go through this but as Ross alludes to, women go through the additional “glass cliff” and “glass stiletto” that leaves them with a lack of confidence to pursue senior roles. Mthimunye in Chapter 3 talks about hyper-performance as a form of thriving. Feelings of being alone and invisible as a female academic, particularly one of color, can make you overperform to prove that you belong. Every second invested is truly fulfilling but many seconds invested were possibly not necessary, writes Mthimunye. This certainly resonates with me, as I am sure it does with others – that you put in the additional hour, read the additional book, review the additional journal paper, write (and rewrite) that additional paper (time taken from elsewhere in life, most notably family and personal time) just to prove that you have the right to be here. Aligning to the non-grandeur aim of this book, Carruthers Thomas in Chapter 8 provides examples of “moderate feminism” – focusing on changing structures, bit-by-bit and just enough to increase the success of individual women. Her ideas reified within the xChange festival, enabled staff and students to occupy the “gap between words and deeds, to resist tokenism, raise their voices, make visible their experiences and expertise, support other women, perhaps even to thrive in that space.” Indeed, for centuries women in academia have thrived regardless of the “space” they are given.
T-SHIRT SLOGANS OF ACADEMIC LIFE Academic life, in a rapidly shifting higher education landscape, is an undulating road, full of bends, twists, hills, mountains,
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valleys, and dead-end cliffs. There is never a good reason for the modern academic to run off into this wild landscape without a GPS navigation device, or at least a good old map and compass. Learning to “read” what the landscape is telling you about the terrain will help you navigate and find your way on your academic adventure. Developing an academic career narrative against this backdrop is not easy. As exemplified in the first chapter and the contributions in this book, career narratives come in different shapes and sizes. Every academic individual has a good story. To craft your academic story, you simply have to dig into your academic history (no matter how short) and the legacy you want to leave behind (no matter how small). A good career narrative is not a r´esum´e nor is it a day-by-day journal. While the details are important, not everybody needs to know all the details. It is your task as an academic storyteller to decide what matters. You do this daily in writing your scholarly outputs – so why not your career narrative. Your story helps your readers, your colleagues, and your networks understand what drives you, who you are, and why you are the academic you are. Most importantly, your story helps you energize, motivate, inspire, and thrive in academia. Tara Brabazon, the Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University, has this to say about telling your story: What are the t-shirt slogans of your life? I wear a lot of t-shirt slogans… I often wear these really pretty offensive or out there t-shirt slogans like ‘Training for the zombie apocalypse’ or ‘Zombies eat brains. Don’t worry you are safe’. My other favourite one is ‘I’m silently correcting your grammar’. These sorts of slogans crystallise thought and they capture something really significant about you. So you may
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like to think about what are the t-shirt slogans of your life, the stuff that you wear that is the punctuation for your daily existence… What are your values and indeed what do you value? This is not the story that you tell other people. This is not the story you tell somebody on a date, like tell me your life story… It is not the story you tell in a job interview. This is much more honest and much more important. This is the story that you tell yourself. And whatever story you are telling yourself, it can change. It can transform.
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(Brabazon, 2018) Tara Brabazon identifies four stories: the academic story, the professional story, the personal story, and the life story. The academic story is about the how and the why you got into this research. This provides a punctuation point in your intellectual life, and helps stop and block the impostor syndrome. The professional story is about your engagement and impact – why does your research matter and who does it matter to. The personal story is about your raison d’ˆetre about doing this research – it could be for the greater good such as a deep social justice imperative or something more personal such as being a first-generation PhD candidate or Professor. This story should be emotive and enable you to achieve personal satisfaction and achievement. The story that strips back the layers of your skin is your life story – “the grammar that is the punctuation for your life.” So what is your t-shirt slogan? Among all the academic stories and narratives you hear, how do you define yourself? Where do you situate your values? What drives you? Remember that your story can change, so does your t-shirt slogan. Drawing on the strengths-based narratives in this book, your
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story should emphasize the inherent strengths and capabilities that you bring and can offer. But most importantly in considering your story, Tara advises “Don’t be a guest star in your own life.”
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WHAT NOW FOR THE MODERN FEMALE ACADEMIC? For many decades, women in academia have worked hard to achieve work–life balance, juggling professional and domestic responsibilities while thriving in academia. The COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying this already fractured landscape, and its impact has manifested itself in far-reaching and unimaginable ways. COVID-19 has not only highlighted privileges but also amplified the mental, physical, social, and economic impacts attributable to pre-existing inequities in academia, as well as favoring biased decision-making processes, which threaten to deprioritize equity initiatives (Malisch et al., 2020). Against this backdrop, change will be harder to achieve than ever before. Maybe one day, in the very distant future, the higher education system will transform so that there is equality, equity, and fairness in access and opportunities for all, regardless of gender and creed. In the meantime, I offer some strategies for thriving for the modern female academic, explicated in the words of Max Ehrmann, American writer and poet (1927). Negotiate the unwritten rules. Women often lack access to informal networks in the workplace that can provide critical insights into the unwritten rules of advancement. One way to get around this is to build strategic alliances and collaborative networks so that you can better negotiate and navigate these rules in order to “level up.” Negotiation, however, is also about reciprocity. Every negotiable “rule” has value to you and value to the other side. There are things that you need, things that
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you want, and things that are nice to have. Be true to yourself “…for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass,” writes Ehrmann. Collegiality. I cannot stress enough, how important collegiality is – it is the heart, the fundamental hallmark, the cornerstone of professional work in academia. In a higher education environment wrought with uncertainty and unpredictability, a wise leader recognizes that the most valuable assets in a university or department or team are its people and the intellectual capital they possess and the culture they create. For those who are early in their career, take a mental note not to mimic and perpetuate the behaviors of those around you that may lack collegiality, respect, and basic civility. For as Ehrmann enlightens, “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Personal care and development. If you are going to demand academic growth of yourself, then you need to ensure that you take time for personal growth and development in other areas of your life – be it education, spiritual, physical, emotional, and social. “Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune,” writes Ehrmann. However, personal care and development is not only about ensuring positive physical and mental growth of yourself, but it also ensures that you are looking after yourself for the people you love. Remember the airplane rule? Fix your oxygen mask before helping others. It is a rule that everyone should live their lives by. Be gentle with yourself. “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here… And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul” Ehrmann concludes. In the fast-paced world of academia, we are continually redefining ourselves – we recalibrate, we pick up, and we keep moving.
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But above all else, we should be kind to ourselves. Because we have a right to be here. My now ten-year-old daughter says she wants to be a neurobiologist (just like Amy in the Big Bang Theory). Late one night, after watching our Friday night girls’ movie, we talked about which university she might go to (Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, Melbourne, Sydney… the world is your oyster, I told her). I do not know whether she will be an academic, but I do know that if she does, likes others before her, she will prosper and thrive in academia.
REFERENCES Brabazon, T. (2018). Vlog129 What’s your story [Vlog]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v5LBP_ U6ZwgAU.
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Ehrmann, M. (1927). Desirata. Retrieved from https://www. desiderata.com/desiderata.html. Malisch, J. L., Harris, B. N., Sherrer, S. M., Lewis, K. A., Shepherd, S. L., McCarthy, P. C., & Ramalingam, L. (2020). Opinion: In the wake of COVID-19, academia needs new solutions to ensure gender equity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(27), 15378–15381. ¨ D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals Schon, think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.
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INDEX Academia, 17, 19, 154, 168–170 black women, 42–43, 47–48 gender inequality, 89–90 leadership, 64 portfolio approach, 148, 154–155, 161, 163 shape careers, 113–114 thriving, 168–170 women empowering, 52–57 women thriving, 3–4, 6, 9–10, 12 Academy, 63 collegial relationships, 33, 35–37, 39, 41–44, 46–47 COVID-19, 102–103 gendered, 90–91 identity, 94 legitimacy, 33, 35–37, 39, 41–44, 46–47 modern female, 173–175 narratives, 10–11 stories, 4, 6–10, 12 t-shirt slogans, 170–173
workforce, 109, 111, 113, 123 Asian/American, 76–77, 81–82 Association for Learning Technology (ALT), 160 Athena SWAN model, 53–54, 134–135 Authentic leadership, 62–63 Autoethnography, 35 Blackness, 36–37 Black women in academia, 42–43, 47–48 Brexit, 133, 138 Collaboration, 19, 44–45, 48 Brexit, 133 inter- and intradisciplinary, 100–101 international, 122 leadership, 63 portfolio development, 162 social media, 159
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Collegiality, 174 COVID-19, 96, 102–103, 129–130, 173 Differentiation, 109, 111, 113, 123
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Education-focused academics, 109–110 giver’s career, 114–116 innovator, 116–117 problem-solver, 117–119 shape women, 113–114 women, higher education, 110, 112–113 worker/server, 119–124 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), 103–104 Exclusion, 35, 46, 90–91, 96 Facebook, 96–97 Feedback, 45, 162 Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), 137 Festival. See also xCHANGE festival, 129–130, 133–135, 139 Gender, 3, 11, 36–37 academy, 90–91 bias, 9, 81–82, 109–110 discrimination, 78–79 equality, 53 imbalance, 57
inequity, 53–54, 143–144 transformation, 46–47 Glitch, 101 Google Scholar, 154 Higher Education Academy (HEA), 152 Higher education institutions (HEIs), 33–34, 41–42 Black and female, 43 deracialization processes, 34 South Africa, 34–35 Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), 51–52 Hyper performance belonging, 41–42 thriving, 42–43 Imposter syndrome, 5–6, 151–152 Inequality, 11, 123, 132 gender, 89–91, 103 Innovator, 116–117 International academic and women leaders, 59–61 International Women’s Day (IWD), 129–133, 142–143 Leadership, 157, 168 academia, 64 capacity, 54 committees, 78–79
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Index
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educational, 109–110, 119–120 and management, 3, 10–11 opportunities, 61, 76 programs, 54–56 qualities, 63 servant, 72 skills, 67 strategies, 62 women, 51–52 Legitimacy, 35 definition, 35 higher education institutions (HEIs), 35 social contract transformation, 39–41 LinkedIn, 96–97 Literacy learning, 17–18 Mentoring, 9 sponsorship, 57–59 women, 116 #MeToo, 133 Microsoft Teams, 18 Modern female academic, 173–175 Multimedia, 148, 163 National Institute of Education (NIE), 22–23, 25 National Library Board, 25 Networks, 17, 38, 92–93, 150 academic, 89–90, 93, 95 informal, 169
179
mentorship, 59 opportunities, 55–56 sponsorship, 59 New Zealand Universities Women in Leadership Programme (NZUWiL), 54 Office of Education Research (OER), 25 Overseas Graduate Scholarship, 22–23 Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF), 103–104 Personal branding, 153 Pink collar work, 109–111, 113 Portfolios, 148–149 creation, 155–161 impacts, 153–154 imposter syndrome, 151–152 personal branding, 153 professional identity, 152–153 strategize, 149–151 Power. See also Networks, 36, 78–79 geometry, 129–130, 142, 144 Previously White Institutions (PWIs), 33–34, 38, 40 Problem-solver, 117–119 Publons, 154
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Race, 36–37, 81–82 collegial partnerships, 46–47 and gender, 34 higher education institutions (HEIs), 33–34 Reflection, 16, 40–41, 48, 158–159, 168 mentorship, 59 portfolio, 162 social media, 96–101 Research communication, 24–25 Research Evaluation Framework (REF), 92 ResearchGate, 96–97, 154 Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), 53–54 Self-efficacy, 44–46 Singapore Ministry of Education, 25 Social media, 92–93, 96, 101, 154, 169 academic networking, 89–90 practical guidance, 101–102 women academics, 89–90 Speaking up, 74, 84–85 Sponsorship, 47, 57, 59 academics, 58 Thriving academia, 168–170
Index
hyper performance, 42–43 self-efficacy, 44–46 strategies, 10, 12, 66–67 Transformation, 12–13 economic and social, 33–34 gendered and racialized system, 46–47 social contract, 39–41 T-shirt slogans, 170–173 Twitter, 96–97, 99 University of Hong Kong (HKU), 71, 81–82 Women, 149–150, 153 in academia, 3–4, 6, 9–10, 12, 52, 57 academics, 51–52 Asia, 74 Black women, 42–43 Deans, 80–81 education-focused roles, 113–114 higher education, 110–113 leaders, 58, 62, 64, 80, 82 programs and initiatives, 56–57 scholars, 89–90 @the cutting edge, 161–163 thriving, 3–4, 6, 9–10, 12 Women ATTaining Leadership (WATTLE) Program, 54–55
Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook
Index
Work-life balance, 17, 27, 53
finale, 139 International Women’s Day (IWD), 129–132 launch, 138 power geometry, 142–144 Show the Sash, 137–138 Zoom, 18
Copyright © 2021. Emerald Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
xCHANGE festival, 135–139 2019, 135–139 2020, 139–141 Athena SWAN, 134–135 Brexit, 133, 138 feminist playlist, 138–139
181
Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook
Copyright © 2021. Emerald Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
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Women Thriving in Academia, edited by Marian Mahat, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. ProQuest Ebook