Exploring academic identities through collage-making: A collaborative autoethnographic project

abstract

Black/women of colour occupying academic positions is still a novel phenomenon in many academic institutions, in South Africa and elsewhere. We explored our academic identities as early-career black/women of colour through the novel application of collage-making as a tool in collaborative autoethnography (CAE). Through collaborative collage-making, we generated personal reflections on our experiences as academics. The content of the collages and the group reflections they generated were subjected to thematic analysis. Our results revealed socially cohesive and professionally inhibiting experiences that have shaped our academic identities. We shed light on issues related to academic mobility, the need to perform and the social interactions that help or hinder our academic identity-making processes as women of colour at a historically white institution. Sharing and reflecting on our collages also offered an unexpected benefit: we were able to reframe aspects of our thinking and beliefs about our academic identity and identify potential pathways for change. In this way, we established and participated in a professional caring community that facilitated sharing of tips of the trade – a practice that relates to Joan Tronto's idea of caring ‘with’. Our shared insights add to the existing body of knowledge on women's experiences in academia more broadly, as well as feminist decoloniality as an applied theory of caring. We argue that CAE is a powerful and empowering methodological approach that aligns with an ethic of care. We found that the agency emanating from the process positioned us to promote a more inclusive university environment where women of colour can thrive and experience a sense of belonging and accomplishment.

keywords:

• collaborative autoethnography
• academic identities
• early-career academics
• women in academia
• South Africa
• women of colour
• feminist decoloniality as care

Introduction and background

Early-career academics developing their academic identities and envisioning their career can potentially suffer under the pervasive ‘publish or perish’ culture often credited to academic institutions.¹ Working as women in academia has also become a debated topic internationally and nationally (Anderson, Goodall & Trahar 2020; Breeze & Taylor 2020; Pillay, Naidu & Geils 2018). Many scholars are interested in understanding how diverse women in academia are making sense of their academic identities, especially those who often need to perform important roles within their workplace and family contexts, and find themselves juggling a variety of glass balls – often holding several priorities that are personally and professionally equally important and essential (Weber & Dismore 2020).

In South Africa, there has been a growing presence of women of colour in academia (Wilder, Jones & Osborne-Lamkin 2013). However, many of these women academics have experienced their appointment as a measure of institutional compliance with transformation policies rather than an authentic intention to make a “concerted effort” to “enhance career development and status” for women of colour (Mahabeer, Nzimande & Shoba 2018, p. 29). Despite their efforts and the costs of gains made, academic identities of women of colour in academia are still rife with narratives of psychological threat, imposter syndrome and fighting generalisations and stereotypes (Anderson et al. 2020; Mahabeer et al. 2018).

As early-career academics ourselves, and women of colour, the authors embarked on a process of reflective inquiry about our experiences in academia. Taking inspiration from Anderson and colleagues (2020), we believe that our experiences can contribute to the body of knowledge on the academic identity of women in higher education. As Maylor (2009, p. 53) put it: “ … reflecting through dialogue provides the opportunity to give voice to what is often thought, experienced and internalised, but goes unsaid.” Therefore, women of colour continue to advocate for the need to question and challenge the prevailing (white) perspectives on knowledge, emphasising the importance for black women to shape their own lived experiences and understanding of the world (Maylor 2009). This is in line with a feminist decolonial lens, which informed our research endeavour.

In 2019 we joined a research group focused on Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) within academic spaces. We came to understand how feminist decoloniality recognises the historical and ongoing impacts of colonisation on gender relations, social structures, and knowledge production. In addition, it seeks to critique western knowledge systems and generate new knowledge that centres marginalised voices, experiences and ways of knowing. This research was therefore an opportunity for our voices, previously silenced and marginalised, to be heard. It also provided an opportunity for care.

In their work, Fisher and Tronto (1990) define care as the encompassing activity that involves all our efforts to sustain, perpetuate, and mend our world, enabling us to inhabit it in the best possible way. By adopting a collaborative approach and employing FEMDAC as a theoretical framework, the act of cultivating care for others emerges as an achievable endeavour.

The FEMDAC project involved the participation of black/women of colour academics from Stellenbosch University, Durban University of Technology, the University of Kwazulu-Natal and the University of Illinois. We were introduced to collage-making as a collaborative research strategy. Collage-making involves using various materials, such as pictures, photographs, colours, symbols or words, to create an artistic composition on a particular theme or topic (Butler-Kisber 2008). Collaborative collage-making is a process undertaken among peers or colleagues as a research strategy to co-create knowledge on a specific topic. We believed this method would provide a platform for us to discuss, think about, create, reveal, learn, and even unlearn certain beliefs relevant to our academic identities (Lapadat 2017; Norris et al. 2007).

Our application of an autoethnographic methodological approach is not uncommon (see Maseti 2018; Mohope 2014) and may even be associated with studies using autobiographic narrative with reliance on storytelling as a sense-making process (e.g. Mahabeer et al. 2018; Mokhele 2013; Msimanga 2014). However, our approach departs from these studies in adopting collaborative autoethnography (CAE) as our method of choice, with the novel application of collage-making as the medium for storytelling and group reflection rather than written narratives. CAE is a qualitative research method “that focuses on self-interrogation but does so collectively and cooperatively within a team of researchers” (Chang, Hernandez & Ngunjiri 2013, p. 17).

To explore the data collection method, we collaborated on a collage-making project centred on our experiences as women in academia and how they shaped our academic identities. Despite differences in faculties, departments and disciplines, we share commonalities, such as being first-generation graduates, early-career researchers, women of colour, and mothers and spouses in our 30s and 40s, all holding lecturer positions. We have all been employed for between 7 and 15 years at Stellenbosch University, and we were either starting, completing or had completed PhDs at the time of conducting the research. Our scholarly work took a grounded approach by creatively using collage-making as a CAE methodology. We investigated the following question: What can the visual narrative method of collage-making and collaborative autoethnography reveal about academic identities?

We viewed academic identity crafting as an ongoing identity work and meaning-making process, rather than a fixed concept. This process involves defining our roles and relationship with our work and is shaped by our daily social interactions (Martin, Lord & Warren-Smith 2020). As such, identity work entails constructing, deconstructing, interpreting, and reinterpreting our ideas of self and place to others (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop 2004). While there is a substantial body of international scholarship on academic identity development in higher education, there is a lack of literature exploring the perspectives of early-career academics and women of colour who write collaboratively about their experiences (Djerasimovic & Villani 2020).

Methodological approach

Our autoethnography was part of the larger Mellon-funded project for which ethical clearance was obtained via UKZN (HSS/0078/019). Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) was selected as the methodology as it allowed for team analysis and a more rigorous approach to analysing personal narratives. This approach fosters team building, trust, mentorship, and empathy among peers (Lapadat 2017).

Our primary data source included individually produced collages, reflections on these collages, and discussions among one another. Collage-making is an arts-based research approach that allows for juxtaposing various elements to create suggestive metaphors for readers to interpret and create their meanings (Butler-Kisber 2008). We considered our collages as personal documents, and the discussions that ensued from sharing them became additional data sources. Through the initial collage-making exercise, we identified common challenges in navigating our workplaces and recognised the importance of understanding our academic identities to shape them actively. Reflective conversations on our experiences, positions, and perceptions were conducted to better comprehend our personal and professional roles as women and explore nuances of our backgrounds. This process allowed for a safe and trusting space to examine these personal narratives, which has been noted as a significant advantage of CAE (Lapadat 2017).

Between October and December 2020 the five authors created individual collages. Each of us drew on images from our personal collections, as well the internet, that we felt symbolised our academic experiences and our thoughts or feelings about them. These images were put together electronically using Microsoft PowerPoint (2016). We then met weekly for three weeks, for sessions lasting between two and four hours. The focus of these sessions was to present our collages to each other and ask questions to clarify our understanding. The process occurred during the implementation of COVID-19 protocols in South Africa, which prohibited in-person contact. Therefore, reflection sessions were conducted online using Microsoft Teams, with all sessions recorded for later analysis. It is worth noting that the entire process was conducted in English, a language common to all participants.

We used ATLAS.ti version 8.25 software to transcribe and analyse recorded reflections. Each of the electronic collages were imported into ATLAS.ti, together with the transcriptions of our recorded online sessions, and these constituted the two primary data sources. The authors conducted the first round of coding together, under the technical leadership of one of the authors who is familiar with the software. In keeping with the collaborative nature of CAE, the group shared, discussed, and refined the codes, resulting in a final list. The software was used to analyse text and visual data, including collages. The codes were clustered and network views were generated.

Collage from one of the participants, all of whom were first-generation graduates, early-career researchers, women of colour, and mothers and spouses in their 30s and 40s, all holding lecturer positions.

Further example of a collage from one of the participants.

Findings and discussion

Several themes emerged from our analysis of our collages, reflections, and discussions. The sentiments conveyed through pictures and text were captured in the recorded reflections and surfaced in the codes. Themes that emerged from analysis were centred on these codes, and were: ‘The self I bring’, ‘Work-life balance: Focus feels selfish’, ‘Meritorious mismatch’, and ‘An ethic of care through CAE’.

The self I bring informs my academic identity

‘The self I bring’ refers to pictures in our collages that represent narratives of our identities, and the role of personal traits in our professional lives. It refers to symbols of identity narratives and personal traits that we felt had sometimes been misjudged or misrepresented in our professional contexts, but that we believe are assets in the academe. This included references to our identities as teachers rather than researchers, for instance (see the theme below), but also highlighted our feelings, values and personal stories from our past that inform our academic identities, that we consider unique, positive contributions to our academic environments. As one colleague stated:

… part of my academic identity is very much about connecting spaces that are marginal to the history of the university and bringing it into mainstream as though it's normal. So, I – if – whatever opportunity I get, I've taken a decision to take my students to places they would never have access to otherwise or would think of to look.

This was a significant point to note, because we had all experienced our academic ‘otherness’ at one time or another in our careers, as imposters, outsiders or marginal participants in a system historically not designed for us. As one colleague recalled:

She said to me ‘Oh, … we are so blessed to have you here, al was jy maar n moes [even though you were a forced] appointment’, and she thought it was okay to say it that way.

This recognition of meaningful contribution presents a powerful antidote to any impressions of inadequacy, insecurity or unwelcome presence in the academe.

Considering her background an asset, one of us has made it her mission to integrate where she comes from into her academic offering, framing her places of origin as marginal spaces into which she is a bridge for students, facilitating knowledge exchange between disparate knowledge worlds, geographic locations and social constructs:

As I take them [students of colour] there I tell them my – our family history, I try to inspire them with an identity about who they are and what they're about, how we are connected to the First Nations peoples of Africa, how that is a special honour and so on and so forth.

Past experiences, especially individual, community and historical events in our lives, thus sensitised us as lecturers and supervisors to students who may feel marginalised, which consequently informed our teaching philosophies and actions:

In my teaching I focus on a pedagogy of care and repair.

Whoever comes into my classroom, I do my best to make them feel like it's a space, a safe environment for them to just be who they are. And I guess also being an academic, you know, I'm inspired by what I teach. It's not always all moonshine and roses, it gets so depressing sometimes … But I always try to see the glass half full and try and look for opportunities in the challenges.

The result is an academic identity and teaching philosophy shaped in part by our response to past traumatic experiences, which informs our sensitivity to these issues in our classrooms.

“I am a teacher at heart”

It was interesting to note how strongly we all identified as teachers – an interesting find, since we all hold positions that include responsibilities as disciplinary (not necessarily education) researchers. From all our collages, the most positive associations were drawn from teaching:

[In my collage] I put a Chomp and sunflowers and the words thank you … Teaching … that's my happy space, my comfortable space. Sunflowers and the Chomps are usually the gifts that I get at the end of the year [from students].

I ended up as a lecturer teaching [a subject] that I love, since my school days.

I love learning as an individual, and I love seeing other people learn. And I'm very passionate about teaching … I am a teacher at heart.

Shared personal contexts also led to consideration of how we are socialised as women of colour. Teaching is a familiar profession in our communities and the families to which we have had life-long exposure. Arguably the same cannot be true of any other academic profession we now occupy. For some of us, the statement: “teaching is my academic identity” speaks to the personal values that shape our identity as teachers, rather than researchers, in academia:

We are teachers first; we grew up with teachers; we are socialised for collective teaching in the community; we come from teaching families [true for two colleagues]; teaching was the only noble profession available to many Coloured people in the past.

Another colleague reported that she was always singled out for her academic performance at primary school, with clear directives from adults that she would surely become a teacher. The envisaged role has shaped her academic progression from undergraduate, through postgraduate and then lecturing positions. Through reflecting with us, she realised: “Academia is all I know”.

Our interpretation of teaching as a significant part of making sense of our identity highlights an interesting paradox within the South African context. In the previous dispensation of apartheid, people of colour, especially coloured persons who were educated, had limited career options, of which becoming a teacher was one. We experience a strong teacher identity, which has meaning in our communities, yet feel that this is undervalued within higher education.

For example, having come from a resource-poor neighbourhood or having graduated from a historically black university has led to negative misperceptions among peers about our academic credentials. CAE allowed us to build trust and therefore feel safe to share our true feelings. Thus, one of the five authors shared that ever since she started working at the university, she always felt that her qualifications had been questioned by her white colleagues, who assumed that since she graduated from a previously black university, she was academically inferior.

Work-life balance: “Focus feels selfish”

Each of us identified strongly with our roles as teachers, but bemoaned the constant pressure of being measured against and reminded of the need for academic output in the form of publications and research accolades. One issue was the expectation to publish amidst burgeoning teaching loads and student supervision work. This may well be more a function of being early-career academics, rather than being women of colour. Is well known from the literature that the workload associated with teaching and service is disproportionally allocated to younger academics, leaving them with little time to develop research skills and output. All of us related to the metaphor of feeling like you are ‘climbing a mountain’, which resonates with other early-career academics who feel that they have high expectations placed on them (Djerasimovic & Villani 2020).

We all agreed that sustained outputs in all dimensions of our careers (research, teaching and service) made research outputs hard to attain, especially in a measured, performance-managed environment (Van Aarde & Mostert 2008). It is imperative to recognise these lived experiences, especially because research focused on women’s experiences in the workplace, work-life balance for women and the multiple roles women have to fulfil (Van Aarde & Mostert 2008). As part of her collage, one of the participants highlighted a picture of a mountain peak, which she used to describe how she felt about the demands and expectations she experienced within academia:

The mountain there, sorry I know my collage is really very busy. The mountain there again, some mornings you wake up and you feel oh my goodness, I have to conquer this. I'm gonna have to get through this whole list of things that I need to get through. And sometimes it does feel like looking up to this giant Everest and thinking I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to reach that summit. But I find comfort and peace knowing that you know, even if I just go about it one step at a time, I'm eventually … I’ll eventually get there.

However, while this was regarded as a challenge for us, we could agree that this was not an aspect that would negatively affect our individual or collective efforts to publish or pursue our publishing goals. It was an aspect that saw much discussion of the feelings it evokes and how we believed our colleagues regarded our publishing profiles. One of us remarked that it does create guilt, especially when you want to publish more, but in the end fall short:

Sometimes, you know, academia also kind of feels that way to me, because, you have conversations with people, it's all about Google, how many people downloaded this and how many citations and how many this and that. And when people get into talks, sometimes I just kind of zone out. So, so yeah … so sometimes, yeah … that also kind of gets to me. Especially when it comes to, you know, my guilt around me wanting to really put out more and not getting to it all.

Therefore, some of our feelings and experiences regarding publishing are consistent with those highlighted in the literature (see Garnett & Mahomed 2012; Fridner et al. 2015) and a key factor that emphasises what it means to be an academic. The juxtaposition of a passionate teacher and an unaccomplished researcher led to feelings of guilt. Comparisons with other colleagues and peers based on institutional expectations often lead to feelings of insecurity and shame for not having done more, not having accomplished enough, and often either perceiving or even downright being told that we are found wanting: “feelings of guilt for not having done more, achieved as much, or done better at academic activities, despite being in this ‘unequal race’”. The “unequal race” referred to here is linked to the pervasive feelings of inadequacy and guilt for not attaining more, faster. A related phenomenon was reference to the “perfect picture” of what an academic should be, evoking feelings of not being able to live up to either personal or professional expectations.

Feelings of guilt also often accompany attempts to prioritise our academic work over other important academic and social responsibilities. A PhD qualification is a time-consuming prerequisite for academic progression. At the same time, we are aware of the trade-offs between the priorities we value. The following quote demonstrates the level of guilt that sometimes plagues us:

… how do I justify doing a PhD when I've got a child with a learning barrier that needs my support … how do I justify educating myself further when I'm feeling like I'm leaving those that need me most, behind.

Academic work requires focus, but focus can feel selfish as we juggle roles. It should be noted here that all of us could relate to this sentiment of ‘focus feels selfish’, even though none of us had worded it in that way before. An important reflection about feelings of selfishness in our careers needs to be noted. What we experienced as selfishness could be reframed as the necessary task of prioritising. How to balance multiple dimensions of our careers and the emotional toll/dissonance that this creates is something we all seemingly grapple with, and may be interpreted as selfishness. The symbols presented in our collages offered another way for us to express feelings of ambivalence towards the research demands. This was a relief and a freeing experience, because we came to understand our struggles with the ‘publish or perish’ narrative in a new way.

Meritorious mismatch: “The goal posts keep shifting”

We critically reflected on shared notions that the goalposts keep shifting. Just as you think you have ‘arrived’, the performance requirements/parameters change. In describing her collage, one colleague stated that she always feels like being in training, needing to upskill herself to be on par with colleagues and for her contributions to matter or count. As black female careerists, there is always the need to achieve and prove your worth. She thus asked the question: “Is my PhD just a qualifier for confidence?”

Are gendered roles influencing academic identity?

As female academics, our professional duties run parallel to our social responsibilities, such as caring for children or elders. This often results in women needing to approach tasks and family responsibilities and their academic role/work-life balance differently through, for example, having access to flexible working hours. However, this can be viewed by colleagues who do not share the same responsibilities, or by those who can afford to pay for elder-care or after-care, as a weakness of needing ‘special concessions’ to do our jobs. Our performance compared to that of male colleagues arose as we discussed how others perceived our academic identities. There was a shared feeling that ‘It's a man’s world’, meaning that as female academics we operate in a traditional male-driven organisational culture, leaving little room for female academics who have added social responsibilities to flourish:

Women are chained to social duties; it sometimes feels like you've got this chain stuck to your ankle, and you have to make it through all of these obstacles to still get to the same end result.

Because we always have these men who are at our backs, you know, trying to be who's who in the zoo. So we are being courageous women, but also, at the same time, needing to be thick-skinned.

Organisational culture also feeds into how we are measured: we refer here to the “publish or perish” narrative which was highlighted by one participant. This is evident in the following quote: “There is a lot of emphasis placed on publishing in the department – publish or perish or the number of publications that you have validates your promotion.” Do we, as academics, collaborate in this space of publications? Or does the masculine, individualistic culture result in only some going forward? Hofstede’s (2011) five dimensions of organisational culture speaks to masculine and individualistic environments. Masculine environments are driven by an organisational culture where individuals need to achieve and wield power to succeed, which often ties in with the culture of individualism where greater importance is placed on attaining personal goals. Both these cultural dimensions – masculine and individualistic – are the converse of feminist and collective attributes (Robbins et al. 2013). As such, these cultural dimensions are likely to be incongruent with black female academics, who are more inclined to gravitate toward and flourish and perform in a feminist and collectivist cultural domain. Therefore, women of colour experience confusion when they meet the technical demands of the role, but still fail to advance in the profession as a result of failing to master the academic occupational culture (Walker 1998).

While publishing presents its own unique challenges, feelings of inadequacy or self-doubt were attributed to negative past experiences with colleagues, aspects of gender imbalances, duration of tenure or departmental and/or institutional practices that contributed to or exacerbated these feelings. A colleague explained how negative past experiences with colleagues resulted in her struggling to voice her opinions or contribute to decision-making as a staff member:

It just results in me keeping quiet in meetings, you know, have discussions around things that’s not working well in the department, I generally find myself muted. It's just easier to say nothing than to seem as though you're standing on a soapbox. And when I do voice my opinions, I feel guilty afterwards. And I don't know what that guilt is or I feel like I should have kept my mouth [shut].

In our reflections we frequently used the metaphor of “standing on a soap box” to describe the feeling when speaking out against injustices entrenched in the current individualistic and masculine organisational culture. This is less a matter of being silenced because of our gender or race – but rather that the injustice entrenched in the current individualistic and masculine organisational culture is accepted as a way of being. Questioning how things are done in this setting is often seen as being difficult or rebellious (Acker 1994). This often led to silence and acceptance of the status quo, immobilising us. We colloquially referred to this as “klaar wat dit so is” (it is what it is), reflecting our perceptions of institutional and cultural norms. These norms shape the culture of departments and institutions and often become the mould into which early-career academics must fit.

A diversifying university population requires integrating new norms into the organisation's culture. Consequently, transformation sits squarely on the agenda of the university project, informing policy with the intent to change practice and transform institutional culture. Our (Stellenbosch) university has also driven the equity agenda through diversity dialogues and workshops to create awareness and facilitate understanding and integration of a more inclusive university culture. The transformation agenda thus forms the backdrop to our academic identity-making, because as women, and women of colour, our positionalities are central to the changes being called for. However, we were presumably hired because of our education, experience, skill and potential – but others may say, or you may feel, that your appointment was entirely quota related. The ‘quota system’ approach to transformation can thus be damaging, causing feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy:

I have all these achievements, but it is clouded by whether I am good enough or was it because I was completing a quota? So, no matter how hard I work, even if I land up at a prestigious international university one day, it is all overshadowed by the thought that I am here because I am a person of colour.

Through our collage-making we surfaced experiences of operating dual realities in an environment with years of traditional, male-dominated, white norms (Makobela 2001). Eking out an academic identity in an institutional culture quite different from our social contexts has required constant and consistent navigation between ‘two worlds’. The reference is multi-dimensional. The ‘two worlds’ are rarely harmonious, calling for trade-offs (e.g. teacher vs researcher role), compromises (e.g. “always straddling two worlds as mommy and career woman”), and even feelings of exclusion (e.g. “It is a man’s world … there is the underlying tone that you shouldn’t really be here, you should be home with your children”).

An ethic of care through collaborative autoethnography

Employing autoethnography as research methodology allowed us to use self-reflection to explore the making of our academic identities as we reviewed subjective and personal experiences and tried to connect these in our meaning-making journey. Uncertainty, hesitation and disconcertion were but some of the perplexing feelings we were confronted with while conducting this study. Not only were we trying to make meaning of our experiences, but we were trying to make meaning in making a scholarly contribution to academia about our experiences. This is valiant for novices.

We appreciated how the collaborative nature nurtured the development of our academic identity. Moreover, we could reframe our thinking and beliefs about our role in the academe. Participating in and establishing this professional learning community aided this, as we were able to change the way we look at things. Through this work, some of us learnt the tools and tips of the trade, for example: “You've got to use your time and the space that you have to think creatively about the things that could energise you, set up things [projects] that could energise you”.

Learning and understanding things like benefits within the organisation also enabled our development, as we learnt how others cope in the workplace. For example, we reminded each other of certain benefits within our context: “All of the academics get research leave as well and it builds up, and it's something that accumulates that no one can take away from you”. Understanding simple activities related to our work environment helped us reframe our identities, but also led to coping better in the work environment.

The benefits of our weekly meetings went beyond the intended purposes of understanding our academic identities. Sharing and reflecting on our collages helped us reframe our thinking and beliefs about our role and raised potential pathways for change. Starting with the lenses of our collages, we were able to change the way we look at things. We established and participated in a professional learning community that facilitated sharing tips of the trade. Understanding the workspace and viewing our roles from better-informed perspectives illuminated a way of ‘holding out the carrot’ to cope in the workspace. Learning about and understanding processes like sabbatical and research opportunities, for example, and benefits within the organisation also contributed to our development. Therefore, understanding simple activities related to our work environment helped us reframe our identities, but also led to coping better in the work environment in the following months.

This practice of reframing, therefore, became one way we applied Tronto’s (2013) concept of ‘caring with’. In other words, by creating a space where there was communication, trust and respect, a sense of solidarity was constituted, and we felt safe to share these ideas with one another.

Conclusion

By engaging in this collaborative autoethnographic project, we could share our personal experiences and perspectives. Our research findings highlight that identity formation is a dynamic process involving various factors and dimensions of thought. Our unique subjective experiences, along with the impact of societal, familial, academic, and professional cultures and our personalities and aspirations, contribute to our rich academic experiences. This research has also prompted further questions, such as: What defines an academic? How did we previously perceive our identity as academics? Moreover, in what ways do we feel constrained or empowered, and how do we navigate traditional and contemporary structures in our identity formation? How do power dynamics and resistance shape our academic identity formation as women (Haeruddin, Pick & Thein 2019)?

Upon analysing our academic experiences, we have come to understand the challenges and opportunities that have shaped our trajectory. While we recognise that our entry into academia and current positions were not merely a matter of chance, we also acknowledge that we have faced significant obstacles. Our analysis reveals that some of these challenges persist. Nevertheless, as women in academia, we believe we have an important role in driving meaningful change. This includes challenging existing paradigms and advancing discourses that can contribute to fundamental transformation in higher education.

As lecturers and supervisors, our past experiences have made us sensitive to the feelings of marginalisation that students may face. This sensitivity shapes our teaching philosophies, which prioritise care and creating a safe environment for students to be themselves. Our academic identities were nurtured through collaboration during the study, with an emphasis on our positionality as women of colour. Teaching is a central aspect of our academic identities, as we all strongly identify as teachers. It holds personal value for us and aligns with our socialisation as women of colour, as teaching is a familiar profession in our communities. However, this teaching identity can sometimes be undervalued in higher education, where research outputs are emphasised for promotion and recognition. This mismatch creates a sense that the goalposts keep shifting, and our performance is constantly evaluated based on research rather than teaching.

We struggle with the pressure to publish and meet research expectations while also fulfilling our teaching responsibilities. This can lead to feelings of guilt and inadequacy, as well as comparisons with colleagues. We recognise that our experiences align with those described in the literature, highlighting the challenges and tensions of being an early-career academic. Negative past experiences, gender imbalances, and departmental/institutional practices contribute to feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. We sometimes struggle to voice our opinions and navigate decision-making processes, fearing judgement or marginalisation. The institutional and cultural norms often lead to silence and acceptance of the status quo.

In South Africa and beyond, it is clear that more courageous conversations need to take place. Efforts to effect change in academic institutions, including questioning and confronting institutional cultures and norms, must be given priority. This will be instrumental in achieving transformation goals, promoting gender equality and representation in academia, and breaking down implicit and structural barriers (Adonis & Silinda 2021; Luvalo 2019; Naicker 2013).

As women of colour, our positionalities are central to the transformation agenda in the university. However, the perception that our appointments are solely quota-related can lead to self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. Overall, our academic identities are shaped by our personal experiences, the value we place on teaching, the challenges of research expectations, and the transformative goals of the university. We navigate these complexities while striving to make meaningful contributions and create positive change in academia.

This project allowed us to develop our inner voices and share our experiences as women of colour in academia, which aligns with the focus of FEMDAC work. Creating collages and sharing our thoughts supported each other and affirmed our belonging in these spaces. Our contribution adds to discourses on women in higher education, demonstrating our academic dispositions and the value of supporting each other's voices. As Mahabeer et al. (2018) argue, women can take responsibility to emancipate themselves and speak out together in challenging hegemony. This work is a step in that direction.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carmelita Jacobs

CARMELITA JACOBS is an educational psychologist and a lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Zelda Barends

ZELDA BARENDS is a senior lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Rhoda Malgas

RHODA MALGAS is a lecturer in the Department of Conservation Ecology & Entomo⁣⁣logy⁣ at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Lisa Bailey

LISA BAILEY is a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Psychology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Samantha Williams

SAMANTHA WILLIAMS is a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 In South Africa, women of colour refers to black, coloured and Indian women.