Feminist decoloniality as care in higher education

Conceptual rationale

Research has established that women academics and particularly Black women academics continue to be marginalised in universities (Mahabeer, Nzimande & Shoba 2018). They are a statistical minority within academia (Mabokela & Mawila 2005; Mabokela & Mlambo 2017; National Center for Education Statistics 2022), and when they do occupy academic posts, their collective successes in universities are significantly constrained. Reasons for this include frameworks of inclusion in higher education, which have partially supported their access to academic careers but have done little to facilitate their flourishing as academics in universities that are increasingly neoliberal in practice, a system fuelled by patriarchy and white hegemony.

Within this context, individualistic, market-driven logics of neoliberalism drive individual performance metrics in a university system assumed to be based on the myth of meritocracy (Feingold 2011) that profoundly impacts academics’ career identities and sense of self-worth. Moreover, barriers to Black women’s success include lack of mentorship, poor promotion trajectories, huge teaching loads and expectations to provide emotional support to students and colleagues. Furthermore, dominant deficit narratives about Black women academics proliferate, especially in South Africa and USA contexts that ascribe to affirmative action policies (Khunou et al. 2019). Women experience institutional cultures as exclusive, detrimental to their (mental) health and wellness and uncaring, which impacts their capacity to work optimally (Makhuba 2022). These trends intensified during COVID-19. In some disciplines, women academics published less, had more domestic responsibilities and felt more exploited in academic institutions (Ronnie 2022; Jemielniak et al. 2022).

Given these challenges for Black women in higher education, innovative frameworks for understanding and intervening to support Black women to remain and prosper in higher education are necessary. We draw on strands of decolonial feminist and ethics of care approaches to suggest a generative theoretical foundation for Black women’s advancement in higher education institutions (HEIs).

What is feminist decoloniality?

Feminist decoloniality is a relatively new concept, coined by Lugones (2007, 2010). It draws on strong traditions of decolonial theory that critiques the nature of Western knowledge production that focuses on ‘othering’ marginalised groups through designating them as voiceless subjects for investigation through a colonial lens of Western knowledge production (Mignolo 2007). Decolonial feminism highlights the intersections between coloniality, racism, gender, geospatial location and modernity in producing particular kinds of feminisms in different contexts of oppression, with a strong focus on justice. There are four key foci of decolonial work relevant to our focus on Black women in higher education. It acknowledges gender as a power asymmetry that structures our experience and primarily argues for a rehumanising and reparative engagement in HEIs (Ipadeola 2017; Mirza 2014). Secondly, it aims to disrupt the politics of knowledge production dominated by Euro-American normativity to generate ecologies of knowledge that focus on experiences narrated by and about women in the Global South. Thirdly, it centres geospatial, historical, and political contexts for academic women in and of the Global South,¹ and fourthly, it draws on critical feminist methodologies such as critical reflexivity and the value of lived experience. As such feminist decoloniality is an important lens with which to understand the contemporary historical moment in which academic women in the Global South are located.

Aligned with this understanding, this Agenda issue also adopts an approach that foregrounds an ethic of care as central to our conceptualisation of relations in higher education and contemporary society and the place of women generally, and Black women in particular, therein.

What is an ethic of care?

Our approach to an ethic of care is informed by the work of Joan Tronto (1993).

Fisher and Tronto (1990) define care as an activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all in a complex, life-sustaining web which we seek to interweave (Fisher & Tronto 1990; Tronto 1993). Tronto’s work is valuable since it considers care as an ongoing relational process and moral imperative that takes the “concerns and needs of others as the basis for action’ (1993, p. 105). All humans, the animal and material world are vulnerable and dependent on care but can also give care. As non-paternalistic and democratic caring (Tronto 2017), this is not only an interpersonal or individual activity but also a systemic and institutional activity. According to Tronto, four moral elements make up non-paternalistic care: attentiveness to a need involves caring about someone or something; responsibility, or taking on the task of responding to a need; caring competence implies having some skill to care; and responsiveness to the needs of the person. More recently, Tronto (2013) added solidarity, where we can take collective responsibility, and where citizens can be seen as both receivers and givers of care in society.

Tronto (1993) does offer critiques of care as potentially paternalistic, as it generates power asymmetries when others are vulnerable in relation to our decisions about care. She also highlights parochialism in care as problematic when we care for only those who are similar to us (Tronto 1993). In this Agenda issue we sought contributions that challenge or speak to such paternalistic care.

Linking feminist decoloniality and an ethic of care as foundational framework

Decolonial feminism is a conceptual lens that has an implicit assumption of an ethic of care but does not formally theorise the nature of caring. It is therefore important to draw on frameworks of care that may extend the work of decolonial feminism theoretically and in applied ways. Finally, there is a strong focus on a rehumanising imperative and disrupting gendered power asymmetries in both decolonial feminism and Tronto’s ethic of care. Finally, this conception of care is contextual, relational and systemic, a commonality central to both feminist decoloniality and care. The fact that we are concerned about minimal caring in institutional cultures in HEIs makes these conceptual strands valuable. The integration of an ethic of care with decolonial feminism is also focused on understanding and praxis: how do we develop imaginative and valid interventions to address gender asymmetries in higher education?

In this special issue, we seek to make a unique intervention as interdisciplinary researchers and activists to explore feminist decoloniality as care from a social scientific perspective that includes praxis. We sought contributions that address questions such as: How do we create spaces in which Black women academics can flourish to stimulate critical consciousness within our students to promote their decolonial turn in the westernised university? How do we nurture and care with and for Black women academics who are engaged in the decolonial feminisms within the context of the westernised university? How do we build a community of practice centring feminist decoloniality as care, both in our scholarship and praxis?

We therefore invited authors to analyse the ways in which women understand and contribute to scholarly debates and interventions in HEIs that draw on decolonial feminisms and an ethic of care. We welcomed manuscripts and creative endeavours that explore the ways in which scholars who are Black women and gender expansive understand, respond to, and resist the gendered policies, structures and processes in universities, particularly the ways in which this is reflected in their scholarship, curriculum development, decision-making, and community engagement.

Summary of work featured in this Special Issue

We called for and received articles, essays, reflection pieces, poetry and artistic contributions written or presented from decolonial feminist care perspectives that articulate positions, experiences, research and praxis concerning topics such as decolonial feminist research methodologies, decolonising the curriculum in higher education, gender and curricular transformation in higher education, decolonial feminist transnational solidarities, feminist care ethics, and participatory research as decolonial research methodology and any other relevant issues.

Part 1: Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) project, research, and methodological contributions

We are so pleased with the work reflected in this inaugural effort to articulate feminist decoloniality as care. The contributions are organised in the following manner. Nekita Thomas' gorgeous cover design portrays topography as a metaphor representing the highs and lows of the academic journey for Black women globally, where peaks are often moments of ‘collaboration, nurturing, and growth'. We start off with a generative poem penned by Janice Marie Collins, ‘Academic woundedness and healing: Welcome to the Queendom!’ which she dedicates to “those who have had to face and endure the pain and suffering of academic woundedness”. This is followed by the FEMDAC project contingent and the lead article for the issue, ‘Metaphor drawing as decolonial research and feminist care among Black women academics in selected South African higher education institutions in times of crises’ authored by Professor Relebohile Moletsane, the principal investigator on the FEMDAC project, and her collaborators Ronelle Carolissen, Saajidha Sader, and Nonhlanhla Mthiyane at three universities in South Africa. In this insightful work, Moletsane and her colleagues offer “metaphor drawing as decolonial method [which] has the potential to generate counter-narratives that disrupt pathologising discourses about women academics’ experiences and capacities”.

Continuing our focus on South Africa, Mercy Mupavayenda and colleagues’ perspective piece, ‘Symbolic inclusion and systemic exclusion: Exploring our precarious journeys to becoming black women academics at a South African university through the lens of fieldwork’, “surfaces financially vulnerable Black women students … as frontline workers of and in the university in marginalised and volatile communities, often with disabling consequences”. They argue that the feminist decoloniality as care framework may “viscerally produce potential for epistemic obedience in Black students and holds transformative and reparative potential for the university to recognise both the students and communities as knowers/collaborators in knowledge production privileging African/local epistemes.”

Emilie Diouf, Unifier Dyer, Asali Ecclesiastes and Marita Gilbert’s offering is the ambitious ‘Our Ubuntu: A Black feminist turn’, which makes an important intervention. As they explain, “we experiment with the process of writing as a form of disruptive academic praxis of care work informed by spirituality, creative expression, and spatial embodiment”. The authors demonstrate “that inserting our voices and bodies into the work at the intersection of care, praxis, and knowledge generation is a collaborative act of care cultivation done by Black women for Black women and benefitting all peoples/bodies”.

Two FEMDAC project-related research manuscripts follow. ‘Exploring academic identities through collage-making: A collaborative autoethnographic project’ by Carmelita Jacobs and her colleagues “explored our academic identities as early-career Black and women of colour through the novel application of collage-making as a tool in collaborative autoethnography (CAE)”, and how they “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’.” Assata Zerai’s ‘Black women academics in the United States of America and South Africa deploying principles of Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) to confront experiences of microaggressions’ analyses the results of a survey among FEMDAC participants and leadership.

Part 2: Feminist decoloniality in HEIs across the African continent

Part 2 of the Special Issue focuses on feminist decoloniality in HEIs across the African continent. The first two manuscripts in this section explore Black women’s experiences in academic leadership. ‘“It seems the women are taking over”: Stereotyping around women in top-level leadership positions in Ghana’s universities’ by Eugenia A.B. Anderson and her colleagues explores “patterns of change in the advancement of academic women’s leadership at universities in Ghana”. The authors note that “Using a feminist decolonial lens, [they] inductively analyse semi-structured interviews with key academic women as well as men in leadership positions at selected universities, backed with the authors’ experiences as female academics, and employment records” [to] examine “gradual advancement of women to top leadership” in Ghana.

Barbara Tsverukayi’s ‘Experiences of female higher education academics in Zimbabwe: A decolonial feminist perspective’ builds upon demographic work that indicates the low representation of Black women in HEIs’ leadership, to explore what this looks like on a day-to-day basis. Tsverukayi discusses ways in “which decolonial feminism and associate ethics of care have influenced women’s empowerment” and its impact on “experiences of female academics in leadership positions within HEIs in Zimbabwe”.

Moving from leadership to academic staff, ‘In solitary confinement: The constrained identities, spaces and voices of Black women criminologists in post-apartheid South Africa’ by Lufuno Sadiki “makes use of feminist decoloniality and intersectionality frameworks to explore the experiences of 11 female criminologists”. Sadiki notes that “In utilising feminist decoloniality and intersectionality, the research seeks not only to challenge the persisting biases and inequalities, but also to amplify the voices and experiences of Black women criminologists and bring attention to the obstacles they face, including feelings of otherness and exclusion. Black criminologists’ experiences include, among others, discrimination, ageism, exclusion, and insufficient academic and research mentoring.”

A briefing by Anniah Mupawose and Emmanuel Ojo titled ‘Decolonial feminism and indigenisation: Reimagining postgraduate research supervision in post-apartheid South Africa’ examines “the potential for a decolonial feminist approach to indigenise postgraduate research supervision in South African universities”. This work contributes to decolonising the university, as the authors present “a conceptual framework that challenges the traditional Eurocentric and patriarchal structures of academia, foregrounding the experiences and knowledge systems of Black African women”. Further, their “framework incorporates indigenisation and decolonial feminism, advocating for an academic environment that is more inclusive and equitable”.

Part 3: Feminist decoloniality in HEIs in the United States of America

We conclude with a manuscript focused on an HEI in the USA. Brandi Stone’s ‘Serving in Black spaces of the institution: A decolonial Black feminist autoethnography’ discusses the experience of serving in Black Culture Centres in the USA, and how leadership in these spaces by Black women incorporates ethics of care. She notes, “I seek to contribute to the research by examining how Black women BCC directors can embrace othermothering while also resisting capitalistic expectations of labour through a decolonial Black feminist approach to leadership. Findings from this study contribute to the emerging scholarship exploring the experiences of Black women in BCCs and provides an authentic understanding of the day-to-day work. Finally, strategies are provided for Black women directors who seek to incorporate a decolonial Black feminist praxis into their leadership as BCC directors.”

Conclusion

As noted by Vergès (2019/2021), “decolonial feminisms are part of the long movement of scientific and philosophical reappropriation that is revising the European narrative of the world” that “contest the Western-patriarchal economic ideology that turned women, Black people, Indigenous people, and people from Asia and Africa into inferior beings marked by the absence of reason, beauty, or a mind capable of technical and scientific discovery” (2019/2021, p. 36). Contributors to this special issue who are decolonial feminist activists and academics are developing “their own modes of transmission and knowledge” (Vergès 2019/2021, p. 36). These works reflect a Black transnational decolonial feminism (Zerai, forthcoming) that recognises that:

• neocolonial and neoliberal spaces and logics must be disrupted and replaced;

• tools within our areas of expertise as artists and academics can be deployed to disrupt systems that dehumanise and oppress us;

• individual access to scarce resources carries the grave responsibility to not only share those resources but to enhance routes of access to them for groups typically excluded from them;

• we work in community in collaborative, restorative, reciprocal and redistributive ways; and

• we must connect with a community of practice of like-minded decolonial feminists who will challenge us, grow with us, and participate in the struggle with us.

In summary, as noted by one of our authors, “it is our hope that this scholarship and the interventions it inspires will further the work of decolonising the westernised university.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Assata Zerai

ASSATA ZERAI is a decolonial feminist scholar, whose research deploys Black feminist research methodologies to analyse achieving inclusion in complex organisations, just access to information and communications technologies, novel contributions of BIPOC women’s scholarship transnationally, and structural impediments to maternal and child health. She has published five books and numerous articles spanning these topics. While serving as Fulbright-Hays scholar in 2023, she is currently writing her sixth book, a monograph, Black Feminist Interventions in Decolonizing the Westernized University (under contract with Rowman and Littlefield, Lexington Books). Email: [email protected]

Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela

REITUMETSE OBAKENG MABOKELA is the Associate Chancellor and Vice-Provost for International Affairs & Global Strategy and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BA in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Master’s in Labor & Industrial Relations and a PhD in Educational Policy Studies, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A former Fulbright New Century Scholar, as well as a Fulbright International Education Administrators programme participant in France, her research seeks to understand experiences of marginalised populations and aims to inform and influence institutional policies that affect these groups within institutions of higher education. Her research centres or has centred on the examination of three interrelated themes: organisational change and organisational culture in higher education; gender in higher education; and higher education in transitional societies. Email: [email protected]

Ronelle Carolissen

RONELLE CAROLISSEN is a clinical psychologist and full Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is a National Research Foundation-rated researcher. Her research expertise and publications explore feminist decolonial pedagogies and critical community psychology perspectives on equity in general, and youth citizenship in higher education contexts. She is a Fulbright research scholar alumnus (2021–2022) and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Saajidha Sader

SAAJIDHA SADER, who identifies as a decolonial feminist activist scholar, is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her activism, teaching and research focus on decoloniality, social justice and education broadly and more specifically on decoloniality, gender, scholar activism and higher education. She is a founding member of the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis (commonly referred to as The Network), which is based at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE), University of Newcastle, Australia. The Network includes founding members from South Africa, Ghana, Sudan, the USA and Australia. Email: [email protected]

Nonhlanhla Mthiyane

NONHLANHLA MTHIYANE is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of Education at Durban University of Technology, South Africa. She received her Master of Science in Education from SUNY College at Buffalo, and her PhD in Science Education from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. A recipient of the Spencer Foundation Fellowship and the NRF/NSF award, Nonhlanhla’s career started as a Biology teacher and spans secondary school, college of education and university. She is passionate about teacher education that is impactful and transformative, and that contributes significantly to finding solutions to societal problems. Her research interests include gender in education, teacher development, feminist methodologies and methods, and recently feminist decolonial methodologies. Her focus is on creating supportive and reflexive spaces for students and Black women academics, and in applying feminist decolonial methodologies to decolonise the curriculum, including research. Email: [email protected]

Mariann Skahan

MARIANN SKAHAN is a PhD candidate in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation ‘Language Education and Revival on the Jicarilla Apache Nation’ focuses on the impact of educational policies on heritage language use for the Jicarilla Apache community. Her work offers a critical analysis on the impact of US federal educational policies and examines current community-based initiatives to decolonise past educational trauma. Her work with FEMDAC has allowed her to gain insight into decolonial theory and Black feminist research, which she has incorporated into her research addressing educational equity and supporting programmes for underserved/underrepresented populations. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 FEMDAC is composed of women from the Global South and from the African Diaspora. For Black women living in the USA, we recognise our African roots and demarcate our commitments to Black women globally and the project of decolonisation. Thus, we utilise the concept of “in and of” the Global South.