“It’s Just My Face:” Workplace Policing of Black Professional Women in Higher Education

Abstract

In this qualitative meta-narrative, I explore how Black women administrators in higher education experience and navigate policing in predominantly white work environments. Using intersectionality as a framework and semi-structured interviews as the primary data collection technique, the findings from this study reveal workplace policing manifests for Black women on physical, emotion, and communicative levels. More specifically, participants endured restrictions and navigated dissatisfaction with their tone of voice, criticism of their attire and style of dress, and (mis)perceptions of office fit. Participants also reported engaging in self-policing practices to (over)compensate for and in anticipation of workplace-based policing struggles. I include implications for research and practice.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The University of Vermont Office of the Vice President for Research contributed to the open-access publication of this article under OVPR Project Grant #040085.