Battling the “headwinds”: the experiences of minoritised academics in the neoliberal Australian university

Abstract

Academics who identify or are identified with minoritised groups in society and teach marginalised subjects are particularly prone to experiencing individual and systemic bias and discrimination which harm their wellbeing and restrict their career advancement. These challenges can be likened to “headwinds” that they must constantly battle against, whilst those belonging to dominant social groups benefit from “tailwind” effects. We critique the framing of the “ideal” academic in the neoliberalised university and argue that it entrenches the marginalisation of academics from minoritised backgrounds. Through a collaborative auto-ethnographic approach, we explore how we push back against “headwinds” in order to resist our marginalisation, in particular detailing how collaborative writing and research function as successful protective strategies within hyper-competitive environments. Whilst this article focusses specifically on the Australian context, the international resonances are apparent from connections we illustrate within the literature, and showcase how developments from a distance frame our local contexts.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• intersectionality
• race
• gender
• neoliberalism
• collaborative autoethnography

Notes

Acknowledgement

An initial draft of this article was presented at the Southern Cross University Scholarship of Teaching Colloquium on 28 November 2017 (Lismore, N.S.W., Australia).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the terminology of “minoritised” rather than “minority”, following Özlem Sensoy and Robyn DiAngelo (2017), who argue that a dominant social group does not need to be numerically in the majority to hold a hierarchically higher position in society. There are more women than men in the world, for example, and yet globally, men are the dominant social group in terms of gender because they have considerably more power and resources as a group than women do.

2 Although at 1.1% of total staff this is well below population parity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leticia Anderson

Dr Leticia Anderson is a Lecturer in Humanities at Southern Cross University (Australia) and formerly taught at the University of Sydney for more than ten years. Leticia has a dual research focus on inclusive and transformational higher education and on race relations and Islamophobia in contemporary Australian society.

Kathomi Gatwiri

Dr Kathomi Gatwiri is the author of “African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies” (Springer ISBN 978-981-13-0564-1). She is a social worker and psychotherapist and currently teaching at the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University.

Marcelle Townsend-Cross

Dr Marcelle Townsend-Cross is an Indigenous Australian Studies and Cultural Studies educator. Her research is focused on teaching and learning for social justice and social change as well as on the history and contemporary manifestations and impacts of colonialism.