Women’s refusal of racial patriarchy in South African academia

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the career experiences of women academics at three South African universities. To understand the experiences of women academics, we conducted an intersectional interrogation of the politics and practices of belonging in departmental cultures. The sample consisted of thirty women academics whose interviews were analysed through a discursive thematic frame. We found that while all participants experienced gender-based discrimination which hinders academic progression, the barriers experienced by black women academics are compounded by the intersections of race, gender, and motherhood. Patriarchal and racist institutional, disciplinary and departmental cultures served as further challenges to belonging. On the other hand, through counter storytelling and refusal, women created alternative spaces of sociality where suffering co-exists with pleasure, refusal and survival. Ultimately, the paper suggests refusal as a generative theoretical lens to surface the complexity of women academics.

KEYWORDS:

• Refusal
• alienation
• belonging
• women academics
• intersectionality
• gender

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zaakira Raymond

Zaakira Raymond practices as an organisational psychologist in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hugo Canham

Hugo Canham is an associate professor and studies the phenomenology of living in the margins of human value, suffering and death.