performing and defying gender: women’s leadership experiences in african higher education ane...
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Performing and defying gender: Women’s leadership experiences in African higher education
Ane Turner Johnson, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Educational LeadershipRowan University
What to expect…A bit about
me
Background of the study
Contextual factors
Theoretical lenses
New narrative
Methods
Data collection
Data analysis
Findings Outcomes Theory generation
Current work
Comparative study
A bit about me…
• Rowan University in New
Jersey, USA• Advise 17 doc students• Coordinate, WGS & Ph.D.• Research higher education
in sub-Saharan Africa• Most recent work: higher
education post-conflict
Starting Point
Obstacles to women
Few women in
H.E. Admin
But these women
made it!
Lived Experiences
of African Women Leaders
Informed by normative & limited empirical literature
Observation
Higher Education in Africa• Gendered nature of higher education
– “organizational saga” – “constructs and regulates” (Morley, 2010, p. 547)– Relegated to informal, invisible work
• Pre-existing cultural relationships and gender-based violence in African higher ed
• Women do not usually contest the script
Women as leaders in higher education• Not always described as such.
– Mabokela (2003): women as the “donkeys of the university” – an allegory for their roles as managers with challenging responsibilities and a lack of accompanying respect (p. 136).
• Gendered division of labor• Hegemonic vision of leadership
– The “care-less manager” (Lynch, 2010)– “She will be asking you for permission to take her
children to hospital’ (Lindow, 2011, p. 114).
There are “swaths of activity, processes, statistics and attitudes” within higher education and society at large that defy the mediation of gender mainstreaming and call for “shifting the paradigm of patriarchy” in order to make lasting change for women within the academy
(Morley, 2010, p. 547).
Framing gender• Series of acts• Stylization of the body• Creates expectations• Enforced
– “punishments for contesting the script” (Butler, 1988, p. 531)
• Complicated by culture– “sites of resistance” (Chilisa &
Ntseane, 2010)
Intersectionality
gender
race class
gender
sexuality ethnicity
Varied identifications “intersect” constructing complex experiences
(inequality regimes) for the individual (Collins, 1990).
Critique of intersectionality• Western feminist perspective
– Troubled by conceptions of identity in postcolonial Africa (Mama, 2001)
• Victimization narrative– Common trope in African studies (Roe, 1995)– Focus is on obstacles to women and how
gendered/racialized processes within organizations may victimize them
– May contribute to continued othering
Exploring positive intersections
Research question
How do women within higher education administration in Africa describe their life and career paths, in light of lived space, time, body, and human relations?
Methods• Phenomenology
– Lifeworld existentials – create heuristic for exploring women’s lived experiences (Van Manen, 1990)
• Data collection– Interviews (with hermeneutical thrust)– 1-2 hours
• Data analysis– Thematic selective reading– Reflexivity
ParticipantsAlias Country Education Title Institution
Antsa Madagascar Ph.D. Natural Sciences
Vice President of International Relations
Public
Abena Ghana M.S. Industrial Management
Dean of Entrepreneurship
Public
Anodiwa Zimbabwe Ph.D. Teacher Education
Pro Vice Chancellor - Academic
Public
Mudiwa Zimbabwe Ph.D. Educational Administration
Vice President for Research & Scholarship
Open & Distance Learning
Adiaba Nigeria Ph.D. Educational Technology
Vice Chancellor Public
Caution!
• Africa is not a monolith.
• Positionality• Research efforts• Description of what
women do in addition to formal career expectations.
Intersecting trajectories
FaithGod made a way for me and I got it.
VocationI’ve got a teacher who taught me, she was very progressive.
AgencyI don’t shout all the time to say we’re equal. But I defy this culture by the effort that I’ve made.
Intersecting Identities
They expect me to be a model and as matter of fact, my students do look to come to me as a mother.
‘Um, Madame, it looks like Mrs. [Abena] everybody calls you either Momma or Mommy or Ma. So can I also call you, address the same?’
They think I’m right out there I should be a role model for others around me particularly female students.
Gendered work
It’s not a woman’s job being a Vice Chancellor. And things like that. And even after the interview, after the interview and the appointment, my husband was abducted just to prevent me from taking up the position.
I read it in the Bible somewhere, a woman is in some way a setting (decoration) in her home, so a woman must take care of herself.
And the students are able to come, even though we have counselors in the school, our students are able to just come to you with some personal problems because you are a mother.
It’s exerting. If I ever come back, if there’s reincarnation, I will be a man.
Performing and defying gender• Absence of gender
– Work hard and gender shouldn’t be an issue• Motherhood = agency & influence within the
organization (in conflict to lit)• Legitimate gender beliefs through replication• Replication altered by agency
– “I defy this culture…”– Naturalizes gender within org
• Intersection is a site of resistance– “outsider within” (Collins, 1999)
Theory generation Intersections
of Identity
“Outsider within” Status
Threshold for Agency
Gender Performance
Neoliberal carelessness
Future work
Carelessness and culture/socio-historical antecedents and women’s leadership
Gender violence in conflict-affect higher education
Racism, colonialism, tribalism, contextual factors
Public universities in sub-Saharan Africa – focus on
students/faculty
ReferencesButler J. 1988. Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theater Journal 40(4): 519–531.
Chilisa B. and Ntseane G. 2010. Resisting dominant discourses: Implications of indigenous, African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research. Gender and Education 22(6): 617–631.
Collins P.H.1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Collins P.H.1999. Reflections on the outsider within. Journal of Career Development 26(1): 85–88.
Lindow M. 2011. Weaving success: Voices of change in African higher education. New York: Institute of International Education.
Lynch, K. 2010. Carelessness: A hidden doxa of higher education. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 9, no. 1: 54-67.
ReferencesMabokela, R. O. 2003. “Donkeys of the university”: Organizational culture and its impact on South Africa women administrators. Higher Education 46, no. 2: 129-145. Mama A. 2001. Challenging subjects: Gender and power in African contexts. African Sociological Review 5(2): 63–73.Morley, L. 2010. Gender mainstreaming: Myths and measurement in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania. Compare 40, no. 4: 533-550. Roe, E. M. 1995. Except-Africa: Postscript to a special section on development narratives. World Development 23, no. 6: 1065-1069. Van Manen, M. 1990. Researching lived experience. New York: SUNY Press.