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Exploring gender and race amongstfemale sociologists exiting academia inSouth AfricaMarlize Rabe a & Pragna Rugunanan ba Department of Sociology , University of South Africa , Pretoria ,South Africab Department of Sociology , University of Johannesburg ,Johannesburg , South AfricaPublished online: 31 Jan 2012.
To cite this article: Marlize Rabe & Pragna Rugunanan (2012) Exploring gender and race amongstfemale sociologists exiting academia in South Africa, Gender and Education, 24:5, 553-566, DOI:10.1080/09540253.2011.630313
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.630313
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Exploring gender and race amongst female sociologists exitingacademia in South Africa
Marlize Rabea∗ and Pragna Rugunananb
aDepartment of Sociology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa; bDepartmentof Sociology, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
(Received 5 August 2010; final version received 14 August 2011)
This article explores issues of gender and race in the academic careers of femalesociologists in South Africa by focusing on selected women who left academicdepartments in higher education institutions. In-depth interviews were conductedwith 11 participants who left various Sociology departments at different times. Itwas found that young black female academics dwelled on issues of race in theircareers, but paid scant attention to gender. Older white female academics,especially those who had been in senior positions, focused on gender issues,with only brief comments on racial issues. It is argued that racial challengesovershadow gender challenges for black female academics in South Africa andthat gender discrimination is only experienced once women reach more senioracademic positions. A minority status in academic departments contributes toexperiences of racial or gender discrimination, although demographic changeswithin departments do not necessarily lead to the eradication thereof.
Keywords: gender; race; sociology; academic careers; higher education; SouthAfrica
1. Introduction
Worldwide higher educational institutions have undergone dramatic transitions sincethe late 1970s due to the commercialisation and marketisation of knowledge productionand dissemination, the massification of knowledge, an emphasis on academic entrepre-neurialism and preoccupation with research ‘outputs’ (Currie et al. 2003; Ssesanga andGarrett 2005, 33–4; Weber and Vandeyar 2004, 190). South African higher educationinstitutions did not escape the effects of these changes and also have to deal with thetransforming international higher education environment by trying to find their nichein the global educational marketplace.
In addition to the international climate of changing higher education institutions,South African higher education institutions have been undergoing a local transitionas they transform into democratic institutions. In 2001 Mabokela stated that theSouth African educational system was still undergoing comprehensive transformation‘from a system plagued with racial and gender disparities to one that will uphold theideals of nonsexism and nonracism’ (2001, 207). Historically, South African highereducation institutions were created largely along racial lines, resulting in so-called
ISSN 0954-0253 print/ISSN 1360-0516 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.630313http://www.tandfonline.com
∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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‘black’ and ‘white’ institutions (currently institutions are respectively referred to as‘historically disadvantaged’ and ‘historically advantaged’). In order to eradicatesome of the historical inequalities between higher education institutions in SouthAfrica, 36 institutions were decreased to 23 in 2004 by closing down some institutionsand merging others. Within this changing scenario, academic staff had to make signifi-cant paradigm shifts and find new and innovative ways of teaching and conductingresearch (Fourie 1999, 276). More than a decade and a half after the first democraticelections in 1994, the imbalances of race and gender do not seem to have disappeared:instead, they re-appear in new guises that seem to perpetuate the racial and genderinequities of the past.
It is not easy to address inequalities of race or gender and its effects are discernible,amongst other indicators, in academics leaving higher education institutions in largenumbers. In this regard Pienaar and Bester (2006, 75) report that between 5 and 18%of academics leave the South African higher education sector annually.
Research on the challenges in academic careers, paying attention to issues ofgender and race, is common in the literature (Department of Education 2008; Mabo-kela and Magubane 2004; Mama and Barnes 2007; Pienaar and Bester 2006;Soudien 2010). But, in seeking a deeper understanding of these issues, an investi-gation into the career paths of women who have left the academic environmentwas undertaken. The aim is to enrich our understanding of racial and genderdynamics in South African academic departments through the lived experiences ofwomen who left these departments. One of the questions that currently plaguesSouth Africa, and therefore also higher education institutions, is what exactlydemocracy implies for our society. What does racial and gender equality mean fora culturally diverse society such as ours? In addressing this question, we havedrawn on principles developed by John Dewey, an early American thinker on edu-cation and democracy, recent research and views expressed in South African publi-cations and elsewhere, together with the experiences of our research participants toarrive at a clearer picture on why higher education institutions are not accommodat-ing to certain academics. We focused on one academic field, which is also our ownfield of expertise, since a number of South African female sociologists have left theiracademic positions abruptly (in many cases without future plans for their careers atthe time of their resignation). Since the number of active sociologists in SouthAfrican academic departments is small,1 the number of women leaving theacademic world is proportionally high (although the exact number is not known).By focusing on one discipline where it is known that both established and youngscholars left academic positions, a close-up picture from a unique vantage point isgained.
Initially the research aimed to establish how gender-related factors influencewomen’s decision to leave, but it became apparent that, for certain research partici-pants, namely young black females, gender issues were largely surpassed by racialissues or racial and gender aspects were closely linked. Young black participants in par-ticular thus redesigned the initial aim of this study to focus on both gender and race. Inthis study ‘black’ is understood within the South African context, which includes threeracial categories – black, ‘coloured’ or from mixed descent and Indian – developed bythe Nationalist government, which ruled the country prior to 1994 (when the first demo-cratic elections were held). These three racial categories, in conjunction with the cat-egory ‘white’, formed the basis for segregating and discriminating against people inthe system of ‘apartheid’. The four racial categories are still used by the present
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government of South Africa to monitor, amongst other things, the rate of developmentand transformation in the labour market.
2. The research design
This research was undertaken following a qualitative research design, wherein we, theresearchers, initiated the social construction of the discussions on the topic. Ourapproach is informed by the writings of C. Wright Mills (1959, quoted in Cotterilland Letherby 2005, 109): ‘You must learn to use your life experience in your intellec-tual work: continually to examine it and interpret it. In this sense craftsmanship is thecentre of yourself and you are personally involved in every intellectual product uponwhich you work.’ This approach provides for a ‘critical and reflexive’ scrutiny ofone’s self and one’s own experiences as sociologists and academics (Cotterill andLetherby 2005, 110). We are not on neutral ground as we bring our own subjectiveexperiences into the study (cf. Shackleton 2007, 27 for similar arguments) and thereforewe want to explain our position at the outset.
As sociologists in academic departments, we were intrigued by seemingly unusualcareer patterns of women leaving the academic world since they resonated with some ofour own experiences. We both worked for a number of years for a university which wasresource-poor (Vista University – a multi-campus higher institution developed duringthe apartheid years in South Africa to teach urban-based black people) with mainlyundergraduate black students. We were under pressure to take severance packagesprior to the higher education mergers in 2004 in South Africa (after which Vista Uni-versity ceased to exist) and in response one of us left academia and then returned aftersix years. We are roughly the same age, both have two school-aged children and wetook only three months maternity leave for each child before returning to work.Apart from such similarities in gender experiences, we had different racial experiencessince one of us is white and one is Indian. For example, the white researcher obtainedher first temporary full-time academic position after being mistaken for a black womanon paper (‘who will have family to stay with close to work since black people alwayshave large families’ according to a telephone conversation in which the initial tempor-ary job offer was made) based on similarities between a German surname and anAfrican surname. Experiences such as leaving and returning to academic life (by theIndian researcher) and experiencing a strange twist of racism roused our interest ingender and racial experiences related to university careers.
Qualitative research was undertaken, wherein 11 individual in-depth interviewswere conducted at the chosen venues of the research participants (homes, offices andcoffee shops). The research participants were women who had formerly worked indepartments of Sociology at different South African universities. The women wholeft university careers ranged from women who had worked in Sociology departmentsfor relatively short periods (less than five years) to others who had left well-establishedcareers (after more than 15 years).
The level of diversity in terms of race differ greatly between South African univer-sities, with certain universities having huge diversity amongst students and academicstaff and at other universities the majority of staff and students belong to a specificracial group (white or black) due to the history of racial segregation at higher educationinstitutions. Although certain large urban-based universities have a number of seniorblack academics and managers, other universities still only have a minority of seniorblack academic and managerial staff.
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We conducted all the interviews ourselves. Since the sociological academic com-munity in South Africa is small, we were acquainted with most of the women, althoughwe were neither close friends nor colleagues who exerted power over each other. Wethus managed to create an open, trusting environment, where the interviewees coulddiscuss their experiences freely as one participant stated: ‘I know you will be discreet.’
One of the central questions in the interviews was: Why did you leave academia? Inmost cases, there seemed an overt willingness on the part of the participants in wantingto share their stories/to have their stories told. This view seems to corroborate Butler’sexperience: ‘although women have been making inroads into the academic community,both in terms of numbers and positions, the ‘stories’ of the majority still remain hidden,unrecorded, barely mentioned, or forgotten’ (Butler 2005, 3).
We made use of a combination of purposive and snowball sampling to find formerfemale academic sociologists who were willing to be interviewed. Five of the womenhad completed doctorates and the remaining women had completed Master’s degrees(two were pursuing doctoral studies at the time of the interview). Four of the womenhad no children, and there was some diversity regarding marital status and sexual orien-tation. Six of the women were white and five were black; because of the small numberof black participants, no ethnic identities were probed for or mentioned by the researchparticipants. Five of the white participants were older than 40 years, and therefore insenior academic positions when they left, and of the six under the age of 35, onlyone is white. Although the age and race divisions of the participants were notplanned, it reflects some of the broader dynamics in the South African higher education.
Given the sensitivity of this research, we were particularly mindful of ethicalconcerns, such as protecting the identities of our research participants as we are present-ing the research results to an academic community that the research participants left andsome may even want to return to, for example: ‘I consider myself to have left fulltimeemployment within an academic institution, uhm, but in order to resume it again atsome point’ (Maria). We asked interviewees to choose their own pseudonyms, andassigned names to women who choose not to do so. No person or university is identifiedin any of the transcripts and letters from the alphabet were assigned chronologically topeople and universities mentioned in each transcript. Quotes that could potentially ident-ify a particular university or be regarded as sensitive information were sent to the specificresearch participant for approval. In certain cases we removed specific material if theparticipant felt that she did not want to place such information in the public domain.
3. Discussion
Given the history of South Africa, it is not surprising that issues of gender and racefeatured prominently in the interviews. De la Rey succinctly captures the impact ofgender and racial discrimination in South Africa:
. . .a historical analysis of the university system in South Africa shows indisputable evi-dence of gender discrimination but the impact thereof on women was filtered through arigid system of race discrimination such that white women would have been negativelyaffected, but black women would have been subjected to the combined negative impactof both gender and race discrimination. (1999, 2)
The high hopes for democratisation of higher education institutions shortly after thefirst democratic elections held in South Africa (Moja, Muller, and Cloete 1996, 130)
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have not materialised, as a recent special issue on affirmative action and access tohigher education (Soudien 2010) and the South African Department of Education’s(2008) report attest. This struggle with race and education is not unique to present-day South Africa and has been reflected upon in the twentieth century in variousparts of the world. One such reflection is demonstrated in Neubert’s article on‘Democracy and education in the twenty-first century’, which focuses on the work ofJohn Dewey:
The educational struggle to further the opportunities for all, including the socially margin-alized and disadvantaged, to truly participate in the life of their society is as relevant fordemocracy today as it was in Dewey’s time. (2010, 489)
Dewey (in Neubert 2010, 488) asserts that ‘education is the keystone of democracy’. Ina learning environment, people learn more when they can bring their own experiences(even if they are meagre) into the learning process so that education becomes a processof give and take. If such democratic principles are applied to institutions of highereducation, academics with diverse backgrounds should be able to teach and learnfrom students with a myriad of personal histories. Similarly, academic departmentsshould be milieus where people can learn from each other by sharing different academicand even personal experiences. The experiences of our participants are analysedagainst such ideals.
The experiences of the research participants will be presented next, focusing first ongender dynamics in departments.
3.1. Gender
In South African academic departments of Sociology, a high number of females enterthe discipline as postgraduate students and subsequently form part of the academicstaff. Still, the majority of senior positions (associate professorships and professorships)are occupied by men (cf. South African Sociological Association 2007). This concen-tration of women in ‘the lower ranks’ of academia is not unusual; numerous authorshave observed it in different parts of the world and in various disciplines (Acker1983, 191–2; Barnes 2007, 11; DiFuccia, Pelton, and Sica 2007, 15; Naidoo, Smit,and Seedat-Khan 2012; Schoen and Winocur 1988, 307; Tsikata 2007, 30–1; Vasil1996, 104; Walker 1998, 335).
Possible reasons for the skewed gender distributions in academic fields include thatfemale academics do not publish as much as their male counterparts (Cummins 2005,225; Stein and Lockheed 1983), a pattern also seen in South Africa (Prozesky 2006),and females spend more time on tuition/teaching, administration and other tasks thatdo not contribute so readily to academic promotion (Schoen and Winocur 1988). Inaddition, a range of institutional and personal factors that contribute to women occupy-ing less prestigious positions in academic circles were identified, including their nurtur-ing nature (Cummins 2005, 224), the inability to promote themselves, a lack ofnetworking (Butler 2005; Shackleton 2007, 26) and family responsibilities (Acker1983, 192; Donovan et al. 2005, 251; Probert 2005, 65).
Studies assert that higher education working environments are not conducive tofemale academics advancing their careers successfully in South Africa (as well asthe rest of Africa). Unwelcoming academic environments are believed to be evenworse for black female academics and much more prominent at historically
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disadvantaged institutions (Mabokela 2001; Mama and Barnes 2007, 3). The genderchallenges in higher education include ‘being exposed to working environments domi-nated by masculine values, masculine power and masculine discourse’ (Butler 2005, 3).
Strong views on gender discrimination are abundant in the literature, but a complexpicture regarding gender discrimination at South African institutions was found in thisstudy, where both age and race are significant. Our gender focus is subdivided betweenthe white and black participants since they reported such diverse experiences.
3.1.1. Black research participants
Despite the compelling discussions on discrimination against women in the literature,the black women participants seldom mentioned any experiences of gender discrimi-nation, and some even insisted that they never experienced any form of such discrimi-nation, even when probed. It is important to note that the black academics in this studywere all young and/or had been occupying junior positions in academia prior toleaving. Age is significant here, as it has been observed in organisational studies thatwomen experience resistance to upward mobility when occupying increasinglysenior positions (Geber 2000, 8).
This clustering of women in the junior echelons of departments is associated withlow pay, which led one research participant to make the following comment:
by junior people particularly and obviously, you know it’s only women that can be juniorlecturers, my husband would not be able to afford this – where would the family stay? Ithink that salaries are not really competitive . . . in academia, you have to publish, youhave to get a degree, these things take long, uhm, so it does influence the feminisationof academia, and at the same time it becomes devalued, because if women are doing it,it can’t really be that wonderful. (Maria)
In this particular study low pay amongst junior academics indeed contributed toleaving: ‘I was struggling financially . . . I couldn’t even afford to buy a car. . . itdoesn’t have to be a decent car you know . . . I couldn’t afford to get a place of myown’ (Kim) and overwhelming demands on time:
the professors and senior lecturers would take the post-graduate classes and MA courses,and the junior staff get the undergraduate courses and its huge classes and the markinggets you so bogged down, you don’t get anything done. (Shelly)
Since young academics are in their childbearing years, many have dependent childrenand, in such cases, gender was occasionally mentioned as a reason for leaving. Shellycouples the lecturing demands with other traditional gender role expectations related tofamily life:
it does not matter how hard you can work as a black academic, especially with us beingsingle mothers and not having husbands or wives, you know, to load them with some ofthe work, so you have to juggle and do everything, and a lot of people don’t have tojuggle. (Shelly, emphasis added)
Although Shelly apparently refers to both men and women by saying that certain aca-demics do not have husbands or wives, she is focusing on single mothers who find itdifficult to cope with demanding academic careers in addition to family responsibilities.This remark resonates with observations that employees with family responsibilities are
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disadvantaged in their careers simply by the amount of hours they have available, asAcker (1983, 193) states: ‘a (say) 60-hour man with a 70-hour housewife to backhim up is off to a running start compared to everyone else.’
More complex family relationships and financial obligations of certain youngfemale black academics are captured by Pam:
I had to make a choice between a job that doesn’t pay well but that is interesting [anacademic position] and a job that pays well where I can support about ten extra peopleother than my nuclear family. I don’t want to say all white people have . . . financial[ly]secure environments, but it is easy for most white people to make decisions that are ofinterest to them eh and the same is not true for black people. . . (Pam)
Although young black women grapple overtly with racism (as will be seen below), theirawareness of gender issues seems more subconscious and interlinked with race issues.
We will now turn our attention to the older white women in our study, some of whommade career transitions to more senior positions before leaving the academic world.
3.1.2. White research participants
Logan and Huntley (2001) observe that women in academia are often excluded from‘old boys’ networks’ and struggle to enter professional relationships to further theircareer. Essed (2004, 115) refers to a ‘high cloning quality’, where educational positionsof importance are reserved for people who are similar to their predecessors in terms ofgender, race and class. Acker (1983, 194) states that women may not only be excludedfrom networks, but other subtle exclusions may also appear, such as being expected to‘accept jokes at the expense of their sex’. In short, successful women have to behavelike (sexist) men in many aspects (Logan and Huntley 2001). Claire’s view of ahead of another academic department at her former university, underscores this point:
V, who is head of department C, okay, and she has been the only woman at that level foryears and years, uhm but she is just an interesting case . . . I use to tell my students if youcome into an organisation as a woman you got two options, you can either be one of theboys, okay, or not. So, you know, you can sort of say, I am a woman and I want to betreated like a woman or forget that I am woman, I am just like you guys, I laugh at allthe jokes and all the rest of it. No, V is one of the boys, she dresses like one of theboys, you know, not in pants but in like little suits, that is why she has such a high positionat University B because she is one of the boys [laughs]. (Claire)
Another senior female academic who has left university life readily recalls examples ofgender discrimination by white men:
to a large degree I felt that the men undermined me, especially the senior men of thedepartment . . . H for example undermined me every chance he got . . . I don’t reallythink it was because I was a woman, no, I think in H’s case it was entirely subconscious,he will be horrified if I say it, but I wanted to tell him a few times, just to wake him up . . . Itold G, he is a sexist bastard and she said yes, G agreed with me. (Rose)
This man’s lack of awareness of his sexist behaviour towards women is not unique. Inthis regard Acker (1992, 59) states ‘that there is a “male commonsense view” whichleaves many academics bemused wondering what all the fuss is about.’ Benokraitis(in Butler 2005, 8) confirms the perception that women are often chided for being‘too sensitive’ or ‘petty’. In other words, it is believed that gender discrimination is
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in the past and that all the necessary policies are in place to ensure equality for all. Still,one interviewee immediately agreed to take part in our research project because she saidthat ‘certain stories have to be told’ in relation to sexism. Yet, it is difficult to giveaccount of individual experiences over a number of years in which women wereincreasingly silenced until they withdrew from academic life due to the personalisednature of certain sexist acts (cf. Logan and Huntley 2001; Luke 1994).
It is clear from our interviews that the effect of gender discrimination, similar toobservations on racial discrimination (below), is worse for women who are minoritiesin departments compared to departments with more equal divisions according to genderand race. However, even in departments where women are not in the minority andsenior women are on management levels, gender discrimination may still be present.Women who occupy managerial positions may act according to a patriarchal stereotypeand undermine junior colleagues, as Sue’s experiences show:
In the beginning M was this wonderful fantastic role model and then I suddenly realisedshe has feet of clay . . . when I arrived in that department there were quite a few professors. . . and they were all men and M [and others] challenged them and things eventuallychanged but then I was really disillusioned. I mean they were not supposed to be likethat and they were actually worse than the men, you know, their management style andbeing underhanded. (Sue)
This disillusionment in women occupying senior positions resonates with a responsefound by Chesler:
Forget about academic women helping each other. Some do, but mainly, its cutthroat. Themediocre female talents hate and resent the more stellar female talents. They gang up onthem and they do them in . . . For the last twenty years, I have seen accomplished andgenerous women destroyed by other women. (in Cummins 2005, 224)
Placing women in senior positions therefore does not automatically imply that womenare no longer undermined. It is ironic that women who are described as being excludedfrom ‘old boys’ networks’ do not seem to be able to form networks that promote theadvancement of all academics.
Participants in this study revealed that leaving established careers is due to a com-bination of work-related, family and personal factors. Often, family transitions play arole, for example an elderly parent or children requiring care. If such family mattersoblige women to take on traditional caring roles, they may contribute to a career tran-sition: ‘So it was like a coincidence of personal factors and all this professional crap thatI’ve put up with all these years’ (Claire). Universities are sometimes described as‘greedy institutions’ (Acker 1983, 192) in that it requires commitment that spillsover into other areas of life. Equally, families can be greedy institutions that demandthe full-time attention of women, especially when family crises arise.
The importance of racial dynamics, and how it relates gender aspects, is highlightedbelow.
3.2. Race
In order to overcome racism a complete overhaul of institutionalised practices by chan-ging curricula, mindset and behaviour is needed. Such changes also involve a completerestructuring of the relations of power – economically, politically and culturally. Thus
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the changes in the superstructure of society must feed into the very foundations of uni-versities to ‘oppose the subtle racism, stereotyping and patronising attitudes’ of those inpower at all institutions (Weber and Vandeyar 2004, 185–6). Potgieter (in Weber andVandeyar 2004, 176) argues that ‘“institutional racism” is seen as reasons for newlyarrived black academics leaving historically white universities in South Africa’coupled with poor leadership and management.
3.2.1. White research participants
The white research participants did not dwell extensively on racial factors, but there arefour instances where race was mentioned.
A white participant recalled an example of experiencing reverse racial discrimi-nation where ‘incompetent people’ were appointed in academic positions due to affir-mative action. At that particular institution all promotions for white people had been puton hold for a number of years, which contributed to her exiting her academic depart-ment; as she stated: ‘you can’t work like that’ (Helga). Another participant, Sue,argued that she struggled to return to academic life due to affirmative action policies.Rose mentioned that racial tensions in her department became particularly evidentwhen a new head of department had to be appointed since certain candidates for thisposition would be considered as a continuation of white hegemony in the department.The following participant expressed the dominance of a gender identity, with someawareness of race, in her life:
I think the closest identification that I can have is the fact that I am a woman because it issomething that touches me. This is what affects my position in life the most, rather thanmy language or the country where I live. To work with South Africans, especially blackSouth Africans, and you are a woman, is difficult. I am aware of being a woman all thetime, the whole mental state that South Africans expect, white, black, it doesn’t matterwhich colour. (Olga)
Apart from these fairly brief comments on racial issues by white research participants,little was said about race-related matters. The absence of references to race by the whiteparticipants is significant, because in such silence a myriad of questions arise. Duringthese participants’ tenure, South Africa was in the throes of major political transform-ation that would erode everything that was familiar and secure. This impact was felt atevery level – national, regional, local and personal. Were other issues, such as genderdiscrimination, departmental politics or working conditions, more ubiquitous than race?Jansen (2009, 148) refers to the ‘silent whites’ who act as if nothing happened in thepast and therefore avoid discussion about racial inequalities. In a similar vein Rodriguez(2009, 486–7) argues (albeit in the context of the USA) that whiteness is a sociallocation of power. The author describes instances where white Americans are cast as‘victims’ who are ‘innocent’, with little understanding of social inequality based onrace. Since we did not initially explore racial experiences, we recommend that theissue of race be probed further amongst white academics in studies of a similarnature to ascertain what the silence of white academics on racism implies (see, forexample, Rodriguez 2009, 492 for different explanations of silence by white students).
3.2.2. Black research participants
When asked to reflect on gender and racial issues, one participant stated:
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I think society has, uhm . . . succumbed more to the female academic, than to the blackacademic, so if you are female and black, then it kinda just doubles it up, I don’t thinkthat I experienced what you call sexism in the workplace as such, and I don’t thinkmuch of the disadvantage or even discrimination, I don’t think I can place it on genderthan I can on race . . . has not grappled with it as much as I have with race, I am notsaying it’s not there, I just have not felt it as much, I am sure other people must havefelt differently. (Shelly)
For Kim, a black participant, having been overlooked twice for a permanent lecturingposition, the disappointment was too much. She experienced this as overt racism andthis, the final step in a series of disappointments, prompted her to resign from herposition. Another black participant, also with the experience of not attaining any ofthe academic appointments that she wanted, mentioned that black people do not staylong in academic careers. When asked why she thinks this is the case, she responded:
While transformation is never easy and you find that people stay in academia for years,they build their lives around that, so if you come with an idea that will change things,obviously it won’t go down well . . . it is nice to work with people around you whohave similar interests and similar backgrounds to yourself, it is nice. It is not nice to bequestioned all the time, not because you are not good enough but because people aretrying to understand you, you know, it can get to you. So I think the racial dynamicsin South Africa still have a long way to go, because we do not live together and wehave not lived together so it becomes a challenge to work together uhm especiallywhere you find that you are a minority. (Pam)
As Pam stated, she was part of a racial minority in the particular academic depart-ment she had left. Pienaar and Bester (2006, 87) relate that those belonging to minoritygroups are the most likely to experience stereotyping and even discrimination, as blackacademics in their study also reported. The minority status of black female academicscan be seen in statistical reports, for example, Pienaar and Bester’s (2006, 77) researchon academic careers at an unnamed higher education institution in South Africa foundthat in 2003, out of a total of 669 academics, only 59 were black and male and 26 wereblack and female. Minority experiences can also be seen in individual reports duringour research project, which may lead to an intense awareness of a racial identity, asthe following quote from a research participant reveals:
you know you walk into a classroom of 200 students and you find 95% of them iswhite, and there you are you are standing in front of these students – you are black,you are woman and you are young, and you think ‘Oh my God!’ It’s very verywhite, University B is super white . . . Some of our students, because we developvery good relationships with our students . . . would actually say, you know ourparents don’t know we have black lecturers and they would freak if they know. Ifound this very interesting. (Shelly)
Such experiences of ‘“embodied” differences’ based on students’ perceptions influ-ence the lecturer–student relationship and black female lecturers are cast as ‘other’ or‘not the norm’. This kind of ‘othering’ affects teaching practices since black female lec-turers feel that they have to prove their academic abilities before they are accepted ascredible by students (Housee 2002, 81–3; Rodriguez 2009, 484).
It became apparent in the interviews with the black participants that certain insti-tutions are still grappling with issues of transformation and that racism may be experi-enced as a form of institutional racism. The following quote illustrates this point:
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what I realise is this: I also think that there was a ceiling for black people in terms ofgrowth for black people, be it intellectual or whatever or career advancement ingeneral – you find that they would set a ceiling for you – it was as if you can go butuntil so far as this, I found that even though I had a master’s degree and I was stilldoing administrative work it seemed to persist/benefit the system, there was nothingwrong with this, this incident comes to mind – just to illustrate this point, I was in thephotocopy room with person E, she came into the photocopy room and said shewanted to know how to do this and this and this, and so I said this is how you do itshe said, ‘oh you so clever, that is why you’ve got a master’s degree, you see, you’reso brilliant’ and I’m like – ‘it’s a stupid photocopy machine, hello’ it’s like that levelof patronising like, you know, as if to say yeah, yeah, yeah, we gave you that master’sdegree it won’t take you anywhere, this is how far your knowledge base can go. (Shelly)
In our research, it became clear that young black females who have to enter predo-minantly white academic departments experience continuous pressure to assert them-selves, and this may contribute to their complete withdrawal from academic life.Even though racial dynamics in academic departments were not the only reasons foryoung black female participants to explore other career prospects, it played a decisiverole. Affirmative action within higher education seems to work in favour of blackfemale academics, but only up to a certain point. The availability of bursaries for post-graduate studies was often mentioned as a case in point. Many of these young blackfemales were initially induced to join the academic establishment with promises of bur-saries, institutional and structural support, for example in the form of mentorship andresearch assistance. This formed part of the wider vision of the institution to nurtureyoung black female academics. Although there was, thus, initial commitment to affir-mative action by means of financial support for studies, that did not necessarily lead topermanent and senior positions in academia, which led to participants questioning insti-tutional commitment to levelling the racial playing field, to the point that individualseither acquiesce by accepting the status quo, or resist by moving on.
Katila and Merilainen (in Chesterman, Ross-Smith, and Peters 2005, 177) reflectspecifically on how women adapt to academia:
Some women have found fitting into the dominant discourse and culture so difficult theyhave left the mainstream. Others silence their complaints and surrender their identities,consequently defining themselves and their relations with others in terms of the dominantdiscourse.
Weber and Vandeyar (2004, 182) offer similar views in arguing that some blackacademics simply assimilate into the dominant discourse at their institution andthereby ‘respond to and are deeply involved in the structures of their own oppression.’Their responses reinforce the prevailing status quo: they surrender their identities whenthey conform to the dominant culture, leaving universities culturally poorer.
Dewey, and other authors, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Jane Addams and WilliamJames, oppose the idea of creating colour-blind societies in tackling racism. Theypropose that racial identities should be acknowledged, since they represent a sharedhistory amongst people which ultimately enriches society (Pratt 2004, 190–1). Inthis light, we believe that a diversity of male and female academics from differentracial categories in junior and senior positions will enrich the educational experiencesof students and academic circles in general.
The interviews we conducted highlight how black research participants experiencea prominent racial identity in their academic careers, but, instead of this adding richness
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to academic departments, their racial identity is experienced as different from the statusquo. This lived difference leads to feelings of isolation, insecurity and of being con-stantly misunderstood.
4. Conclusion
The different experiences of white and black female academics in South Africa havebeen under the spotlight prior to the higher education mergers, with the historical under-representation of particularly black women in academia being highlighted (Hassim andWalker 1993, 524; Walker 1998). More recent research has been incorporated in thisarticle to show that, although women’s representation has increased on all academiclevels, both locally and internationally, various disciplines still struggle with represen-tativeness (Donovan et al. 2005) and especially in certain African countries (Mama andBarnes 2007, 3).
It is apparent from this study that, when participants were asked why they left aca-demic positions, gender and race were major themes in their responses, even though wedid not ask if gender played a role and we did not set out to do research on race. Racialaspects are important for young black research participants in their careers, and itappears that for them, their assigned racial identity played a bigger role than theirgender identity. For white participants older than 40 years, gender discriminationwas experienced more significantly and contributed in certain cases to a withdrawalfrom academia. It is difficult to establish whether the different experiences betweenthe two age cohorts point to improved gender relations in academic departments,which implies improved gender equity, as found in other parts of the world (Ackerand Armenti 2004; Probert 2005), or whether women only start to experience genderdiscrimination once they make individual career transitions to more senior academicpositions, or whether racial discrimination simply overshadows gender discrimination.
It is clear from this research that, for the black participants, gender issues cannot beseparated from racial issues. To reiterate Rodriguez’s (2009, 484) point, ‘white femin-ism’ that focuses only on gender issues cannot be simply applied to the experiences ofblack women. Although the young black women participants focus on perceived racialdiscrimination, traces of gender issues could be found (for example, when they mentionresponsibilities towards family members). Similarly, traces of racial awareness can befound amongst the white women, although it is clearly not a major concern.
The intersectionality between race, gender and age in the experiences of theresearch participants is not surprising if the historical trajectories of South Africa aretaken into account. For example, women in their late forties (as most of the whiteresearch participants were) would have started their careers in the late 1980s in depart-ments at institutions which were characterised by patriarchal relationships. Prior tomajor democratic shifts in South Africa, black women in their late twenties and earlythirties (as the black research participants were) would have attended ‘black only’schools that were mostly resource poor. Political changes, belonging to a specificracial category, being a woman and at a certain stage of one’s career thus had a com-bined effect on the decision to leave academia.
Racial and gender discrimination seem to be most acutely felt where participantsbelong to minorities in departments, but traces of gender discrimination can also befound where women are not in the minority. Thus, changing the demographics ofacademic departments does not necessarily end discriminatory practices if it is notaccompanied by individual and institutional sensitivity to heterogeneity. Certain
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higher education institutions display diversity in terms of race and gender amongst stu-dents and staff; but ‘diversity at one level does not exclude homogenizing pressures at adeeper level’ (Collinson and Hearn, in Essed 2004, 114). To employ democratic prin-ciples, higher education institutions in South Africa still have to incorporate the richdiversity found amongst academics on all levels, instead of relying solely on thetrusted prototypes of the past.
Note1. According to the Directory of Sociology (South African Sociological Association 2007),
223 sociologists are employed at South African universities.
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