Chapter Six
6.1 Introduction
The place of women of colour in research has often been described as a double-bind or double/triple jeopardy, reflecting the multiple conditions of black women in particular.
Until recently one could not even chart the progress of women researchers of colour and the purpose of the previous chapter was to partially address that concern. By disaggregating the data to reflect the demographic profile at the national and regional levels, I presented a snapshot not only of women academics and researchers in general, but also reflected on the data in terms of the apartheid designated race groups in South Africa.
Although the findings of the Women in Research Audit revealed rich information, black women were subsumed and rendered almost invisible in the broader study.
Having presented the statistical, baseline data, findings and a broad analysis of aspects of the Women in Research (WIR) audit in the previous chapter, I make a qualitative turn to further explore the lived realities of women academics and researchers, translating and unpacking the issues raised by the statistics of the previous chapter through the eyes of black women academics and researchers in KwaZulu-Natal. Seeing that the area of graduate women as researchers has not been investigated in much detail (see Hayes and Flannery, 1997), this chapter begins the process of documenting the everyday research worlds of women academics from the perspective of women of colour through their testimonies.
I have argued in the previous chapter that the picture presented by the WIR audit, although crucial to the empowerment of women in academia and research, is however a slightly distorted one. The incompleteness of this picture is due to the fact that the majority of the respondents were white women academics and researchers, based mainly at historically white institutions. The findings of the Women in Research audit need to be interpreted and understood within this context.
There were also aspects of the findings that did not resonate with the experiences I was having as a black woman researcher. Having worked on many research teams especially
with women of colour, I knew that what I felt about the experiences of women of colour, were echoed by many of them. My concern with these feelings led me to further explore the problem by attempting to foreground the experiences of women academics and researchers of colour in the Kwazulu-Natal region. The value of personal narrative as data has been recognised in a range of areas (LePage and Flowers, 1995; Elbaz-Luwisch,
1997).
In this chapter, I explore the research worlds of six black women academics from the province of KwaZulu-Natal. I share these excerpts from their conversations with their permission. The intent is to place these lived experiences within the institutional contexts of research in the academy. I present the edited transcripts of their testimonies in a manner that tries to maintain a certain degree of flow, creating a sense of their situatedness, as opposed to a content or thematic analysis, which I believe would interrupt the flow and destroy the subtleties and nuances that accompany these stories when they are kept intact.
These testimonies are also kept intact to allow for the women's own theorising, analyses and reflections to be infused and become an integral part of their data. By adopting such a stance, I am suggesting that we deconstruct our generally accepted notions of what constitutes theorising. Theorising is not only that which is portrayed within formal languaging systems such as academic jargon. Itis also evident and located in the everyday worlds of individuals, portrayed within informal languaging systems such as 'everyday talk'. In their narratives, they intertwine with their experiences, the ways in which they have theorised and made sense of their trajectories. I present the testimonies in a consecutive manner, allowing for a more holistic insight into the research worlds of these women. This is followed by a general analytic summary that theorises some of the more pertinent issues raised by the women's own reflections and analyses. I try as far as possible, not to impose my own 'researcher' interpretation or voice on these testimonies because I believe that the women's own analyses and theorising serves a useful purpose in giving voice to their 'silences'. The summary is also written with the intent of capturing the intertwining, the overlapping, the connections and fusions that constitute women's everyday worlds as academics and researchers.
I do, however, revisit the recurring issues in the final chapter, within a larger framework of charting the way forward for women in academia.
6.2 Coloured Confessions
I present the stories of the six black women academics. Their personal and professional journeys engage with issues of power and their reflections provide interesting and valuable insights into the problems of women of colour in the academy. I draw on the everyday, concrete experiences of these women, revealed through their own testimonies obtained through the interviews and conversations I had with them. Whilst my broad intention is to add to the body of knowledge that has emerged from the traditions of black feminist thought and narrative inquiry, I also try to shed some light generally on the day-to-day lived experiences of women, unpacking the issues of marginalisation and oppression and subordination into its constitutive components of the incidental, the invisible. I try to achieve this by firstly attempting to construct the partial identities and realities of the women of this culturally specific group, individually, from their points of view. Secondly, I examine how the social, political and historical context serves as a dynamic process that simultaneously changes and is changed/shaped by these women's experiences and thirdly, reveal how the interconnected experiences of race, class, gender and other affiliations, interact with and influence the course of each of the women and their development of a research and academic identity.
After I had completed the interviews and transcribed them I became introspective once more. How should I proceed with this phase of the research? I thought of presenting the data in its raw form but this raised ethical concerns for me. I had promised confidentiality.
I had promised the women the opportunity to read through their transcripts for comments.
In presenting the findings I was faced with the dilemma of whether the narratives should be presented as is, or repackaged under the specific themes that emerged from the data. My decision to present the narratives in their entirety was based on its successful portrayal by Dhunpath (1997) where he argues for the flow of the narratives to be maintained and not annihilated by splicing them into themes.
The data, presented as a narrative in their own words, reveal the individual identities and experiences of the respondents and establishes linkages between their experiences and the general state of problems concerning women researchers of colour. All elements combine to determine each individual identity and lend insights into the collective identity of
women researchers of colour as a group. The women were placed at the centre of the analysis, participating fully in the interpretative process through the act of confessions and in so doing, defined their own identities, realities and truth.
I returned the transcripts to the women as promised, requesting feedback. They read through them, editing and deleting information that they, in retrospect did not feel comfortable about revealing. All six of them expressed concern that even though names and places had been changed, they could still be identified. I then went through a process of reviewing the transcripts together with each of them allowing them the freedom to withdraw information that they felt would be compromising to their positions in any way.
Based on that I present, in this chapter, the edited transcriptions of their narratives. The lack of continuity at some points is due to the editing by the women themselves in order to maintain confidentiality or retractions of some of their earlier statements.
I was not able to create a more comprehensive portraiture as I had initially intended, since the women had decided that it did not in fact conceal their identities but clearly pointed to who they were. What I present here is, therefore, their partial research portraitures.
The following voices tell their own stories and highlight the ways in which the intimate and therefore the very personal nature of the research process impacted on the emotional as well as the professional life of these women.