Chapter Six
6.9 Making research and academia a 'fairer' place
In this phase of the study that spanned 12 hours of interviewing, there were many issues upon which I could focus. Choosing those that seem to be of most interest to the study, have most heuristic value, and which can be extrapolated from the data at hand, was the challenge. These narratives represent rich sources of data, because they serve to illuminate the processes as well as lay bare the logic of individual courses of action within particular contexts and identities such as gender and race contained in the women's own analyses of their testimonies. The testimonies also provide us with sorely needed evidence of the interplay between the social, the political, the economic, the cultural and the historical.
The dynamics of each of these women's lives are never devoid of the issue of sexism and racism. Their critical moments that they lay bare reveal deliberate courses of action that in turn have had the potential to undermine or perpetuate their conditions and relationships within the arena of research and academia.
In some ways the stories are ephemeral. Memories of anger, drudgery, of helplessness, of delight, fade away with time. What may have been extremely important to them in earlier
years may not have been so later. The personal journey of seeing their tasks to completion receded in importance as new challenges arose to confront them.
It allowed them to relive anger, pride, frustration and wonderment in the company of a fellow [me] who has traversed that route. But more than that it grants permission for that memory to be a means by which further understanding of one's motives and one's dreams and one's aspirations may be understood as social items - items that are inter-related with other journeys simultaneously embarked upon.
These related journeys were sometimes in terms of one's feelings about the body, about oneself as a sexual being as illustrated so aptly by Zinzi' s story, about one's self in relation to significant males or females as exemplified by Thandeka, about juggling routines and about economic imperatives as highlighted in the testimonies of Saras, Shakti, Mandiswa and Thandeka. To divorce the personal value of the research journey from the other inner journeys is to somehow sterilise it, sanitise it. There is the need to challenge those artificial divides. It is in recognition that learning involves emotions (Arnold, 1997) that we can better understand or name the processes and layers of the journey, and better prepare the way for those that follow.
The interconnected processes of, for example, race, class and gender function in concert with historical, social and political, cultural contexts. Saras, Mandiswa, Phumzile, Shakti, Zinzi and Thandeka unpack what it means to be black academics and researchers, as females adopting middle class values, although having roots in mainly working class backgrounds. Race, class and gender effects and how they are personally perceived, are interwoven into how each woman defines her reality, names her identity and assesses her truth and charts her trajectories.
Recurrent themes are those of social pressures and personal prejudices limiting access to research and thus further constraining their achievements. Although these women came from a variety of backgrounds, they all had to confront the same stereotypes associated with being women and being black in their bid to break into academia and research. These women had to overcome not just obstacles because they were women, but obstacles because they were women of colour. They believed that because of their colour they were seen as non-performers, that there was and still is a failure to recognise their potential and
accomplishments because of their colour. All the women in the interviews found it extremely frustrating to endure the negative, condescending and patronising attitudes of their fellow white male and female colleagues. This has resulted in their perception of being cut off from the club and subsequently not receiving the benefits and rewards that accompany such membership. They have had to endure lower pay, slower advancement, under utilisation of their talents, fewer rewards, less recognition and diminished job security. In addition they felt that it was because of their colour that they were frequently overloaded with administrative duties which were often couched in terms of affirming them but seldom taking them seriously. There was also the feeling that it suited white women to appropriate feminism for themselves choosing not to dirty their hands with the murkier issues of race because it did not serve their own interests.
They found that often the agendas were defined and shaped by white women. It was in these very subtle forms that the racism came through. It would have been much easier had the prejudicial behaviour been overt. It is in its ordinariness, its normalisation that it was believed to be most potent. The subtle forms were felt by the way in which they felt ignored or overlooked; the way in which they observed white women continually speak for them as though they were unable to articulate their own struggles. It is in the seemingly unintentional, patronising attitude that white women brought with them to discussions and meetings that inflicted the deepest hurt and humiliation.
White race privilege was believed to have assisted white women academics and researchers in gaining employment and conducting research. They revealed through their testimonies how the concept of merit is defined as being a white concept. They described how selection panels were usually white, how white people make other white people feel comfortable, how white academics are aware of what is considered good, appropriate communication and techniques for whites and use them for the white interview panels.
These women have sounded their concern about the fact that white women do not need to be aware of any cultural bias in giving information, in what is seen as acceptable behaviour and can therefore fit very easily into the white workplace. They also highlighted the issue of white women being taught skills and knowledge in an education system that was established by white people, for white people, about white people.
Mandiswa captures this with her testimony of :
" ... they seem as though they were born for this role - it is all so natural to them - it is almost as though they know that their world and the world of research are one and the same"
This type of racism and discrimination has existed and was believed to still exist thus creating the circumstances that ensure that black women are seldom seen as meritorious.
Those who wanted promotion, others who had been passed over in job interviews but also sticking to something worthwhile over a sustained period of time not only generated a certain stamina or inner strength for themselves but also gained in terms of knowledge growth, expansion and enrichment. Shakti provides evidence of this pressure when she states that:
"I didn't have my masters, so I was told that if I didn't get my masters I would have a problem ... "
They were highly cognisant of the fact that there was work that needed to be done in order that the world might be a 'fairer' place - and that knowledge was powerful and that the two were integrally linked. This again flowed back to the personal. At times it generated greater self-confidence, pride in achievement and determination to keep producing. At other times, the frustration was intense and opting out was seen as the saner course of action. From a policy-making perspective, one might question the nature of this 'rite of passage' demanded by academia, when the rite itself generates so much pain so beautifully expressed by Thandeka when she "felt like I was talking and nobody could hear me".
And yet all the women felt it important not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. There was something of value out of all the pain and it is that which they wanted to retain.