Examining the gendered timescapes of higher education: reflections through letter writing as feminist praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the significance of neoliberalism in re/shaping the gendered timescapes of higher education in Ghana through its intersection with patriarchal forces. It draws from a project aiming to create non-hierarchical, co-mentoring spaces in which participants collaboratively generate feminist analyses. Letter-writing was identified as a form of feminist praxis and an auto/biographical method to access the multidimensional inequalities women navigated in their careers. Opening counter-hegemonic time–space and providing feminist conceptual resources, the women explored their aspirations, experiences, and subjectivities. In Ghana, women are attempting to balance the accelerated temporalities of neoliberal higher education, as productive subjects, with the explicit demands of patriarchy, which construct them primarily in reproductive terms as wives and mothers. Our collective reflections illustrate that intersecting forces are at play that impact women’s higher education careers in unpredictable and contradictory ways.