‘I am not a Gentleman academic’: Telling our truths of micro‐coercive control and gaslighting in Business Schools using ‘Faction’

Abstract

AbstractThis paper draws from our own experiences of sexism within Business Schools to bring attention to the effects of the operation of a highly masculinized, white, cis‐gendered, and patriarchal culture, whether enacted by men or women, and to how we come to be silenced within it. Our work reflects on intersectional issues of race, health (mental and physical), and care‐work, using faction built from six paired interviews to tell a truth we feel unable to tell individually. This piece highlights the real fear of repercussions that still persist for female academics, and uses the acts of collecting data and writing differently to offer the authors a safe space in which to resist both overt and structural sexism in Business Schools. It highlights the need to take seriously those subtleties of sexism that we are often expected to put up with, those difficult‐to‐name aspects of our working lives that leave us feeling it would be “silly” to complain and act as a form of micro‐coercive control over our lives. We operationalize our collective voice as a form of activism in the academy that is situated within our individual silences.