The Chihuahua and the Space Princess writing in the margins: Antenarratives of two (older) women early career academics

Abstract

AbstractIn asking “why is it so bloody hard for older women, with years of professional experience in industry and graduate degree holders, to create a career in the Academy?,” the authors co‐examine the challenges they experience in their careers and in their transition into academia. Framed within intersectionality scholarship, specifically anchor points, the authors' nonnormative positioning as older ciswomen, early career academics, who are attempting to find tenured positions, showcase their fluid living stories of sexism and ageism while trying to negotiate a career transition. Using a duoethnographic methodology, the authors share and then analyze their embodied, fragile antenarratives as they understand them at this point in time. In the process of writing differently, literally at the left and right margins of content and style, and in the analysis of these writings, they discover that they can begin to resist the gendered ageism from the margins and that they are no longer alone. They navigate a path of resistance, laboring against the norms that try to relegate two older women, early career academics' stories to silence, inviting others into their living story network.