Women Faculty Of Color Research Articles

Thriving and surviving as women of color in the academy: a duoethnographic journey of resilience and resistance

This project explores the experiences of two Black women on the tenure track at a predominantly white university in California. Inspired by Lorgia García Peña’s Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, the authors engage in a duoethnographic journey, reflecting on their resilience and resistance in academia. Using García Peña’s book as a catalyst, they share challenges and successes, discussing survival strategies and resisting pressures towards complicity with whiteness. The authors examine the prickliness of establishing trust with their colleagues, with students, and in the broader institutional context. They explore the metaphorical notion of standing in the gap as a symbol of advocating for future students and creating a trusting learning environment. The project is a testament to the importance of cultivating friendship, fostering community, and challenging institutional norms for Black women and women of color faculty.

Humanizing the Lived Experiences of Muslim, Immigrant-Origin, Women Doctoral Students, and Black Women Faculty: A Photovoice Study

Abstract: Using the frameworks of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) and Representational Intersectionality, we employ photovoice as a form of Participatory Action Research (PAR) method to illustrate the lived experiences and voices of Muslim, immigrant-origin, women doctoral students, and Black faculty in predominantly and historically white institutions (PHWIs) within the United States (U.S.). The findings illustrate how we make meaning of our academic experiences, and challenge grand narratives that are rooted in anti-Blackness, anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, sexism, classism, racism, and other forms of social oppressions in order to provide and develop humanizing approaches to be seen and valued within higher education. This study expands on strategies to support and empower graduate and faculty women of color in the Academy as they navigate and find humanizing approaches to succeed in PHWIs.

Humanizing the Lived Experiences of Muslim, Immigrant-Origin, Women Doctoral Students, and Black Women Faculty: A Photovoice Study

Using the frameworks of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) and Representational Intersectionality, we employ photovoice as a form of Participatory Action Research (PAR) method to illustrate the lived experiences and voices of Muslim, immigrant-origin, women doctoral students, and Black faculty in predominantly and historically white institutions (PHWIs) within the United States (U.S.). The findings illustrate how we make meaning of our academic experiences, and challenge grand narratives that are rooted in anti-Blackness, anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, sexism, classism, racism, and other forms of social oppressions in order to provide and develop humanizing approaches to be seen and valued within higher education. This study expands on strategies to support and empower graduate and faculty women of color in the Academy as they navigate and find humanizing approaches to succeed in PHWIs.

Wage Disparities in Academia for Engineering Women of Color and the Limitations of Advocacy and Agency

The devaluation of women of Color (WoC) by way of gender discrimination and systemic racism is well documented. For WoC in engineering a chief cause is the observable wage gap. Women who identify as Asian, Black/African American, Latina/Chicana, Indigenous/Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Native Alaskan, and/or multiracial have reported stark wage disparities. In this paper, we offer a phenomenological study of how WoC engineering faculty across U.S. academic institutions describe the challenges and practices associated with wage disparities and how they navigate these disparities. This study, which is based on participant interviews, is guided by three research questions: (1) What do WoC engineering tenure-track faculty perceive about wage disparities based on their race and gender? (2) How do WoC faculty understand the institutional practices that contribute to wage disparities? and (3) How do WoC engineering faculty respond to and address wage disparities? Using structural racism and intersectionality as our guiding conceptual framework, we interviewed 32 self-identified WoC who identified structures and systems of institutional racism related to the maintenance of wage disparities. In terms of findings, we note that WoC have two primary strategies to respond to wage disparity: advocacy and agency. The experiences of WoC engineering faculty in our study highlight unsatisfying institutional responses, and thus WoC often rely on their own agency to advocate for themselves and to advocate for and mentor other WoC faculty. We found a few notable cases where men advocated for women to help close the wage gap. Our work reveals that pay inequity for WoC is often coupled with other forms of exclusion and marginalization.Reducing wage disparities in academia is critical to advancing diversity efforts and ensuring equitable support for WoC faculty. Our findings suggest that institutions can work diligently to rectify wage inequality, including making sustainable structural and salary modifications and sharing the burden of combatting wage inequities. Finally, our findings also highlight the importance of making policy changes to reduce pay inequalities, such as providing transparent pay information and more opportunities to earn merit raises.

Testimonios de las atravesadas: A borderland existence of women of color faculty

AbstractThe temporalities of COVID‐19 and resultant economic crisis, along with increased visibility of white supremacy and anti‐Blackness, have exacerbated the longstanding challenges Women of Color (WOC) faculty experience, particularly around negotiating labor and navigating the academy. Through Anzaldúa's borderlands framework, and an interwoven methodology of testimonios and pláticas, this paper's findings illuminate how the fixed, shifting, and messy boundaries of academic work have, especially for WOC faculty working through COVID‐19, violated the limits of the personal and professional, intruded into the homes as sacred spaces, and continued and expanded demands to provide labor. Institutions have placated these fraught borders with professional development and networks of mentorship—all while pivoting away from addressing the material and structural conditions that disintegrate the borders, particularly for WOC faculty. By exploring the layered complexities of traversing the academy–a space not made for our existence as WOC within them–we offer a nuanced understanding of academic borderlands. As a part of this, we highlight our resistance to carve out spaces of solidarity and collectivity in the face of Eurocentric, individualistic institutions to imagine new possibilities, a practice necessary toward transforming the academy.

More service or more advancement: Institutional barriers to academic success for women and women of color faculty at a large public comprehensive minority-serving state university.

More service or more advancement: Institutional barriers to academic success for women and women of color faculty at a large public comprehensive minority-serving state university.

Reflections on Racism Against Women of Color Faculty in Academia

In this article, we utilize autoethnographic methods and a literature review to report on themes regarding female social work faculty members who identify as women of Color (WOC) and their experiences with racism and White supremacy within predominantly White institutions in the United States. These experiences are not unique to any particular institution or university, but rather reflect systemic racism and the upholding of White supremacy in higher education throughout the United States. We highlight the differential vulnerability faced by WOC women in academia, which are often unaddressed in the pursuit of what is seen to be an egalitarian or colorblind merit review. Utilizing autoethnographic techniques and bearing in mind our own positionalities, we share personal narratives regarding our own marginalization within White spaces and the emotional labor that we are often asked to carry for the institutions within which we work. Themes include experiences of tokenization or assumed intellectual inferiority. Given the current sociopolitical moment and the heightened awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts within universities, institutions of higher education must move beyond simply hiring more people of color or conducting diversity trainings to ensuring that WOC are more fully included in their roles within universities as faculty, administrators, staff and students.

Why so Few, Still? Challenges to Attracting, Advancing, and Keeping Women Faculty of Color in Academia.

From its earliest beginnings, the university was not designed for women, and certainly not for women of color. Women of color in the United States are disproportionately under-represented in academia and are conspicuous by their absence across disciplines at senior ranks, particularly at research-intensive universities. This absence has an epistemic impact and affects future generations of scholars who do not see themselves represented in the academy. What are the barriers to attracting, advancing, and retaining women faculty of color in academia? To address this question we review empirical studies that document disparities in the assessment of research, teaching, and service in academia that have distinct implications for the hiring, promotion, and professional visibility of women of color. We argue that meaningful change in the representation, equity, and prestige of women faculty of color will require validating their experiences, supporting and valuing their research, creating opportunities for their professional recognition and advancement, and implementing corrective action for unjust assessment practices.

“We Came Together Out of Necessity”: A Latina Diaspora Group Engaging in Plática to Thrive with Dignity in Academia

In this article, five Latina faculty members and one Latina doctoral student engaged in Chicana feminist plática methodology to examine how creating and participating in a Latina diaspora group supports our personal and professional well-being. As Latina researchers/educators, situated in a predominantly White institution (PWI) in the Midwest, we collected narrative and discussion data centered around how our collaborative group provided a space to navigate academia and higher education. We analyzed our narratives and our analysis revealed three themes: (a) resisting the silos of academia through liminal spaces, (b) blurring our borders of the professional and personal through pláticas, and (c) disrupting hierarchies through la facultad. This article informs scholarly conversations about Latina/Chicana ways of knowing, and what it means to work in solidarity as women faculty of color within PWIs.

Women of Color Faculty Reimagining Institutional Spaces During the COVID-19 Pandemic

As women of color faculty who have experienced challenges associated with hostile work environments within predominantly white institutions, we consider the ways that working remotely during COVID-19 offers transformative possibilities for reimagining our relationship to the academy. We discuss our embodied responses to institutional spaces that often marginalize faculty of color; how university leadership may be reimagined through a blurring of gendered, racialized lines of “public” and “private” (or institutional and domestic) spaces; and the possibility of healing from the trauma associated with oppressive workplaces and institutional betrayals.

“Does this happen to everyone?”: Women professors of color reflect on experiences in the academy

Women of Color in higher education often experience cultural taxation alongside feelings of invisibility and hypervisibility. In this paper, two women faculty of color use duoethnography, a dialogic research method, to unpack a shared journal that documented their own experiences of navigating and negotiating predominantly White academic spaces. By analyzing their experiences, the researchers discovered that their shared journal revealed similar patterns documented by other women faculty of color. The dialogic nature of duoethnography also led to transformational understandings of their positionality in the academy, self-healing, and development of strategies for moving forward. Vignettes from their shared journal and dialogic excerpts are discussed.

Cihuātocameh (Spiderwomen) Weaving Twenty Years of Transformative Justice Work in Higher Education

While the student population in higher education has become more ethnically diverse the professoriate in universities remain predominantly of European descent. Reflecting this disparity of representation within the context of higher education in the United States, women faculty of color continue to experience tokenization, among other dissolutions. Within this inequitable context, we continue to find ways to resist these moments of fragmentation. We draw upon an analogy of spider weaving as a way to re-member the fragmented parts of being Women of Color scholar activists in the academy. In this paper, two Xicana Indigenous scholars highlight moments of resistance and transformation in the past 20 years of engagement with higher education. We begin with an undergraduate summer research experience and continue to the present moment as assistant professors. We share the context, our narratives of growth and resilience to unveil effects of the lived realities for Women of Color invested in social transformative justice. We offer a reflective opportunity for those who enter and continue struggling to survive and thrive within academia while navigating the shoals of privilege and marginalization. This awareness can offer a starting point for further discussions focused on the recruitment and retention of Women of Color faculty in the academy.

Who Cares?

The changing tide of faculty has brought with it increasing numbers of faculty members serving in non-tenure-track roles. Scholars have argued this increase in contingent faculty includes an increase in inequities and has created a stratified class system between tenure-track faculty (TTF) and non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF). The majority of NTTF numbers comprise women of Color, across race and ethnicity, serving in both full-time and adjunct capacities. The cultural, historical, and sociopolitical occupation of women of Color in higher education has been rife with inequity, marginalization, and oppression. In addition to their duties across rank and appointment, women of Color faculty are more likely to take up the labor of care. Labor concerns have been raised in the both the literature of contingent faculty and women of Color faculty. Yet, few scholars have systematically studied the experiences or overlapping systems of oppression women of Color who are NTTF faculty face in the academy. Fewer still have examined the specific experiences of Black women faculty serving in contingent roles. For our study, we used a conceptual framework comprising Black feminist thought, care work, and labor justice to analyze scholarly personal narratives and focus group interviews of four Black women serving in full-time NTTF roles. Our study aims to provide a window into the intersected realities Black women contingent faculty members within the academy and a pathway forward for academic leadership.

The correlation between undergraduate student diversity and the representation of women of color faculty in engineering

AbstractBackgroundDespite the critical role of faculty diversity in the persistence and academic experiences of undergraduate students as well as in the development of engineering innovations, women of color (WoC) faculty are still underrepresented in engineering programs across the United States.Purpose/HypothesisThis study identifies whether the demographic composition of undergraduate engineering students is correlated with the representation of WoC faculty. It also highlights the institutional‐ and departmental‐level factors that contribute to the race–gender diversification of the engineering professoriate.Design/MethodInformed by organizational demography as the theoretical framework, the methods include linear and logit regression analyses. Data come from the American Society for Engineering Education, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and the American Community Survey, and include engineering departmental‐level observations across 345 institutions over 12 years.ResultsEngineering departments that award more bachelor's degrees to women African American/Black undergraduate students are more likely to employ relatively more African American/Black women faculty. This positive relationship is also found among Asian Americans and Hispanics/Latinas.ConclusionsResearch findings demonstrate the relationship between engineering undergraduate composition, as well as other departmental‐ and institutional‐level factors, and the prevalence of WoC faculty. The findings highlight important areas for stakeholders and academic administrators to consider when developing strategies and programs to diversify the composition of engineering faculty.

Struggling to breathe: COVID-19, protest and the LIS response

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to provide a follow up to “Libraries on the Frontlines: Neutrality and Social Justice,” which was published here in 2017. It addresses institutional responses to protests and uprising in the spring and summer of 2020 after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, all of which occurred in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The article expands the previous call for libraries to take a stand for Black lives.Design/methodology/approachThe authors describe the events of 2020 (a global pandemic, multiple murders of unarmed Black people and the consequent global protests) and responses from within library and information science (LIS), from the perspectives as women of color faculty and library professionals.FindingsThe authors comment on how libraries are responding to current events, as well as the possibilities for panethnic solidarity. The authors also consider specifically how libraries and other institutions are responding to the racial uprisings through statements on social media and call for concrete action to ensure that their organizations and information practices are actively antiracist. In so doing, the authors update the claims and expand the appeals they made in 2017,that Black Lives Matter and that librarianship must not remain neutral.Originality/valueThis paper addresses recent institutional and governmental reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial uprisings of spring and summer 2020. It is original, current and timely as it interrogates ongoing events in a LIS context.

‘Complicating my place:’ multiracial women faculty navigating monocentricity in higher education––a polyethnography

ABSTRACT This polyethnography is an interdisciplinary collaboration between four multiracial women faculty employed at different universities across the US to examine their experiences navigating monocentricity in higher education. This insightful study amplifies the voices of a particular subset of women of color faculty who identify multiracially – a group overlooked in existing literature examining diverse faculty experiences in higher education. Utilizing Multiracial Critical Race Theory (MultiCrit), we reflex on the similarities and nuances that exist within and between our written stories of experience. Conjointly, our critical reflections reveal the prevalence of monoracism within institutions of higher education, which places both internal and external pressures on multiracial women faculty to demarcate themselves monoracially, while simultaneously maintaining a clandestine borderland identity within their departments. Implications for this study reveal the importance of multiracial counterspaces for multiracial faculty as a form of resistance against monocentricity in US institutions of higher education.

“A Hard Space to Manage”: The Experiences of Women of Color Faculty Teaching Online

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of Women of Color (WOC) faculty who teach asynchronous online courses. While there is a growing body of literature on the experiences of WOC faculty and a separate body of literature on the challenges and opportunities related to online teaching, virtually no research exists on how Women of Color faculty navigate the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and pedagogy in an online class. Using a theoretical framework of embodiment, we investigated WOC faculty’s embodiment in online teaching to better understand how (dis)embodiment impacted their teaching experiences. We explored the following research question: How do WOC faculty describe their experiences with disembodiment in asynchronous, online courses? Our analysis of the data showcases the ways in which WOC come to understand the space of online teaching, the impact of their identities in online teaching, and the utility of online teaching for engaging in critical conversation regardless of course content.

Exploring the Benefits and Drawbacks of Age Disclosure among Women Faculty of Color

This article is guided by two questions: How is age an important aspect of social location that, when forthcoming about it with students, can be beneficial for pedagogical purposes? and How can women faculty of color—particularly those who appear youthful and/or are younger than most of their colleagues—address the marginality of their actual and/or perceived age while simultaneously operating in a space that is contested for women of color? I highlight four benefits that arose as a result of disclosing my age to students: It (1) enabled me to provide concrete examples that were illustrative of key course concepts, (2) helped students understand how age is relational and contextually significant, (3) facilitated the creation of a safe space for “nontraditional” students, and (4) allowed me to better control the narrative students crafted about me based on their perceptions of me as an instructor.

Barriers to the advancement of women of color faculty in STEM

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight critical issues facing women of color (WOC) faculty and to synthesize the research literature in order to offer recommendations for action to address inequities using an intersectionality framework.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a qualitative meta-analysis. Relevant articles were obtained through a search of the EBSCO and Google Scholar databases entering in combinations of specific keywords. In order to be included in this review, the manuscripts had to be published between the years 2001 and 2017; in a peer-reviewed journal; and available through the university library system.FindingsThe majority of manuscripts in the meta-analysis revealed high teaching and service loads, ambiguous standards for tenure and lack of culturally responsive mentorship are challenges experienced by WOC faculty. Moreover, there is limited research that examines STEM WOC faculty experiences at minority-serving institutions and in leadership roles. Further research is needed to examine the long-term efficacy of mentoring strategies and institutional transformation efforts for WOC. These numerous challenges cumulatively undermine institutions’ abilities to implement institutional transformation that impacts WOC in higher education.Originality/valueThe recommendations provided are based on the results of the meta-analysis and are intended to promote systemic change for STEM WOC faculty in institutions through intersectional and transformational approaches.

ADVANCING Women Academic Faculty in STEM Careers: The Role of Critical HRD in Supporting Diversity and Inclusion

The Problem The low representation of women and women of color (WoC) faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic disciplines represents a critical talent development issue by constraining universities from being truly diverse and inclusive therefore limiting the development and advancement of women scientists. The Solution We describe the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) ADVANCE program as a mechanism for increasing STEM women and WoC faculty career development, inclusion, and advancement. We situate this program as a critical human resource development (CHRD) project and analyze the interventions of ADVANCE Centers at five institutions using a coding scheme based on Acker’s theory of organizational gendering. We identify how key interventions address gendered processes and how these efforts align with human resource development (HRD) disciplinary expertise. The Stakeholders This article will benefit HRD scholars and professionals by identifying how HRD disciplinary expertise can be used to support institutional change efforts focused on faculty diversity and inclusion.