The Intersection of Race and Gender in the Academic Environment
Prof. Cheryl Potgieter

An obvious observation regarding the intersection of race and gender in higher education 14 years after most of us euphorically dropped our vote in the ballot box for the first time is that the higher up the academic and management ladder you climb, the number of women and particularly black women you are likely to meet declines. Interestingly, ten years ago on April 1st 1998 when I received my doctorate, I remember writing in my journal that times are changing for women in the universities as at the time  there were a number of female Vice Chancellors as well as Deputy Vice Chancellors. Ten years later, in relation to this senior management level, I have to borrow a concept from Amartya Sen – “missing women”. I return to this point a bit later.

When asked to speak on this topic I had a feeling of déjà vu - would I have to once again talk about the chilly climate, lack of mentors, being made to feel invisible, not being taken seriously and the other factors that women and especially black women who are potential leaders in academia experience. I then imagined a conference where a presentation on the intersection of race and gender in the South African academic environment would be a good news contribution. Unfortunately it is not a good news story if we look at the quantitative data which reflect women’s positions in academia and also the fair amount of qualitative data that has emerged from a range of authors on the experiences of women in academia.

In South Africa in recent years theorising about the intersection of race and gender in universities has mostly, except for the odd publication, focused on the negative experiences of black women in a hostile white academic environment. One wonders why so few white women and white men have failed to critically engage with the spaces which they occupy on the ladder, or put differently, failed to engage with race and gender issues in relation to the transformation of higher education. The white women that have done so are mostly, if not all, self identified feminists.

I am aware that often in times of crises and at graduations and other public ceremonies the mostly male leaders’ discourse is one that recommits their institutions to places where gender equity continues to flourish and where all cultures (the word race is seldom used) feel at home in the institution. However, if one listens to and gives attention to what white and black women’s experiences are in these institutions then the obvious conclusion is that this is compliance talk, i.e. it is compliance with the legislative framework rather than from a gender justice or social justice framework.

I then ask myself should we not analyse the situation with a more multi-focused lens? Have our analyses on the gendered and racialised higher education environment, where it often seems that the wheels of transformation have come off, overlooked the complex ways in which power is played out. Here I turn to the issue of how power is played out in spaces which are very distant, often in location but also in decision making, from the Vice Chancellor and other traditional holders of power- such as university councils. My experience has been that individuals who sit on faculty appointment committees, including heads of departments, are often the gatekeepers as to who is let in and who is kept out. I have been part of these middle management decision-making bodies and have often found that one has to be very assertive, convincing and at times confrontational to ensure that Black male and women applicants are not overlooked. However, at particular universities such as the one where I currently am employed there is no paucity of white Afrikaans speaking  women academics. The latter reflects the history of the institution.

One has to counter arguments at these committees such as the following: 1) the black female candidate may not fit in; 2) yes, she has a doctorate and publications but has she supervised?; 3) to be appointed as a senior lecturer one has to have administrative responsibilities and this good scholar’s career would take a dip if we appoint her to the position as she will be bogged down by doing the administration of co-ordinating the undergraduate course. Then, what is seen as being supportive: 4) maybe ask her to re-apply when a position that does not entail so much administration work becomes available. I would also like to flag that I have been part of committees where white women who have possibly published in the area of gender and transformation, or mentioned the F-word (feminism), and Black men who are deemed to be “controversial” have also not been the favourite of selection panels.

I now want to explore the power of faculty administrators. I am amazed at the power which senior faculty administrators ( mostly white women)  have and how this power is, for example, an obstacle to changing selection guidelines in year books. Changing selection guidelines essentially mean that a more diverse grouping of students in terms of  “race” would have access to the university.
No matter what policies institutions have regarding transformation and no matter what senior management official position is in terms of gender and race equity and making the university a home for all, and no matter who is appointed as chancellor/ chair of council  if we do not change the mindset of faculty academics, departmental academics and the powerful administrators, little is going to change.  I have not even touched on transformation of curriculum and teaching methods- this is an area that needs to be engaged with in terms of race and gender transformation.  The latter are all areas where power needs to be interrupted.

I now want to talk to what Amarta Sen calls the “missing women”. Why are women missing in the higher ranks of academia and administration? Given that they were there a decade ago the question that immediately comes to mind, one which has been posed previously by Anshu Padayayachee and others is: where have they gone to and for what reasons? The simple answer regarding where they have gone is, as Anshu Padayachee points out: they have chosen to leave the field or have joined other organisations where their skills are valued. I want to add that some have gone from one university to another but have taken on “below-the-radar positions” but where they still feel they are making an impact. A few years ago the black female Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) was not successful in her application for the Vice Chancellor post and it went to a white woman who, interestingly, occupied the post for a short time before a black male was appointed. The incident, for want of a better word, did not play itself out in a public, theatrical manner as did the Mamdani and Makgoba affairs. One wonders if this is in any way related to the way in which men are socialised to lead and, if necessary plead, in relation to women’s way of leading a pleading? Are there lessons for women to learn? I think so.

In a recent article Terri Barnes provides a gendered analysis on the highly publicised Mamdani and Mokoboba affairs which have been couched, and I quote: “struggles over racial transformation. These struggles could be seen as struggles between competing racialised masculinities.” She draws on work by Kanter and later Collinson and Hearn (2000) who point out that certain male managers (and I read mostly black) are selected according to their ability to display “appropriate social credentials”. They are perceived to be more reliable, predictable and generally speaking, capable of fitting in with the establishment. This environment thus excludes not only many women but men who do not live up to these expectations. Those that live up to it are “invariably white and male with a certain shiny clean look.” Barnes points out that Mamdani and Mokgoba were initially deemed to have the credentials and the look. For example Mokgoba was thought to meet the criteria being a black, “Englishman”, a view  I am assuming he will not be comfortable with- but when he started to act out and not fit the culture of the institution he ran into problems. I do not have time to expand but similar difficulties were experienced by Mamdani. I find it very interesting that two black men have been appointed Vice Chancellors of two merged, historically Afrikaans universities- the new Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Do they have the look and the credentials or have the power structures, and those that have power, changed and ruptured at these institutions? My imagination wonders to the possibility of two black women (originally from the same city and similar neighbourhoods, as these men are) occupying these senior positions? Many questions in relation to race, gender, masculinities and class are just starting to be explored in the work of Barnes and others. These explorations and further explorations should assist in the navigation of the transformation agenda in higher education.

I now want to turn my attention to mentorship programmes, writing programmes and leadership programmes that women and particularly black women have attended. As we know there have been and still are various initiatives to address the paucity of women and black women in academia. Why are we not then seeing more  women progress to, and/or  being retained at the levels of professor, dean, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice Chancellor in universities? I believe that apart from certain institutional constraints that is preventing progress  a post doctoral training school for 3-6 months where they need to learn the politics and skills of publishing, public speaking, accessing funding, how to be a public intellectual (and eventually have a column), how to supervise, how to engage with and at times challenge the institutional politics and practices. However, even if the above does happen, they will not be assured of progress if the institutions continue to have, what has been labelled, hegemonic patriarchal cultures- simply put, a way of doing things. I do not particularly support major state intervention in regulating and micro-managing the business of universities but I think that we would not have one third of parliament comprising of women if an agreement by the ANC did not exist that one third of its members should be women. Could we go this route in academia? Obviously not at the expense of universities ceasing to exist. Jonathan Jansen conceptualised universities ceasing to exist as follows: The university ceases to exist when it represents nothing other than an empty shell of racial representativity (and I add gender representativity) at the cost of academic substance and intellectual imagination (Jansen, 2004).

If we are to build another layer of black women leaders and scholars it is important to listen to and not be dismissive of the experiences of those women that have come before. My research looking at black women’s experiences at historically white universities indicated that they experienced what I called racialised knowledge, sexist stereotypes and the politics of pedagogy. To illustrate the point I use the following example made by one of the participants regarding the fact that it was slightly easier to obtain funding for a conference than money for research. As she explained: “…they ( probably reading people in power) will let us go to conferences as this public platform creates the impression to outsiders that these white universities are not only employing black women but they are offering us opportunities to present our work. However, they will let us go to conferences which they are not interested in…. If I and a senior white colleague apply for the same conference it is easy to guess who would be funded. Unless they need to send a black face.”

As Linda Greene states in her article Tokens, Role Models and Pedagogical Politics: Lamentations of an African-American Female Law Professor, one of the most important factors of our professional life is tokenism. Tokenism masks racism and sexism by admitting a small number of previously excluded individuals into institutions. At the same time a system of tokenism maintains barriers to individuals to institutions.

It seems that black women are often excluded not only because they are female and black but because of the stance that they may take on issues such as transformation. Exclusion is often related to biology but equally often to both biology and ideology.

Another point made by the black women I interviewed, and this is supported by other studies, is that regardless of their training and expertise they were expected to be authorities on all courses that addressed the so called “black issues” – regardless of whether or not they had acquired the specialised knowledge that the course demanded. They were expected to fulfil a mothering role and if they were not prepared to do so they were criticised, stigmatised and marginalised as not being helpful and supportive – at the other end are those that compromised their publication output because they were fulfilling the role of counsellor to black students. Many other examples illustrate the intersection of race and gender, and here I point you to the text by Reitu Mabokela and Zine Magubane called Hear Our Voices: Race, Gender and the Status of Black South African Women in the Academy, as well as recent issues of feminism in Africa.

An interesting  and important piece of work is the Department of Science and Technology ( DST)  Facing the Facts study which highlights some  important trends.. In 2001 white women constituted the majority of female student enrolments and graduates at doctoral level (65%). White women made up 70% of the female academic staff in higher education. It has also been found across the world that women do well at undergraduate level, then exit prior to a post graduate level, instead taking on the roles of mothers and possibly junior academics. When they are raising children they publish less than when their children have left home. Essentially women’s careers peak later than do men’s. Cheryl De la Rey has asked the question should women not be allowed to retire later? Many other questions exist that we can ask in terms of cut-off age for funding, scholarships and the like. Another point that I have not had time to talk to is why do many women emerge as authoritarian leaders? Has it got to do with the paradigm of their mentoring, is it a survival issue or is it something we have not theorised?

These struggles are played out in almost private spaces- we only talk to each other. I have a personal trainer who is black and played rugby for the Blue Bulls. He has commented to me that we in academia are lucky, as being discriminated on the basis of race is a non-issue. If only he knew. It brings me to the statement by Bell Hooks: Black female intellectuals working in colleges and universities confront head-on in a world that outsiders might imagine would welcome our presence but most often our views are seen as intellectually suspect.