Women in research - a conversation between Sussex Research Hive Scholars
By Andrea Perez Porres, Georgia Wetherall, and dyiuti a
One day we sat and ranted about our lives in academia as women, and women of colour. For two of us (Andrea and dyuti) this was also with regards to an academic institution not in our home country. This piece strings together our conversations, frustrations, thoughts, anger, helplessness and doesn’t aim to offer solutions but hold some space, some resonance in our words.
Andrea: I constantly feel that I have fooled everyone to think that I am intelligent and that I am not really that smart to be doing a PhD. This has led me to question myself every day about if I really want to do a PhD because I feel like I am just going to fail, and I have somehow unmotivated myself from it. But this has led me to consider what are the reasons behind the fact that women are more inclined to experience imposter syndrome than men? Is it really a reality or is it an illusion? I think it is a result of existing systemic bias and exclusion from the academic world, and a consequence of not seeing yourself represented in your department, high-positioned roles outside of academia, etc. There are so many impacts from a system that is inherently classist, sexist, racist and xenophobic that were not considered when developing the term imposter syndrome. What about the contexts that both women of colour and white women experience? We are not validated as much as men are, we don’t find role models that look like us as often as they do.
Georgia: As a researcher who works in the hospitality industry, I am constantly faced with scrutiny over my status as a PhD student. ‘Why are you working behind a bar if you’re so smart?’ ‘Why are you not a teacher?’ ‘Clearly you can’t be smart enough to complete a PhD if you’re ‘just another bartender’ in one of the thousands of bars in Brighton.’ Although I, on most good days, am confident in my abilities and my intelligence, the consistent dismissal of my research really cuts through that confidence. There is a misconception within the academic world, and outside of it, that everyone within the academic community is capable of spending all of their time on their project, and those with jobs will find work in the academic institutions they are studying within and, as such, any kind of employment that is outside of that community is dismissed as ‘not proper work’. I cannot count the number of times that people either within or outside of the academic world have dismissed my employment as something that is not worth my time and distracts from my research. I hadn’t really considered the implications of this on my mental health and the imposter syndrome that I naturally have because of all of the reasons Andrea listed, but when you’re constantly dismissed as a researcher because of how you decide to earn money in order to sustain yourself and pay for food, rent and the general cost of the PhD, it really puts a strain on your belief that you actually have a space within the world you occupy. Whenever I’m faced with the question of ‘well, why are you in a bar if you’re so smart?’, I’m faced with this horrible question of whether I actually deserve to be here. I’m not working in the same departments as everyone else, I can’t talk to my peers about marking or lesson planning, and I don’t know the general ins and outs of academic teaching. The majority of this is not by choice, as I have tried to gain access to academic jobs, but have often been excluded as I haven’t had the same access to experiences as other Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) have had, and have lost out on job offers because of this lack of experience.
dyuti: Compound this dismissal that we face as women, with being a woman of colour in a discipline, anthropology for me, that has historically been about studying the ‘other’ me. My presence as not only a PoC but also from a former colony demanding a seat at the table is disruptive and unruly almost. To add to that add, the constant second guessing and unsurety of being in academia, makes navigating the space so hard. I feel like I am constantly in an obstacle race. One foot is tied with the imposed baggage of colour and being from a former colony, the former subject who is now demanding a seat at the table and the other being a woman educated in a different academic space and having to re-learn the ways of being in the “West”.
Andrea: Both of my PhD supervisors are white men from the UK, and even though I really like them and learn a lot from them, besides my supervisor during my MSc, most of the academics that have made a big impact or influence in my career have been middle-age white men. I haven’t really had enough representation of people that look and sound like me. During my undergraduate studies in Spain 90% of my teachers were men (it might even be higher than that). Then, I came to the UK and even though I had more female teachers, the vast majority of my department in Geography and Environment was, once again, men. I felt even smaller, I got into a good university and all I thought during the 2 years I spent doing my MSc (I did it part-time so I could work at the same time) is that they probably made a mistake when accepting me and that I shouldn’t be there at all. Everyone else had either previous experience in the field, or they were fresh out of their undergrad. I did not have any experience, I had taken a gap-year between my undergraduate degree and my MSc to work as an au-pair and in a restaurant to save money and figure out where I wanted to study next. I didn’t really think I deserved to be there, I didn’t feel like I was smart enough to be at LSE. I remember someone made a joke at the beginning of Welcome week about impostor syndrome and how probably a lot of us felt overwhelmed and thought that LSE had made a mistake, but they wanted to assure us that they hadn’t. I kept thinking that I was probably the odd one out.
After my MSc I decided to apply for a PhD at Sussex at SPRU, and even though I got in and since then I have had many opportunities to work and collaborate within my department and outside, I still feel doubt creeping in every now and then.
Georgia: Yes, and I think that as women we are made to second guess our intelligence and to feel inferior with our place in the world due to the absence of people like us in the academic world. Throughout my undergrad, although my department was quite diverse in terms of staff, the vast majority of my teachers were middle-aged white males. I saw other women around the department, heard from my peers that they had excellent female teachers, but I had very little experience being taught by someone who looked like me. I felt like I had to defend my place at all times, prove my intelligence and apologise when I said something that wasn’t entirely clear or easy to understand. I really struggled without that reference, without someone to look at and say ‘that’s what I’m aiming for, that’s who I want to be’. Without anyone to aspire to be, I just felt like I didn’t belong. I was aiming to accomplish something so great, and I began to feel like it wasn’t possible just because I was surrounded by men every day. When I was applying for my PhD, I felt compelled to defend my intelligence at every opportunity, and when I was accepted I still felt as though everyone was thinking ‘She isn’t smart enough to get a PhD, obviously she’s lying.’ This is not to say that the men in my academic career haven’t been impactful, it’s just to say that absence of female academics has been detrimental to my confidence and mental health.
dyuti: There is a dream that is a sequence of many films, especially Bollywood, the ones I grew up watching– that the protagonist enters a meeting room/ room/ space where s/he doesn’t belong and everyone starts laughing at them. This has multiple iterations with people wearing odd clothes, coming wrapped in a towel etc. But in all the laughter and mocking is because somehow this body is out of place, does not belong here. The liberty films have is that they often sell dreams and stories. Stories have liberty that they can take routes and end in the way the writer deems fit. Bollywood, is all about as you know elaborate song and dance routines and hopeful happy endings. Lies. I have been in academia as a PGR for close to 4.5years and I am yet to get my moment of things turning around and feeling like I can do this.
Andrea: I think this is something I will struggle with my whole life, but with time it gets easier to ignore the voices of doubt and anxiety. Seeing more women and/or queer faculty in academia at Sussex University has allowed me to feel that I belong more and that this is a safe space. Seeing women faculty that are also mothers has eased my fears around both wanting to have a family and an academic career, as responsibilities around family still fall heavily on women compared to men.
I do believe that the absence of women in academia compared to the presence of men has had a big impact on how I have assimilated anxieties and doubts about not belonging, about not being enough. Nevertheless, I hope that as Researchers we have more conversations about these issues, about what it is really like to be part of Academia as a woman and/or minority but also what we can do to make people feel really included and that they belong. What we can do to allow more women and queer people to not only access these spaces but also to feel safe and at ease in them.
About the Authors:
Georgia Wetherall is a second year PhD researcher in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities. Her research focuses on the body in Russian literature of the 1930s and 40s, embalming and death practices, and the treatment of the body after death. Her main aim as a Hive Scholar is to ‘open-up’ and de-mystify higher education and the years that follow, making the whole process seem a lot less daunting! She wants to ensure that anyone struggling to balance a PhD alongside other commitments (such as work, childcare, care work, etc) finds the support they need.
dyuti a is entering her final year as a PhD Researcher at the Department of Anthropology at the school of Global Studies. Her current research explores the imagination of ‘verbing the state’ by exploring the ways in which state is (re) produced, articulated, and experienced in the ‘space of appearance’ through the everyday interactions between ordinary Indian and ordinary Kashmiri. As a Hive Scholar she strives to make the Hive a welcoming and critical space for the research community across differences of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and PhD status. Her vision is to hold spaces for PhD scholars to write, interact across the divisions of school, departments and share pedagogical practices. She writes her name with small d because Hindi doesn’t have capital alphabets. In her head she is a comic, till you give her an audience then she is rather quiet!
Andrea Perez Porres is a second year PhD Researcher at the Science and Policy Research unit. Her research focuses on social movements in the UK and how they are re-thinking innovation beyond economic growth for sustainability transitions. Her focus as a Hive Scholar is to represent international students that are self-funded and have to work part-time to support themselves along with researchers that are also part of the LGBTQ+ community. She wants to organise more inclusive events for all Sussex researchers, as well as allow for more spaces for researchers to meet each other, form communities and support bubbles. Andrea is originally from Spain and has lived in the UK for the last 5 years. She loves trying new vegan food and would travel anywhere if needed –no matter how far it is. She is also into weightlifting, making to-do-lists and she is trying to read over 35 books (not PhD related) this year.