Seeking Emancipation from Gender Regulation: Reflections on Home space for a Black Woman Academic/ Single Mother
Keywords:
Downloads
Abstract
Using the work of Judith Butler on gender regulation, Black Feminist Thought (BFT), and autobiographic storytelling, this piece illustrates how essentialist notions of gender, and discourses related to gender create conflict in shaping identity construction for a Black woman academic and single mother (BWA/SM) in the United States. This piece reveals complex gendered and racialized tropes related to notions of motherhood and womanhood, particularly within the author’s own family. Included here is how the author attempts to transcend these complexities in her quest for self-definition and self-actualization, unbridled by gender norms. Yet, race, gender and parental status are significant intersecting categories in identity construction, and inherent in the constructions are hegemonic discourses with which the author continues to grapple. Consequently, the struggle to transcend these forces is further complicated by the limited representation of Black women in the US academy, and by the types of academic work where they find themselves typically situated.Downloads
References
Alsop, R., Fitzsimons, K. (2002). Theorizing gender. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefBailyn, L. (2003). Academic careers and gender equity: lessons learned from MIT, Gender, Work and Organization, 10(2), 137-153.
Google Scholar CrossrefBell, E. L. (Ed.) (1990). The career and life experiences of black professionals [Special Issue]. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11.
Google Scholar CrossrefBracken, S.J. Allen, J.K. & Dean, D.R. (Eds.) (2006). The balancing act: gendered perspectives in facuty roles and work lives. Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefBrown, A. F. & William-White, L. (2010). We are not the same minority: The narratives of two sisters navigating identity and discourse at public and private White institutions. In R. C. Cole & C. Pauline (Eds.), Tedious journeys: Autoethnography by women of color in academe (pp. 149-175). New York: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar CrossrefButler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefBracken, S.J. Allen, J.K. and Dean, D.R. (Eds.). (2006). The balancing act: gendered perspectives in faculty roles and work lives Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefCahill, A.J. & Hansen, J. (Eds.). (2003). Continental Feminism Reader. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefChambers, V. (2003). Having it all? Black women and success. New York: Doubleday.
Google Scholar CrossrefCole, J.B. & Guy-Sheftall, B. (2003). Gender talk: the struggle for women’s equality in African American communities, New York: One World Ballantine Books.
Google Scholar CrossrefCollins, A.C. (2001). Black women in the academy: an historical overview. In R.O. Mabokela and A.L. Greene (Eds.), Sisters of the academy: emergent Black women scholars in higher education. (pp. 29-41). Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefCollins, P.H. (2000, 2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefCollins, P.H. (1991). Black Feminist Thought – knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment, perspectives on Gender, Vol. 2, London: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefCovington Clarkson, L.E. (2001). Sufficiently challenged: a family’s pursuit of a Ph.D. In R.O. Mabokela and A.L. Greene (Eds.), Sisters of the academy: emergent Black women scholars in higher education. (pp. 161-173). Virginia, Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefCreamer, E.G. (2006). Policies that part. In Bracken, S.J. Allen, J.K. and Dean, D.R. (Eds.) The balancing act: gendered perspectives in facuty roles and work lives. (pp. 73-92).Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefDavidson, M.J. (1997). The Black and Ethnic Minority Woman Manager: Cracking the Concrete Ceiling. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Google Scholar CrossrefDenton, T. C. (1990). Bonding and supportive relationships among black professional women: Rituals of restoration. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11, 447-457.
Google Scholar CrossrefDenzin, N.K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefDenzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (2000). The policies and practices of interpretation. In N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (end ed., pp. 897-992). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
Google Scholar CrossrefDill, B. T. (1988). “Making your job good yourself": Domestic service and the construction of personal dignity. In A. Bookman & S. Morgen (Eds.), Women and the politics of empowerment (pp. 33-52). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefDoyle, C. and Hind, P. (1998). Occupational Stress, burnout and job status in female academics, Gender, Work and Organization, 5(2), 67-82.
Google Scholar CrossrefDuBois, W.E.B. (1968). The souls of Black folk: Essays and sketches. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.
Google Scholar CrossrefEllis, C. & Bochner, A. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexicity: Researcher as subject. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733-768). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Google Scholar CrossrefFordham, S. (1993). “Those Loud Black Girls”: (Black) women, silence, and gender “passing” in the academy, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 24, 1, 3-32.
Google Scholar CrossrefGilkes, C. T. (1983). Going up for the oppressed: The career mobility of black women community workers. Journal of Social Issues, 39, 115-139.
Google Scholar CrossrefGilkes, C. T. (1988). Building in many places: Multiple commitments and ideologies in black women's community work. In A. Bookman & S. Morgen (Eds.), Women and the politics of empowerment (pp. 53-76). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefGregory, S.T. (2001). Black Faculty Women in the Academy: history, status, and future. The Journal of Negro Education, 70(3), 124-138.
Google Scholar CrossrefHale, J. E. (2001). Learning while Black: creating educational excellence for African American children, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefHecht, M.I., Jackson II, R.L., and Ribeau, S.A. (2003). African American communication: identity and cultural interpretation, 2nd edition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefHolt, N.L. (2003). Representation, legitimation, and autoethnography: An Autoethnographic Writing Story, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2(1), 1-22.
Google Scholar CrossrefHooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory: from the margins to the center. Boston: South End Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefHooks, B. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Boston: South End Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefHooks, B. (1990). Yearning, race, gender and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefHarrison, P. (1991). Woman, Wife, Mother. Tulsa, OK: Harrison House Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefHurston, Z.N. (1969) Their eyes were watching God. New York: Negro University Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefJewell, K.S. (1993). From mammy to miss America and beyond: cultural images and the shaping of US policy. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefJohnson, E.P. (2003) Appropriating Blackness: performance and the politics of authenticity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefJones, J. (1985) Labor of Love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work and the family from slavery to the present. New York: Basic Books.
Google Scholar CrossrefKing, T. C. (1995). "Witness us our battles": Four student projections of black female academics. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 8(6).
Google Scholar CrossrefKnights, D. & Richards, W. (2003). Sex Discrimination in UK Academia. Gender, Work and Organization, 10(2), 213-238.
Google Scholar CrossrefLee, C. (2005). The State of Knowledge about the education of African Americans. In King, J.E. (Ed.) Black education: a transformative research and action agenda for the new century, (pp. 45-72). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
Google Scholar CrossrefLeonard, D. & Malina, D. (1994). Caught between two worlds: mothers as academics. In S. Davies, C. Lubelska, & J. Quinn. (Eds.) Changing the Subject: Women in Higher Education,( pp. 29–41). London: Taylor and Francis.
Google Scholar CrossrefLorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Trumansberg, NY: Crossing Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefMason, M.A., Goulden, M. & Wolfinger, N.H. (2006). Babies Matter. In S.J.Bracken, J.K. Allen, & D.R. Dean (Eds.) The balancing act: gendered perspectives in facuty roles and work lives, (pp. 9-29). Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefMunn-Giddings, C. (1998). Mixing motherhood and academia - a lethal cocktail. In Malina, D. and Maslin-Prothero, S. Surviving the Academy: Feminist Perspectives, (pp. 56–68). London: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefNaylor, G. (1988). Love and Sex in the Afro-American Novel. The Yale Review 78(1), 19-31.
Google Scholar CrossrefNkomo, S. M. (1988). Race and sex: The forgotten case of the black female manager. In S. Rose & L. Larwood (Eds.), Women’s careers: Pathways and pitfall, (pp.133-150). New York: Praeger.
Google Scholar CrossrefNkomo, S. M. (1992). The emperor has no clothes: Rewriting "race in organizations." Academy of Management Review, 17, 487-513.
Google Scholar CrossrefPickney, A. (2000). Black Americans, 5th edition. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefPhilipsen, M. (2008). Challenges of the faculty career for women: success and sacrifice. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Google Scholar CrossrefProbert, B. (2005). I just couldn’t fit it in: gender and unequal outcomes in careers. Gender, Work and Organization, 12(1), 50-72.
Google Scholar CrossrefRamsay, K. and Letherby, G. (2006) The experience of academic non-mothers in the gendered university, Gender, Work and Organization, 31(1), 25-44.
Google Scholar CrossrefRich, A. (1976) Of woman born -- motherhood as experience and institution. New York: WW Norton and Company.
Google Scholar CrossrefShaw, S.J. (1996) What a woman ought to be and do: Black professional women workers during the Jim Crow era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefSherman, W.H., Beaty, D.M., Crum, K.A. & Peters, A. (2010). Unwritten: young woman faculty in educational leadershsip. Journal of Educational Administration. 48(6), 741-754.
Google Scholar CrossrefSparkes, A.C. (2000). Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 21-41.
Google Scholar CrossrefTeevan, S., Pepper, S., & Pellizzari, J. (1992). Academic employment decisions and gender. Research in Higher Education, 31(1), 141-159.
Google Scholar CrossrefO’Connor, C.A. Lewis, R.L. and Mueller, J. (2005). The Culture of Black Femininity and School Success. In L. Weis,& M. Fine (Eds.) Beyond silenced voices: class, race, and gender in United States schools. New York: State University of New York Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefWallace, M. (1978, 1979, 1990, 1999). Black Macho and the myth of the superwoman. New York: Verso.
Google Scholar CrossrefWilliam-White, L. (2011). Dare I write about of oppression on sacred ground [emphasis mine], Cultural Studies ⬄ Critical Methodologies, 11(3), 236-242.
Google Scholar CrossrefWilliams, L.D. (2001). Coming to terms with being a young, black, female academic in U.S. Higher Education, In R.O. Mabokela and A.L. Greene (Eds.), Sisters of the academy: emergent Black women scholars in higher education. (pp. 93-102). Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Google Scholar CrossrefZinn, H. (1997). A people’s history of the United States. New York: The New Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefDownloads
Published
Metrics
Almetric
Dimensions
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All articles are published under Creative Commons copyright (CC BY). Authors hold the copyright and retain publishing rights without restrictions, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles as the original source is cited.