Women academics' ambivalent experiences of singlehood and international mobility

Abstract

This article explores the lived experiences of nine women scholars who are single, childfree and internationally mobile. Mobilising Laurent Berlant's work on ambivalence and ‘cruel optimism,’ we show how experiences of singlehood and academic international mobility are never only good or bad, but always both at the same time. Ambivalence emerges in the women's experiences because singlehood can facilitate academic careers by enabling high productivity and mobility, whereas mobility can inhibit finding committed relationships through an absence of stability and prevalent gendered expectations of women in heterosexual relationships. Most of the interviewed women hope for a life which has both careers, mobility and romantic relationships, however, the simultaneity of benefits and struggles associated with singlehood and a mobile academic life places them in an ambivalent situation that precludes the option of letting go of either of their affective attachments, namely, to gendered couple norms and the academic institution.