Black women academics in the United States of America and South Africa deploying principles of Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) to confront experiences with microaggressions

Abstract

abstract While several studies detail the experiences of university students with racial and gender harassment, bullying, and microaggressions, few explore these phenomena among Black women faculty members in higher education transnationally. This article makes a novel contribution by examining Black women’s agentic responses to marginalising experiences in higher education. Black women’s extraordinary efforts to succeed in westernised universities built on the subjugation of and from the labour of their ancestors, awareness-raising about their negative experiences, and strategies to change colleagues’ behaviours defy ‘business as usual’ in higher education. Neoliberalism, Gender and Curriculum Transformation in Higher Education is a multi-site project led by Professor Relebohile Moletsane (Moletsane & Mabokela 2019), who partners with Black women to support their academic and scholarly success. This article reviews results of a survey administered to participants to document their experiences and explore the interventions designed by Moletsane’s Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) investigators at universities in South Africa and America. This article describes four ways in which researchers effectively operationalise feminist decoloniality as care, by: 1) truth-telling about the impact of neoliberal institutions on the daily lives of Black women academics; 2) locating the source of academic woundedness not solely in the individual behaviours of bad actors but in systemic oppression; 3) creating opportunities for women to see the similarities in their experiences transnationally and to recognise ways in which institutional structures marginalise them; and 4) mutual support, a team mentoring approach, and reproducing Black excellence.