Narrating the Field of Communication Through Some Female Voices: Women’s Experiences and Stories in Academia

Abstract

The field of communication has been constructed through primarily masculinized stories, such as the myth of the “founding fathers,” a situation that has tended to exclude the views and figures of female researchers. This article tries to remedy this by recovering the voices of women via eight in-depth interviews among prominent researchers (second-generation, 1960s–1970s) from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, the UK, and the US. The results illustrate the inequality, sexual harassment, lack of legitimacy, and stereotypes faced by these women, and their strong emotional leadership. Their stories of success show how academia is a field of struggle where hegemony, domination, and resistance coexist. However, female experiences in academia are diverse and complex. That is why the article concludes with the need to continue tracking the stories of so many different women as knowing subjects, as well as the challenges of intersectionality in the epistemological construction of the field.