Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Gender, Work & Organization
Publisher
Wiley
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
62213
Funders
Open access publishing facilitated by Edith Cowan University, as part of the Wiley - Edith Cowan University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians
Abstract
This article draws on the work of Judith Butler, particularly the notion of vulnerability in/as resistance, to explore the gendered experiences of women in Australian academia. Through employing an arts-based research method, Draw, Write, and Reflect, with women academics in Australia, we explore the ways in which vulnerabilities are identified and navigated in the context of academia. Our study identified three key forms of vulnerabilities: the expectation paradox, the body, and age and experience. Such vulnerabilities appeared to be navigated through acts of othering, denying, and overcoming. We return to Butler's call for the creation of gender trouble in making sense of these findings but find that what is instead occurring is within-gender trouble. We then explain how this aspect is shaped by the masculine and highly individualized structures of academia. Our findings extend Butler's notions of vulnerability in/as resistance by offering insights that capture a fragmented and sometimes impermeable space between vulnerabilities and resistance.
DOI
10.1111/gwao.13096
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Franken, E., Sharafizad, F., & Brown, K. (2023). Gender, vulnerabilities, and how the other becomes the otherer in academia. Gender, Work & Organization. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13096