Moving From the Tangled to the Secure: Female Academics Spinning Silk Threads Across the Academy

• In Event: Intersectional Challenges and Successes of Women in Higher Educational Leadership Internationally: Autoethnographic Reflections

Abstract

Objective
This paper seeks to explore the type, complexity, and strength of webs woven by female academics to secure their futures in higher education (Harford, 2018a; Harford, 2018b). How do female academics negotiate their roles and advancement within the academy? Does faculty allegiance determine the style and type of webs constructed to ensure their place? Does the national culturally constructed social and political determinants of education inform how female academics enact their professional lives on a daily basis?

Theoretical Framework
The research paradigm which informs this study is interpretivism, a concept concerned with perspective and the meanings social actors attribute to the world around them as they interact with it and make meaning through their own subjective interpretations (Charon, 2004; England, 1994).

Research Methods
As a female academic, who transitioned from the role of post-primary teacher to teacher educator and a keen observer and researcher of and participant in leadership roles, my story is one of insider versus outsider status (Merriam et al., 2001). Reflecting on how social, cultural and historical practices inform the labour of women’s lived experiences allows stories and actions to emerge and unfold while also embedding the fact that lives are not tidy.

Findings and implications
The many interactions that take place on a daily basis demand that cognisance is taken of a multiplicity of voices as both the researcher and biographer co-construct deeper, richer representations of the silk threads that are created for survival and security by female academics within the academy (Denzin, 1989).

Scholarly significance of the study or work
While not all spiders build webs and only some male spiders do so, they are less prolific and complex than those of the female (Levinson & Levinson, 1996). Female spiders build webs, from self-produced silk, for a variety of reasons, one being to transport them to a high point from which to throw and tighten a dragline to secure their landing space. The type and strength of the web determines the reaction felt when it is disturbed while a weakness in one area does not mean a total disintegration of the web entirely. This investigation sought to apply this metaphor of one woman academic and leader’s journey, providing insight and hope to other women leaders (O’Connor, 2011).

Author

• Mary Elizabeth Cunneen, University College Dublin