Nontraditional Women Students' Experiences of Identity Recognition and Marginalization During Advising

Abstract

Nontraditional women students, defined as older than 24 years, parents, or veterans, compose a fast-growing higher education population. Many face identity-related challenges when interacting with advisors. From 2 northeastern U.S. women's colleges, 42 nontraditional women students participated in phenomenological interviews focused on their advising experiences, including the way advisors engaged with their identities. We classified 6 themes, 3 positive (guidance, identity recognition, advocacy) and 3 negative (indifference, identity marginalization, gatekeeping), that underscored the centrality of advisor engagement with identity for advisee-defined experiences. Advisors encouraged nontraditional women when recognizing intersectional identities as assets but also marginalized students through stereotyping or communicating low expectations. We highlight implications for future research and practice in this domain.