“Are You One of Us, or One of Them?” An Autoethnography of a “Hybrid” Feminist Researcher Bridging Two Worlds

Abstract

This chapter will be a personal piece, which also aims to draw upon academic research and feminist theory around the themes of this book. Drawing upon an evocative autoethnographic approach (Ellis, 1999; Wall, 2006), this chapter discusses the intersectionality of opportunities and limitations (Crenshaw, 1997; Essers & Benschop, 2009) that I faced as a hybrid British/Syrian feminist researcher (focusing on the intersections of gender, age, nationality and ethnicity). First, being implicitly marginalised at the Business School in which I carried out my research, a historically masculine, objectivist and positivistic discipline (Leitch, hill & Harrison, 2009), not only for researching women in business, but also researching 'the Other' (de Beauvoir, 1953): women in business in the context of the Middle East (Mohanty, 1988). Secondly, and unexpectedly, within days of commencing my PhD I was faced with hostility from my male PhD peers, who were from a range of Arabic countries across the Middle East, and many of whom were in the final stages of their PhDs and 10-20 years senior to myself. I would hear comments such as ‘are you one of us, or one of them?’ and it is the negotiations, reflections, and experiences arising from these comments and my research that I will discuss in this chapter.