Betwixt and Between: Academic Women in Transition

Abstract

University culture is increasingly being influenced by globalization, competition, the commercialization of research, and external demands for accountability. Corporate managerial practices that value individualism and productivity bump up against more democratic and collaborative practices inherent in the traditional academic culture and governance. Tensions result as faculty members are left on their own to make sense of the shifting political, economic and social landscape of higher education and to understand the implications for their professional identity within their Faculty. In an unstable institutional culture that lacks rules or mechanisms to shepherd faculty through this process, individuals can feel anxious, confused or incompetent as they negotiate the contradictions in their professional lives and deal with issues of power and resistance. Grounded in their own experiences of liminality, this paper uses an autoethnographic approach to explore and describe the experiences of three academic women “betwixt and between” their senior management positions, taking up positions as academic members of a Faculty, and the strategies they used to support each other, to reconstruct their professional identities and to understand the norms of the Faculty culture. The paper speaks to the importance of post-heroic forms of leadership, dialogue and collaborative communities that contribute to the creation of a culture in which faculty members can flourish.