Posted on by kimberleightommy

But still, (together) we rise

 

“You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”- Maya Angelou

When my editor approached us about writing a post for Women’s month, I was caught off guard surprisingly. What would I speak about? It is difficult to write about topics that are close to your heart, sometimes they are triggers, sometimes they get you fired up, sometimes they make you cynical about the world. That was the dilemma I found myself in, there is so much to discuss being a woman, not just in STEM but generally in life, there are so many challenges but at the same time there are so many successes, so much inspiration and ultimately so much resilience.

In a world that is truly designed for men (I mean that in the most literal sense, check out this article by the BBC and this article in The Guardian and prepare to be SHOOK!) it may seem like a constant uphill to carve a space for women. One thing that has helped us, though is our ability to come together and to build communities and support systems. The strength that comes from women uniting for a common cause is something that is truly awe-inspiring, it reminds me of a video I once watched of Army Ants who had held onto each other tightly to form a raft to survive a flood in the Amazon jungle. I use this analogy for a number of reasons, 1) people often think ants are small and insignificant however they are pretty incredible, 2) people underestimate how smart they are and 3) they are strong in numbers, just like the women in science that I know. The world has tried to crush them, but they have prevailed, the system has tried to force them out but they have stood strong.

They continue to rise, like dust

Fire ant raft
Fine ant raft

So, the purpose of my women’s month post is to highlight my own support structure and some of the incredible global initiatives that have provided a space for women to talk, connect, vent, draw strength and reflect on the past, present and future. These organizations are doing the important work of uniting women from all walks of life and providing them with a shared safe space in order to foster much-needed conversations but make no mistake, they are not all talk!

South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS)

Although SAYAS is a platform for PhD candidates (not only women) this year was a special one because the entire team of bloggers and our editor all happen to be women! I have learnt so much from Joyful, Sesetu, Munira and Roula and I am grateful for our meme sharing, motivation and support of each other. Ladies, we have had a beautiful year together and I cannot wait to watch you all dominate your respective fields, it has been a complete privilege to share a platform with you. I look forward to hearing the future voices on here talking about the groundwork we once laid!

Black Women in Science South Africa (BWIS)

2019 has clearly been a fantastic year for me! I am also very honoured and privileged to have been selected as a 2019 BWIS Fellow. Black Women In Science (BWIS) is a registered NPC which aims to deliver capacity development interventions that target young black women scientists and researchers. Black Women In Science develops professional research and science conduct, leadership and mentorship skills for women within all scientific disciplines, in tertiary intuitions and professional environments nationally and internationally. The organisation was founded in 2015 by Ndoni Mcunu (CEO), google her, she is so incredible and there are far too many accomplishments to list!

Women in STEMI

This organization serves as a platform for telling the stories of emerging women in science. The forward was written by one of my icons in science, Prof Himla Soodyall and if this quote doesn’t make your arm hairs stand on edge then I do not know! “As I read through this collection of young women’s stories, marvelling at how their journeys through life have brought them to their current destinations, I am struck by a common theme that emerges through them. It’s a theme linked with sacrifice and passion to overcome challenges and a compelling drive to achieve one’s best, but at the same time to give back to society.” – Prof Himla Soodyall

Umsuka team Lindsay Hunter
Umsuka team – Lindsay Hunter

Association of South African Women in Science and Engineering

The Association of South African Women in Science and Engineering (SA WISE) is a dynamic association for all those who support the idea of strengthening the role of women in science and engineering in South Africa. The website contains profiles, information about funding and links to other important resources. One to keep tabs on.

Inspiring Fifty

InspiringFifty is a non-profit that aims to increase diversity in tech by making female role models in tech more visible. The organization releases an annual call for nominations of inspirational women so keep an eye on their webpage and make sure to nominate the women in your life!

One Million Women in STEM

1MWIS (1 million women in STEM) is a campaign seeking to profile a million women working in STEM disciplines to provide visible role models for the next generation of girls. There is now a significant amount of research showing that visible female role models serve to increase the number of girls pursuing STEM subjects in higher education and of those role models, real women (over celebrities, historical figures etc.) have the most influence.  To date, they have highlighted the work of over 300 women from different fields who are challenging the status quo and driving change. You can follow them on Twitter at @MillionStem

Women in Bioanthro workshop 2018
Women in Bioanthro workshop 2018

500 Women Scientists

500 Women Scientists is a grassroots organization started in America but now has a global network of local ‘pods’ to build communities and foster real change that comes. Local pods allow for a personal experience where members can meet often and in-person in order to exchange ideas. The pods focus on issues that resonate in their local communities but rooted in the larger 500 Women Scientists mission and values.

Quote this Woman+

In South Africa, less than 20% of sources quoted in the news are women and this online database of professionals seeks to change this by providing a resource for local and international journalists who are looking for comments! You can add your name to the database as an expert in your respective field.

In 2018 I was fortunate enough to publish an article through The Female Scientist (I am sure you know about this platform by now because I mention it all the time in my posts) on my experiences as a woman of colour in academia (I cannot speak to everyone’s experience- only my own) titled ‘Ebony in an Ivory Tower’ and my view on the position of women in STEM then was quite bleak. Today,  although the challenges I mention in the article are still ever-present, I am more optimistic because I have met with women, spoken to women and been comforted by women who have fought alongside me, for me at my weakest and against me at my most cynical. That is the beauty of the life raft we have created together, it keeps us afloat, but it helps us to realise that it is always darkest before the dawn.

The article I had written ended like this: “We need our voices to bellow through the ivory tower, until the vibrations of our collective pain, anguish, and ultimately hope, rattle the foundations and bring it to the ground. Because we love a science field that never loved us and instead of hiding in the shadows of this unhealthy power dynamic, we stand in the sun and demand a day when science acknowledges who we are.”

Ladies, thank you for standing in the sun with me.

Posted on by SAYAS

Bricked in by the walls of patriarchy

By Prof Srila Roy is an associate professor of sociology at Wits

The story of fighting sexual harassment in the university tends to be a story of failure. It is a story of trying to address complaints, giving voice to victims, changing the institutional culture — and of being met with walls and silences.

As feminist Sara Ahmed has repeatedly reminded us, walls come up from the moment a student or staff member tries to complain and stay up well after their complaint is registered. (In 2016 Ahmed resigned from Goldsmiths, University of London, in protest against the institution’s failure to address sexual harassment of students.)

Walls are at work, even in the rare cases of termination of employment on the grounds of sexual harassment, because confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses mean that perpetrators cannot be named.  They are, in fact, free to go and seek employment elsewhere, in what has been called the “pass the harasser” phenomenon.

What would it mean to tell a different story of tackling sexual harassment on campus? A story of institutional resources and commitment; of independent offices to deal with complaints alone, to counsel and care; and of feminist leadership?

A story where it would be obvious that intervention must mean the transformation of entire institutional cultures and not merely of individuals (through discipline and punishment)? Where, through measures such as advocacy, counselling, gender training and the creation of safe spaces, the silence of sexual violence could be made speakable? Where the effects of such speech would be concrete, material and transformative — formal dismissals, not just quiet resignations?

This could indeed be a story of feminist success. But feminist success is invariably its failure.

For, in the garnering of actual institutional capacity and power lies the undoing of feminist resistance and its promise of an alternative future.

We often hear of the threat of co-option, of feminist forces being co-opted by a range of structures, from the state to the market. Think, for instance, of how the slogan “Girl Power” adorns T-shirts made by underpaid precarious female workers — usually girls — of the Global South. Co-option has become so pervasive in our times that it becomes difficult to discern feminist from nonfeminist politics in the mainstream — everyone from a Hillary Clinton to a Beyoncé is, after all, now a feminist.

Universities, too, co-opt sexual harassment work for various agendas and ends.

Professor Alison Phipps of Sussex University describes how the neoliberal university uses campaigns run by students about sexual violence to draw in other students to enhance the university’s own attractiveness.

Unlike previous historical conjunctures, ours is one in which universities cannot ignore the “problem” of sexual harassment in their midst. They must learn to “manage” it through, for instance, what Phipps calls “institutional airbrushing”, in ways that ultimately serve to preserve the reputation of the institution at the cost of victims.

But when feminist sexual harassment work becomes too successful — when it doesn’t merely chip away at walls but begins to shake the foundations on which those walls rest — it is not simply co-opted, it is undone.

The same mechanisms of investigation that served to establish the university as a champion of sexual harassment work are now deemed as putting the university “at risk”; victims’ voices are replaced by those of perpetrators who speak, unchallenged, of injustice, wrongdoing, unfairness; new procedures emerge overnight whereas existing procedures are erased; external expertise is called upon when, throughout, internal expertise and voluntary labour has run successful institutional work; whisper networks emerge to instil uncertainty where there was once confidence, to undo the building of trust and to dismantle safe spaces.

Eventually, individuals are “redistributed”, or let go of. These are the feminist troublemakers; they are the killjoys of institutional life, who were originally brought in to chip at the walls of the institution but not to take it down. When they act in other ways — consistently in favour of victims — they become “rogue feminists”. Their detractors label them as “unprofessional”, as shooting from the hip, and not working within a rule-of-law framework. Complainants are left wondering why their words did not count for those making these kinds of assessments.

What, might you ask, transforms co-option into the active undoing of feminist work? The evidence comes from various quarters with the same implication: it is all right to challenge sexual harassment, bullying, even rape, when it occurs among students or between junior staff and students. Senior management, star professors, are another matter altogether — letting them go is too costly, too difficult when it comes to fragile egos and male entitlement, and too threatening for the boys’ club they are part of and whose interests they represent. When their position and privilege are challenged, it is as if the rogue feminists are taking over.

Another contributing factor is the expansion of the category of “sexual harassment” and the material effects of such expansion. In expanding to include, for instance, gender-based bullying, we move away from spectacular forms of violence against women — rape — to the everyday acts of sexism and aggression that constitute the bedrock of patriarchy.

As sexual harassment redressal work reaches deeper into the behaviours, cultures and psyches of the workings of patriarchal power, a panic ensues. In an act of undoing (not just co-option), the panic transforms victimology from being at the hands of sexual predators into the hands of rogue feminists.

It is the killjoys and rogue feminists that we are now warned against, not male perpetrators of injury and not institutionalised sexism or patriarchal power. It is no longer sexual harassment that places the institution at risk but the impulse of transformation and the effort to stop it.

The institution acts swiftly: it exiles the firebrand. Much like how it individualises the systemic nature of sexual violence, it shifts its own accountability on to a singular person, the feminist leader-turned-rogue. It appoints in her place someone whom it knows will work within walls, in the belief that such walls can be chipped away at, but not broken or rebuilt.

Now that the feminist rogue has gone, all procedural inconsistencies, all forms of “risk” and accountability (or lack thereof) can be attributed to her, and the project of co-option can resume. The university can be lauded for yet another successful measure in the fight against sexual harassment.

Such success is not just feminism’s failure, but its undoing.

This article was first published by the Mail & Guardian.