Women Breaking The Glass Ceiling

PART I:

COLONIAL INFLUENCE, WHITE DOMINATION AND POWER STRUCTURES IN ACADEMIA

CHAPTER 1

DEFYING THE ODDS: AN AFRICAN FEMALE’S LIVED EXPERIENCES OF RESILIENCE, RISK, AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

GLADYS KEDIBONE MOKWENA

Dr. Gladys Kedibone Mokwena held the position of Senior Lecturer in Adult Education at the University of South Africa. Her involved scholarship enables her to provide adult literacy and vocational training in community learning and correctional centres. Through her commitment to promote social justice, she includes the marginalised in various communities. She is the recipient of UNISA Women's Forum Significant Achievement Award for her outstanding contribution to lifelong learning. Her memoir, Resilience in Adversity, inspires her to engage young children and adults in writing, reading and storytelling.

Email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The term resilience is frequently used in the contexts of mental health and wellness to highlight differences in how effectively people can cope with adversity, while also having the potential to change or even transform certain unfavourable circumstances. This chapter was inspired by a personal look into the life of an African female, who despite facing challenges head-on, persisted in her pursuit of achievement. The chapter adopted auto-ethnography as a qualitative research method to reflect on and analyse my academic accomplishment at one of South Africa’s leading higher learning institutions.  I base the study’s theoretical framework on resilience-ubuntu and the constructivist interpretative paradigm.

This chapter indicates that women in South Africa encounter socio-economic obstacles due to gender inequality and negative cultural practices. Through auto-ethnography, based on my own experiences, I share how I overcame obstacles to succeed academically. A variety of adversities create risk factors for academic achievement through insight. However, in this chapter, my perspective on resilience, risk, and academic achievement becomes clearer as a result of social support networks, which shape collective community values and individual characteristics such as the ability to overcome adversity. Therefore, resilience-enhancing strategies are feasible. This is the reason the chapter recommends teaching resilience education in schools, especially in higher education institutions and community learning centres.

Keywords: Academic Achievement, Community Values, Defying the Odds, Lived Experiences, Resilience, Risk, Support Networks

INTRODUCTION

Current events worldwide are clouded by a myriad of natural or man-made challenges. For this reason, even the most focused and grounded individuals might experience feelings of dread, worry, rage, or despair (Chaigneau, Coulthard, Daw, Szaboova, Camfield, Chapin III. & Brown; 2022).  The concept of resilience, which is frequently used in the contexts of mental health and wellbeing, allows the international community to express differences in how effectively people can cope with adversity while also having the potential to change or even transform certain adversity conditions. Even though there is a lot of knowledge about the nature and circumstances that promote resilience to deal with adversity, there are perhaps few empirical and practical studies on resilience's emancipatory function and altering adversity settings.

As a Black South African female of open distance and lifelong learner, I demonstrated positive development despite chronic poverty and associated risks, including sub-standard housing, inadequate nutrition, food insecurity, lack of healthcare access, and under-resourced schools. Unaware of my indirect familial and non-familial networking, I have learned about the importance of connecting with others. The African philosophy of Ubuntu shaped my resilience processes. Specifically, constructive connections to a broad network of supportive people, tolerance, and educational agency informed my positive adjustment. Certainly, my story offers evidence that connecting to familial and non-familial kin, being long-suffering, and pursuing a tertiary education were culturally congruent processes. As the author of the book, Resilience in Adversity (2021), I regard resilience as a developmental phenomenon that is an enthralling subject. In addition, through resilience, I have uncovered the attributes that enable certain people to succeed in life despite seemingly insurmountable challenges.

This study was conducted in Pretoria, presently known as Tshwane, South Africa’s administrative capital. Before the country became democratic, the Group Areas Act was passed in 1950 during the apartheid era in South Africa. Separate urban areas for Blacks, Coloureds and Indians were mandated under the act (Mandela, 1994). The apartheid regime also regulated the types of jobs that Black people could do. However, as domestic workers, tea ladies, and other unskilled or semi-skilled trades, Black women used this risk factor to build resilience through collaboration.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of resilience-ubuntu and the constructivist interpretative paradigm guided the study. The theoretical lens helped me to view defying all odds, resilience, risks, and academic achievement as an African female. Furthermore, I have selected to ground this chapter in the resilience theory, using the person-focused approach, because it tries to understand how resilient people differ from others who are not faring as well in the face of adversity.

The nature of adversity is not the most important in resilience theory but how one deals with it. Notable contributors to the Resilience theory used in this chapter are Garmezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984) and Ungar (2014). The contributors suggest that two significant resilience and person-focused approaches culminate in the conceptual development of the phenomenon of adapting to adverse challenges. In person-centered resilience research, resilience and non-resilience are operationalised in terms of a person’s adaptive or maladaptive responses under highly stressful conditions. As in previous person-centered resilience research, resilience refers to a person’s capacity to deal with different situations (Garmezy, 1983; Ungar, 2014). Adversity is part of life; hence we are expected to make a move from risk to resilience. With this mindset, we may be better prepared when threatening events occur, whether they are anticipated or unforeseen. For these reasons, I saw the need to shift focus from risk to resilience in this regard.

In addition, Masten (2001) describes resilience as the phenomenon of individuals doing well despite experiencing adversity. Donald Lazarus and Lolwana’s (2012) definition of resilience uses a variable-focused approach to examine the patterns among measures of characteristics of individuals. For Donald, Lazarus and Lolwana (2012), resilience is defined as maintaining a balance between the stressors and developmental risks to which learners are exposed on the one hand and the protective factors that might be operating for them on the other. Similarly, I accede to Masten (2001) and Donald, Lazarus and Lolwana (2012) as I view resilience as a dynamic process of adapting successfully to threats in life (Mokwena, 2021).

Amidst the myriad of risk factors, women around the world are holding the knife’s edge. A point in case is Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known as Nina Simone. She was a singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist from the United States. She tells the story of a Black woman who inherited the shackles of sorrow, misery, and worthlessness in her 1966 song Blackbird (Nina Simone, 1966, Nina Simone with string, Blackbird).

Even though this Black woman could achieve her goals, the song depicts how her ambitions were questioned. If she tries to achieve her goal, she will be met with failure and regret. Indeed, the lyrics of this song were written from the perspective of an outsider, someone who cannot comprehend why a Black woman would have such lofty goals when confronted with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Interestingly, the answer to this question is that the words do not come from an outsider but instead from an ordinary Black woman’s story. Because we live it, Nina Simone’s song can be found in you and me (Nina Simone, 1966, Nina Simone with string, Blackbird). Through perseverance and determination to focus on our goals, we can defy the odds.

The Family Odds and Resilience

Two critical events in South Africa mark the period of my birth – the adoption of the Freedom Charter in June 1955 and the women’s protest march to the Union Buildings were significant events in my life. As an individual, I could not escape impoverishment due to contextual factors of the time. From a family of six siblings, we were raised by a single mother who augmented her little tea lady income by selling produce from our backyard garden (Mokwena, 2021). In our household, the risk of poverty was significant. As a result, I would go to school without the required school uniform. I did not have any shoes; my mother, on the other hand, defied the odds and looked for other ways to keep the home fires burning. She grew various indigenous crops in her home garden, including beans, groundnuts, and pumpkin. She would make relish out of pumpkin leaves to serve with her porridge. It warms my heart that I would eat the leftovers at school during lunch. I would isolate myself from other students around lunchtime because of my childish tendencies, so they would not see what I was eating.

I faced adversity on my life's journey, which included widowhood at a very young age and raising two children single-handedly. As a primary school teacher and student studying part-time, I have managed to break the glass ceiling. My academic journey, particularly the pursuit of my Ph.D., was fraught with obstacles and accompanied by minimal support from my supervisor. However, my resilience enabled me to recover and defy the odds in my academic achievement.

Ubuntu as a Tool for Resilience

In Africa, the Ubuntu teaching is a powerful tool for overcoming adversity. Its absence results in adversely affected communities. It is believed that in Africa, the negative narratives outnumber the positives in our societies. As a result, this chapter aims to rewrite the narratives through the African philosophy of Ubuntu in terms of resilience, risk, and academic achievement.

A myriad of South African families were on the verge of breaking down due to the country’s history and conditions. However, the African Ubuntu ideology, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, or I am because we are," instilled optimism in the community by uniting people as creatures with numerous ties and connections. In African culture, the emphasis is on the ‘I/We’ relationship, as opposed to the ‘I/You’ relationship in western culture, which is focused on the individual (Chilisa, 2012). The family is an important source of inspiration, socialisation, and moral and cultural ideas in the African culture. Mpofu and Indabawa (2006) brought out the negative consequences of poverty, which represent a threat to society’s common collective spirit. By utilising the African teaching that it takes a village to raise a child, Mpofu and Indabawa (2006:124) promoted the importance of educational empowerment  as the only lasting strength of a society. As a means of adapting to the adverse conditions, the same authors (2006) saw the provision to education at all levels as functional and meaningful to the activities of the environment which education is planned and designed for.

Exploring my academic achievement, I propose that community members embody the virtues of Ubuntu which recognise respect for human dignity and love to encourage resilience, alleviate risk, and enhance academic achievement. During the academic journey of individual community members, family members and the people around them must demonstrate the value of dignity and love. Furthermore, all members of society should consider the ‘Ubuntu’ ideals in order to assist individuals in defying the odds and breaking through the glass ceiling. My relationships with other individuals continue to shape my sense of self.

According to Kenyan literary scholar Ogude (2019), Ubuntu could counter the dominant individualism in the contemporary age. Ubuntu is where I learned community values such as self-respect and social justice through educational endeavours and sharing with others. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of my life, I used my lived experiences with others to strengthen relational forms of personhood. As a result, to preserve communality with siblings, fellow students, co-workers and academics, I devised new ways to communicate my dignity, humanity, and compassion.

The Ubuntu value of love enhanced my sisters’ resolve to assist me in completing my secondary education. Form 3 (or eighth grade) could have been the end of my career aspirations in this case but, by persevering and enduring adversities in pursuit of my dreams, I was able to turn my poverty into a positive force. I was also able to love working with my hands and the opportunity to go for teacher training. Furthermore, I took a temporary job during the holidays, thanks to the financial support of my sisters – one made money crocheting raffia hats, one was a primary school teacher, and the other worked as a saleslady (Mokwena, 2016).

Resilience Despite Risk

The UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative aims to rethink education and shape the future. As advocated by the Sustainable Development Goals SDG Goal 4 (United, 2016) and Education for All (Unterhalter, E. (2013), education is important in promoting gender equality and the advancement of women. The National Planning Commission (2013) acknowledges that women constitute a large proportion of the economically challenged in the South African scene. Undoubtedly, the NDP emphasises women’s economic empowerment as a prerequisite for sustainable development. The policy is premised on recognising gender issues as central to and critical to the achievements of women breaking the glass ceiling. Resilience, or adaptive behaviour in the face of adversity, has recently come to be understood as a phenomenon that should not be uniformly conceptualised across contexts and cultures (Theron, Theron, & Malindi 2013).

In this sense, in 1956, a diverse group of South African women marched to the Union Buildings to protest the implementation of the amended to the Urban Areas Act (Gunner, 2009). A total of 20 000 women of various races were predicted to be present. On the backs of some of the ladies were toddlers, and some of the women were wearing traditional dresses and sarees, and others were clothed in their domestic work outfits. Without question, women took significant risks, including being imprisoned and prosecuted. Their determination in the protest, on the other hand, yielded positive results.

Before 1994, few women were in leadership positions, and White men occupied most top positions in the public and commercial sectors. The traditional glass ceiling is broken everywhere in South Africa, and women courageously strike new ground. Women now have more opportunities to participate in historically male-dominated fields such as the judiciary, engineering, finance, defence and business https://www.gov.za/blog/sa-women-continue-break-mould. Like the women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956, and those who rejected the Group Areas Act of 1950, women will forge their futures and lead South Africa forward. Defying the odds and resilience, everyone agrees that these are all good things and worthy goals.

Similarly, I have experienced resilience while passing through academic risk. I became a single parent as a result of my husband’s untimely death and decided never to give up on my struggle to break the academic ceiling. Then tragedy struck. I never knew that having a reading group was a risk, but resilience saw me through. It happened that on the 29th of August 1998. My B.Ed. reading group came together to study at my house as it was our practice to rotate reading venues. At about 22hr55, just as we switched off the light to rest, I heard the gaits of a person jumping into my yard. Within the blink of an eye, the intruders were in the house. We heard gunshots and a commanding voice demanding our valuables. This incident led to one of our reading mates’ death and a bullet wound on my arm. The trauma and the bullet wound on my arm were enough to make me quit academics. However, I travailed through resilience while breaking the academic ceiling of a Bachelor of Education.

Nevertheless, when risk factors outweigh the positives for individuals, it causes setbacks for women. Though several studies have focused on models of resilience, pieces of literature indicate that a few studies have explored the role of resilience in enabling individuals to defy the odds for academic achievement (Kent & Davis, 2010; Masten & Reed, 2002; Theron, Theron, & Malindi, 2013). Oprah Winfrey grew up in inner-city Milwaukee after being born into poverty to a single teenage mother, in rural Mississippi (Illouz, 2003). She was molested as a youngster and into early adolescence, and she became pregnant at the age of 14. Despite the likelihood of her son being born prematurely and dying in infancy, she overcame the odds. She now owns and operates the Oprah Winfrey Network. She is a wealthy philanthropist and a well-known figure in the international society. In our African soil, the Kenyan Wangari Maathai, despite being beaten, imprisoned, tear-gassed, and attacked multiple times, she kept fighting for what she believed in. Her accomplishments inspired her country and the world to further move toward solutions to environmental and humanitarian concerns (Iraki, 2020). 

Familial and Non-familial Networks to Strengthen Resilience

Familial and non-familial relationships played a significant role in my experience of defying all odds. The networks include cases where the carer had a pre‐existing relationship with me, although they were not biological, step, or adoptive parents (Mokwena, 2021). Regardless of the difficulties at home, I had the support of the immediate family and extended family in the community. I would rank among the top five students in primary school at all levels. Given the risks of poverty, resilience was at an all-time high. Education served as the basic tool that enabled me to fulfil my role as a full member of society. From a young age until I completed my post-graduate studies, I was successful in my studies. I have defied the odds today. As an African woman, I have a different perspective on resilience and am motivated to make a difference in people’s lives.

My academic success has enabled me to break through the glass ceiling in my career. In adopting this approach, I was more prepared when threatening events occurred, whether they were predicted or unanticipated. I have lived the doctoral journey and have experienced both the good and the bad. Although I experienced ill-health due to several bumps academically, I was blessed with a highly supportive family and children. My inspiration for research comes from my loveable mother, whose fervent wish was to see me one day registering at the University of South Africa, the university at the mountain top (Ko thabeng), as it is popularly called. Notably, I was still studying for Matric at a night school. However, my commitment to pursue the doctoral qualification was unwavering. Consequently, I was the first female in my family to break through the glass ceiling with a Doctoral degree.

My Autoethnographic Study

As we understand them today, autoethnographic methods have their roots as far back as 1935 (Hayano 1979) and have since been called by different names and described with many variations (De Vos, Strydom and Delport, 2012:  Chang, 2008). Although it is different from other self-narrative methodologies, autoethnography has many variations in its application. It may include anything from a study focussing on the self to inquiring into groups of which the researcher is part of. The inquiry can also extend to other groups of which the researcher is not part but, through the method of inquiry, becomes a co-creator in recreating the stories (Chilisa, 2012; Ellis & Rawicki 2013; Stein, 2021; Walford, 2021). My autoethnography focused on my own experiences as an academic and the importance of networks in my academic journey experiences. I chose to use an autoethnographic approach because it allows for deep insights into experiences not always possible in other methodologies (Chilisa 2012). These deep insights evolve out of continuous reflection on one’s own story. The reflection is furthermore facilitated by the process of narrative writing (writing about one’s life and experiences), which is inherent to the autoethnographic method. The mere act of writing becomes an act of reflection in itself while generating data for analysis.

Autoethnographic methods allow one to draw links between one’s own experiences and the culture in which the experiences are embedded. Because I am an insider, the autoethnographic inquiry enabled me to gain a deep understanding of myself and the community values in which I am embedded. As a researcher in this chapter, I could draw on personal experiences and cultural resources to frame and shape my chapter in a way that an outsider could not (Chilisa, 2012; McMillan, & Schumacher, 2014). Furthermore, I decided to use analytic autoethnography for this chapter rather than its counterpart, evocative autoethnography.

Using autoethnography, I became a complete member of research, visible, active and reflective as well having a dialogue with myself.  In this instance, Anderson (2006) explains that every insight gained in the reflexive stance is a doorway to how ‘others’ in the culture experience the phenomenon and how the researcher himself or herself experienced it. He refers to it as reflexive social analysis and reflexive self-analysis. The overall aim is to seek connections between the researcher’s experiences and feelings to the broader context or theory. The researcher should also be visible and active as a social actor in the text by incorporating the researcher’s feelings and experiences into the story (or report). This is considered to be vital data for understanding the social world being observed. According to Anderson (2006), one does not use only one’s own experiences in one’s autoethnography but also asks other people about their experiences to draw connections between their own experiences and the broader context. However, the value and feasibility of other data sources will vary according to the specifics of a given project and the goals of its creator(s) (de Vos et al., 2012).

In most cases, data collection in autoethnographic studies takes the forms of reflective journals, e-mails, memos, and sketches (Holt, 2003; Schumacher, 2014). Data can be textual and non-textual (Chang 2008; Muncey 2005). For the most part, autoethnographies have used the same data sources, namely field notes, personal documents and interviews. In this chapter, I used both hard and soft data in different forms, including self-observational, self-reflective, and external data (Mokwena, 2016; Mokwena, 2021). Data from my own experiences consisted of self-reflection and reflective writing on my life journey.

The data analysis process involved determining patterns, main themes and sub-themes from the auto-ethnography. To draw closer to the text, make meaning and translate the data collected, I analysed the information manually and developed themes and patterns using thematic content analysis.

Analysing the data from qualitative research depends on coding. Saldaña (2021) confirms that the process of coding entails gathering text or data, which can be found in materials like books, documents, transcripts of interviews, journals, field notes, videos, observation checklists and e-mail messages. Similar to data collection, coding calls for compiling data segments that