Opinion

We Urgently Need More Black Female Professors In UK Universities

There are just 25 black British female professors in UK universities – the smallest group of professors in terms of both race and gender. A new report by Dr Nicola Rollock, and the first study of its kind in the UK, delves into the experiences and challenges of this virtually invisible group of women. Here, Rollock speaks to some of them.
Image may contain Face Human Person and Hair

If I were to ask you what a professor looks like, you may well say an older white man complete with beard, glasses and corduroy jacket. Even if the description of their clothing might be a little off the mark, you would be right to think of a white man. There are well over 12,000 white male professors working at universities across the UK. In fact, around 15 per cent of white male academics are professors.

In contrast, there are over 4000 white female professors in these institutions, making up just 6 per cent of the white female academic population.

The group that is by far the worst represented are black female professors. By sobering comparison, there are just 25 black (Caribbean/African) British female professors in UK universities, making up less than 2 per cent of the overall black female academic population. In other words, you are around three times as likely to be a professor if you are a white woman compared to a black woman.

Read more: Stormzy Offers Scholarships For Black Students Going To Cambridge

I spoke to 20 of the 25 black female professors to find out their reasons for becoming an academic and their experiences as they made their way up the career ladder. I was especially interested in whether they had experienced any barriers along the way and how they had managed them. What I found alarmed me.

One academic told me that professors are the “mules and donkeys of the [academic] workforce” with some saying that the work pressures were so extreme that they had been unable to pursue a personal life and that relationships had suffered. Managing the constant barrage of emails along with a need to work weekends will be familiar to many academics, but what was particular about these women was their reports of having to work harder than their white counterparts to succeed.

Lola*, Constance* and Roberta* described the extent of their experience, qualifications and wealth of managerial responsibilities, but nonetheless had been unsuccessful in securing promotions at different stages of their career. This was despite witnessing less qualified white female colleagues bypass them and successfully secure the same roles. The reasons given for such decisions were poor, as Lola explains:

"I had a lot more publications, had been teaching much longer than she [a white woman] had and we were in competition for the job. She got the job of course and I was told 'well, yours is a kind of promotion because you're going from part time to full time' [laughs] 'and, besides, she’s got a baby and she needs the money’".

Another professor told me that the only feedback she received, earlier on in her career, on a failed application to become a senior lecturer, was “you had a typo in your application”.

As a result of these experiences and, in anticipation of further barriers, these women went beyond the call of duty to demonstrate their excellence. One spoke about making sure she had more than the required number of book manuscripts to support her application for promotion. Another described how a colleague refused to give sign off on a rudimentary aspect of her job that she had carried out with success in previous years. She felt forced to forensically quote university policy and copy in her manager just to get the task done.

I asked Germaine* about her experiences of her workplace. She described in painful detail how she was mistaken for the student rep by a white male colleague chairing a meeting. She then went out of her way to show that she had not taken offence and to demonstrate how knowledgeable and prepared she was for the meeting. She later confided in me how exhausting it was to have to monitor yourself in this way.

Faced with similar challenges, Kathy* speaks of feeling isolated and of wanting to run away from her institution. "What is it [I want to run away] from? It’s probably [from] being constantly undermined and... the atmosphere in the place. It’s my colleagues. It’s the people who you have to encounter all the time who are brilliant but very narrow minded. [They] will come out with the most conservative view about something, or about race. They won't allow you to thrive."

Read more: Malala On Life At Oxford University And Why Every Girl Deserves The Same Chance

Additionally, if you want to become a professor, you often need the approval or recommendation of your Head of Department. Without that endorsement, your chances of success are slim. I find the fact that we hold onto this rule odd given that research by the workplace diversity charity Business in the Community has shown that women and those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds report that line managers are often barriers to promotion.

The path to the top is strewn with racial stereotypes, poor management and a fixed view about what it means to be a good academic. Maxine’s* comment that “everything has to be a battle” seems a good though sad summary of the challenges black female professors face on their way to the top. Yet somehow these women had the tenacity, resilience and talent to fight past these barriers. I can’t help but wonder how many more black female professors we would have in our universities if we didn’t have to fight quite so hard.

*Names have been changed.