Opportunities for Self-Realisation?: Young Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in Russia

Author(s):  
Ulrike Ziemer
2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-69
Author(s):  
Fauzia Ahmad

I explore British South Asian Muslim women’s experiences of higher education and how it impacts identity construction and negotiation. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-five undergraduate and post-graduate Muslim female university students, I reflect on their perceived and actual experiences. By stressing how representations of them influence their participation and experiences, I analyze how individual subjectivities are mediated and negotiated while reflecting common experiences. I also consider their accounts of the social and personal benefits they felt that they gained during their studies, as well as to the more disturbing and racialized aspects of their experiences. They differentiated between three overlapping forms of beneficial experience: academic, social, and personal. While instances of anti-Muslim racism were rare or subtle, certain university structures and expectations of what being a mainstream student means often contributed to a noted sense of “othering.” I conclude by highlighting how their accounts of their university experiences directly challenge those stereotypes that misrepresent educated Muslim women as “religious and cultural rebels.”


The impetus for this book and the study mentioned was the author's intention to try to close a gap in scholarship related to Hispanic women's experiences and their positions of leadership in higher education. The existing literature did not offer ample information about Hispanic women who have achieved professional success in leadership roles. This chapter contains the preliminary findings that have already been shared in diversity conferences, recommendations, reflections from colleagues who are administrators, professors, and students as a way to address this subject. The author believes information must continue to be shared in order for more voices to arise and whom we can encourage while empowering other Hispanic women/Latinas. It is important to promote support for future strategic efforts among college students, faculty, and diversity fellows from different organizations and community partners across the nation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Simpson

AbstractThis is a reflexive account of carrying out ‘dirty research’ on cis women’s experiences of working as erotic dancers while at university in the UK. Focusing on the recruitment process, I discuss how universities avoided becoming ‘subjects’ of research by blocking the study and labelling it ‘extremely sensitive’ or ‘inappropriate’. By scrutinising the fieldwork, this revealed the prevalence of whorephobia within Higher Education and the general, rather than idiosyncratic, prioritisation of institutional reputation management at the expense of silencing marginalised voices and experiences. This article adds to scholarship problematising the taken-for-granted, subjective power wielded by research ethics committees which has the potential to curtail academic freedom and the advancement of knowledge and debate within specific fields. By restricting access to potential participants and through delay tactics, this hindered my ability to carry out the initial research design, shaping the type of data gathered and the knowledge I was able to contribute to this already under-researched area of study.


2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fauzia Ahmad

I explore British South Asian Muslim women’s experiences of higher education and how it impacts identity construction and negotiation. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-five undergraduate and post-graduate Muslim female university students, I reflect on their perceived and actual experiences. By stressing how representations of them influence their participation and experiences, I analyze how individual subjectivities are mediated and negotiated while reflecting common experiences. I also consider their accounts of the social and personal benefits they felt that they gained during their studies, as well as to the more disturbing and racialized aspects of their experiences. They differentiated between three overlapping forms of beneficial experience: academic, social, and personal. While instances of anti-Muslim racism were rare or subtle, certain university structures and expectations of what being a mainstream student means often contributed to a noted sense of “othering.” I conclude by highlighting how their accounts of their university experiences directly challenge those stereotypes that misrepresent educated Muslim women as “religious and cultural rebels.”


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