Ethnic minority women in the Serbian academic community

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the position of ethnic minority women (Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian) in relation to their career-building in the Serbian higher education system and reaching decision-making positions (such as rector, vice-rector, dean, head of department, etc.). The author defines two hypotheses: (1) that there are invisible biases (gender-based, ethnicity-based, and segregation-related) in the sciences that put ethnic minority women in a challenging position when attempting to build a career in academia, and (2) that these women encounter a glass ceiling when trying to reach more senior positions. The analysis is based on 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian female teaching staff employed at two Serbian universities. Intersectionality as a theoretical framework and method was used in the analysis of interviews, along with narrative analysis. Analysis of the interviews showed that ethnic minority women adopt specific strategies when discussing and explaining their difficulties and opportunities in the higher education system of Serbia. The intersectional analysis indicates that ethnic minority women struggle with invisible biases at the individual level, and, due to the horizontal segregation in sciences, have to overcome a situation of double jeopardy in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies. The findings suggest that women from ethnic minorities face a glass ceiling in relation to obtaining decision-making positions. Namely, such positions are usually only guaranteed to them within their own ethnic enclaves at departments with majority female staff. However, positions higher than these are rarely attainable.

Keywords

Academia career-building decision-making positions ethnicity intersectionality Serbia women

Introduction

With regard to the extent to which ethnic minority women are the subjects of high-profile forms of feminist activism and academic knowledge production, it is clear that middle-class white women (and their interests) continue to dominate (Evans, 2015). However, maintaining a focus on ethnic minority women represents an asset to contemporary feminist activism and academic research, increasing the diversity thereof by centering more on aspects of inclusion compared to second-wave feminism (Evans, 2015).

On the one hand, studies on intersectionality and the symbolic representation of ethnic minority women indicate that the latter are more frequently mentioned in relation to both gendered and racial identities than their majority female and minority male peers. This more frequent highlighting of issues connected to race/ethnicity and gender (Brown and Gershon, 2017) suggests an awareness of intersectional identities. Other studies imply that ethnic minority women are more aware of their ethnic identity than their gender (Aavik, 2015; Morrison et al., 1987).

Ethnic minorities are underrepresented in academia – for example, 13% of the Vojvodinian population is Hungarian, but only 6.7% of the student population in Vojvodina is of Hungarian ethnicity (Lendák-Kabók, 2015) and their opportunities for obtaining decision-making positions are challenged as well. For instance, out of the 18 rectors that the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) has had in the last almost 70 years, three were women, but none have been members of an ethnic minority from Vojvodina (Savić, 2015). Nonetheless, minority women play an important but invisible and somewhat burdensome role in maintaining ethnic communities. Yuval-Davis (1996: 17) argues that women reproduce symbolically their ethnic and national collectives, as well as their workforce, families, and the citizenry of their states. In other words, their role involves the gatekeeping of national identity (Korać, 1996).

Speaking further about the burden that minority women must shoulder, Acker and Armenti (2004) argue that women who belong to a minority group feel they face additional pressure. This phenomenon Tierney and Bensimon (1996) call cultural taxation. The term implies that, in addition to achieving success in academia, academics from minority communities are confronted with additional expectations in relation to mentoring and supporting students from minority communities. Their present struggle with a sense of otherness (Spivak, 1985) is now perceived differently than in the communist era, when they could benefit from it (Jensen, 2011) due to the existence of a quota system (Miladinović, 2003), which made it easier for members of ethnic minorities, and thus ethnic minority women, to build their careers and reach decision-making positions in academia.

The socialist era is gone, and today there are neither quota systems nor affirmative action related to gender or ethnicity. Therefore, it is much harder for ethnic minorities in general, and for ethnic minority women specifically, to build careers in academia and to reach decision-making positions. In addition, members of minority communities may struggle with a minority complex that is connected to a feeling of inferiority related to belonging to a group that is different to the majority (Maran, 2013).¹

Based on the above observations, and adopting an intersectional perspective, the author defines the following two hypotheses: (1) that there are invisible biases (gender-based, ethnicity-based, and segregation-related) in the sciences that put ethnic minority women in a challenging position when they attempt to build a career in academia, and (2) that they face a glass ceiling when trying to reach more senior positions (such as rector, dean, vice-dean, head of department, etc.). The article presents an analysis of the narrative strategies women use to justify or explain their positions, decisions, and attitudes in academia.

Intersectionality as a theoretical framework

European gender-studies scholars have elaborated intersectionality both as a theory of identity and as a method for analyzing processes and relations of power and inequality (Davis and Žarkov, 2017: 316). Nonetheless, debate remains about whether intersectionality has been discussed in the right way in a European setting concerning the fact that Crenshaw (1989) originally applied it to women of color in the US. In this sense, European scholars such as Davis and Žarkov (2017) argue that the specifically European contribution to intersectionality studies was the intersectional perspective on Muslim women. It may also be noted that, in Europe, feminist scholarship has been focused on Roma women (Kóczé and Popa, 2009; Vincze, 2014), but scant attention and scholarly debate has addressed the gender-based differences among sub-state minorities (Kymlicka, 2007), who, due to political turbulence and the border changes mainly of the twentieth century, became ethnic minorities in Europe. One piece of research about sub-state ethnic minority women was undertaken in Estonia by Aavik (2015), who investigated the positions of Russian-speaking women on the labor market in Estonia. Aavik found that the awareness of ethnic belonging of the latter was much stronger than their gender awareness, and that they occupied the lowest paid positions on the Estonian labor market.

Narrowing down the discussion to the cultural context covered by this research – Vojvodina, the northern province of Serbia – creates fruitful soil for intersectional research on ethnic minority women, as the latter is a multicultural and multi-ethnic region.² The Vojvodinian context of intersectionality in Serbia allows us to observe the ethnic minority experience through a gender lens (Lendák-Kabók, 2016).

To analyze the situation of the sub-state ethnic minority women in academia, Winker and Degele’s (2011: 58) definition will be used. According to this, intersectionality consists of three social constructions that interact: namely, a ‘system of interactions between inequality-creating social structures (i.e. of power relations), symbolic representations and identity constructions that are context-specific, topic-orientated and inextricably linked to social praxis.’ The author will thus examine how, in the context-specific social setting of the Serbian higher education system, the representations and identity constructions of a specific category of women – ethnic minority academic staff members – evolve. Their position is a privileged one due to their socio-economic background (Fiket, 2018), yet they are also marginalized by their minority belonging (Aavik, 2015), which leads to specific difficulties in relation to building an academic career, or obtaining access to powerful positions. The intersectional analysis will reveal the invisible biases which ethnic minority women face during their career-building, as well as upon reaching decision-making positions. The biases stem from their sense of otherness and lack of belonging, and are also connected to the language barrier, and subsequently, to their ‘foreign accents’ (Russo et al., 2017), all of which factors they need to overcome in the majority of cases.

Gender in higher education

Higher education plays a significant role in the creation and reproduction of the gender privileges of men, as well as the subordinate status of women (Cotterill and Letherby, 2005). Statistics show that although more women and men would qualify for professorships, significantly more women are eliminated while climbing the steps to the top of the career ladder (Niegel, 2014), which fact can be attributed to discrimination (Mercer, 2013). The ‘feminized work’ that is associated with the academic profession (such as teaching, advising, and service provision) is not typically associated with great professional prestige (Martinez-Aleman, 2014; Thomas and Davies, 2002).

Scientific excellence appears as one of the key factors in success, and suggests a purely meritocratic system. Meritocracy emerges as a paradigm for making sense of the way academia is organized (Śliwa and Johansson, 2013: 838). However, scientific excellence is a very debatable category when viewed from the perspective of gender equality, as women start out at a social disadvantage (Pető, 2018). Namely, the problem of balancing an academic career and caring work related to a family inevitably leads to a lower level of scientific production (Acker and Armenti, 2004), with women being most affected (Lendák-Kabók, 2020). Another argument for the former claim is that men may obtain higher h-index scores than women despite being cited less often as authors due to the ‘sexual dimorphism’ of self-citation. Since research performance is evaluated through quantitative measures, women are thus left at a disadvantage (Cameron et al., 2016).

The experience of academia being organized according to male norms and standards can be seen in the light of research, meaning that academia displays a dominant masculinity, especially in fields like engineering, which historically has been considered a dirty, hard, and tough profession (Määttä and Dahlborg Lyckhage, 2011: 387). This is the case in Serbia as well due to the horizontal segregation which is manifest in the feminization of some sciences and the much weaker representation of women in other sciences (such as, for example, computer science). It may be assumed that different sciences are ‘open’ to women to different extents and that if women build careers in those sciences which are ‘more open,’ they generally encounter fewer obstacles than in STEM areas (Blagojević, 2009: 111). In the latter area, they have to overcome double jeopardy in a very male-dominated field – being both women as well as members of a minority group, as Williams et al. (2014) suggest. Although ethnic minority men are employed in STEM fields, minority women are insufficiently and disproportionately represented, even in relation to the total number of women in these areas (Lendák-Kabók, 2018a).

Ethnicity in higher education

Inequalities in society are still shaped by social categories such as race and/or ethnicity (depending on the geopolitical context). The related social barriers may be deconstructed through academic knowledge production, as this represents a perfect arena in which to shape the knowledge of future generations (Davila and Aviles, 2018: 122). However, even in an environment that cherishes equality, such as in Finnish academia, several social categories (including gender, ethnicity, age, and class) make a difference in relation to measurable success (Huopalainen and Satama, 2001: 3). Moreover, higher education, albeit ostensibly accessible to everyone, does not offer the same experience to all, and nor it is likely to offer everyone the same rewards (Reay et al., 2001: 871). For example, going to university and building a career at a university sometimes represents a breakthrough for members of ethnic minority communities (Ball et al., 2002), especially if it means studying in the non-mother tongue. However, this may be problematic, since education in one’s mother tongue is crucial for the preservation of national identity. This fact has been repeatedly emphasized in multilingual regions, as teaching and learning in one’s mother tongue has been found to improve learning outcomes in primary schools (Seid, 2016). Since in Serbia, there are only a few options for continuing higher education studies in minority languages,³ instruction in minority languages at the primary and secondary level of education might bring a future risk for members of ethnic minorities (Filipović et al., 2007). Namely, the teaching of all classes in primary and secondary education in a minority language, with only a few hours of Serbian as a majority language per week, has created generations of unbalanced bilinguals who are characterized by a very low level of proficiency in the Serbian language (Filipović et al., 2007).

In addition to insufficient support for majority language teaching, Nađ claims that many young Hungarians in Serbia have not wanted to learn the Serbian language since the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s (Nađ, 2006: 448), when ethnicity became a tension-filled topic (Aavik, 2013) due to political propaganda. Consequently, the former individuals face difficulties during their post-secondary education in Serbia, and/or struggle to find satisfactory employment, which by default requires knowledge of Serbian (Filipović et al., 2007). Ethnic minority students first need to overcome the language barrier (i.e., to learn Serbian) when starting their studies, which requires time, effort, and sacrifice (Lendák-Kabók, 2017). Research confirms that speaking the majority language with a foreign accent can have a number of effects on the working environments of those who need to use a non-mother tongue at work (in terms of work experience, performance assessment at work, and task assignment), as well as on career outcomes (career advancement, and satisfaction with this) (Russo et al., 2017). It can be concluded that, due to language-related challenges, very few ethnic minority students are able to build a career in academia nowadays. This was not the case in the socialist era in Yugoslavia when the Communist Party believed that, in order to successfully run a country with such a diverse population, it was extremely important to respect ethnic quotas: i.e., the proportion of state officials, military officers, university professors, and judges from minority and majority ethnic groups had to correspond to the national structure of the population (Miladinović, 2003: 39).

Women’s careers and leadership positions in academia

Leadership within the academic community is a key factor for initiating and implementing change. The number of female researchers in the highest level positions is limited, as women who seek to reach decision-making positions must effectively balance family obligations, have family support, nurture friendships with colleagues, and successfully cooperate with management (Shahtalebi et al., 2011). Even though a masculine culture and practices are not an all-encompassing explanation for the underrepresentation of women, a patriarchal value system makes it difficult for women to reach leading positions, or develop the desire to do so (Linková, 2017: 61).

On the one hand, some women do not see themselves as leaders because they prefer not to internalize the values that are believed necessary for holding such positions (Mišić Andrić and Markov, 2018). On the other hand, some women strive for leading positions and therefore accept the need to ape the patterns of behavior of individuals in such positions (Madden, 2002), and the ‘patriarchal bargain’ (Kandiyoti, 1988). It also should be noted, as Acker (2012: 423) argues, that even when a woman takes up a leading position, this is an insufficient guarantee of major change in the status quo of masculinist discourse due to layers of history and normative expectations.

Although women leaders ought to empower other women (Cox, 2008), a lack of solidarity often exists that may be the result of the neoliberal transformation of academia and the atomization of human and professional relations within the higher education system (Žarkov, 2015), as well as the difficulties some women have engaging with the parameters of success as defined by the neoliberal project (Tsouroufli, 2018: 12). According to recent research, academic staff members in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina (regardless of their ethnicity), are generally not interested in attaining high positions in the management structures of the university (Lendák-Kabók, 2018b).

Methodology

The findings of the qualitative research presented in the article are based on 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian ethnic minority⁴ female staff members. The current analysis is part of a wider research project, in which the narratives of both male and female academics and students from three ethnic groups (Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian) and the majority Serb academics and students inhabiting the Vojvodina region of Serbia were studied (Lendák-Kabók, 2019). The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then authorized by respondents.

Six of the interviewees worked in a STEM field of studies, whereas 10 worked in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Thirteen respondents were members of the Hungarian ethnic minority, two of the Slovak ethnic minority, and one was Romanian, which proportions are approximately representative of the related minority communities present in Vojvodina. The respondents were working at the University of Novi Sad and the University of Belgrade at the time the interviews were conducted. It should be also noted that the exact number of Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian professors in the higher education system of Serbia is not known because revealing their national/ethnic identity is not obligatory according to Article 47 of the Constitution of Serbia.

The ethnic minority female professors were born between 1952 and 1984, and raised in different parts of Vojvodina. Depending on the municipality, the respondents spoke the majority language at different levels of competency during their childhood and at the beginning of their studies. In municipalities where an ethnic minority was the majority population, the use of the majority language was not at a high level, thus the ethnic minority population encountered difficulties when entering the Serbian higher education system or struggled with having a foreign accent.

The identity of respondents was anonymized using codes instead of names. Initials used to indicate ethnicity are in English, followed by an initial for gender, and finally number, which shows their age. Numbers related to age were coded chronologically according to year of birth (the higher the number, the younger the respondent) – for example, HFP8 denotes a Hungarian female professor born in the 1980s.

The snowball method (Esterberg, 2011) was used to select respondents. Interviews were conducted between 2014 and 2015 in the Hungarian and Serbian languages. The respondents of the Slovak and Romanian nationalities agreed before the interviews to speak in the Serbian language because this was the shared language of the researcher and respondents. The parts of the interviews that are discussed in this article were translated by the author from Hungarian and Serbian into English.

The interview grid consisted of 13 questions, which can be categorized into the following six topics: (1) childhood, schooling and Serbian language proficiency of ethnic minorities; (2) difficulties during their career (e.g., language barriers to ethnic minority academics); (3) family and career; (4) gender-based segregation in academia; (5) opinions about (Hungarian and/or other national minority) women who are building research/teaching careers or occupying decision-making positions within academia; and (6) opinions regarding the organization of higher education with respect to minority languages (Lendák-Kabók, 2020). This article focuses on analyzing responses related to the area of challenges faced while building a career and reaching management positions (i.e., topics number 2 and 5). Narrative analysis was used to investigate the interviews, as proposed by Law (2004), and a qualitative research approach was also employed whereby the author analyzed the stories female minority teaching staff told. This approach helped to understand how the respondents saw themselves and their experiences in their own eyes, and from the perspective of others.

Intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological tool was used for analyzing the interaction of gender and ethnicity that produces social inequalities and power positions (Lykke, 2010). As this strategy primarily focuses on rendering the invisible visible, intersectionality was deemed the perfect tool for the analysis of the position of ethnic minority women in the higher education system of Serbia with regard to their individual-level focus on constituting their identities through a process of differentiation from others, while at the same time creating a sense of belonging (Winker and Degele, 2011), or positioning themselves as others (Spivak, 1985).

Findings

The qualitative part of the analysis that supported the first hypothesis was applied to the narratives and narrative analysis of respondents’ interview excerpts about the existence of difficulties in the construction of faculty careers for members of minority communities. In the following segment, some of the interview excerpts are presented and discussed, together with the narrative strategies used by the respondents when discussing and explaining the hardships they had encountered in developing their academic careers and obtaining higher level management positions at the universities. The narrative strategies that were identified were the following: otherness, minority complex, language barrier, scientific excellence, political background, equal distribution of powerful positions, and open possibilities. The narrative strategies defined this way help to approach, discuss, and verify the hypothesis in a more nuanced way.

Difficulties building a career in academia for ethnic minority women

The qualitative analysis begins with HFP2 from SSH, who at the time of interview was studying at a minority language department in Novi Sad and the Teacher Training Faculty in Hungarian in Subotica. She emphasized that being a member of a Hungarian minority can be both advantageous and disadvantageous, depending on where one lives. For instance, minority belonging is certainly an advantage if one lives in Subotica (the city closest to the Hungarian border in that region), where almost 40% of all citizens are Hungarians, hence there is a greater chance of being accepted. However, being a woman and member of an ethnic minority in a predominantly majority academic environment is more challenging:

I did not face any difficulties regarding my nationality. I am convinced that it depends on where you live. For example, in Subotica, there is a place for Hungarians and there always has been. But I am sure that a Hungarian woman would encounter difficulties at the University of Novi Sad in a Serb majority environment. First, she has a different perspective, maybe she faces a language barrier or speaks with a foreign accent, maybe because of her minority community membership she is not accepted well. I do not know for sure, but I think that she has to fight harder than members of the majority. (HFP2)

HFP2’s interview excerpt suggests that she uses a narrative strategy of otherness to explain a set of invisible biases such as a language barrier or a foreign accent (Russo et al., 2017). The interviewee notes the importance of the context: being among ‘one’s own’ protects one from otherness.

HFP9 was a ‘demonstrator’⁵ at the university in a STEM field at the time of the interview. She pointed out that she was not paid for this position, nor did she have any guarantee that a paid position would become open to her in the future. She particularly emphasized the influence her father had had on her insecurity. Namely, her father was convinced that she could never get a paid job at the university because of her Hungarian origins:

My father told me a few years ago: ‘‘Do you realize that you’re never going to get into the university as a professor, or as a teaching assistant?’ I asked ‘why?’ ‘Because you are a Hungarian!’ He ‘implanted’ this thought in my head, and sometimes I think about this, because, in fact, I no longer see how my situation could be resolved/ (HFP9)

Although she did not mention any specific cases or experiences of direct or indirect discrimination, the quote implies that she directly linked her disadvantaged position at the faculty with her ethnicity (Aavik, 2015; Morrison et al., 1987). Her father’s claims were further strengthened by the fact that, although she was an exceptional student, she had not had the support of professors when building an academic career, which she explicitly talked about in the continuation of the interview. She relied on a narrative strategy of a minority complex (Maran, 2013) to explain her situation.⁶

RFP1, a professor in SSH studies in a minority language department, emphasized in her narrative the language barrier as a major obstacle to women from ethnic minority communities in the academic environment. More specifically, even though Romanian is her mother tongue, it was difficult for her to teach Romanian as a foreign language in Serbian. Her experience can be linked to earlier research on ethnic minority students, a majority of whom were unbalanced bilinguals, characterized by a very low level of Serbian proficiency (Filipović et al., 2007). The former situation applies equally to students who are Romanians and who chose to study Romanian language and literature, but due to a high level of assimilation speak the language of their origin poorly or not at all. This phenomenon is supported by the following quotation:

I think that, in this case, language-related difficulty is a very important factor. Someone who speaks with their family members only in Romanian and finishes schooling in Romanian and after that has to continue their education in Serbian, or to speak only in Serbian, must face great difficulty. I face it when teaching my students, who do not speak Romanian, in Serbian. This is may be important [in the academic environment], [the] language-related difficulty. (RFP1)

Based on the narrative of RFP1, it can be concluded that a language barrier narrative strategy is used to explain the limiting factors in the careers of ethnic minority women.

Ethnic minority women reaching decision-making positions

The qualitative part of the analysis that supports the second hypothesis starts with an interview excerpt from HFP1, a professor in STEM studies who held different positions during the socialist era. She was also a vice-dean long after the end of this era. She used a narrative strategy of otherness in a reverse way (Jensen, 2011) – i.e., not in a negative sense, but in order to show that she had benefitted from it, and to explain how she was selected for her current position because she was a member of an ethnic minority and a woman:

I was the head of an institute for many years. I was the vice-dean as well for one term, although I did not apply for a second term. In the city, during communism, there was a list of the qualities needed for obtaining a decision-making position. So, for the positions where they were looking for a female Hungarian engineer, I was the only one who was suitable. I was Hungarian, a woman, married, and an assistant professor as well. People were very curious about who this person was who possessed all the listed qualities. So, for many years I held various positions, like in the Social Union. I also worked in the House of Representatives for years, then on the main committee, the personnel committee, which still exists, and on the Serbian National Theatre board of directors, which still exists as well. (HFP1)

HFP8, a professor in STEM studies, which are less open to women (Blagojević, 2009), had a very clear sense of balancing her otherness by using it as a strategy and narrating how a woman from the Hungarian ethnic minority has to have an excellent scientific background to obtain a high level position at the faculty:

I think that a Hungarian woman has to know more than others do. She has to demonstrate skills and results that only a few have, to prove that she excels. This is needed for them [other members of the academic community] to accept you and to follow you as well. (HFP8)

HFP8’s narrative is in line with Acker and Armenti’s argument (2004) concerning women from minority groups who face additional pressures: i.e., cultural taxation (Tierney and Bensimon, 1996). Cultural taxation also includes working with students from the same minority group, which the respondent mentions as one of her academic activities. Namely, she explained how she always mentors Hungarian students for the Hungarian Scientific Conference of Vojvodinian Students (HSCVS), which takes place annually at the University of Novi Sad:

Now I have three students for the HSCVS. Every year I gather a few Hungarian students who would like to take part in the HSCVS, and I work with them on a scientific topic. (HFP8)

HFP11, who was a young member of a STEM teaching staff, reported that young women could get a decision-making position only if they worked diligently and took upon themselves all related responsibilities. She did not see herself in a decision-making role. Justifying her attitude, she used a narrative strategy of political involvement, implying that dealing with politics in academia is hard:

I think a Hungarian woman can reach a decision-making position, but only with a lot of work . . . So, what I notice lately is that I am receding, I do not take on additional obligations. Because – I am not saying I am scared of work . . . – but . . . [in decision-making positions] too much politics is involved, and you need to be able to deal with people. My biggest concern, I think, is my sense of justice. Concerning students, bosses, and colleagues. I find it very difficult to swallow injustice, for example, when someone is promoted for something that is ultimately not due to their merit. (HFP11)

HFP13, a young scholar from SSH, used scientific excellence as a narrative strategy to account for her success:

In my opinion, if someone excels as a researcher in her field, then she can get a decision-making position. Yes. There is growing emphasis on how strong someone is in the field of their research, how well she is acknowledged, how famous she is. But of course, other things are needed as well. (HFP13)

The last sentence of the quote by HFP13 reflects an assumption that the existence of a meritocracy is still very uncertain (Pető, 2018), even though scientific excellence is now easily measurable due to pre-defined requirements.

Both professors from the Slovak ethnic minority answered the question whether women from ethnic minorities can reach decision-making positions in academia positively. In this sense, they used a narrative strategy of open possibilities. SLFP2 limited herself to discussing an environment with which she is well-acquainted – the faculty she works at (i.e., in SSH studies), highlighting that she cannot speak with assurance about other faculties. However, historical data indicate that at this particular faculty there have not been any ethnic minority women deans.

It is possible, I think it is, at our faculty – yes. I am not sure about others. At our faculty, a lot of foreign- and other languages of national minorities are studied, and that is one of the characteristics of this faculty. I have not noticed any discrimination regarding this issue. I think they can. (SLFP2)

RFP1 stated that in order for someone to hold the position of dean, one needs significant support from the Romanian National Council (a state-funded political body), as well as from all the academic staff at the faculty, and she believes that such a situation is not likely to happen with a member of a minority:

I have never thought about whether a dean will ever be a Romanian. This could happen, but I do not know whether we would have the support of people from other departments, for us to become deans . . . I am now the vice-head of the department, we have agreed here at the department that we will rotate these positions, so we will all have our turn, we will not fight to be head of department. (RFP1)

In the first part of her narrative, she uses a political background narrative strategy. It is important to note that RFP1 points out that a member of a Romanian minority stands a chance (although she does not explicitly speak of women) if the choice is broadly agreed upon and grounded on the external political support of the Romanian National Council. In this sense, ethnic cohesiveness might be of help in steering members into leading positions, as occurred with HFP4 in Subotica. However, the ethnic cohesiveness in question does not refer to a gender-based cohesiveness as well. The political background strategy is mentioned in the narratives of women from minority communities as an element necessary for career advancement, but at the same time they have a degree of repulsion towards building a political background for themselves. The political background in their narratives can relate to both the external and internal politics of the institution.

In the other part of her narrative, RFP1 uses a narrative strategy concerning the equal distribution of powerful positions and reveals a situation that is of crucial importance in her minority language department: that there is agreement amongst its members that all of them will become department head. The small size of such departments makes this practice possible within minority ethnic enclaves. Furthermore, at minority language departments it is often mostly (or only) women who are employed, so it is less challenging to claim that women from ethnic minorities may reach positions of power.

Conclusions

Ethnic minority female professors used a set of narrative strategies to justify and explain their status and attitudes in relation to the academic context. To start with, a narrative strategy of otherness was employed to stress a sense of alienation in the academic (predominantly majority) structure, while one respondent used a strategy of the minority complex, which suggested that a member of the ethnic minority community is pre-destined to fail. A narrative strategy of scientific excellence explains the implicit pressure which an ethnic minority woman can be burdened by, and which makes her believe that she must excel in relation to her colleagues. A narrative strategy of political involvement assumes that, in terms of reaching-decision making positions, there is too much political influence on the academic community. A political background narrative strategy can empower minority community members in terms of cohesiveness at the ethnic level. A strategy of the equal distribution of powerful positions reveals an important feature of ethnic minority women’s positions in their ethnic enclaves (for example, rotation of ethnic minority female academic staff members in power positions within their own departments, regardless of any political background). Moreover, an open possibilities strategy presumes that there are equal chances for members of minority communities to attain high positions in academia. Finally, a language barrier narrative strategy was used by respondents to explain the situation in which minority women struggle to build their careers in academia because they feel unequal to majority academic staff members due to a language barrier.

Our intersectional analysis showed that ethnic minority women struggle with invisible biases at the individual level in terms of their sense of belonging and otherness. They possess greater awareness of their ethnicity than of their gender (Aavik, 2015), which situation is somewhat connected to the language barrier they have to overcome when entering the higher education system, while some of them also subsequently struggle because they speak with an accent (Russo et al., 2017). Having succeeded in building an academic career, women do not question their social status in a traditional society built upon patriarchal values (Blagojević Hjuson, 2015). They accept the position of gatekeepers of their ethnic walls, since minority women are mainly present in departments in which minority culture, literature, and languages are studied – accordingly, their role is to preserve the nation (Korać, 1996), which may be facilitated by fostering ethnic identity, as well as minority language. Minority women are faced with cultural taxation, being burdened by the additional expectation that they should mentor and support students from minority communities (Tierney and Bensimon, 1996).

Ethnic minority women face difficulties due to horizontal gender-based segregation between STEM and SSH fields. Although men from ethnic minorities are employed in STEM fields, women from ethnic minorities are underrepresented, even in relation to the total number of women in these areas (Lendák-Kabók, 2018a). This can be explained by the fact that STEM disciplines are seen as ‘male’ areas of study, and are thus de facto predominantly male environments. When combined with the factor of ethnicity, such gendered constellations are difficult to overcome, as confirmed by previous research – for example, by Blagojević (2009). Women from minority communities working in STEM emphasized that they need to be exceptional individuals and have a brilliant scientific career behind them for others to accept and follow their ideas and projects. What they also are confronted by and must overcome is the double jeopardy of being women in STEM areas – a significantly male-dominated field (Williams et al., 2014).

Finally, I found, in accordance with earlier studies, that women do not perceive gender and ethnicity as an intersectional bias, but rather focus solely on their ethnic belonging (Aavik, 2015; Morrison et al., 1987) when narrating the potential difficulties they encounter in obtaining decision-making positions. The analysis showed that decision-making positions are guaranteed to ethnic minority women who work within their (presumed) ethnic enclaves (such as at departments for ethnic minority languages). In these domains they can advance hierarchically, since (among other reasons) they are not seen as competitors of the majority population (women and men) who do not teach (or speak) minority languages. If both male and female ethnic minority staff were proportionally employed at departments, it would be logical to assume that ethnic minority men would climb the career ladder faster than minority women. Such a situation occurred, for instance, at the Hungarian Language and Literature Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, where male staff members had occupied decision-making positions for years. Today, there are no male staff members at the department, which has opened up the space for minority women leaders. Thus we can conclude that, except for in ethnic enclaves, gender and ethnicity effectively obstruct most ethnic minority women from reaching decision-making positions, leading them to encounter the glass ceiling in the Serbian academic community.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would hereby like to thank my interview respondents for trusting me with their stories, which ought to serve as not only research material, but also to shed light on ethnic minority women and increase their visibility in scholarly work. I would also like to thank the editor-in-chief and managing editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies, whose support was invaluable to me, as to an early career researcher. Last, I would like to thank the reviewers of this article whose comments led to substantial improvements.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Karolina Lendák – Kabók

Notes

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