Female Academics in Higher Education: Conducting Qualitative Research against All Odds

Abstract

This piece brings together the experiences of four Chilean researchers and one Spanish researcher with different professional backgrounds (psychology, sociology, nursing, and education), who conduct qualitative inquiry from other approaches, moments, and gender-sensitive topics of interest in the border regions of Arica and Parinacota, and Tarapacá, both in northern Chile; the capital Santiago; and in Andalucía, southern Spain. In this paper, the authors problematize their research experiences by focusing on their condition as academics conducting qualitative research in the context of neoliberal higher education and with a pandemic affecting all spheres of life. Finally, they explore what their experiences have been like in leading government-funded research projects and representing the voices of underrepresented people in different spheres of life in the field of education and health. Voices are shared to identify challenges and assess implications for qualitative research in these difficult times in the academy.

Keywords

• gender
• academic life
• female experiences
• qualitative research
• collaborative [auto]ethnography