Guest editorial: Racially minoritised women academics in the global academy

• Date: 27 January 2025
• Pages: 1-8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-02-2025-549
• Published date: 27 January 2025
• Author: Yaz Iyabo Osho

Guest editorial:

Racially minoritised women

academics in the global academy

While the terms to refer to BAME, BME, POC, and BIPOC evolve, the experiences of these groups,

particularly those facing intersectional disadvantages, remain largely the same.

This Special Issue, akin to the evolving field of EDI theory and practice, has changed direction,

which, of course, is part of a scholarly process of peer review and response to the field of

research. Wehave witnessed changes in words, phrases, collective terms and acronyms used to

refer to racially minoritised individuals and communities in recent times. The Special Issue,

conceived in 2022, coincided with the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement, the

proliferation of spending on organisational EDI/DEI initiatives and widespread contention

over terms to refer to racially minoritised people.

About terminology

From the outset, this Special Issue was positioned as one that would explore the experiences of

what were commonly termed “BAME” women academics within the context of the global

academy. As a result, the initial title for this Special Issue was “BAME Women Academics in

the Global Academy”. For editorial reasons, a couple of years passed between the proposal

submission to Emerald and the writing of this Guest Editor Introduction to the Special Issue,

which moves us to the present day,and the new title: “Racially Minoritised WomenAcademics

in the Global Academy”.

Although terms for heterogeneous and minoritised communities have always been

fractious, contentious and changeable, this discussion has rapidly gained pace in the last three

years. Moreover, in the UK, where the term “BAME” was most used (Law Society, 2023;

Selvarajah et al., 2020), a report commissioned by the UK Prime Minister found that aggregate

terms such as “BAME” were unhelpful in describing different ethnic groups and should be

“dropped” (Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, 2021). Likewise, BAME can be seen

as “unhelpful, misleading and [in] conflict with the rigour of modern research” (Roche et al.,

2024, p. 201).

In part, it is arguable that this contention reached its peak at the height ofthe global outbreak

of COVID-19, where racially minoritised communities were disproportionately impacted

in terms of mortality and morbidity along with the worsening of existing inequalities

(Bhatia, 2020;Public Health England, 2020). In this context, it was found to be essential to

disaggregate data collected across ethnic groupings to uncover the real impact of the virus

(Parliament, 2020) drawing attention to the woefully problematic use of “BAME”.

Although, on a global scale, there is no agreed term or satisfactory definition to denote the

groups that are often referred to as “ethnic minorities”, “POC”, “BAME”, “ethnically diverse”

or “BIPOC”, there are some categorisations that are less contentious, for instance, terms such

as Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) and racially minoritised, the latter of which this Editorial

adopts. The use of GEM positions ethnicities within a rightfully global context, and the term

racially minoritised spotlights the social process shaped by power, as well as the process of

positioning groups as a minority. The preference for the use of “racially minoritised” is multi-

faceted. First, racially minoritised explicitly encompasses a social constructivist approach in

recognising that individuals, groups and communities are minoritised by others as opposed to

naturally existing as a minority (Gunaratnum, 2003). Second, the term centres “race”, unlike

“BAME” or GEM. Racially minoritised speaks to an acknowledgement that some groups,

Equality,Diversity

and Inclusion: An

International

Journal

1

Equality,Diversity and Inclusion: An

InternationalJournal

Vol.44 No. 1, 2025

pp.1-8

©Emerald Publishing Limited

e-ISSN:2040-7157

p-ISSN:2040-7149

DOI10.1108/EDI-02-2025-549