Whisper network knowledge of BAME women in academia: a critical realist, critical race feminist theory model of theorising inequality regimes

• Date: 01 May 2024
• Pages: 61-76
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-03-2023-0093
• Published date: 01 May 2024
• Author: Angela Martinez Dy

Whisper network knowledge of

BAME women in academia:

a critical realist, critical race

feminist theory model of theorising

inequality regimes

Angela Martinez Dy

Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Loughborough University London,

London, UK

Abstract

Purpose –This paper introduces a new approach to theorising and learning from Black, Asian and Minority

Ethnic (BAME) women’s experiences of inequality in academia. It offers a versatile model with which the

structure of a particular racist-sexist inequality regime can be theorised from empirical evidence.

Design/methodology/approach –The paper presents composite, fictionalised accounts of intersectional

discrimination which are then analysed through critical realist frameworks, employing critical race feminist

theory insights. This novel “whisper network”method centres the knowledge of BAME women in academia,

and is translatable to other marginalised actors, offering a more protective means by which to access their

knowledge as a foundation for organisational change.

Findings –Through theorising the ontological arrangement of key causal mechanisms responsible for the

reproduction of inequality regimes, the paper illuminates links between micro-level intersectional

discrimination and meso-level institutional inequality.

Research limitations/implications –In order to preserve anonymity and reduce potential backlash, the

vignettes in this paper are not intended to precisely capture specific empirical realities, but instead reflect wider

patterns from the author’s own whisper network knowledge. Nonetheless, the analytical method developed here

could be applied to rigorously collected empirical data, with clear implications for improving organisational practice.

Practical implications –The paper offers a structured and systematic process by which qualitative data on

institutional inequality can be analysed and stakeholders engaged to develop and propose solutions, even by

individuals new to the field.

Social implications –A methodical basis for strategicaction addressing the issues revealed through such an

analysis can be developed in order to galvanise and steer organisational change.

Originality/value –The novelty of the paper is twofold: in its original synthesis of critical realist depth

ontology and ontologicalinsights from critical race feminist theory about social structures of oppression, and in

the development of the innovative “whisper network”method based upon a critical race theory counter-

storytelling epistemology, in conversation with the emergent stream of literature within feminist organisation

studies regarding the importance of “writing differently”.

Keywords Academia, Anti-Racism, Intersectionality, Critical race theory, Critical realism, Feminism, Race,

White supremacy, Racism, Sexism, Universities, Whisper networks, Women of colour

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

In UK academia, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women are not only subject to

discrimination and unequal treatment on the basis of both race and gender, but also burdened

BAME women’s

whisper

network

knowledge

61

The author would like to acknowledge collective members and participants in the Building the Anti-

Racist Classroom (BARC) workshop series (2018-2020) and members of the Loughborough University

BAME Staff Network (2019-2023) for sharing the many resonant and interconnected stories informing

this paper. May our collective knowledge continue to inspire anti-racist transformation.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-

for-profit sectors.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 29 March 2023

Revised 2 October 2023

6 February 2024

Accepted 20 February 2024

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 44 No. 1, 2025

pp. 61-76

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-03-2023-0093

with having to “fix”institutional inequalities, often seeing their careers suffer as a result

(Ahmed, 2012;Gabriel, 2020;Johnson, 2020;Salmon, 2021). Black and women of colour

feminists’extensive theorising on intersectionality, or the co-construction of structures of

oppression such as race and gender, has heavily influenced both feminism and social theory

at large (Cho et al., 2013;Christoffersen and Emejulu, 2023;Collins, 2019). However, the deep

ontological knowledge that BAME women studying and working in academia often possess

about how organisational inequality is (re)produced in the sector is still marginalised - not

only within the management and organisation studies field (Dar, 2019;Dar et al., 2020) but in

the sector as a whole, since BAME women tend to be “excluded from the participatory process

of formulating the academic canon and academic management structures”(Lazos Vargas,

2003, p. 6). Often based on shared understandings of lived experience, the form and content of

BAME women’s knowledge is delegitimated in university settings, leaving it under-theorised

and underutilised, and inhibiting its potential to galvanise and direct organisational change.

To counter this manifestation of epistemic injustice, which occurs when the knowledge of

certain knowers is systematically marginalised or suppressed (Fricker, 2017), both theoretical

and methodological innovation is necessary. To this end, this paperdevelops an intersectional

feminist “whisper network”approach to theorisingfrom BAME women academics’knowledge

of institutionalracism-sexismwithin a fictionalisedUK higher education institution,based on a

novel critical realist, critical race theory (CRT) perspective. Encouraged by work within

feminist managementand organisation studies(MOS) that challenges how “scientific”writing

normsgovern knowledge generation(Gilmore et al.,2019),it develops three compositevignettes

of exclusionary racist-sexist experiences faced by BAME women at a fictionalised UK

university. The vignettes are then collectively analysed using CRT and critical realist

retrodiction; a cross-case analysis clearly reveals patterns of institutional racism-sexism

emerging acrossmultiple problem spaces.Examining seemingly isolatedincidents in this way

can illuminatethe presence and operationof meso-level inequalityregimes (Acker,2006;Alfrey

and Twine, 2017;Healy etal., 2011). This work thus introducesand demonstrates the potential

of a novel meansby which to better apprehendthe deep structural inequalities experiencedby

BAME women in UK academia, while protecting individuals through composite anonymised

accounts, exhibiting potential for cross-sectoral applications.

Racialised organisations in a post-race society

A rich tradition of critical race, postcolonial and decolonial scholarship articulates how race

and white supremacy came to be constitutive aspects of modernity (Bhattacharyya, 2018;

Mills, 1997;Mohanty, 2003;Omi and Winant, 1994;Wynter, 1999). In particular, the linked

histories of imperial colonisation, indigenous genocide, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade

were central to the formation of race, as well as continuous resistance to its confines. Scholars

of racial capitalism further explain how, in Global North societies, power and wealth come to

be concentrated amongst white people in urban centres, predominantly men of Anglo-

European descent (Danewid, 2020;Dantzler, 2021). Across disciplines, racism and its

corollary, racial inequality, are found to have profound deleterious institutional and

interpersonal effects on the material and discursive realities of racialised minority groups

(Ford and Airhihenbuwa, 2018;Laster Pirtle, 2020), which are further compounded by the

effects of other structural inequalities.

In response,racialised minority groups(Black, Indigenous, and Peopleof Colour - BIPOC in

US terminology, Black,Asian and Minority Ethnic - BAME in UK) have, throughouthistory,

continually engagedin anti-racist struggles, made political andmaterial gains, and fomented

legal, structural and cultural change. However, after each period of progress, a cultural

backlashtends to occur, joined by a range of materialviolences (Liu et al.,2021). Recentdecades

have seen the normalisation of a “post-race”colour-blind ideology and race-evasive dominant

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