View from the mountain top: Chinese women academics’ perceptions of experiences in career development - a feminist critical perspective

Abstract

According to findings in international research, women academics face many obstacles in career development, but they embrace career expectations and possibilities as well. This research seeks to explore the experiences of elite Mainland Chinese women academics’ career development. It recruited 20 women from Chinese “double first-class” universities and investigated their strategies to thrive in academia, what they perceived as important in their career paths, and if doing a doctorate locally or internationally made a difference to their experience of an academic career. I conducted the research qualitatively by narrative inquiry through a fictional story completion and semistructured, in-depth interviews. I employed critical discourse analysis in data analysis along with analytical concepts from the work of Judith Butler. Based on the narratives, I identified the following matters as important among these women academics in their career development: their perceptions of the performance of gendered subjectivities throughout doctoral education, the fusion of different identities in career development, and the inscribed bodies of work–life balance in motherhood. These aspects constructed their gender and academic subjectivities and identities in the male-dominated, neoliberal academic context of elite Chinese higher education. The women academics also showed resistance to repositioning themselves in institutions. The tension between the gender constraints they experienced and their academic career aspirations contributed to their temporal and fluid identities. An important contribution this thesis makes is the extension of our knowledge about the career experiences and aspirations of elite Chinese women academics, including those who received overseas doctorates, through the use of Butlerian theory.