Decolonising British higher education: underrepresentation of women academics of colour (WAC) in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculties

Abodunrin, Abimbola Olatunde (2026) Decolonising British higher education: underrepresentation of women academics of colour (WAC) in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculties. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This study explores the underrepresentation of women academics of colour (WAC hereafter) in British STEM academia, building upon a substantial body of research highlighting the glaring and seemingly intractable lack of diversity within UK STEM faculties (Advance HE, 2024a; HESA, 2025a; Royal Society, 2024; WISE, 2023) and across global STEM academia that reflects a broader pattern of exclusion as documented in international reports (for e.g., UNESCO, 2023b, 2024a). Situated within the context of numerical inequity and epistemological otherness, the study explores how the career experiences of WAC are shaped by particular power relations and dynamics reflected in academic cultures and institutional practices. In particular, I sought to unpack the extent to which gendered and racial identities intersect to influence and constrain the career experiences of WAC, particularly in relation to their progression and retention in STEM. Simultaneously, I explored how WAC subvert the power of dominant discourses through micro-practices of resistance and the ‘technologies of self’ - to exercise power, negotiate and sometimes reproduce the very hegemonic cultures that serve to marginalise them. In search for answers around the underlying processes that pose barriers towards equitable representation for these women, I drew majorly on Saidian post-colonial (including other post-colonial scholars and feminist) and Foucauldian poststructuralist feminist lens to conceptualise knowledge/power relations both as a discursive force that produces epistemological binaries of East (the orientalised Other) and West (the civilisational other) and as fluid, discursively constructed, and temporally relational. This allowed for an analysis that shifts subjective narratives to a structural understanding of how broader institutional cultures and practices serve to perpetuate inequities along gender and ‘race’ lines, informing an analysis of the ways in which discursive practices, potentially linked to epistemologically orientalist power dynamics, shape and influence the conduct of WAC in STEM spaces, and how they are constituted as subjects of knowledge. Methodologically, the study is grounded in an interpretivist onto-epistemology, employing a qualitative research approach through 17 semi-structured online interviews (15 with WAC and two with senior faculty members) facilitated through timeline maps designed to foreground participants’ agency in shaping the trajectory of the research focus as well as enabling a nuanced understanding of pivotal moments, institutional dynamics, and identity negotiations that shaped their career trajectories. Drawing on a mix of thematic and discourse analysis, the findings of the study are underpinned by four overarching themes that revolve around intersecting discourses that shape the marginalisation of WAC in STEM, including dynamics of tokenistic visibility, the masculinisation of scientific identity, institutional penalties linked to care and partnership, and the tension of negotiation of belonging. Together, these findings foreground how gendered and racialised structures constrain career progression while also producing ambivalent forms of resistance that both challenge and, at times, inadvertently reproduce exclusionary norms.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Supported by funding from a College of Social Sciences PhD Scholarship.
• Subjects: L Education > L Education (General); L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Funder's Name: College of Social Sciences PhD Scholarship
• Supervisor's Name: Read, Professor Barbara and Slade, Professor Bonnie
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-85774
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 20 Feb 2026 14:37
• Last Modified: 21 Feb 2026 12:56
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85774
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85774