Science as a field of struggle: Gendered experiences of African scholars doing forest governance research

Abstract

Building on scholarship addressing gender inequality in forestry, this paper investigates how African scholars experience gendered struggles in doing forest governance research. Employing Bourdieu's theoretical lens of science as a (gendered) social field of struggle, we consider scholars' participation in academia as shaped by dispositions related to gender, locality and other social dimensions of difference. Based on interviews with twenty female and male scholars affiliated with research organisations in African countries, we examine how these dispositions affect their experiences as academics in forest governance research. Therefore, we adopt an integrative interpretative approach to interview analysis focusing on narratives, positionings and discursive dynamics.

We present our empirical results according to two core themes: gendered experiences of struggle in reconciling family commitments with the requirements of scientific productivity and mobility; and gendered experiences of struggle related to doing science in male-dominated research environments. The study reveals that African women scholars in the field encounter specific difficulties in meeting the requirements of scientific productivity and mobility due to patriarchal gender orders. Aside from difficulties to reconcile their roles as wives, mothers and academics, they are confronted with instances of marginalisation in forest research discourse and fieldwork. The picture emerging from the empirical data is that the complexity of struggles female African scholars experience and the great efforts they need to make to participate in forest governance research remain somewhat ‘invisible’ in academic contexts. We argue that future research needs to explore more how socio-cultural conditions create specific barriers for women in scientific fields.