Today is the first day of the MITACoach Workshop. A key component of the workshop, besides the workbook, curated readings, and flash consultation with me, is storytelling.
I started MITACoach as a way to help mothers working in the academy find support and community. As mothers and as academics there is a lot of pressure not to share our complex stories. The editors of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia write movingly about the many women faculty members who wanted to share their stories about being in the academy in this anthology, but who decided they couldn’t publish their experiences because they were afraid of the professional backlash. Today we’re starting to break that silence by telling about our experiences and so gaining community and and support.
I firmly believe that our academic institutions are better when everyone has a seat at the table. Feminist theories of knowledge production have demonstrated that we produce much more complete pictures of the world when we have researchers who come from a diversity of viewpoints. Retaining mothers in graduate school and as faculty members would be a huge step in the right direction, and one way to do that is to have our experiences validated.
MITAcoach 