Unveiling Lived Realities: Narratives of South Asian Indian Women in Academia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The submitted paper illustrates, through its authors’ narratives, their experiences related to mentorship, being mentored, and becoming mentors, scholars, and academics across their individual personal and professional life spans. Aiming at unveiling the lived realities of academics from the Global South, the authors. three South Asian Indian academics with differing generational statuses address the cultural rules and roles that influence South Asian women’s experiences in their familial and societal spheres; the pressures around negotiating family needs, work pressures, and departmental fairness abound in university settings that privilege men faculty, and how female mentoring help women faculty navigate sexist barriers.
As the authors point out, their personal narratives resonate with the literature. These show “a deep respect for authority without even questioning it or knowing how to be professionally and found vulnerability with each other (…) or other people of color across different spaces in time (…) and learned to grow [their] voices while indirectly learning how to decolonize through making room for intersectionality”. The authors’ personal narratives also illustrate the challenges of a “bi-cultural negotiation” that South Asian women face, as they “must participate in; different social instructions at home vs in academia; at home it was more of a one-directional relationship between family members in a hierarchical collectivistic fashion, whereas in academia the expectation was that it was more of a collective dialogue based on egalitarianism and individualism”.
The authors conclude that “highlighting the use of personal narratives acknowledges the importance of vulnerability, subjectivity, and self-advocacy in academia while addressing the nuances of intersectionality”, and hope that the exposed narratives may “support women in finding their own voices and feel support in creating new frameworks within the academic cultures as well as the family cultures that they are a part of, not only in being emblematic of walking the walk of lived realities, but also serving as a role model and mentor for future generations of women of color who aspire to be in academia and also have structural support”.
While women's representation in academia and their international mobility are growing phenomena, migrant women faculty from the Global South face relentless gendered barriers to career advancement and work-life balance in academic settings. Therefore, the issue addressed in the proposed paper is highly relevant to pursuing an inclusive and gender-sensitive university. However, the submitted manuscript presents too many blind spots, leading me to think that not even a thorough revision would allow it to contribute to the literature on gender equality in academic leadership. The fact that the authors share personal narratives for gender awareness will undoubtedly be welcomed once disseminated through channels other than a scientific journal. Indeed, the action-oriented paper is unsuitable for a scientific peer-reviewed journal that aims to present the newest relevant and emerging scholarship. Hence, and for the following fundamental reasons, I recommend rejecting it.
First, the paper intends to use authors’ personal narratives as a “way of mentorship, where sharing of our vulnerability in hopes that it will help potential mentees to find themselves in our stories, to feel a sense of community and open up possibilities for other truths to emerge”. So because the paper’s objective - i.e., “to open space for awareness and self-reflection for feminist solidarity” - is practical and not a research-oriented one. Because the paper’s aim is not to explore but to illustrate, the presented work does not go beyond the present measurable and verifiable objectives.
Second, while there is an appropriate overview of the context of women faculty of color, their family vs career dilemmas and the need for new mentorship models, the paper does not present a theoretical section discussing how different concepts from feminist gender studies would be brought together and integrated to pursue the paper’s objectives. In sum, the paper lacks a framework for research and data analysis.
Third, the paper does not present a section identifying the methodological challenges, making it impossible to assess the research strategy, models and assumptions that underpin the project beyond presenting the virtues of the action-oriented approach of illustrating authors’ experiences through personal narratives.
Lastly, while the personal narratives presented are interesting and valuable to the pragmatical goals settled by the authors, the paper does not show significant findings nor properly discuss them in the Conclusion section to demonstrate how far it goes beyond the state of the art.
Author Response
November 30, 2024
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Unveiling Lived Realities: Narratives of South Asian Indian Women in Academia” for publication in the Social Science Journal, Special Issue: Feminist Solidarity, Resistance, and Social Justice. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments that will make our paper better. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers. We have copied and highlighted the concerns, and we provided our responses. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Instead of referencing page numbers we have copied and pasted what was added in response, with an explanation as well as highlighted them in the document.
Reviewer 1:
The submitted paper illustrates, through its authors’ narratives, their experiences related to mentorship, being mentored, and becoming mentors, scholars, and academics across their individual personal and professional life spans. Aiming at unveiling the lived realities of academics from the Global South, the authors. three South Asian Indian academics with differing generational statuses address the cultural rules and roles that influence South Asian women’s experiences in their familial and societal spheres; the pressures around negotiating family needs, work pressures, and departmental fairness abound in university settings that privilege men faculty, and how female mentoring help women faculty navigate sexist barriers.
As the authors point out, their personal narratives resonate with the literature. These show “a deep respect for authority without even questioning it or knowing how to be professionally and found vulnerability with each other (…) or other people of color across different spaces in time (…) and learned to grow [their] voices while indirectly learning how to decolonize through making room for intersectionality”. The authors’ personal narratives also illustrate the challenges of a “bi-cultural negotiation” that South Asian women face, as they “must participate in; different social instructions at home vs in academia; at home it was more of a one-directional relationship between family members in a hierarchical collectivistic fashion, whereas in academia the expectation was that it was more of a collective dialogue based on egalitarianism and individualism”.
The authors conclude that “highlighting the use of personal narratives acknowledges the importance of vulnerability, subjectivity, and self-advocacy in academia while addressing the nuances of intersectionality”, and hope that the exposed narratives may “support women in finding their own voices and feel support in creating new frameworks within the academic cultures as well as the family cultures that they are a part of, not only in being emblematic of walking the walk of lived realities, but also serving as a role model and mentor for future generations of women of color who aspire to be in academia and also have structural support”.
While women's representation in academia and their international mobility are growing phenomena, migrant women faculty from the Global South face relentless gendered barriers to career advancement and work-life balance in academic settings. Therefore, the issue addressed in the proposed paper is highly relevant to pursuing an inclusive and gender-sensitive university. However, the submitted manuscript presents too many blind spots, leading me to think that not even a thorough revision would allow it to contribute to the literature on gender equality in academic leadership. The fact that the authors share personal narratives for gender awareness will undoubtedly be welcomed once disseminated through channels other than a scientific journal. Indeed, the action-oriented paper is unsuitable for a scientific peer-reviewed journal that aims to present the newest relevant and emerging scholarship. Hence, and for the following fundamental reasons, I recommend rejecting it.
First, the paper intends to use authors’ personal narratives as a “way of mentorship, where sharing of our vulnerability in hopes that it will help potential mentees to find themselves in our stories, to feel a sense of community and open up possibilities for other truths to emerge”. So because the paper’s objective - i.e., “to open space for awareness and self-reflection for feminist solidarity” - is practical and not a research-oriented one. Because the paper’s aim is not to explore but to illustrate, the presented work does not go beyond the present measurable and verifiable objectives.
Second, while there is an appropriate overview of the context of women faculty of color, their family vs career dilemmas and the need for new mentorship models, the paper does not present a theoretical section discussing how different concepts from feminist gender studies would be brought together and integrated to pursue the paper’s objectives. In sum, the paper lacks a framework for research and data analysis.
Third, the paper does not present a section identifying the methodological challenges, making it impossible to assess the research strategy, models and assumptions that underpin the project beyond presenting the virtues of the action-oriented approach of illustrating authors’ experiences through personal narratives.
Lastly, while the personal narratives presented are interesting and valuable to the pragmatical goals settled by the authors, the paper does not show significant findings nor properly discuss them in the Conclusion section to demonstrate how far it goes beyond the state of the art.
Our response: Thank you for your comments. We can see why this impression is suggested and the recommendation of a stronger structure and backing. We don’t intend to imply that we had no methodology. We want to reiterate that this manuscript is a reflection of experiences of what worked in analyzing discourse. We have added more language to speak to this and added a methodology section specifically.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsSee the attached review for the Authors
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Reviewer 2:
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Unveiling Lived Realities: Narratives of South Asian Indian Women in Academia” for publication in the Social Science Journal, Special Issue: Feminist Solidarity, Resistance, and Social Justice. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments that will make our paper better. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers. We have copied and highlighted the concerns, and we provided our responses. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Instead of referencing page numbers we have copied and pasted what was added in response, with an explanation as well as highlighted them in the document.
Report on the paper \Unveiling Lived Realities: Narratives of
South Asian Indian Women in Academia"
November 14, 2024
In this paper the authors present the experiences of three women in academia, who are
Indian or 1rst- or 2nd-generation Indian migrants in the US. Their stories, as dark-skinned
women in academia in the US, originating from a Southern Asian country, speci_cally from
India, question the whole process of integration in a mostly white society, and may serve as
role models for women who would be in the same situation in academia.
The _rst section deals with `Understanding the context', in terms of `Careers vs Family',
`South Asian female faculty of colors', and `Female mentoring and needs for new mentoring
models'. The second section is dedicated to the stories of each of the three authors. The article
ends with a one-page conclusion, discussing some ideas on what to do for female academics
who _nd themselves in a situation similar to that one or more of the authors.
The paper is well-written. The narratives, especially, are unique and are worth being
published as they are. The authors particularly discuss the role of mentors in their lives,
mostly male mentors. Each story also shows how female mentors enter in the life of these
women, when they precisely look for their female mentors{{their presence and their action are
not obvious, at _rst.
In view of all that has been written above in this report, the referee considers that this
paper, after taking into account the speci_c remarks below, is appropriate for publication, in
its present form, in `Social Sciences', although it might be possible to shorten it a little, as
the concluding section repeats at some length what has been written previously, particularly
in the _rst section on context.
Speci_c Remarks
_ l. 70, the de_nition of the acronym MFT should be given here... though it is only done
- 100.
_ l. 119{121, the reference \Bhattacharya & Ahmet (2002)" is listed twice in the same
sentence.
_ l. 139, the reference \Talbani & Hasanali (2000)" is not listed in the list of references.
_ l. 142, the reference \Wikramasinghe (2017)" is not listed in the list of references.
_ l. 152, the reference \Asher (2006)" is not listed in the list of references.
1
_ l. 179, the reference \Cannon (2017)" is not listed in the list of references.
_ l. 308{309, the sentence is not right, the \and" after \mentors," should be suppressed.
_ l. 503, de_ne the acronym \M/CFT".
_ l. 599, add \from" in front of the _rst \her" in \She learned her in her educational
pursuits".
_ l. 604, replace the semi-colon by a comma in the middle of the sentence.
_ l. 643, about the word \itself", shouldn't it be rather \themselves"?
_ l. 684{685, de_ne the acronyms \SP", \RNT", \GS".
_ l. 792{784, the reference \Mittal" is not cited in the paper.
_ l. 797{801, both references with \Seshadri" are not in the right place in the list of
references (not in the alphabetical order).
2
Our response: Thank you for your comments. We have edited each specific remark and added more where needed in both the reference list and text.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI enjoyed reading this article, especially as there is limited scholarship around South Asian women in academia. The main overall comment is that it needs to be tightened up and structured around some more explicit 'research questions' with a clear thread gathering the emerging themes together in the conclusions.
Generally I found that as a reader it was sometimes up to me to link the contextualisation / narratives / conclusions sections together. For example, having mentioned systemic racial biases in the abstract/opening paragraphs, examples of these from the three narratives might be drawn upon more explicitly in the conclusion. Salary is also mentioned at the beginning, and financial pressures in the conclusion, but I can't see where this was present as an issue in the narratives?
Some other specific comments below:
If the article is aimed at MFT, this should be made clear in the abstract/info. It's introduced as a term quite late on and not defined until line 100.
It would help to define what is seen as a mentor - there are mentions of having many mentors. Might it be helpful to differentiate up front between family and friends v professional mentors (especially as you describe having mentors who are both, i.e., friends and colleagues as being extremely valuable).
Some of the references (e.g., Turner) are quite old - it's worth saying explicitly at the beginning of the context section that there is little recent material on this subject.
Line 123 mentions existing studies - which are these? Also, references in lines 139 and 142 (possibly others) are missing from the bibliography.
Only tiny comments on English, there's some repetition of words in line 40-42 + 80 + 599 plus a missing word in 599. Hopefully this and anything similar can be picked up in a final read-through by the authors. Also, Lines 520-521 (and elsewhere) no apostrophes required for dates, e.g.,1930s and 40s or ages, e.g. 20s.
Also, though I appreciate the sections containing the narratives are a record of the authors' experiences, the flowing of the entire narrative without some structure or breaks makes it very difficult to follow.
As this is an academic article, I'd giving the narrative sections a bit more structure with some moving around to group by within the narratives theme (if only loosely, e.g., lines 463-469 and 487-495 are around the mentorship by/for women of colour and if these were combined would make a much more powerful point for the reader). Even if some can't be grouped by theme, some paragraph breaks would help.
I also felt that some of the narrative was overly-detailed in a way that detracts from the 'story' being told about culture and mentoring. For example, the few lines following 428 or 552, or 565-577. Though giving some detail paints a richer picture, giving lots of examples of experiences gives a feel of going off-track at times.
Author Response
Reviewer 3
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Unveiling Lived Realities: Narratives of South Asian Indian Women in Academia” for publication in the Social Science Journal, Special Issue: Feminist Solidarity, Resistance, and Social Justice. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments that will make our paper better. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers. We have copied and highlighted the concerns, and we provided our responses. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Instead of referencing page numbers we have copied and pasted what was added in response, with an explanation as well as highlighted them in the document.
I enjoyed reading this article, especially as there is limited scholarship around South Asian women in academia. The main overall comment is that it needs to be tightened up and structured around some more explicit 'research questions' with a clear thread gathering the emerging themes together in the conclusions.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We can see why this impression is suggested and the recommendation of a research question. This was added in the intro section.
Generally I found that as a reader it was sometimes up to me to link the contextualisation / narratives / conclusions sections together. For example, having mentioned systemic racial biases in the abstract/opening paragraphs, examples of these from the three narratives might be drawn upon more explicitly in the conclusion. Salary is also mentioned at the beginning, and financial pressures in the conclusion, but I can't see where this was present as an issue in the narratives?
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We can see how the financial thread was not pulled through as a theme—we have added nuances where appropriate. We have also added a research question in the intro section.
Some other specific comments below:
If the article is aimed at MFT, this should be made clear in the abstract/info. It's introduced as a term quite late on and not defined until line 100.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We have added text to the abstract and clarified the literature review.
It would help to define what is seen as a mentor - there are mentions of having many mentors. Might it be helpful to differentiate up front between family and friends v professional mentors (especially as you describe having mentors who are both, i.e., friends and colleagues as being extremely valuable).
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We have added text to the narratives and clarified the literature review.
Some of the references (e.g., Turner) are quite old - it's worth saying explicitly at the beginning of the context section that there is little recent material on this subject.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We have added text and clarified the literature review.
Line 123 mentions existing studies - which are these? Also, references in lines 139 and 142 (possibly others) are missing from the bibliography.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We edited it appropriately.
Only tiny comments on English, there's some repetition of words in line 40-42 + 80 + 599 plus a missing word in 599. Hopefully this and anything similar can be picked up in a final read-through by the authors. Also, Lines 520-521 (and elsewhere) no apostrophes required for dates, e.g.,1930s and 40s or ages, e.g. 20s.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We edited it appropriately.
Also, though I appreciate the sections containing the narratives are a record of the authors' experiences, the flowing of the entire narrative without some structure or breaks makes it very difficult to follow.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We edited it appropriately.
As this is an academic article, I'd giving the narrative sections a bit more structure with some moving around to group by within the narratives theme (if only loosely, e.g., lines 463-469 and 487-495 are around the mentorship by/for women of colour and if these were combined would make a much more powerful point for the reader). Even if some can't be grouped by theme, some paragraph breaks would help.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We edited it appropriately.
I also felt that some of the narrative was overly-detailed in a way that detracts from the 'story' being told about culture and mentoring. For example, the few lines following 428 or 552, or 565-577. Though giving some detail paints a richer picture, giving lots of examples of experiences gives a feel of going off-track at times.
Our response: Thank you for your comment. We edited it appropriately.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsHaving read the authors' covering letter and reviewed the changes, I think the paper works well now and is a sound and very interesting contribution to the literature.
