International Women’s Day is particularly pertinent for me this year for many reasons, both professionally and personally. As I begin my new role as Director of the Office for Institutional Equity, I want to demonstrate my commitment to women, that I understand the intersectional inequalities and layers that mean the struggle for women’s equity is one that is stratified. As a white, non-disabled woman in a professional occupation my circumstances are very different to my sisters of colour, and to transgender, disabled, and economically oppressed women. Whilst this understanding will inform my practice and will mean that I continue to develop my knowledge and consult with colleagues to ensure we take an inclusive approach, my attention over the last few weeks has been focused on the women who have inspired me and what I have learned from them. This focus has been instigated by my mother's poor health.

My mum, in her years as a primary school teacher, influenced me hugely although I perhaps hadn't realised it until I reflected on my own teaching practice. She showed me that every pupil in her class mattered. My mum taught in the Meadows, an inner-city area of Nottingham, one of the most economically deprived in the city. Her teaching, I now know was one situated in critical, relational pedagogy, it valued both the pupils and their experiences. Together, my mum and her pupils would co-create the curriculum, writing drama productions together, drawing on their different cultural heritages for discussions and problem solving through creative activities. My mum was able to relate to some of the experiences of the children through the lens of her own childhood and also understood that schooling works best when it recognises difference and celebrates it.

Why is this pertinent to me now? Recently the death of the writer, feminist theorist and cultural critic, bell hooks, led me to revisit her work – works that have influenced sociologists of education and critical pedagogues across the globe and yet are often absent in the core reading of both education and sociology courses.

In hooks’ text Teaching to Transgress she refers to the importance that the lecturer ‘genuinely values everyone’s presence. There must be an ongoing recognition that everyone influences the classroom dynamic, that everyone contributes. These contributions are resources’ (hooks, 1994, p8). Compassionate approaches which value people, which demonstrate to people that they matter, and which inculcate belonging have often been overlooked, dismissed as ‘feminine’ or lacking rigour. Yet in order to thrive, we need to be able to feel comfortable in our own skin, to feel that we matter for all of who we are and not just the bits that appear to fit in. For hooks, this is why ‘many students still seek to enter feminist classrooms because they continue to believe that there, more than in any other place in the academy, they will have an opportunity to experience education as the practice of freedom’ (hooks, 1994, p15). These approaches align with what my mother taught me. My approach to this role will be the same as my approach to my teaching and my leadership – authentic, compassionate, and situated in an ethic of care that values people.

As I write this, I am about to go and visit my mum in hospital and I will read my words to her. As a girl, my mum would read and write for her Granny, she would cringe as she was asked to write the words ‘isn’t Josephine clever, she can write so well’ – and no doubt she will feel similarly as I read these words to her.

As we rally together for International Women’s Day, we have a call to action to ‘break the bias’ and to reject gender assumptions. Whilst these rallying calls raise awareness, the importance of asking ourselves the question ‘what will I do?’ is worth contemplating alongside reflecting on how we might use our own privileges to ensure that we can all rise, that we matter and that we are seen.

Dr Tamsin Bowers-Brown is the new Director for the Office of Institutional Equity at Leeds Trinity University. Read more on our website.

Bibliography

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London, Routledge.