Chinese female university teachers’ emotional vulnerability in the era of hyper-performativity

The global advent of hyper-performativity in higher education has placed great pressure on university teachers, which is particularly evident for female teachers. Through the theoretical lens of emotional vulnerability within a post-structuralist approach, the study examines Chinese female university teachers’ professional development and wellbeing amid the ramifications of hyper-performative institutional cultures. Adopting a narrative case study design, the study collected data from eleven participants through narrative frames and in-depth interviews. Analysis revealed that participants experienced emotional vulnerability arising from tensions between rising institutional productivity demands and the conventional sociocultural positioning of women as caregivers, as well as from the gendered and hierarchical division of labor in higher education. To cope with their emotional vulnerability and maintain wellbeing, participants strived to negotiate optimal trade-offs between multiple expectations and constructed eclectic identities. They also stepped outside the hyper-performative institutional logics and invested in their self-valued and envisioned professional identities. The post-structuralist theoretical approach allows us to interrogate how implicit gendered subtexts embedded in social and institutional structures intersect to shape female teachers’ emotional vulnerability while also allowing for a nuanced understanding of how vulnerability creates a space for female teachers to assert their agency in constructing alternative ways of doing and being. The study offers implications for higher education policymaking and for supporting female teachers’ professional development and wellbeing within the hyper-performative higher education landscape.