Arduously Reconciling the ‘Good Mother’ With the ‘Academic Worker’: A Collaborative Autoethnography on Academic Motherhood and Sisterhood in Australian Higher Education

Globally, in higher education (HE), a “good mother” and a “successful academic” are two personas often residing uncomfortably within one body. The career-oriented, productive woman academic enthusiastically pursuing a linear, unfettered research and teaching career path is, in most cultural contexts, a mythical creature, particularly when constrained by family responsibilities. Simultaneous performance of motherhood and academic roles can be an arduous and isolating experience, potentially imperceptible to the predominantly heterosexual White men who occupy management in Anglophone and Eurocentric institutions. Convening as an academic sisterhood of three colleagues and academic mothers in a regional Australian university, we use collaborative autoethnography (CAE) and conversation as a blended methodology, sharing and unpacking our lived experiences as mothers and academics, and crafting critical insights into negotiating and reconciling these often-conflicting identities. Through an intersectional lens, we work toward an awareness of commonalities and differences in our experiences of meaningfully performing motherhood and academe. Reflecting on the “how” and “why” driving our efforts to pursue this reconciliation leads us toward acknowledgment and appreciation of the collaborative enactment of “academic sisterhood” and triadic allyship, which enables self-care and negotiating ongoing gendered marginalizations. Resisting normative identity formations in HE, we advocate for creating stronger nongendered alliances through inclusion and diversity encompassing all mothers and creating dialogic spaces for resolutions.