Being the Diversity Hire: Negotiating Identity in an Academic Job Search

Do you see me? The complex experiences of women of color MSW students

“…Although social work is a discipline that is heavily female, a basic contradiction exists between the field's aims of empowerment and the experiences of people of color, especially females, who are marginalized and underrepresented in academic units. As cautioned by Hughes, Horner, and Ortiz (2012), even so-called 'diversity hirings' of female faculty members and the admission of female students of color can fail to infuse a transformative influence where diversity is viewed as an asset rather than a barrier. Despite efforts to progress in race and gender relations, a certain systemic exclusivity involving females and individuals of color remains.…”

Investigating Diversity in Social Work Doctoral Education in the United States

“…Finally, as illustrated by Hughes et al (2012), underrepresented students are often compelled to negotiate issues around diversity as they attempt to secure careers after leaving their doctoral programs (in this case Hughes et al specifically address concerns on race, gender, sexuality, and family). These findings confirm the fears that students in Davis and Livingston's study (2016) express in terms of being worried about having to address racism on the job market.…”

“…The issue of diversity in social work doctoral education is a particularly important area of investigation. There are many ways of approaching this topic as the word diversity may refer to differences in doctoral education in terms of the extent to which curricula address questions of social difference (Hudson, Shapiro, Ebiner, Berenberg, & Bacher, 2017), the social positioning of social work faculty (Hughes, Horner, & Velez Ortiz, 2012), the way doctoral programs are structured (Biegel, Hokenstad, Singer, & Guo, 2006), debates over the balance of the research, teaching and practice dimensions of doctoral training (Anastas & Videka, 2012;Belcher, Pecukonis, & Knight, 2011;Fong, 2014), and the emphases placed on different kinds of knowledge (Tucker, 2008), to name a few. For the purposes of this article, we are concerned with diversity in terms of the differences among students in social work doctoral programs.…”

“…As mentioned earlier, Davis and Livingston (2016) indicate that social work doctoral students not only experience racism in their programs but they also expect racism to structure the process of securing employment after they complete their education. In their autoethnographic reflection, Hughes et al (2012) describe the challenges associated with being a diversity hire on the academic job market including negotiating one's identity, managing identity conflict, and potentially addressing tokenism once hired. They point out how structural and cultural aspects of specific institutions influence the ways underrepresented candidates engage with the job market, pointing specifically to mentorship (or lack thereof), disciplinary politics, and concerns about gender.…”

“…They point out how structural and cultural aspects of specific institutions influence the ways underrepresented candidates engage with the job market, pointing specifically to mentorship (or lack thereof), disciplinary politics, and concerns about gender. Like many studies in this review, Hughes, Horner & Velez (2012) consider issues of ethnoracial difference and also address how issues of sexuality and family life influence the ways underrepresented doctoral students attempt to secure academic positions in social work.…”