Black and minority ethnic leaders: support networks and strategies for success in HE

1. Black and minority ethnic leaders: support networks and strategies for success in HE Professor Kalwant Bhopal and Dr Hazel Brown @KalwantBhopal

2. Introduction • Race Relations Amendment Act (2000); Equality Act (2010); Athena SWAN; Race Equality Charter (ECU). • Increase in BME students at HEIs; Indian and Chinese students more likely to have a degree compared to other BME groups (HEFCE, 2014-15). • Inequalities continue to persist despite policy changes and changes in student body (Bhopal and Jackson, 2013; Pilkington, 2013); White applicants three times more likely to secure a professorial post compared to BME candidates (UCU, 2012).

3. Project aims and objectives • Aim: to explore successful career trajectories of BME leaders in HE Objectives • To provide case study data on the experiences of BME leaders • To examine how BME construct themselves as successful academics • To analyse sources of support and • To influence HE in terms of better support provision for BME career progression Funded by Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (June 2016)

4. Intersectionality • A multiplicity of social categories that interact and interlock to produce systematic and individual inequalities (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 1998; McCall, 2005) • Pushes against the ‘single axis’ analyses of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, religion etc • Highlights the ways these systems interact, create and reinforce one another, as well as how they are experienced simultaneously • Intersectional informed reflexivity centres fluidity and multiplicity and questions the negotiation of power relations

5. Methodology • Target group: BME leaders • Survey questionnaire: 127 respondents • Support networks • Mentoring • Strategies for success • Interview: 26 respondents (15 people interviewed) • Data transcribed and analysed via NVIVO

6. Survey Findings • A mixed picture for mentoring practices • Poor ratings for promoting professional development • Russell Group universities rated lower for communication and fostering independence • Challenges and Barriers to success • Lack of networking skills • Work harder than white counterparts • Lack of pro-activism

7. Interview findings • Leadership; inclusive, collegiate and collaborative • Successful career trajectories: hard work, support and perseverance • Promotion; not necessarily related to leadership style but to performance and the process by which it was measured • Support; lack of formal mentoring • Identity; gender, ethnicity and to some degree class

8. Conclusions • BME leaders successful due to own hard work and perseverance, differences by gender and ethnicity Ways forward • Formal mentoring systems • Representation on interview and promotion panels • Setting up BME networks • Access to training

9. Contact the authors • Professor Kalwant Bhopal • University of Birmingham • K.Bhopal@Bham.ac.uk • Dr Hazel Brown • University of Winchester • Hazel.brown@winchester.ac.uk