The bottomless care pyramid: a decolonial feminist ethnography of equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives at the University of Galway
Ruggi, Lennita Oliveira
Ruggi, Lennita Oliveira
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Publication Date
2024-03-12
Type
Thesis
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Abstract
This thesis examines tensions between feminist demands for transformations in higher education and the creation of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) governance structures at an Irish institution. Through a case study carried out at the University of Galway, I probe how aspirations for equality were translated into a practical institutional agenda. My research comprises four years of on-site and virtual participant observation, analysis of legal, media, and activist documents alongside policies and EDI reports, and 43 individual interviews with university employees, intentionally sampled to ensure diversity in terms of personal profile, institutional affiliation, and EDI involvement. The study fills a gap in empirical research by investigating the experiences of not only academics and senior management but all higher education workers, including professional services, administrators, and outsourced employees. Following the lead of several research participants and the abundant Irish literature on gender equality in higher education, I employ the concept of care to make visible structural features connecting several layers of institutional inequality. Instead of falling prey to the prolific knowledge system of the ‘equality industry’, my inquiry entertains the collective feminist claim that naming and centring care work is politically relevant. Care is a fruitful notion for articulating intersectional inequalities, since it dislodges fixed identities in favour of an understanding of the interconnection between the devaluation of tasks and existing forms of exclusion from decision-making processes. Ethnographic records show how top positions extract care, appropriate resources, and enforce compliance. My work aims to re-articulate feminist demands and counter the narrowed remit of EDI policies by drawing a comprehensive depiction of the structures of university politics. Theoretically inspired by decolonial feminisms, I propose the ‘bottomless care pyramid’ concept to problematise intersectional inequalities in academia, suggesting a frame to identify how visibility and resources are concentrated at the top within universities.
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Publisher
NUI Galway