Through the eyes of farmers' daughters: Academics working on marginal land

SynopsisIn this article we provide a reflective analysis of our experiences as marginalized academics and explore the complex, intersecting factors that combine to make the achievement of tenure track positions extremely difficult. The emergence of the entrepreneurial university, combined with dire economic times, has resulted in the trend of hiring contract faculty over tenure track hires. Women contract faculty have fewer opportunities for advancement, and family responsibilities further complicate attempts to attain secure academic employment. Within these contexts, we examine the importance of access to social capital during graduate programs and show how we prioritized particular institutional requirements and professional practices, to our detriment. We focused on completing the Ph.D.s, establishing records of teaching excellence, and presenting at conferences. We now believe that obtaining scholarships, landing research grants, securing publications in refereed academic journals, and privileging research over teaching would have better prepared us to compete in the academic job market.