Participation and disclosure in writing the life stories of academic women in higher education

Abstract

This paper is explores the methodological issues of participation and disclosure arising in the context of writing the narratives of the career paths of six academic women in a regional Australian university. These women had been successful in achieving the status of full professors and were professional colleagues of the author. The context of the investigation was a program to facilitate the professional development of academic women at the entry level in the university. They had indicated, in focus groups and via a questionnaire, the difficulties they perceived in the management of their academic work and their further advancement in the profession. The purpose of the investigation was to document through narrative inquiry life stories and the career paths of the six professors, in the expectation that these would reveal effective strategies for managing academic work and for achieving advancement in the profession. The narratives were subsequently to be published with their names and photographs in a book, and thus made available to others within the university and further afield. The focus of this paper is, therefore, on the interactive process involved in obtaining and writing the narratives and the ethical and political issues of negotiating the disclosure and presentation of sensitive personal experiences.