Suffering in Silence: Untold Stories of Black Women and Girls

Celebrating 25 years of the Gender & Education Association

Virtual Seminar Series 2022

Suffering in Silence: Untold Stories of Black Women and Girls

Online Event: Zoom link and password provided to registered attendees on the morning of the event

Speakers:

• Viola Kanu
• Adesola Akinyemi
• Sainabou Hydara
• Dr Victoria Showunmi

About the event: The session lead will be Dr Victoria Showunmi. The speakers are Black women researchers, all are exploring the lived experiences of Black women and girls.

Paper 1: Amplify the voices of Black Girls, speaker: Viola Kanu

• Black girls need safe spaces within schools to voice their hopes, dreams, and insecurities, without feeling judged. This will have a positive effect on their mental health and self-esteem.
• Feeling valued within society and represented at all levels is a necessity for Black girls to thrive.
• The needs and wants of Black girls are missing within the National Curriculum. Therefore, teachers have a duty to embed this in their everyday practice.

Paper 2: What are the educational experiences of Black Muslim Girls in British Secondary Schools?, speaker: Adesola Akinyemi

This research uses critical race theory, post colonialism and intersectionality to explore the multiple layers of discrimination and epistemic violence Black Muslim Girls experience. Whilst highlighting the need for an intersectional approach to the study of gender, race and religion and education, I examine how these factors might affect Black Muslim girls’ school experiences and educational achievement and propose possible solutions to the issues identified.

Paper 3 : How do young Black women learn to feel beautiful? , speaker: Sainabou Hydara

• The start of a wider conversation regarding the implication of black women's relationship with beauty with their self-perception and mental health.
• Our practices of beautification shape our everyday lives and reflect the survivalist nature of life in the black diaspora.

Paper 4: Black women and inequality in the workplace, speaker: Dr Victoria Showunmi

This paper explores race and gender in the context of the workplace, analysing the inequality experienced by Black women. The aim is to create a better understanding of what it is to be Black and a woman in contemporary UK society. The dominance of White women and their role in discrimination against Black women is discussed in relation to the concept of White Women Syndrome (Showunmi 2022). The persistence of racism despite notions of post-racist society is elucidated through the theory of sophisticated racism (Showunmi 2022).

Speaker Bios

Dr Victoria Showunmi is an Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK, and has a passion for teaching and learning, research and community engagement, and is driven by determination to pursue ways in which cutting-edge research can be shared and understood by the wider community. Her contribution to the academy has always been to find innovative methods to include the silent voices of the community. Her leadership and networking skills have enabled her work on gender, education and leadership to be showcased locally, nationally and internationally.

Viola Kanu is an Assistant Principal who recently finished her Social Justice and Education Masters degree at UCL, Institute of Education. She is passionate about her faith and strives to create racial equity within primary education establishments. In the future, Viola desires to become a Director of Education for primary or all through-schools. Her dream is to build and shape a leadership team that directly reflects the cohort of children they teach and embodies the values of the community, in which they serve. In her spare time, Viola enjoys spending time with loved ones, travelling to different countries, and creating digital content.

Adesola Akinyemi teaches Sociology in a secondary school in London. She has just finished her Masters at UCL, and as a result, has become particularly passionate about promoting inclusion through the curriculum.

Sainabou Hydara is a student at Goldsmith University and is soon to be writer, researcher and all around creative. Using writing, visual research and safe space projects to explore the aesthetic dimensions of social structures and their impact on our everyday lives.

Recording: The event will be recorded and shared online after it is transcribed and closed captioning is added.

Access: Automatic transcription will be available

About the Gender & Education Association Virtual Seminar Series 2022: The series is organised and chaired by the GEA Executive Members, the volunteers who lead GEA. The series is funded in part by Taylor and Francis.

About GEA: Celebrating 25 years, the Gender and Education Association (GEA) is a volunteer-led international intersectional feminist charity. Our inclusive community of educators, researchers, activists, leaders, artists, and more have been working together since 1997 to challenge and eradicate gender stereotyping, sexism, and gender inequality within and through education.

Join GEA: We are a small, volunteer-led charity and we rely on membership fees to make GEA’s continued work possible. Please consider becoming a member of GEA: http://www.genderandeducation.com/join/

GEA Website: http://www.genderandeducation.com/

GEA Twitter: https://twitter.com/genderanded

Event Hashtag: #GenderAndEd