While casually scrolling through LinkedIn, I came across an article titled ‘Black Women on the Academic Tightrope: Four Scholars Weigh In.’ Seeing ‘Black women’ in the title instantly drew me in; I quickly liked, reposted, and delved into the read. The piece, written by four insightful women, deeply resonated with me. As a recent graduate and one of only four Black women (one of whom was biracial) in a cohort of around 80 bioengineering students, I saw firsthand the disparities Black women face in academia. The mere 0.05% representation can be isolating in predominantly white spaces, and at times, I’d agree that it was. However, as Dr. Malika Jeffries-EL aptly points out, “Many specialists think this often leads to imposter syndrome, but for me, it had the opposite effect—it underscores how necessary my presence in these spaces is.”
In my third year, I had the privilege of working alongside two of these Black women in my cohort. Together in a project on medical devices, our instinctive ideas were to design devices with Black communities in mind—one of us focused on research for sickle cell treatment, while the other explored keloids, which have affected her family. That shared passion for representation extended beyond our academic pursuits, like when one of these exceptional women set up a call to offer me advice on my dissertation, which also focused on tackling disparities in Black representation, particularly around Afro-Caribbean hair textures in EEG recording. Despite the daunting 0.05% representation, this group of Black women has been some of the most inspiring and driven individuals I’ve encountered, and I find relief in knowing we share the same mission.
Still, I have yet to be taught by a Black woman in academia. I recall my surprise when a Black man taught one of my finance and law lectures in my third year—this rare experience, even in a subject that didn’t interest me, made me sit up and engage fully, simply because I saw a reflection of myself at the podium. Nationally, Black women are the least represented among professors, with only 60 of 24,405 professors (0.2%) being Black women in 2022-23, despite an estimated undergraduate population of 5% Black students. While bioengineering at my university had relatively balanced gender representation, the overall lack of racial diversity was a palpable reminder of the long road ahead.
The disparities I noticed in healthcare, academia, and beyond sparked during my second-year summer in the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. Working on a project titled ‘Personalised Closed-Loop Stimulation for Cognitive Enhancement,’ I realised that EEG technology largely overlooks Black hairstyles and hair types. At the time, I received additional bursary support from YCEDE (Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education), which aims to increase access for BAME groups in postgraduate research. Reflecting on the limited opportunities for Black students in research, I can now see why this support was deserved.
UK Research and Innovation, the largest scientific funding body in the UK, acknowledged ‘persistent systemic racial inequalities in the research and innovation system’ in 2020, yet by 2023, it published a Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion strategy that omitted any mention of race. How effortlessly systemic racism can be erased with a mere shift in language. My interest in research was sparked by my dissertation journey, inspired by SURE, and stands as powerful evidence that Black women are essential in these fields. Yet, my experiences showed that research can feel unwelcoming to Black women. My dissertation, ‘Advancing Electrode Design for Diverse Hair Types: A Comprehensive Investigation and Prototype Development into EEG Recording,’ aimed to address overlooked issues. But after requesting to work on this concept two years prior and facing rejection from my tutor—only to find later that the same research had been awarded a substantial grant—it became clear that the system wasn’t inviting me in, even as I sought to address a need I experienced personally.
Dr. Jeffries-EL states that “This requires collective action; institutions must stop placing the burden of solving these systemic problems on the people who are facing them.” I agree wholeheartedly, though surely, some credit should go to those who confront these issues directly. However, there’s often a lack of social awareness from the institutions in even recognising these issues. For instance, in my Anatomy and Physiology module, the photographs and phrases, “it appears red” were continuously used for symptom descriptions. I reached out to the department to address this oversight, as not everyone’s anatomy presents in the same way. This is a reason Black individuals are frequently misdiagnosed. A more shocking example came from my sister, who is studying medicine in the Czech Republic; she shared a photo of a lecture slide on our family chat with extremely racist imagery that explicitly described tendinitis as more common in the “Negroid race”—an egregious display of outdated, racist terminology. It took her white classmate’s agreement for the faculty to even acknowledge the offence.
Dr. Jeffries-EL’s words ring true: “Black women are over-burdened with service activities,” and I’d add that our daily lives are already challenging enough without the additional load of educating others on issues imposed upon us. But as I’ve come to believe, recognising a problem is an invitation to make a difference. And if that means working harder to foster change, so be it. It only reaffirms how necessary my voice is and how important it is to keep pushing for an equitable future, especially for Black women.
Happy Black History Month.
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