Navigating Role-Overload: 'tales of a Scared/Wounded Yet Productive Female Academic'

In my chapter, Batisai (2017), titled “Mothering beyond National Borders” analyses the trajectories of Zimbabwean migrant women in South Africa. The chapter exposes the narrative of fear rooted in the ‘perceived strain of mothering’ on one’s career. Such fear takes us to the question, “So how do these two identities [a mother and a career woman], inhabit a being and how are they played out in daily life, at home and work?” posed by Mesthire (127) in her review of Venitha Pillay’s Academic Mothers. Although the review challenges the way Pillay renders the pursuit of a balance between motherhood and an academic career futile (128), Mesthire acknowledges that the book “opens debate over motherhood in academia” (129). In 2017, these debates were beyond those raised in my chapter, but I acknowledged that they warranted further exploration. Writing from a biographical standpoint, I revisit these debates in 2024 to map and interrogate my intersecting identities – as a Black academic mother – core to personal trajectories of how I have confronted the post-pandemic burnout, fatigue, and role-overload as I navigated the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid mourning over the past, this article focuses on role-overload to expose how the pandemic, beyond blurring work-family-life lines, taught me to progressively set boundaries and prioritise self-care – attributes that I further embraced during the University of Johannesburg 2023 Women`s Leadership Development Programme. This biographical piece is a powerful theoretical and methodological tool for interpreting the realities of being a Black academic mother, which I summarise by the phrase 'Tales of a Scared/Wounded yet Productive Female Academic'. The self-reflective article brings to the fore the intersections of my academic and (re)productive being, which, although private, affect the public (aspects of life), including my realities as a female academic, especially after the pandemic.