Women of Color in Higher Education: A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Problem Statement 

The double outsider phenomenon is a significant factor that bars women of color from progressing to leadership positions and attaining significant career achievements in the corporate world and institutions of higher education. Unlike their white counterparts, women of color have to overcome both gender and racially motivated discrimination and stereotypes. The few women who have overcome the challenges are the exception rather than the norm, mainly due to glass cliff scenario. 

Purpose Statement 

The purpose of the proposed study is to qualitatively identify and analyze the barriers that keep women of color from achieving high-level management position despite the annual increase in the number of women with higher educational attainments. The objective is twofold. First, the proposed study aims to establish the challenges and obstacles the women of color face during higher education that need to be addressed to improve their entry into institutional leadership roles. Secondly, the proposed study aims to provide new insight into emerging effects of racial and gender inequalities among women of color. 

Research Questions and Hypothesis 

The proposed study aims to answer the following research questions: 

Q1. What challenges and obstacles that women of color face during higher education that need to be addressed to improve their entry into institutional leadership roles? 

Q2. What are the emerging effects of racial and gender inequalities among women of color? 

Answering the above research questions will require establishing the hypotheses below: 

H1. The double outsider phenomenon is a significant contemporary factor that bars women from progressing to leadership positions and attaining significant career achievements. 

H2. Improving the women of color’s entry into institutional leadership roles requires clearing barriers and challenges in early stages, such as during higher education. 

Methodology and Design 

Population and Sample 

The population of interest for the proposed study are women of color, both in institutions of higher education and in the corporate world. According to Than (2017), over 2.67 million women of color hold a four-year degree, of which over 1.87 million are holders of a bachelor’s degree, 669000 hold a Master’s degree, and at least 62000 who hold professional degrees. Given the large size of the population of interest and the current resource limitations, conducting a study with a large sample size (enough to be representative) would be impossible. The situation is exacerbated by the challenges and limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as limiting the number of viable research designs (Holmes et al., 2020). As a result, the study population will be selected by sending a call for participants on social media, through institutional email lists, and through the different professional associations. The objective will be to get as large a sample of interested participants as possible. 

The main challenge is that using the interested participants will threaten the reliability and validity of the findings. After all, such a method is similar to convenience sampling, whose main limitation is that the final sample is no longer representative of the population (Etikan & Bala, 2017). As a result, the final study sample will be obtained by randomly selecting participants from the list of interested and available respondents. 

Measures 

A survey with qualitative and quantitative section will be used as the main data collection method. After obtaining informed consent, the participants will receive the survey form via email and will have one week to fill it and return it. Email was selected as the main communication method over social media for security purposes. Furthermore, the Google forms will be used for its easy-to-use interface and compatibility with a wide array of devices. Lastly, Google forms have advanced features that help a survey creator get correct and complete responses. For instance, the survey creator (researcher) can ensure essential questions are answered with the correct data type and before allowing the respondent to submit their answers. 

The survey will consist of Likert scale used to assess both the participants attitudes towards the challenges and their subjective experiences. An example of a question designed in such a manner is: “The institution I study (or studied) at is cognizant of my challenges as a woman of color and does (did) their best to make my learning experience better?” The respondent will then answer with a s strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree. The Likert scale questions have fixed responses and have been established as a reliable instrument for quantifying a participant’s subjective feelings or opinions (Wang et al., 2018). Likert scale questions also have the advantage of being easy to understand and respond to. 

Unfortunately, one of their disadvantages is that they do not provide additional details. In other words, they ignore the context in which the respondent answers the questions. Therefore, gaining a deeper understanding of the respondent’s thought process, especially the challenges and barriers they experienced in institutions of higher education or at the workplace, will require asking open response questions. The second part of the survey caters to solving the challenge. An example of an open-ended question to be asked in the survey is: “What does (did) my current (former) institution of higher learning or employer done to mitigate the barriers against my progress as a woman of color?” Given that the sample open ended question is similar to the previous Likert scale question, they both complement each other. In other words, the latter serves to quantify the respondent’s subjective feeling while the former provides a qualitative justification for why they feel so. 

Note, however, that the open-ended question also limits the context the respondents can answer. Furthermore, there is an implied limit to the depth of the response. As a result, the last question will be to ask the participant if they will be willing to be part of an extended follow up semi-structured interview. The participants who will agree will later be contacted with a Doodle to schedule a time for the interview. The interview will be held as a Zoom call or whatever digital means preferrable to the respondent. 

Reliability and Validity 

The validity of the survey will be high for the following two reasons. First, by using a random sample, the results are highly likely to be representative of the population of interest. After all, the validity of an instrument is the extent to which it can measures what the researchers set out to measure (Mohajan, 2017). On the other hand, reliability of an instrument measures its consistently in the same or another context. As a result, the reliability of the proposed study will be increased by the fact that Likert scale questions were used to assess the participant’s subjective opinions and attitudes. 

Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations 

The main assumption with the proposed study is that the respondents will be honest and truthful in their responses. Furthermore, it is assumed that their responses will not be biased due to their experiences. The main limitation with the proposed study is its potential sample size. Even though many participants could be interested in the study, the sample size would still be reduced due to resource constraints. Even then the main delimitation will be the scope established by the study’s purpose statement, which is to qualitatively identify and analyze the barriers that keep women of color from achieving high-level management position despite the annual increase in the number of women with higher educational attainments. 

References 

Etikan, I., & Bala, K. (2017). Sampling and sampling methods.  Biometrics & Biostatistics International Journal ,  5 (6), 00149. 

Holmes, E. A., O'Connor, R. C., Perry, V. H., Tracey, I., Wessely, S., Arseneault, L., ... & Bullmore, E. (2020). Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science.  The Lancet Psychiatry . 

Mohajan, H. K. (2017). Two criteria for good measurements in research: Validity and reliability.  Annals of Spiru Haret University. Economic Series ,  17 (4), 59-82. 

Than, M. (2017). 4.5 Million African Americans Now Hold a Four-Year College Degree. (2009). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education . 

Wang, J., Wang, Z., de Dear, R., Luo, M., Ghahramani, A., & Lin, B. (2018). The uncertainty of subjective thermal comfort measurement.  Energy and Buildings ,  181 , 38-49.