For international women's day, we spoke with two academics of colour about their experiences of being minority women in academia.

 

Henrika McCoy is the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Families and associate professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin.

Henrika shares her experience of colleagues and students having erroneous expectations about her scholarship and background because she is a Black female academic. And she addresses the assumption that non-parent academics don’t have any caring responsibilities. 

More from Henrika:

Diversity statements: the good, the bad and the ugly

Questions you should ask yourself about your role in institutional racism

Yes, your university perpetuates racism against BAME academics: what can you do?

Didar Zowghi is a professor of software engineering and a senior principal research scientist at CSIRO's Data61. She leads a research team in "Diversity and Inclusion in AI" and "Requirements Engineering for Responsible AI". She is also the leader of the National AI Centre’s think tank on diversity and inclusion in AI in Australia, emeritus professor at University of Technology Sydney and conjoint professor at the University of New South Wales.

Didar speaks about about biases in AI systems, improving the gender imbalance among AI professionals and her journey from Iran to the upper echelons of the AI research community.