ABSTRACT
Each female academic has a unique journey, often experienced as a trip into an unknown world. Through autoethnographic and poetic writing, we bring together our shared but different experiences as mothers, academics and students to explore the ways in which we encounter, work within and challenge the complexities of neoliberal universities in the Global South. Mufli draws upon her experiences of juggling motherhood and academic career in an Islamic higher education institution in Indonesia, and shares her “tripped” experiences of the “sticky floor” of academic promotion for women. Dewi presents her experiences as a woman from mainstream Minangkabau matrilineal culture in Indonesia, and as a university student who has been influenced by the New Order policy on women’s roles, and her recent “trip” into academic research. Drawing upon her intercultural work as a white settler colonial woman in relation with Indigenous Australian women, Liz speaks to the way in which her academic “trip” has been experienced through a vocal feminist subjectivity. Together we share the dangers and necessity of speaking through and with a sisterhood of the Global South in Indonesian and Australian higher education today.
