‘Marginal Leaders’: Making Visible the Leadership Experiences of Black Women in a Therapeutic Service for Disenfranchised Young People

Abstract

Although women are obtaining and maintaining leadership positions in health, education, and social care services, women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds remain a minority and on the margins. In particular, services working therapeutically with marginalised and oppressed communities often fail to represent the population they serve. In this chapter, the authors will outline the development of an innovative therapeutic service for disenfranchised young people with Black women as leaders. The authors will outline and reflect on how they developed a leadership style drawing on Afrocentric practice, social justice, emancipatory practice and community psychology as they attempted to bring about systems change. The authors will draw on ideas of ‘marginality’ (Collins, 1986) to make visible their experience of ‘be-coming’ leaders, and the challenges that they experienced on several different levels: personal, professional, institutional, political and cultural. It will also examine how race, gender and class intersect in Black women’s leadership experiences, and how they tackle stereotyping in the making of Black female leaders. The chapter will examine how Black female leaders make creative use of their marginal positions to influence and reflect a radical standpoint on self, children, young people, families and community.

Citation

Farooq, R. and Rodrigues, T. (2020), "‘Marginal Leaders’: Making Visible the Leadership Experiences of Black Women in a Therapeutic Service for Disenfranchised Young People", Majors, R., Carberry, K. and Ransaw, T.S. (Ed.) The International Handbook of Black Community Mental Health, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 329-342. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-964-920201021