Women’s Month: Focus on Rimbilana Shingange, UP PhD candidate.

Q: Job title and in which department/research entity do you work?
A: I am a Lecturer in the Department of Animal Science.

Q: What has been the highlight of your career?
A: In October 2022, I received an email from the NATHouse Executive Committee saying that students had nominated me for the Best Senior Year Lecturer Award. Of course, most people would be excited to receive such communication; however, it was a priceless moment for me. This is because I had started lecturing in the Department of Animal Science only in February of 2022, and to be acknowledged by students in this way was an affirmation of my dedication and passion for education, a field I never envisioned myself in. It meant that my students appreciated my efforts to create engaging, effective, and inclusive learning experiences, and it was the best motivation I could have hoped for.

Q: What inspires you?
A: It's important to me that as someone in a position of authority, I intentionally and inter-sectionally see all of my students for who they are and who they strive to be. This is because if I can positively represent some aspect, quality, or trait they see in themselves, they can then identify and transform other aspects of themselves that they may see as undesirable; this transformative capacity inspires me.

Q: What challenges have you experienced in your career?
A: As a young, black woman in an older white-man-dominated discipline, imposter syndrome very often caused me to doubt my belonging at the front of a lecture hall or seated in a staff meeting. Over time, though, I understand more and more that, as people, we have the uncanny ability to internalise and make permanent that which is temporary. Maya Angelou said, ' We are all in process and should do the best that we can, knowing that we are transient,' this notion has helped me contextualise my experiences and use them for growth.

Q: What message do you have for the women of South Africa?
A: Society expects women to be accountable in ways that other members of society, particularly men, aren't: Women are disproportionately responsible for domestic duties, surprisingly expected to sacrifice their bodily and mental health and image to bear children, and wholly liable for the emotional state of many around them. Thus, women often internalise their inability and unwillingness to fully meet these expectations (both valid reasons) as personal failures. Sihle-siphon Nontshokweni wrote, ' All of my ugliness is mine, and so is my courage'. So women must, unapologetically, strive to create the lives they want for themselves because they are the only ones who experience what it is to be them.