IWD profiles: Dina Nayeri
International Women’s Day 2024 – #InspireInclusion
International Women’s Day is an opportunity to champion the power of women’s voices and drive positive change.
We spoke to women across the the University who all have one thing in common – an unwavering pursuit of equality. We asked them why they thought it was important to mark IWD, who inspires them and what they love about being a woman.
Dina Nayeri, Reader in the School of English, and internationally acclaimed author (transcribed from audio interview)
Is there a woman who has inspired you personally or professionally?
In recent years I have really been inspired by Sigrid Nunez, a writer. I started reading her work a while before she won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, and what I noticed about her, and her career, was her long and slow process of writing well, getting better without regard of what the outside world thought of her.
People loved her, but she didn’t have a huge audience and I don’t think she focused on outside validation, instead I think she focused on her work and getting better every year, she paid attention to her students, she observed and lived and wrote and then, suddenly, she wrote one book, The Friend, that made her a literary superstar, and yet that didn’t really change the way that she approached her writing, because that extreme validation didn’t arrive until she was older. Her career trajectory reminded me how important it is to just keep doing the work and not to get side-tracked too much. And that any moment can be a new beginning.
What is the one thing you would like to see done to help further equality for women?
There are tangible and intangible things that still need to be done. Obviously, things like income and equality, inequality of representation in professional spheres and in leadership, not having enough diverse female voices in places of power. But there are also intangibles, even in places where we have equal representation, it’s often the women who are silent and there are deeply seated psychological factors that make women think that their voices and opinions aren’t as valuable and that they are being ‘difficult’ when they’re not. Many people still carry unconscious bias which they bring into professional spaces and it often leaves women feeling they have to cower when they should speak up. I would like to see all those intangibles become a part of our conversation, and for women to feel not only that they have the opportunity to do the things that men do, but also that they’re equally empowered to do them.
What did you want to be when you were young?
I had lots of phases. When I was a girl in Iran, I saw my parents as doctors, and I wanted to be a doctor too, and then I saw a drop of blood and I knew I was not born to be a doctor. Then I started to look at the things I loved to do – Math, and storytelling – and I started to form a vision around those.
But then, suddenly, when I was eight years old, we became refugees and we lost everything, and I felt what it was like to drop in social status, and to have income insecurity, and I became obsessed with finding that security again. So in my early teen years I wanted to be an international corporate lawyer. I could argue and I was very logical and I knew I could do that well, and make a lot of money and never be at risk of being poor again. Then I realised I was quite good at Math and so I went to university and decided to be a business person, so I could work with numbers and turn that into money.
It took me a long time to undo all that refugee insecurity. It wasn’t until my late 20s when I sat down and said to myself ‘Ok Dina, nothing that bad is ever going to happen again and even if it does, what do you want to have spent your days doing?’ and only then did I realise that, even from the beginning, my passions had been around storytelling and words and creativity and, weirdly enough, Math. Maybe there’s another chapter coming in which I will use that. I still do math puzzles for fun. When life settles down a bit, I can see myself wandering into a St Andrews math glass, maybe a game theory class, and giving young Dina her second chance at that.
What do you love about being a woman?
So many things. I think the best part of being a woman has been getting to experience motherhood and teaching my daughter to be strong and powerful and comfortable in her own skin. I have loved being someone who can be equally intellectual and logical and creative and also loving and nurturing and can drive from both the head and the heart. Of course, all that is equally true for me. More and more I’m realising that all these gender stereotypes are useless. The best people I’ve met defy every expectation.
Looking back, I appreciate the hardships I’ve suffered because of my gender. I spent the first three years of my schooling forced to wear a hijab in an Islamic public school and, while I hated that and I still hate it, it was something that helps me understand what women in Iran are going through right now. It makes me want to stand up for them, for their right to choose for themselves, and to be equal to men in every way. I am glad to be in solidarity with this group of incredibly powerful humans who have been historically wronged, and maybe that’s what I love most about being a woman.