Teacher professional identity (TPI) has become central to understanding teachers’ agency, emotions, and career development, yet existing studies remain largely Western‑centric and overlook how gendered hierarchies shape identity in Asian higher education. Little research has examined how female English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers with PhDs in Thailand negotiate their professional selves amid prestige‑driven and patriarchal insti‑ tutions. This study investigates how Thai female EFL teachers with PhDs negotiate professional identities within the intersecting pressures of teaching, research, gender expectations, and hierarchical academic systems. Adopt‑ ing a critical–dialogical self approach that integrates dialogical self theory (DST) with a feminist perspective, we conceptualize teacher identity as dialogical, relational, and shaped by power‑laden structures. Drawing on narra‑ tive inquiry supported by corpus‑informed thematic analysis, life stories of two Thai female EFL academics were analyzed through the lenses of self‑, other‑, and structural positioning. Findings reveal hybrid “I‑positions” (e.g., educator, mentor, supervisor‑researcher) negotiated within institutional hierarchies that reward productivity but undervalue care work. Tensions of role overload, emotional labor, and neoliberal accountability shaped partici‑ pants’ self‑efficacy and resilience. The study extends DST by theorizing professional identity as affective, relational, and structurally embedded, urging institutional policies that recognize hybrid roles and foster equitable, emotion‑ ally sustainable academic cultures in non‑Western contexts.