Southern Africa ponders lack of female leaders in academia – Research Professional News

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Competence and culture hinder women from taking up leadership posts in science, meeting hears
The Southern Africa Regional Universities Association (Sarua) plans to develop a programme to boost gender leadership in science within the region, a meeting on 24 August heard.
The plan follows the publication earlier this year of an assessment of barriers to gender equality in the leadership of 16 of Africa’s top research universities, focusing on science, technology engineering and mathematics jobs.
That assessment, charting gender equality in the 16-member African Research Universities Alliance, found that only two had female vice-chancellors in October 2022. While the percentage of women in senior executive leadership teams ranged from 25 per cent at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to 75 per cent at Addis Ababa Universities, the majority fell below 50 per cent women at executive level. Women made up less than 30 per cent of deans at eight universities.
“When I heard the presentation of this report at the Association of African Universities Conference of Rectors, Vice-chancellors and Presidents [in July in Windhoek, Namibia], I thought it was so vital for Sarua to hear these findings and see what they mean for us,” said Martin Oosthuizen, executive director of Sarua, at the meeting last week.
Aspiration lacking
Assessment report co-author Roseanne Diab, emeritus professor in environmental sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and former executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa, presented the findings of the Arua report to the Sarua meeting. She said many Arua universities lacked gender policies—only seven had them, and of those only one was in South Africa.
She said that most of the South African universities assessed had anti-discrimination policies, which stem from the country’s apartheid history, and which university management and staff to some extent believe have replaced the gender policies, Diab said. But, she added, anti-discrimination policies are not suited to address gender inequalities in institutions.
“Our conclusion was that the absence of a standalone gender policy means there’s no aspirational policy to address elements such as gender mainstreaming the collection of gender-disaggregated data, gender budgeting, engendering in the curriculum and the application of the gender lens in research,” she said.
Competence and culture
Diab said the people interviewed for the assessment reported a lack of suitably qualified women as the main barrier to women’s ascension to leadership roles, followed by women’s reluctance to take on leadership positions and institutional cultures that favour men.
“Every senior woman interviewed reported having experienced gendered micro-aggressions, which are more subtle and often harder to deal with than overt sexual harassment, but which leave them impacted in many damaging ways as they are persistent and pervasive,” the report states.
Diab told the Sarua meeting last week: “Women found it difficult to raise their voice among all the men. Males tend to repeat the same thing that a woman has just said and they take ownership of the point.”
Oosthuizen said a meeting will be held by Sarua on 19 October to discuss ways to cultivate a culture where women are fully represented at all institutional levels.
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