Only 27% of African universities implement gender policies

How can barriers be broken and gender equality be accelerated in African universities? Who is responsible for women’s under-representation in leadership roles and harassment in those institutions? Who can be counted on to advocate for gender social justice and safe campuses in African universities?

Those are some of the questions the guest speakers at a webinar called ‘African Universities Gender Equality Forum’ tried to answer on 13 March. The webinar was hosted by Shared Value Africa, the regional partner of the global Shared Value Initiative, a business network whose primary mandate is to create sustainable economies and societies worldwide.

Addressing attendees on the current state of gender equality in African universities, Mercy Eboh, a lecturer at Nigeria’s Delta State University, in a keynote address, said gender equality concerns, not just the under-representation of women in leadership, but also extends to enrolment issues, safe campuses, the quality of learning experiences, the completion of qualifications, and participation in research activities.

She stressed that, while most African universities claim to have gender inclusion policies, their implementation is doubtful, as most institutions lack transparent monitoring systems. “For instance, over 70% of Kenya’s universities have no monitoring systems for gender policies,” Eboh said.

Lack of gender policies

Quoting statistics from UNESCO, Eboh said that only 27% of African universities actively implement gender policies.

“Policies exist on paper, but no monitoring structures are in place, and women who dared to report harassment often face backlash in most universities,” said Eboh.

She said the situation in Nigerian universities is worse as 43% of women lecturers have experienced discrimination at the workplace, but only about 10% report it due to fear of retaliation.

However, one of the most serious gender inequalities in African universities identified during the webinar was academic leadership, which remains male-dominated.

According to Eboh, only 15% of women are vice-chancellors in African universities, while women hold less than 30% of leadership positions in academia in Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Professor Rhoda Wanyenze, the dean of the school of public health at Uganda’s Makerere University, while women account for 43% of university students in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 24% of academic staff in tertiary education are female, and only 2.5% of vice-chancellors in the region are women.

Unsustainable interventions

In a study Wanyenze conducted last year with Dr Euzobia Mugisha Baine, the head of Makerere University Gender Mainstreaming Directorate, and Dr Naomi Lumutenga, the executive director of Higher Education Resource Services, most initiatives to promote women in leadership in African universities are disjointed and end up not being sustainable.

“We found that most of the gender equity interventions in the universities were supported by development partners, and some do not outlive the donor support,” noted the three researchers.

The study, which covered seven universities from each of the seven countries of the Eastern Africa Community, namely Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, also found that women were under-represented in senior academic ranks.

For instance, at Makerere University, only 13% of full professors were women, 12% at the University of Dar es Salaam, 11% at the University of Kinshasa, and 17% at the University of Nairobi.

A similar study conducted by the UNESCO Nairobi Office, in collaboration with the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO IESALC), indicate that women academics are heavily under-represented in academic ranks, as well as lagging in all the essential university leadership positions.

Gender roles

Another guest speaker, Bosede Akinbolusere, a mission curator on gender equality and women’s empowerment at the African Leadership University in Kigali, Rwanda, identified cultural barriers and normalised gender roles as key barriers to women taking key positions in African academia.

Leading the discussion on barriers, progress and future pathways towards gender equality, Akinbolusere clarified that the low representation of women in leadership positions in higher education in Africa can be traced back to barriers that contributed to a late start in women’s enrolment in modern schooling.

“It matters how children are brought up and, in most of our societies, women are always allocated time-consuming domestic and familial workloads that often interfere with their academic or professional development,” said Akinbolusere.

Recent research on gender inequalities in academic leadership aligns with Akinbolusere’s observations that gender bias and cultural encouragement for women to pursue motherhood, even when they have full-time academic careers, are barriers to the advancement of women in universities.

According to a decade-long literature review of gender inequalities and academic leadership in various countries, including Nigeria and South Africa, most of the recurring barriers were gender bias and stereotyping, family-work conflicts, heavy workload and male-dominated leadership culture.

Financial constraints

The review published by Dr Ayca Kaymakcioglu, a researcher in gender equality and social justice, and Michael Thomas, a professor of education, both at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, in the journal Social Sciences & Humanities Open, also identified financial constraints and a lack of role models as additional barriers hindering women’s progress in African universities.

“Issues related to gender bias and stereotyping were among the highly mentioned barriers experienced by women academic leaders in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Egypt, Malawi, Lesotho, Benin, Cameroun, and Ghana,” said Kaymakcioglu and Thomas.

Contributing to the issue of breaking gender barriers, Joy Ruwodo, the head of the gender equality unit at Shared Value Africa, called for balancing family and domestic work. “Predominant patriarchal societies in Africa should also be encouraged to stop thinking that women cannot lead,” said Ruwodo.

According to Ruwodo, Africa should have abandoned the idea that women cannot take leadership roles in higher education and other high positions. She criticised negative stereotypes about women’s ability to lead or girls’ capacity to excel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Construction of feminine identities

Commenting on the issues, Muhwezi Naboth of Uganda’s Valley University of Science and Technology urged women in higher education to reject harmful socio-cultural practices and beliefs related to the construction of feminine identities and ideologies of home life and family care.

Other members of a panel discussing the journey towards gender equality in African universities stressed that there are no laws of natural justice that allow gender discrimination practices based on acceptance of male dominance and female subordination within the workplace.

According to Tiekie Barnard, the chief executive officer of Shared Value Africa, equal opportunities are better for all genders. She noted that leadership under-representation, gender violence, cultural and religious barriers and masculine stereotypes about women were retrogressive to the well-being of African societies.

She urged women seeking leadership roles in African universities to believe in themselves, step forward to lead, and reject narratives that they cannot succeed in top positions.

The panel appeared unanimous that gender bias was not on a downtrend swing in African universities, as suggested by a webinar participant.

In this regard, Wendy Mothata of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa said the data on gender inequalities and social justice are not improving. She argued that sexual harassment remains a significant issue in African universities.

Sexual harassment

According to Ester Steven Mzilangwe, a psychologist and lecturer at Tanzania’s Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Science, sexual harassment experienced by university students in five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa varies between 14.3% and 78.2%.

“Weak monitoring systems, lack of guidelines and unprofessional administration, and community attitudes are some of the factors that are associated with sexual violence and victimisation in African universities,” said Mzilangwe in a study she collaborated with several of her associates last year.

In this context, at least 63% of female students in Nigerian universities experience sexual harassment at the hands of staff and fellow students, new research has found, according to a report that was launched on November 25 last year by Alliances for Africa, the Committee of Gender Directors in Nigerian Universities.

Commenting on high rates of gender violence, Mothata urged women and other victims of gender violence to stop protecting perpetrators. “We must accelerate gender equality,” said Mothata.

She said that, for social justice to be realised, the culprits of gender inequalities should not be allowed to continue with their activities and urged high-placed women academics to mentor younger women academics and serve on committees that work for gender equality and inclusion.

But, as one participant commented: the number of top scholars supporting gender equality is small within African universities.