Addressing gender equality, leadership across SA universities

SUPPORT for the development of a barometer to measure and monitor change at varsities, call for a freeze on professorship promotions for male applicants, and the threat of legal action to enforce section nine of the Constitution on equality were among the proposals to transform South African universities at a gender transformation in higher education webinar.

Academics also called for the Higher Education and Training Ministry to implement recommendations of the 2010/2015 higher education summits, as well as last year’s report containing recommendations on recruitment, retention and promotion of black academics.

“We have been in this business as higher education since 1994, and the governance architecture of our institutions hasn’t really changed fundamentally since, including the issues of gender transformation,” said George Mvalo, chairperson of the Transformation Managers Forum (TMF) under the auspices of Universities South Africa (USAf), the body representing all public universities in the country.

Mvalo said there has been and continues to be resistance to gender transformation at some institutions, in addition to a lack of urgency and an absence of consequence for not implementing gender equity at universities.

He made these comments at the Hers-SA (Higher Education Resource Services SA)/USAf TMF virtual webinar on Wednesday, where the emphasis was on women leadership development, advocacy, research and collaboration to push for much-needed change.

Mvalo said by and large, women dominated the tertiary system – the overall gender headcount was 86 678 women versus 75 788 men in 2017, women with Master’s degrees numbering 6250, compared to 5882 men, but since 2015, out of 20 vice-chancellor vacancies, only four were filled by women, while 12 women held deputy vice-chancellor positions, out of 30 positions.

Referring to the minority of women in vice-chancellor roles, Mvalo, the director: Social Justice and Transformation Unit, Vaal University of Technology said: “That tells us a story about how we view the role of women in higher education, particularly when it comes to leadership positions.”

Showing some progress, he said, in 2001 there were 25.7% and 14.5% women associate professors and full professors, but last year, according to the Department of Higher Education and Training, there were 30% women professors.

He said there was an urgent need to change the institutional culture at universities, adding that some of the TMF initiatives ranged from holding public dialogues to developing a Transformation Barometer for the sector as a self-monitoring tool.

The Transformation Barometer was adopted by the USAf board and was currently being adopted by various councils of public universities.

Mvalo said the governance set-up of higher education institutions should be reset and consideration given to instituting legal action to enforce section nine of the Constitution on equality, if need be. “And if you look at section nine of the Constitution, it talks about equality … we have several ministerial reports calling for change, some of them dating back to as far as 2008 and before that.

“And the question is, actually, what have we done with these reports?

“Over the past five years, it appears, therefore that there seems to be a default position by higher education: whenever there are opportunities to accelerate gender transformation by ensuring that there’s parity in leadership positions, the top jobs went to men. Therefore, the need to reset, restart and recalibrate gender transformation in higher education,” he said.

This would involve resetting governance of higher education institutions and the manner in which councils were run as they perpetuated “the old boys’ club”.

“South Africa is an unequal society by all measures, hands down. We are doing very badly when it comes to equality. You can use any dimension you think of. You can use race or gender. You can go to sport. You can go to mining. You can go to ownership of companies. You can go to the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange).

“You will come to our own set-up as well. You will then realise that actually, we have a serious problem on our hands.

“Colleagues, I submit that within our higher education institutions, gender transformation has been relegated to the margins,” he said.

Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) legal head Marissa van Niekerk said universities were struggling to increase the representation of women, particularly black women in senior management positions, and that succession plans at universities did not purposively target women and persons with disabilities.

She said representation of persons with disability at senior management positions remained poor, the provision of childcare facilities and flexitime was not prioritised for women, and generally, there were not enough resources invested.

Among the recommendations proposed by the CGE are that universities:

♦ Adopt transformation policies.

♦ Conduct training and refresher sessions on transformation policies.

♦ Establish effective Employment Equity Forums.

♦ Assign senior Employment Equity managers.

Edith Phaswana, acting head at the

Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, Unisa and current president of the SA Development Studies Association, said she was aware of the challenges faced by women in spaces that had traditionally excluded them.

“The modern world we live in has been constructed without us, as women. One of the biggest issues that always bothered me as a young professional woman had been the lack of support structures in place for women in the workplace, and this is a global phenomenon.

“When young women find themselves occupying those lonely seats at the table, they must ensure that the ‘terms of conversation’ change. Their presence, even if they are outnumbered, must make it difficult for certain things to be said or done,” she said.

Hers-SA director Brightness Mangolothi said the collaboration between Hers-SA and USAf TMF aimed to deepen the transformation discourse within the public universities, enable stakeholders from both public universities and civil society to grapple with the contemporary issues confronting public institutions, and also advance discussions around gender transformation in higher education. “Our vision is to address the need for gender equity in South African higher education,” she said.