Gender equity: a critical issue for women's advancement to senior management postions in South African higher education

[摘要] English: The number of women entering the workforce has escalated over the past thirty years.However, in terms of employment and promotion, women often face greater handicapsthan men in that women continue to compete in the workforce on an unequal footing withmen, and as a result continue to experience unequal labour market outcomes. In highereducation, progress to elevated levels of employment and occupations seems to be muchmore problematic for women than for men. Although the number of women in theacademe has increased, women are still concentrated in lower and middle managementand in unskilled jobs whilst forming a minority in the most senior positions. Thissituation prevails both developed as well as developing countries.The main objective of this study was to analyse the position of women in managementand their experiences in higher education institutions in the South African context.Furthermore, this study also reported on the obstacles that these women may have had toface in their attempt to gain entry into the higher echelons of these institutions. Theabsence of career paths to these positions further exacerbates the situation. This studytherefore focused on amplifying the existing body of knowledge on the experiences ofwomen in management positions in higher education and the barriers they face withregard to their advancement to senior positions, as well as possible mechanisms toenhance their empowerment.From the literature review it became clear that societies often perceive the differencesbetween men and women as natural; but masculinity and femininity are hierarchicalcontrasts, and categories associated with femininity are perceived as inferior andsubordinate whilst categories associated with masculinity are perceived as dominant.Through socialisation, this socially constructed segregation between men and women,and the roles attributed to each sex, are inculcated by the family and reinforced by othersocialisation agents such as schools, peers, religion and the media. Children thereforelearn from infancy about the relationship between biological sex and social roles.Prior to the industrial revolution, family and work life were intertwined for most people.The division of labour only came into being with the advent of industrialisation. Menstarted engaging in jobs outside the home and women increasingly assumedresponsibility for family life, with most of them destined for hard physical labourdominated by patriarchal systems. These attitudes continue to persist. The division oflabour means that, in almost all the economies, women are concentrated at the lower endof the labour market. In South Africa, though, as a result of the heritage that racismbrought to this country, black women �?in contrast to their white counterparts who werediscriminated upon just in terms of gender �?suffered discrimination based on gender,race and class.Recently the traditional female roles have been showing signs of change �?a process thathas been accelerated in South Africa as a result of the country's new constitution, as wellas other legislative gender machinery. These legislative frameworks imply that the nontraditionalwork opportunities for women have increased in all sectors of employmentand in particular in the higher education sector. Despite this, however, women continueto be underrepresented in decision-making positions in the workplace. Furthermore,women are still subjected to the strain caused by gender stereotyping as a result ofpatriarchal beliefs. Women seeking equity in the education management world are oftenconfronted by stereotypical gender views, which negatively impact on their performancelevels and productivityThere are very low numbers of women in executive management positions in highereducation. Women are underrepresented at the ranks of vice-chancellor, deputy vicechancellor,dean and head of school. Higher education institutions are dominated bymale leadership; those few women who manage to reach the top often report isolation andlack of support and recognition from their male colleagues. Most people believe that byclosing the leadership gap between the two sexes, institutions will become more centredon persons and processes. But the problem is that leadership has traditionally beenstudied using male norms as the standard for behaviours. Women have adopted malestandards of success to better fit into male-dominated hierarchical structures and systems.Moreover, women in these positions owe their commitment to the norms and values ofthe dominant male society.A qualitative investigation was the dominant method used and thus formed the core ofthis study, with the quantitative investigation being the alternative, less-dominantmethod. Thirteen females in management positions were selected from six universities inSouth Africa. The respondents came from diverse cultures and backgrounds. TheLeadership Practices Inventory (LPI) questionnaire was used to determine whether theleadership styles employed by women in higher education institutions met the standard asset by these institutions. The results of the LPI indicated that although society does notassociate women with leadership, women's scores on the LPI items were rated moderateto high.Thereafter, structured and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the13 female managers to ascertain their opinions and perceptions with regard to theiradvancement to senior management positions and their experiences once they hadattained these positions. During the empirical investigation the respondents attested totheir experiences of direct gender discrimination in promotion and appointment, as wellas patriarchy and sexual and emotional harassment. Respondents also revealed how thesepractices were impacting on their performance as managers. In addition, familyarrangements can be quite unequal in terms of sharing the burden of housework andchildcare. In many societies, it is quite commonly taken for granted that while men willnaturally work outside the home, women may do so if and only if they can combine itwith various inescapable and unequally shared household duties.The participants' responses to a great extent correlated with the literature in revealingsolutions for curbing the problems related to women's under-representation inmanagement in higher education. Women need to form groups and women'smovements, take an active stance, and speak in one voice against this inhumanity.Society's attitude and behaviour towards women also need to change. Both sexes shouldstrive towards achieving equity and equality. Education institutions can also play a vital role in this regard �?from promoting gender sensitivity to implementing programmesaimed at changing societal views on gender and recruiting more women into the system,as well as changing the institutional culture to make it more accommodating to women.In the final chapter of the study, the researcher formed a synthesis of the findings fromthe literature overview, the qualitative study and the results of the quantitativeinvestigation. The report indicated how female managers in higher education wereinfluenced by stereotyping and the institutional environment that is not conducive towomen's advancement to decision-making and authority positions. Recommendationsfor the enhancement of women's empowerment in order to allow them to advance tomanagement positions in higher education were provided at the end of the final chapter.From the recommendations, it is clear that strategies need to be put in place to increasethe number of women in senior management positions. A prerequisite to meet thischallenge is a change in the attitude of society, which very often still regards women asinferior to men, to allow every citizen to work towards the realisation that women's rightsare human rights, and that South Africa can never be a true democracy until women, too,can claim full enjoyment of all the human rights enshrined in the constitution.

[发布机构] University of the Free State