Advancing Gender Equality in Higher Education in South Africa: Emboldening Women Leaders in Complex Contexts
Inclusive Leadership: Equity and Belonging in Our Communities
ISBN: 978-1-83797-441-2, eISBN: 978-1-83797-438-2
ISSN: 2058-8801
Publication date: 16 October 2023
Abstract
Change in higher education across the globe is taking place at an unprecedented pace. Various groups, especially women, are impacted differently by these changes. Women remain underrepresented in leadership at universities across the globe, and South African higher education is no different. For women to take up senior leadership roles more potently in universities, particularly in the Global South, it is essential that they not only cope with and compete in the patriarchal systems that characterize this sector but are also emboldened to contribute to changing patriarchal hegemony. There are shifts needed in prevailing management styles and leadership discourses toward a pluralistic and inclusive culture, where transformational and equitable leadership cultures become the norm and praxis. Given this context, we assessed the needs of women leaders in the South African higher education sector and designed a program to help shift their experience of themselves and their contexts. This chapter discusses this national executive development program – the Women in Leadership (WiL) program – which was developed and implemented with the aim to advance gender equality and inclusivity in higher education leadership in South Africa. This program aimed to embolden the women leaders in their ability to recognize, address, and impact barriers to gender equality.
Keywords
Citation
Schreiber, B. and Zinn, D. (2023), "Advancing Gender Equality in Higher Education in South Africa: Emboldening Women Leaders in Complex Contexts", Barnes, J., Stevens, M.J., Ekelund, B.Z. and Perham-Lippman, K. (Ed.) Inclusive Leadership: Equity and Belonging in Our Communities (Building Leadership Bridges, Vol. 9), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 65-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2058-880120230000009006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Emerald Publishing Limited
Change in higher education across the globe is taking place at an unprecedented pace. Various groups, especially women,1 are impacted differently by these changes as these impact higher education leadership, particularly at senior leadership levels (Gmelch & Buller, 2015; Seale & Cross, 2017). Women remain underrepresented in leadership at universities across the globe, and South African higher education is no different.
For women to take up senior leadership roles more potently in universities, particularly in the Global South, it is essential that they not only cope with and compete in the patriarchal systems that characterize this sector but more so are emboldened to contribute to changing patriarchal hegemony. There are shifts needed in prevailing management styles and leadership discourses toward a pluralistic and inclusive culture, where transformational and equitable leadership cultures become the norm and praxis.
Given this context, we assessed the needs of women leaders in the South African higher education sector and designed a program to help shift their experience of themselves and their contexts. This chapter discusses this national executive development program – the WiL program – which was developed and implemented with the aim to advance gender equality and inclusivity in higher education leadership in South Africa. This program aimed to embolden the women leaders in their ability to recognize, address, and impact barriers to gender equality. An evaluation of the program and its impact on the participants was undertaken, and in this chapter, we provide an overview of the program’s components and the findings on its impact on the first cohort of participants.
Women in Higher Education Leadership
Women in higher education leadership often experience the practices around power and its implicit and explicit distribution, and overt or veiled sexism, that maintain prevalent patriarchal hegemony in “micro arrangements within a university space” (Fish, 2019, p. 31). Women, often part of the minority in leadership spaces, experience themselves “misaligned with hegemonic culture and need to face these alienating and exclusionary institutional cultures and practices” (HET, 2019, p. 31). These experiences within patriarchal leadership cultures contribute toward the asymmetries of gender balances in leadership, reflecting “the higher the fewer” (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019, n.p.) which applies across the higher education sector.
Women leaders in universities remain underrepresented in the global higher education sector despite several key initiatives that seek to advance gender equality in leadership in higher education via bespoke programs (Jarboe, 2016; Johnson, 2017; www.advance-he.ac.uk; www.acu.ac.uk/get-involved/gender/). South Africa also has several initiatives that seek to address the gender asymmetries in leadership in higher education (for instance, Higher Education Resource Services-South Africa (HERS-SA) and others, see Seale et al., 2021). Under the auspices of Universities South Africa (USAf), a national umbrella body comprising all 26 public universities in South Africa, one such initiative called the WiL program has been undertaken by a strategic unit called Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM). As its name implies, HELM is mandated to build and support leadership capacity in the sector, including for women in higher education.
Preparation for the WiL Program
The WiL program is based on a training needs analysis (TNA) which explored the needs of women leaders in higher education in South Africa. The TNA focused on women’s experience in higher education leadership at 26 public universities in South Africa. A web-based survey recorded demographic data and explored the (1) skills considered already in place and (2) further training and development needs. The questions were closed- and open-ended and asked the participants to either list certain items, themes, or key terms and then to rank these. Open-ended responses were thematically analyzed.
This TNA generated “many interesting but not surprising aspects” (Seale et al., 2021, p. 8) and confirmed that women leaders in South African higher education experience a gendered leadership context. Furthermore, it revealed that women leaders want to understand their challenges and address the systemic barriers that maintain these challenges. Women leaders expressed that they seek to be part of programs that equip them to boldly impact their context to advance their leadership and to promote a more gender-fair higher education leadership culture. These findings are aligned with Mouton and Wildschut’s (2015) study that found that middle and senior leadership in South Africa has an “acute” need for training and development programs, including gender awareness programs (p. 8).
Pedagogy and Approach to the WiL Program
Research on initiatives that aim to advance women leaders and gender equality often focuses on extended programs, many with a “collective learning approach” (Garavan & McCarthy, 2008; McCarthy & Garavan, 2008; Yemiscigil et al., 2023). The collective learning approach includes a relational aspect (Garavan & McCarthy, 2008; McCarthy & Garavan, 2008; Yemiscigil et al., 2023) and includes reflection, learning, and development that occur in the context of dyads, groups, and communities. This kind of learning involves learning in a peer context, learning from each other by engaging in discussion, sharing, reflecting, and challenging each other’s experiences, in a way that normalizes, explores, and challenges experiences and interpretations of these (Jones et al., 2006; Yemiscigil et al., 2023). The WiL program described in this chapter utilizes a collective learning approach and has a strong emphasis on the relational aspect. In addition, we have employed a humanizing pedagogy, which seeks to restore dignity, worth, and confidence, to reverse the dehumanization, with all its negative consequences, to those who have had to live and work in inequitable and often overtly oppressive contexts. In this regard, the pedagogical approach and philosophy of radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire have provided inspiration and guidance (Freire, 1970; Freire & Freire, 1994, 1997).
Besides the focus on humanizing pedagogies incorporated into the conceptualization of the program’s architecture, content, and methodologies, there is also a recognition that institutional cultures require a re-examination if we are to advance a more gender-balanced leadership in our higher education sector.
The WiL Program
In response to the TNA (Seale et al., 2021) described above, the research undertaken on programs with similar goals, and drawing on the professional “lived” experience of the program team (who had themselves held leadership positions as women in higher education in South Africa), a senior-level leadership program was developed and implemented by USAf HELM in 2020, and since then annually. The WiL program as conceptualized by USAf HELM focuses on engaging professional women in middle and senior management and leadership in public universities in South Africa to advance their leadership and embolden their impact on the higher education context. The context is characterized by patriarchal management cultures; paradoxical demands; strident student, staff, and public voices; conflicting global and local imperatives; demands for sustainability and social justice; and fiscal challenges and shifts from massification to universification of higher education in a competitive local–global climate.
The WiL program has two specific aims: first, to embolden women leaders to take up more senior leadership positions and advance their leadership trajectory; and second, to embolden women leaders to recognize and challenge practices and structures in their institutional context that create barriers toward a more equitable and transformational leadership culture in which everyone, and especially women leaders, can thrive. The program focuses on women leaders to recognize power asymmetries, navigate patriarchal institutional cultures, and advance gender equity. The program is informed by principles of humanizing pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Keet et al., 2009; Salazar, 2013; Zinn & Rodgers, 2012) which foreground social justice, transformation, critical theory, and personal agency. The pedagogy centers the experience of the subject (in this case women in the contexts of work, home, and society), is interactive (drawing on their own knowledge and lived experiences) utilizing creative tools and activities, is cognizant and critical of the contexts and conditions in which the participants are embedded, and engages peer and collaborative learning from and with each other.
The focus of humanizing pedagogy foregrounds the acknowledgment and development of the self within context; values the self as a critical agent in the learning and development process; and emphasizes the relationships of learners with each other, with their communities, and with their context, situating them and contextualizing them and the facilitators or teachers (Keet et al., 2009). An underpinning approach is to provide participants with an experience of leadership, rather than only foregrounding skills or competencies development. The program focuses on the development of the self in context, self in relation to the collective and others, and the self in relation to one’s own leadership path. The emerging transformation is at a personal level and emphasizes human agency that allows space for thinking and exploration on how change can be affected.
The WiL program is premised on the idea that the development of leadership capacity and confidence emboldens women to advocate for themselves and others like them, while they navigate and excel in leading diverse teams to shape change within the complex higher education context. WiL’s goal is to contribute to a more equitable, diverse, and representative higher education environment, in which multiple perspectives and ways of thinking, doing, and being create an enabling environment in which all who work and live in it can thrive. The program includes acquisition and development of relevant knowledge about self and leadership in higher education institutions, a platform to engage with peers and experienced leaders, opportunities to form professional networks, and opportunities to develop skills. There is a focus on enabling women to envision and create environments in which creativity and diversity are encouraged and thrive.
The curriculum has several components. The core of the program includes 10 scheduled “sessions” focusing on relevant leadership topics and important skillsets required of leaders in South African universities. Most of these sessions are offered online in three-hour sessions every fortnight. At least two “in-person”/hybrid multi-day retreats are included in the program. These sessions were co-presented by two HELM facilitators and include a distinguished leader, most of whom are senior women leaders within the university sector, present their insights on the topic of that session. In addition, peer learning groups are set up, and these are met between sessions. We set up four individual coaching sessions for each participant with an experienced qualified coach, familiar with higher education contexts. The coaching sessions aimed to provide participants with an opportunity to experience individual support regarding their growth and personal development journey. All the coaches utilized an integral coaching approach.
Reflective assignments followed most sessions, and some involved practical tasks and engagements to encourage participants to think about how session content could be applied or implemented in their own institutional contexts. Participants were encouraged to keep a journal to record their private thoughts and reflections during the program. Asynchronous engagement with the material of the program, readings, and the production of a portfolio of learning including a reflective essay and learning portfolio were required to complete the program.
The topics of the sessions included an introductory orientation session, followed by the following topics: the self in context, paradigms, and purposes, leading in times of crisis and challenge, leading the higher education missions, leading and working with people, working with finances, career planning and advancement, and building networks (including global, regional, and national). Finally, in the wrap-up session, the focus was on reflection and review of their learning and preparation of the portfolio of learning.
Program Evaluation
The 2020 program was evaluated by a professional monitoring and evaluation company (Franklin, 2020) to investigate its impact on the participants and their ability to have an impact on their context. The evaluation aimed to explore the WiL program’s relevance, implementation, and impact on the participants.
Methodology of the Evaluation
The data collection employed a mixed-methods approach that included interviews with program staff and facilitators and a series of engagements with participants in a variety of ways. In efforts to maximize the engagements with and feedback from participation, they were invited to engage in some or all the following, depending on their preference and availability: an electronic questionnaire, individual interviews, and/or focus group discussions. Participants’ feedback was anonymized to preserve confidentiality. All 37 staff, facilitators, administrators, and participants of this 2020 program were contacted to provide feedback via any one or more of the channels offered to them.
Findings
Relevance
WiL’s relevance in response to the challenges that women leaders are facing within the higher education context was confirmed by all interviewed participants. The motivation cited by many participants for their interest in the participant in WiL aligned well with the program’s understanding of the challenges that women needed to face. Many participants were grappling with gender- and race-related issues within their workspaces and felt they needed support in understanding these and dealing skillfully with them.
Conceptualization
The humanizing pedagogy informing the way in which WiL was conceptualized and presented, the foregrounding of the relational approach, together with the practice of self-reflection, was woven into all aspects of the program. Participants reflected on how these opportunities for relating deepened their experience and that they felt safe to share of themselves in the process.
Coaching and Peer Group Learning
The coaching component was highlighted as an important part of the program, particularly in terms of being a mechanism for self-reflection. Similarly, the peer learning groups were also reported to be of high impact in terms of being a space that enabled participants to share, to test and normalize their experience, and to explore new ways of being and doing. The long-term benefits of access to a network of female leaders were recognized and highly valued by the participants.
Personal and Professional Changes
The evaluation revealed that WiL catalyzed significant personal and professional change and transformation for participants.
Each of the interviewed participants reported that the program added value to their personal and professional development. Specific themes that emerged relate to strengthening their leadership capacity and skills through understanding of themselves as agent and role-player in the context; enhancing self-reflection and self-awareness; establishing solidarity through networks and relationships; enhanced understanding of the Higher Education (HE) context and its impact on women; recognizing the value of self-care; and reflecting on their career trajectories.
Participants shared examples of how specific sessions contributed toward increased levels of leadership awareness, knowledge, and skills and a deeper understanding of their agency, their impact, and their responsibility in shaping their experience. Participants reported that WiL provided a space to explore the competencies and characteristics required when taking up leadership positions.
Almost all participants spoke of gaining significant insight through the opportunities for self-reflection in WiL, and examples were cited of how self-reflection has led to an enhanced sense of self. The emphasis on reflective thinking and the sharing of experiences was highly valued by the participants, who explained that this had provided a space to think about themselves in new and different ways. The significance of self-awareness became clear as participants shared how leadership styles were employed and were related to their personal sense of self. Participants spoke of how the various components of the program contributed to enhancing their self-reflection and self-awareness and many noted their appreciation of, and often surprise at, the impact of reflection during the journaling exercises.
The establishment of a network through WiL was appreciated as a significant outcome for participants. Many formed close relationships with other women via the peer learning groups or the broader group and valued the personal component of these relationships and the support they received. Participants shared how feeling part of a collective that shares similar experiences normalized their experiences and reduced a sense of loneliness and “being the only one” in certain perceptions.
There was an overarching theme that participants largely prioritized work at the expense of self-care. Participants indicated that the program raised awareness about this aspect and underscored the necessity of taking time for oneself to be better equipped to deal with daily challenges.
WiL provided an opportunity for participants to explore their potential and desire to advance further in leadership positions within their institutions. WiL inspired some to strive toward expanded career goals, and speak about their ambitions. Several participants highlighted that due to WiL, they have realized the importance of being clear and intentional about their professional goals and taking practical steps toward achieving these professional goals. This intentionality comes from making conscious career decisions, actively seeking out opportunities that will bring them closer to achieving career goals, being more assertive and actively competing for leadership positions, and finding admirable leaders to emulate.
Relating To and Impacting the Context
Participants also reported on shifts in the way in which they viewed themselves within their contexts and the macro-institutional environment. Specific themes that emerged relate to how participants “see the same things differently” and have a deeper understanding of the context as enabling or inhibiting their participation and their agency.
Many spoke of a fundamental shift in the way they perceived themselves within their workspaces and a change in how they applied themselves to the challenges therein. There were instances where participants described seeing themselves now as potential “change agents” who could pave the way for others. WiL shifted the way in which participants viewed their power, or lack thereof, with many noting that they felt more empowered within their contexts since participating in the program.
Some participants have strengthened and improved their relationships with their staff and team members because of increased leadership confidences, capacity, and management skills. Leadership outcomes were not only related to how to lead for the completion of tasks but also how to develop junior staff members while being cognizant of the nuances of relationship building.
Many participants reported how these changes had started a ripple effect in their immediate and broader contexts, either as plans they are intending on actioning in the near future or as activities that they have already undertaken. Participants spoke of being inspired by WiL to become champions for other women leaders or future leaders within their spheres of influence. They felt a sense of responsibility for the development of other women to join the ranks in affecting change and impacting patriarchy and recognized the need for solidarity with other women leaders to influence positive systemic change within higher education.
Conclusion
The evaluation done on the 2020 cohort of women participants in the WiL program in South African higher education revealed that the program achieved its objectives to embolden women leaders and build capacity around understanding the complexity of their contexts, as well as their agency to impact their context. The WiL built a sense of community around the similarities of experience, normalizing the women leaders’ sense of being and leading in their contexts. The relational aspect, the peer groups, the reflections, and networks that emerged were highly valued and enabled “developing a voice” for the participants. There appears to be a pronounced need to access a community of women in higher education and to find support from and solidarity with other women leaders.
Gender advancement in South African higher education is not only about emboldening women. It is also about reducing their sense of “otherness,” of being “on their own,” being different to their male counterparts in a patriarchal leadership context. Women leaders need to harness their own strength and exercise their agency in contributing toward a fairer and more equitable higher education management and leadership culture.
The terms “men” and “women” do not imply a denial of gender spectrum but are used in this binary form for this chapter.
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- Prelims
- Part One: Understanding Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
- Chapter 1: Shared Equity Leadership: A New Model for Making Inclusion and Equity Part of Organizational Culture
- Chapter 2: Inclusive Leadership and Power
- Chapter 3: Cultural Humility and Inclusion: Transformation to a Culture of Belonging
- Chapter 4: The Impact of Colonialism on Inclusion and Belonging in Organizations
- Part Two: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Education
- Chapter 5: The Development of Future Leaders' Inclusive Competencies: Lessons From a Business Management Course
- Chapter 6: Advancing Gender Equality in Higher Education in South Africa: Emboldening Women Leaders in Complex Contexts
- Chapter 7: Building Diverse and Inclusive Faculty Teams: Practices in Inclusive Leadership in Higher Education
- Chapter 8: Inclusive Leadership for Social Justice: DEIB Leadership Programs and Organizations
- Chapter 9: Addressing the Goal of Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and Lifelong Learning for All
- Chapter 10: Research–Practice Partnership to Reform Special Education Service Delivery in Boston Public Schools
- Part Three: The Application and Practice of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging/Accessibility
- Chapter 11: An Inclusive Language of Diversity
- Chapter 12: Inclusive Leadership: Guide and Tools
- Chapter 13: How Inclusive Leaders Can Influence Employee Engagement
- Chapter 14: Fostering an Inclusive Organization Through the Power of Storytelling
- Chapter 15: Achieving Societal Equality by Building Inclusive Corporate Boards
- Part Four: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging/Accessibility: A Community and Global Perspective
- Chapter 16: Creating Inclusive Leadership in Rural Communities: Lessons Learned in Rural Minnesota
- Chapter 17: Inclusive Leadership From a Force Commander's Perspective
- Chapter 18: Diversity From an Organizational Perspective: Building a Culture
- Chapter 19: Decolonization and Inclusion: Widening the Circle
- Chapter 20: Muslimophobia: Overcoming Religious Discrimination and Exclusion in the Workplace
- Chapter 21: The Reciprocity of Dignity: Transforming Us/Them Narratives Through Inclusive Dialogue
- Chapter 22: Social Justice Leader Case Studies Assessed Through the Lens of Connective Leadership™
- Chapter 23: Iran's Woman Life Freedom Movement: How Leadership Emerged
- Index