Bridging the gender equality gap in science at the Women’s University in Africa

Abstract

Over the past decades, significant progress has been made to address gender disparities in university education in general and, to a certain extent, science disciplines. Various interventions, such as affirmative action policies, have been used to address this issue of gender disparity. However, much of what is known about this problem comes from higher education contexts in the global North with limited data on this issue emerging from the South and a paucity of understanding of how structural barriers in these contexts fail to attract, retain, and ensure women complete their studies in STEM disciplines. To address this limitation, we conducted a gender audit at the only women-centred university in the SADC region, the Women’s University of Africa (WUA), which has various campuses across Zimbabwe, to understand if and how policies and practices implemented at this institution have addressed systematic and systemic barriers to women’s participation in higher education in general and science disciplines more specifically. Using an array of methods (document analysis, interviews with university stakeholders, focus groups with students and graduates, and observations), the audit found that overall, the university has implemented many progressive policies and practices to work towards its overarching vision of gender equality and achieve its gender-informed enrolment goal (85% female to 15% male student ratio). Despite these successes regarding overall admission rates (i.e. 83% women to 17% male student ratio), our study also found that gender gaps continue to persist in various science- related disciplines at WUA – gaps that can be explained by systematic and systemic issues in the country’s higher education system that can potentially be addressed by more targeted and holistic interventions.