Achieving Gender Equity in Africa’ s Institutions of Tertiary Education: Beyond Access and Representation

Abstract

The analysis below attempts to extend the debate on African women’s participation in tertiary education beyond the persistent appeals for equal representation across the disciplines, and in the proportion of teaching and administrative staff. The analysis here focuses specifically on sub-Saharan Africa. Hence, the references and proposals made exclude the countries north of the Sahara such as Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria. The chapter begins with a brief review of the reasons advanced by those who advocate African women’s access to and representation in tertiary education. It also takes a cursory look at African women’s progress at this level, highlighting the barriers they face. The primary purpose here, however, it to explore the ideological content of African women’s training, and the various ways it might be implicated in the struggle to achieve gender equity at the tertiary level.

As long as the proportion of women in African universities is less than 50 percent … the continent is under-utilizing a corresponding proportion of its available human talent. There seems no intrinsic reason why Africa should continue to disadvantage itself through the exclusion of women … [T]he building of high-quality institutions will benefit from more deliberate and sustained attention to the promotion of women as scholars and scientists, than has prevailed in the past.

Court (1991, 343–344)