Gender and Sexuality

Exploration of a "Gap": Strategising Gender Equity in African Universities

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This paper reflects on the central themes of this dream by exploring some current thinking on the way in which dominant forces in African universities have opened up possibilities for strategising gender equity within institutional contexts, and considers the potential of policies on gender equity for actual transformational shifts within the consciousness and core business of different African-based universities. The first section of the paper, "Gender and African universities", describes the gendered nature of institutions of higher education within African contexts. The argument names the influence of globalisation and market-driven strategies on pedagogy, the management of education, and the formation of alliances with donor-driven research and policy programmes. The ways in which gender influences the possibilities of employment, knowledge-production, and identities are noted through an examination of the internal organising processes of universities, processes which - on the whole - elude quantification. These issues, while critical to an understanding of gender within institutional space, were not those first raised by gender activists in universities on the continent in the early and mid-1980s. Some of the analyses of these gender activists are noted, and the section closes with the suggestion that certain dynamics, usually central to the process of becoming gendered, have been given relatively little attention by theorists of equity. I demonstrate that the importance of heterosexual practices, and individuals' routes into masculinity, womanhood, and the family should be integrated into analyses of the way in which higher education interacts with local, and national contexts.

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: ., 2002

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English

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Subject(s)

Gender Equity
African Universities
Institutional Context
Womanhood
Education
Realities

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Article

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