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

 

The quality of teaching across all levels of education has a significant impact on academic access, retention and performance of male and female students and is essential to achieving sustainable development. The quality of teaching includes an investment in developing standard guidelines as well as lecturer training and support. A three-year long study of Zimbabwean Universities with an in-depth case study of Women’s University in Africa established that there are no Minimum Gender Responsive Curriculum Development Standards and yet lecturers in Universities in Zimbabwe do not all undergo a structured training programme on pedagogy. Given the need for accelerated efforts not only for women and girls’ access, but also their retention and progression through University education, there is renewed interest in addressing systemic issues affecting retention and progression, through investments in quality teaching and learning. This policy brief therefore seeks to contribute to greater fulfilling learning experiences and educational impacts for male and female University students through proposing gender responsive pedagogy in all Universities in Zimbabwe.

The presentation contains information on the background, objectives, methods, and recommendations of the Bridging the Gender Gap in Science at Women’s University in Africa (WUA) project.

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.