INSTITUTIONAL CULTURES AND HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP: WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
DIVERSITY IN LEADERSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Introduction
Good morning. I hope that you are feeling strong. This is a Conference that needs strength, and wisdom. Over the next day and a half you are going to be looking at critical issues which challenge not only higher education, but all organisations and institutions both in Africa and the rest of the world:
These issues are:
Let me first contextualize our discussion by looking at leadership.
The eminent scientist Lord Martin Rees has said: “The prime concern of the 21st Century is that we should survive it.” Strong, good leadership is essential to address the enormous challenges facing the world today. (I tried to find a better word than “good”, but really there is none better: ‘good’ incorporates solid, honest, aware, caring, wise). Good leadership earns respect, shows direction and inspires action and commitment. The world is in dire need of good leadership.
In many ways our generation has failed to provide enough good leaders, people who can seize the challenges of the 20th and 21st centuries, and guide us through the threats of the population explosion, ever increasing poverty, diminishing soil and water supplies, climate change, extremist factions and the good and evil potentials unleashed by science and technology. With a more local focus, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said: “The challenge for leaders in Southern Africa is to establish the kinds of communities that demonstrate that people matter”.
These are enormous challenges. We are passing on a heavy burden to those who will follow us. It will be up to our youth to produce the leadership that will help us survive the 21st century.
The higher education sector has an opportunity: the cream of our youth is to be found in our universities. The leaders of tomorrow are in our institutions now, focusing on their studies, yes, but also absorbing the culture around them and learning by way of example, watching the behaviour of their vice chancellors, professors and lecturers.
Our universities are not technical training colleges where all you learn is a skill or professional competence. A university should provide a stimulating environment which encourages young people to think and question values and norms. A university should not aim to turn out a competent technician, but a thinking, innovative, caring being. In order to do this our universities need good leadership, leadership that is prepared to challenge prevailing institutional cultures and change them.
What are our youth seeing when they look at our present higher education leadership? Do we have Vice Chancellors who are speaking out and playing a leadership role in transforming our society? Are our young people seeing their leaders promoting lively debate and questioning society’s norms and practices? Is their university experience causing them to think about or question the norms they grew up with? I suggest not enough. How else can one explain the continuing existence of a culture that allows racist denigration of South African citizens by fellow citizens as happened at Reitz Residence at the Free State University? How indeed can one explain the outrage of sexism and racism at many of our higher education institutions?
Let’s look again at our current university leadership. If you look in your programme there is a table of statistics. The first thing that strikes you on that list is that you are seeing men. Of the 369 leadership positions surveyed only 85 of these, or 23%, are occupied by women. We have 3 women Vice Chancellors, and 14 women as Deputy Vice Chancellors. Although not listed here, it is common knowledge that this bias is also found among our academic leaders, our professors and associate professors. So our young people learn that leaders are men. What impact is this male dominance likely to have on their development?
Leadership of higher education institutions comes with a responsibility to contribute to transforming the socio-economic and political landscape that continues to be dominated by authoritarian, sexist, racist and inequitable value systems. These value systems are part of our legacy that continues to corrupt the human rights value based Constitutional commitments we made in our democracy. Acknowledging this legacy and committing to transforming it is the task of good leadership in our society across all levels and in all institutions. Higher education institutions have a special responsibility of leadership. Higher education has a responsibility to provide critical intellectual leadership to guide the transformation of our society into its envisaged self. It dares not fail.
Let us now turn to institutional cultures
I used to do a lot of walking in the mountains of the Cape Peninsula with friends. We would enjoy the views, the fresh air and discovering the beautiful mountain fynbos. One of my companions was colour-blind. He could not see anything that was red. So where others would see this magnificent red disa in amongst the grasses, he would not see anything, until it was painstakingly pointed out to him. His view was incomplete, biased. If it was red, it did not exist. Until it was pointed out to him, he was blissfully unaware of what he was missing.
This story illustrates the challenge of institutional culture. When immersed in a particular culture you are blind to certain things. Until someone points this out, you are unaware of what you are missing. Even when something has been pointed out, it does not mean that you can see everything that is ‘red’. Labour law in our democracy demands that we have employment equity for reasons of creating a more equitable society as well as to become better at utilizing all the talents in our society. Employment equity is a tool to eliminate racist and sexist biases in our work place practices. The end goal is to have our numbers of men and women approaching equality. All our institutions are aware of this and overtly strive for it. Progress remains slow because we remain unaware of the other ‘red’ things that hamper progress.
Our institutional climates result in blindness when it comes to issues of gender beyond the numbers. For example, the language of higher education is often masculine. Practices are framed on the assumption of male leadership and timing is insensitive to the needs of women. Male bonding activities are assumed to be the only game in most institutions. How many inter-varsity games are gender neutral? Women either have to join or remain excluded.
The same applies to blindness to issues of race that colour our institutional landscapes. Historically white institutions tend to be unconscious of their tendency to assimilate others rather than reframe cultural practices to ensure greater diversity and inclusiveness. Historically black institutions are also guilty of blindness to cultural artifacts that emulate inappropriate white culture or exclude their white compatriots. Our racist legacy is a stubborn one that requires us to acknowledge and tackle it at every turn and not fall into the temptation of denial. Previously oppressed people are as capable of oppression as any other. Human nature needs to be guided by re-affirmation of those values that compel us to recognize the humanity of others. We need to acknowledge that our welfare is inextricably linked with that of our fellow human beings. Human beings are inherently social and connected to others. It is not just an African cultural trait of ubuntu, but a universal truism that our humanity is defined by our inextricable links with other human beings.
Our first step is to recognize the blinding power of our institutional cultures. The culture of an organization is not something that is overtly noticed by its people. It is just a part of what is natural and normal. Institutional culture is expressed in both artifacts and non-material things such as beliefs and patterns of learned behaviour. Institutional culture is discernable in the very visible architecture of buildings and the invisible power structures that maintain the status quo. It is flaunted in the format of ceremonies and emerges in interpersonal interactions. Institutional culture is embodied in the norms of experiences lived by people within, and working with, the organization. While each person’s experience is individual, the assumption is that there are common threads and themes that run through these experiences, enabling a broad description of aspects of the organization’s culture. Without individuals being overtly aware of it, institutional culture guides behaviour and beliefs and thus influences every aspect of the institution’s functioning.
Our institutional cultures across the social spectrum are colour and gender coded. Within the body politic, black males predominate. Black women are in increasingly visible positions, but their voice is still comparatively muted. Of particular concern in the paucity of young women in political leadership, signaling pipeline problems for the future of leadership in our nation. Even Student Representative Councils remain male domains on most campuses. Within the formal economy, white men continue to rule the roost, with a growing number of black men joining their ranks. White women are few and far in between. Black women are even fewer and further spread. Black women remain at the bottom of the power hierarchy of our society. This is the legacy reflected in our higher education institutions.
Gender-based power constructs
One of the key themes in an institution’s culture comprises the assumptions and values that govern gender interactions. What do we mean by gender? Gherardi (1995, p17) describes gender as “a pervasive symbol of the power relation”. Meanings are assigned by society or organizations to the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’. These meanings tend to subscribe to an oppositional duality, one is either male with all that implies, or female, in a way that minimizes the differences among women and among men. This simplification determines the form and structure of interactions, building on and reinforcing deeply ingrained assumptions and expectations. For example, women as a group are believed to be more nurturing and empathetic and to have a natural ability to help others. We see masculine behaviour characterized as being competitive, controlling, and defensive and risk-taking. It is not unusual for competitive women and nurturing men to be viewed with suspicion.
During this conference you are going to be trying to make visible how the cultures in our institutions shape the forms and structures of interactions, and influence the outcomes of our practices and decisions. You are going to be asking the question: “We have equal numbers of women and men students entering higher education. Why then is our higher education leadership 77% male? Is it something in the women themselves? Is it a special quality that men have? What role do our institutional cultures play?”
This gender bias in higher education leadership positions is not confined to South Africa, or Africa, and international research has explored a number of factors that contribute towards keeping women out of higher education leadership:
Social factors
In most societies women are socialised into fulfilling the caring, reproductive roles – the unpaid work identified by the early feminists. This puts added stresses on women both with respect to time management and prioritising their activities. Women are seen by society as carers rather than professionals. This includes the attitude of line managers, colleagues, students and even one’s own family. It also causes conflict within the working woman herself with respect to her identity, and contributes to structural barriers to advancement. The paucity of role models and mentors in the workplace serves to reinforce these roles that society has assigned to women.
I would like to believe that higher education is the environment where this vicious circle perpetuating social and gender roles can be broken. Our challenge is to explore how this might happen. Women have to be part of the solution. They need to move beyond the comfort zones of projecting themselves as victims. We are all agents of history but agency demands risk taking. Are women willing to take risks to break the cycle?
Structural barriers
Women’s academic advancement is also impacted by structural barriers inherent in the academic environment. One such that has been identified is a bias in applying advancement criteria. Many authors have pointed to the incompatibility of an academic career path with the interruptions women experience due to reproduction and pastoral caring. The period in their career development when a bright young graduate is expected to travel and take up a postdoctoral position coincides with a young woman’s reproductive prime. Not only does the absence of this expected academic experience affect the resumé of the individual woman, but collectively the removal of competition (young reproductive women) increases the opportunities for young men. This clearly affects progression of women’s academic careers, reducing opportunities for research and networking with colleagues. We must also not forget the importance of conferences not only as a venue for academic rationality but also as an arena for masculine competitive display. We need to promote models developed by women such as Prof. Norma Saxe, former Head of Dermatology at UCT Health Sciences Faculty, that promoted part-time research and practice work for women in their reproductive years to keep them within the system.
Many women also have their research time reduced by taking on more than their fair share of teaching and student support. This sense of duty also extends to committee work as women are often prepared to sit on (usually less-influential, routine) committees. Acker and Feuerverger (1996) suggest that women see caring for others as part of their identity and not something that is forced upon them. Women need to take responsibility for living out these stereotypical roles. There is no contradiction to caring and being assertive in demanding equitable sharing of responsibilities. The caring role needs to include reminding male colleagues of the benefits of equitable sharing of responsibilities for the health of the entire academic enterprise. The system of rewards within academia needs to be transformed to signal the importance of the caring roles.
Research in various countries has also shown a distinct gender bias in applying academic advancement criteria such as peer reviewing. One of the more vivid papers on this appeared in Nature in 2006. Ben Barres, a scientist, who underwent a sex change describes how, as a student during a test at MIT, she (then a woman) was the only student to solve a particularly hard problem. The professor told Barres her boyfriend must have solved it. Then later in her/his career, after Barres had given a speech at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a man in the audience, unaware of Barres' sex change, turned to another man and said, "Ben Barres' work is much better than his sister's."
Kettle (1996, p. 52) sums up the situation when she claims that the academic environment “provid[es] men with more credentials” than women. Women who have worked with men can share war stories about how this bias plays out in various settings.
Personal and psychological barriers
Some authors have suggested that women have psychological or cultural barriers to accepting responsibility. A number of authors talk about the importance of self-confidence in advancing a career in academia. Heward (1996) believes that self-confidence and positive self-evaluation of one’s academic ability from an early stage is essential in developing a successful academic career. However, being assertive is criticized as being unfeminine. Research has shown that women value cooperation and caring and dislike competition and individual assessment. Brown quotes Caplan (1993) as saying: “..women are often blamed for their own insecurity, but in fact female socialization to feel inadequate and the very real sexist aspects one finds in most academic settings are the real culprits” (Brown, 2000, n.p.).
Lessons from studies about the psychology of the oppressed across race, class and gender constructs point to the importance of psychological liberation of the oppressed. It is only when oppressed people redefine themselves and declare themselves entitled to equal treatment that they can be free. Victimhood is the biggest barrier to progress in dismantling dominant power structures. Women must take risks and challenge the status quo and free both themselves and their male counterparts from sexist notions. This generation needs to blaze the trails of more equitable power relationships for future generations.
Climate issues
Research and institutional climate surveys across South Africa and across the world find evidence that many women in academia feel “desperately unhappy”, an attitude which can easily be transmitted to their students. Women feel like outsiders, something supported by Blackmore and Sach’s studies in Australia (2000, 2001). The women leaders they interviewed showed ambivalence in that they never felt as if they participated fully in the academic environment, nor could they buy into the institutional management structures. Many women found the requirements of academic identity conflicted with the value they placed on teaching, service and care.
Other authors have interpreted this differently suggesting that women’s values do not necessarily conform with the excessive time demanded by universities as ‘greedy’ institutions (Currie, Harris and Thiele, 2000). Smulders (1998) suggests that female responsibilities and images are incompatible with the masculine nature of the university, an environment where overwork and workaholism are made to be the norm. Acker and Feuerverger (1996) found that women particularly disliked the competitiveness and rigidity around academic promotion procedures. In a similar vein, research in Australia (Harris and Thiele, 1998) points to the tension women experience in coping with the gendered nature of the image of a successful academic as someone who has the capacity to work long hours so as to win grant money and produce publications. They highlight the masculine language of the academy –‘monastic life’, ‘reasonable man’, ‘scientific rationality’, ‘quantifiable output’, and identify the high degree of self-promotion required for success in academia as a problem for women.
The resultant lack of a critical mass of senior women and supportive networks adds to the isolation of women. The ‘old boys club’ is perceived to play a very important role in the career development of males in the academy. Heward (1996) believes that these networks become increasingly important in the mid- and later stages of a career.
The continuous privileging of men and hegemonic masculinities and devaluation of women and femininities have cumulative effects on the careers of individual men and women, causing increasing divergence most visible among the older age groups. (Heward, 1996, p. 21)
My experiences as a former university vice chancellor and managing director at the World Bank have suggested the following as essential pillars of transformation:
Conclusion
Let me conclude with Pretorius’s words written in the Mail and Guardian in June last year that:
“There is a dearth of leadership in the sector [Higher Education], which is a function of the skills crisis. Good people are snapped up by the government and the private sector. Higher education is no different. We are all struggling to appoint the right people” (Pretorius, 2007).
Whilst there is a skills crisis – and this is something universities should be addressing, there is certainly a dearth in leadership. This is not only in the higher education sector but in the country and in the world. I would argue that part of this “dearth” can be attributed to a blindness in our culture, we are just not seeing the ‘red’. Our gendered institutional cultures prevent us from seeing the leadership potential that exists in half the population, our women. If half the students entering higher education are women, you must now, during this conference, explore what happens to them. We need to move beyond just being able to see the potential of the dazzling red disas all around us, towards the creation of a climate that can nurture them to become even more dazzling.
Getting to grips with institutional cultures is no easy matter. It will take a deliberate shift in the frame of reference from traditional authoritarianism towards an enabling culture in which the public interest intersects with the personal, the professional and political interests of all of us.
Thank you
Mamphela Ramphele
27/3/08
References:
Acker, S. and Feuerverger, G. 1996. "Doing good and feeling bad: The work of women university teachers", Cambridge Journal of Education. 26 (3): 401-423.
Barres, B.A. 2006. "Does gender matter?" Nature. 442: 133 -136.
Blackmore, J. and Sachs, J. 2000. "Paradoxes of leadership and management in higher education in times of change: Some Australian reflections", International Journal of Leadership in Education. 3 (1): 1-16.
Blackmore, J. and Sachs, J. 2001. "Women leaders in the restructured university". In Brooks, A. and Mackinnon, A. eds. Gender and the restructured university: Changing management and culture in higher education. Buckingham and Philadelphia: SRHE and Open University Press. 45-66.
Brown, R. 2000. "Personal and professional development programmes for women: Paradigm and paradox", The International Journal for Academic Development online. Accessed on 3 February 2004 from http://www.teandf.co.uk/journals.
Heward, C. 1996. "Women and careers in higher education: What is the problem?" In Morley, L. and Walsh, V. eds. Breaking boundaries: Women in higher education. London: Taylor and Francis. 11-23.
Kettle, J. 1996. "Good practices, bad attitudes: An examination of the factors influencing women's academic careers". In Morley, L. and Walsh, V. eds. Breaking boundaries: Women in higher education. London: Taylor and Francis. 52-66.
Martin, J. 2006. The meaning of the 21st Century. Transworld Publishers. p. 290
Pretorius, C (2007). “Varsities face leadership gap”, Mail and Guardian, 12 June 2007.
Smulders, A.E.M. 1998. Creating space for women. Gender-linked factors in managing staff in higher education institutions. UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning. 64pp.
Mamphela Ramphele
27/3/08