Advancing women in research

Staff Reporter

22 OCT 2010, 03:00

3 min read

In spite of the many advances made towards equality for, and on behalf of women, women are still underrepresented in academic and scientific research as a whole.

This according to Dr. Anshu Padayachee, CEO of the South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD).

SANPAD was established in 1997 through a bilateral agreement between the governments of South Africa and The Netherlands.

Next week, the organisation hosts their annual Women in Research Conference. It is one of their most prominent programmes within a wide research and capacity development agenda.

The conference theme is “2010 — a milestone or a millstone in advancing women’s participation in research?”.

“For the most of the last decade our agenda has been focused on responding to South African and continental priorities as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 2010 being 10 years since the MDGs were adopted makes the conference theme particularly significant. We have to challenge our governments on every front from poverty to girls’ participation in education to the overall socioeconomic development of women,” added Dr Padayachee.

The conference will be convened on 26-28 October 2010 at the Elangeni Hotel in Durban. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr Navi Pillay, who has a sterling personal and professional record in human rights and women’s rights activism has accepted the invitation to address the conference dinner.

One of the main objectives is to promote women’s participation in research and their consequent influence on socio-economic and development issues. The challenge is to encourage especially black women to pursue academic and research careers.

The conference will bring together the community of women research scholars to critically reflect on the emergence and development of women in research more especially since South Africa’s political transformation of 1994.

The specific objectives are:

To facilitate South African involvement in the continental and inter-continental networking and intellectual capacity development programmes aimed at strengthening women’s participation in higher education, economic development and research

To identify the institutional challenges, and value of engaging in intellectual networking with other African, Asian and European countries with much longer experience.

To establish a network of women researchers and to inform this network of ongoing and completed SANPAD research on women, gender and development issues

To encourage women scientists to participate in all scientific areas

To bring together the community of women research scholars from partner countries to critically reflect on the emergence and development of women in research in their respective countries and to identify a common research theme for a large scale SANPAD-funded comparative study over the next two years

To establish a team of senior women researchers to act as mentors and coaches to women research teams

To disseminate research findings to the wider research community

“One the projected outcomes of the conference is the preparation of a proposal for a large scale comparative study which SANPAD will fund,” said Dr Padayachee. SANPAD has secured a line-up of formidable women researchers, research administrators and policy makers to participate in this potentially groundbreaking conference.