Naledi Pandor says traditional social stereotypes are still in place at universities and hinder women’s progress.
Being overlooked for promotion, racial discrimination and intimidating institutional environments are daunting challenges for women academics.
This emerged at this year's annual Higher Education Resource Services South Africa (Hers-SA) academy, held in Cape Town in September.
Registered as a non-profit organisation in 2003, Hers-SA aims to provide women academics and administrators from South Africa and abroad the opportunities to network with each other and gain skills such as strategic planning to enhance their careers. The organisation has close to 1 000 alumnae, of whom 81 attended this year's academy.
Some of the challenges women experience at their universities must be highlighted and addressed, but their identities must be kept confidential, Hers-SA director Dr Sabie Surtee told the Mail & Guardian. "The institutional climate that some of these women are in can be very intimidating, and this makes it difficult for them to speak out. They are afraid of being targeted … for expressing their concerns at work, and this in itself is one of the problems that women in higher education are facing."
One such example is that of an academic, one of only two black members of her university's senate. A delegate at this year's Hers-SA academy, she said she was still being harassed by her white colleagues after occupying the senior post for two years.
"If you are qualified to occupy a position, they have to notice you and this is because of the country's transformation," she said, asking that she not be named. "But transformation is just a smoke screen. They don't have a choice, but they can do other things to make your life miserable.
"I was asked once by one of the male staff: 'What are doing sitting in that chair, haven't you people taken enough?"
Intimidation and victimisation
Problems such as this "affect everything", she said — "my health, my emotional well-being. I am not sure what I will do from here. I have tried to take it up to the highest people in the university but it never gets addressed. I don't speak about it, because I am afraid of more intimidation and victimisation."
Another delegate to the conference told the M&G that other women themselves may pose problems. Some have been "negative about her success" in the institution.
"I feel very isolated and have no support. One of my colleagues once told me not to apply for a certain position because I don't have the necessary experience. I later found out that she had applied for the same position. Even though it is important to look at changing attitudes of men to women, we must also look at the attitude of women to other women," she said.
Surtee said that the annual Hers-SA academy gives women academics the opportunity to gain skills and mechanisms to help them face a variety of problems.
"Many women who are involved in Hers-SA have gone on to occupy higher positions and are better equipped to handle pressure in their working environments."
Professor Nonceba Mbambo-Kekana, director of the school of sciences at the University of Limpopo, told the M&G the Hers-SA programmes have allowed her to manage her work in a better way.
Inspiring
"Attending the academy and other programmes and workshops inspires me because I become aware of how many other women experience the same issues. Since I joined Hers-SA in 2004, I have also had access to information about higher education [through the organisation's newsletter] that I otherwise would not have known; it gives me the bigger picture of things. Hers-SA is a great success because it brings in quality speakers who discuss issues that are relevant to women in higher education today."
Delivering the keynote address at this year's conference, the then minister of science and technology, Naledi Pandor, said: "A great deal of work remains to be done in the higher education sector. The traditional social stereotypes that influence women's progress in higher education remain in place and require dedicated and strategic attention.
"Decades of struggle by women intellectuals have shown that focused and well-crafted joint strategies are the best means of reversing the discrimination that continues to be a part of higher education."
Pandor said that initiatives to increase the number of researchers were under way and the focus would be on ensuring the individuals' gender, age and race were representative of the general population.
One of these initiatives is the Thuthuka programme run by the National Research Foundation. It operates within higher education and aims to enhance the research skills of blacks, coloureds, Indians, women and people with disabilities.