WLA 2018 Report - Draft 1-2

Brief History of State of African
Women
In many countries across the world, the role of women has been minimized based on the long
tradition of their exclusion from education and development. The participation of particularly African
women in economic, social, political and cultural sectors was affected by cultural barriers and low
expectations by and of females. Organisational and institutional cultures of universities, in general,
were established to meet the needs of male faculty and students. Patterns of leadership, beliefs,
symbols, structures, ceremonies, power and information flow (Carrol and Mills, 2006) are modelled
on masculine expectations and experiences and this in turn resulted in very few African women in
tertiary institutions over the years.
Africa’s new investments in higher education are the result of significant strides in expanding access
to primary and secondary schooling for both genders. Yet the ‘massification of higher education’
across the continent has not yielded comparable developments towards gender parity as measured
by the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) despite the significant change globally. According to the
2015 GGGI, Sub-Saharan Africa has made the most progress toward narrowing its educational
attainment gender gap over 2014. But disparities between male and female higher education gross
enrollment rate (GER) ratios persist.
Rwanda, the highest ranked African country (6th) by GGGI has a male ratio of 8.64% and a female
one of 6.64%. Chad, the lowest ranked African country, on the other hand (142nd) has a male GER of
5.74% and a female GER of 1.4%. The research identifies gender inequality in higher institutions of
learning as a key factor that contributes to the marginalisation of women in the workplace.
The last 60+ years have seen the number of women in the workplace globally significantly increase.
Women entered the economic system to supplement the male earning capacity which had been lost
to the two world wars. Despite the evolution globally, African women were still relatively
underrepresented in the workplace with only significant changes happening in the last 10 years.
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