Let me start by recognising the presence of our Minister,Mme Naledi Pandor;the President of ASSAf, Prof Daya Reddy;Executive Officer of ASSAf, Prof Roseanne Diab;Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, Prof Robin Crewe.Young Scientists,ladies and gentlemen,colleagues, good morning and thank you so much for the invitation to deliver this talk.
I was asked to talk about women and leadership,so I thought that is a little quiet and so I decided to make it a bit loud and as colourful as I am and rather talk about Leadership:TheInvisibility of African Women and the Masculinity of Power.
In a recent reply to the so-called‘ideology of “no transformation”’ in higher education, Nico Cloete shows that African women PhD graduates grew from 10 in 1996 to106 in 2012 – a 960% increase. But read on , because this still only translates to a participation rate of 2.4% per100000 of the relevant population. When white women are compared, their participation rate is 40 times higher! My argument today therefore is that black African women are invisible in leadership and the‘masculinity of power’marginalises them.
The question is - Does the picture site2016 for other areas of leadership beyond performance in advanced degrees? The answer is‘no’. As we speak we have only one A-rated black African woman and only two who are B-rated in relation to 12 white women who are A rated and 67 who are B rated. Don’t get mewrong, I am not suggesting that black Afric an women should be awarded A and B ratings even when they do not deserve them. Rather, I am asking why is it that 21 years after democracy only three black African women have risen to these levels. What is it that we are not doing to ensure that more black African women get to these levels? Of course we have to say thank you to the Minister for the 42 women SARChI chairs that were announced recently. But of course even in that group of 42,mostly are white women. So no matter what the CREST data says, the point is that black African women remain invisible despite the increased number of black African women doctorates.
Looking at the government’s latest report on the status of women in South Africa, it is clear that despite educational gains, women are generally employed in low-skilled occupations. Gender inequality varies across sectors, from 12th in the world in terms of political empowerment, to 83rd for economic participation, and 85th for educational attainment.
It may be unusual for someone like me to admit that while statistics are helpful they are inadequate,- on the matter of women and leadership, I believe words are more important,perhaps because we have the figures and their power to speak often needs amplification. We know, for instance,that there are few women CEOs and that academic management is slow to appoint women,and that only parliamentin SA can boast parity between men and women.In mostcases, the numbers paint a dismal picture,despite the triumphalism of our democracy.
The representation of women in government has made us think we’re doing much better than we really are in the leadership stakes. We see rows of women in parliament,some taking prominent positions.In the media,women leaders in the political and judicial arena capture our imagination,and we congratulate ourselves on gender transformation.Of course,these achievements are important,but in our space–research and higher education–the picture seems very different,especially when you start to disaggregate both‘women’and‘leadership’. Which women? What kinds of leadership? My concern is that for all the demographic transformation in government,does this translate to leadership?
Even the relatively positive achievements of women in government masks the real relations of power within social and political movements, and Shireen Hassim (in Gumede & Dikeni 2009:p.183) argues that‘questions concerning who has voice and agency …remain largely obscured’. This is not to say that women have not benefited from the new procedural and institutional arrangements of the state after 1994 -of course we have, but we have to see this as very much a‘work inprogress’.
So today I choose words to help numbers. In a recent book entitled The Colour of Our Future,edited by Mangcu, Joel Netshitenzhe argues that black women have suffered‘triple oppression’,as disadvantaged and marginalised in class terms,as black in a racialised society that privileges the white minority,and as women in patriarchical African cultures.
It seems to me that black women are also affected by the assertions of Africanness which are astrong feature of contemporary politics, because their promotion of pristine forms of African culture generally valorises patriarchical practices. This important return to heritage as a way of restoring dignity to African identity sometimes depicts women in subject roles. Christine Obbo (in Ntarangwi, Mills & Babiker2006:p.157), for example, cites the effect of modernity on women,as elite African menabandone their ‘traditional’wives in villages to marry younger,educated women in urban centres.She points out the irony that this was true of intellectuals who‘exhorted the celebration of African culture’.
Feminism among Africans has also not fared well,because of its epistemological whiteness which,understandably,has not had much purchase in South Africa.This has meant that feminism often sets up arivalry between black and white women, because it has generally been soft on racial and class inequality(Marcus,1988:
101).
Behind the numbers therefore is an analysis of our historical and contemporary status as women.I can’t speak for white women,but in academia they seem to have been the beneficiaries of democracy more than black African women, rising to senior professorial positions and even executive management, althought here is a glass ceiling at Vice-Chancellor level for all women.
This brings me to my own experience,beginning in the township with its economic and educational deficits,making the best of apartheid higher education at the University of Bophuthatswana,and eventually earning a place at Wits.There, I had to contend with its forms of‘coloniality’ in racial,gender, linguistic and curricular terms, until I graduated with a PhD. The academic totem pole has its own challenges, as I climbed the ranks to professor,dean and deputy vicechancellor, against considerable odds.Hard work is important but I have also learned that it is not sufficient!
My experience has taught me that women have to be much better than men to land top jobs,they have to work doubly hard, but this gradually becomes an albatross the more women get into executive positions,because talented women are often constructed as ambitious rivals;and gender politics harshly depicts them in patriarchal stereotypes,caricaturing their personalities to curbt heir influence.
The‘Rhodes must fall ’and the ‘Open Stellenbosch’ movement stackle the ‘coloniality of power’,as Grosfoguel has coined it , but I don’t see issues of gender equality being asserted in these current politics.In this sense,gender is trumped by race, which tends to make women compete with women, which often leaves black African women at the back of the colonial procession.
If I have lamented the invisibility of black African women in leadership,I am also challenging the ‘masculinity of power ’as well as the coloniality of power in higher education and others ectors of the economy.Changing the numbers doesn’t site2016 influence, and leadership is not the out come. So what do young up-and-coming women in science and research need to do to rise to leadership?
First,you need to stay in the system.Often times people don’t think of research as a career. In fact research and academia are not marketed as careers perhaps because the salaries are not thatg reat. Many of our young scientists want to get a PhD so that they can go somewhere else and make money.They use the PhD as a passport to another professional destination.This emigration of research capacity weakens potential leadership in the academy and reduces our influence in knowledge creation and production.
Truth is that a career in research is not glamorous – it means exploring new, unknown paths with patience and persistence without losing focus or hope even when setbacks and difficulties occur.So my encouragement to all our young researchers here today is that YOU stay the course,no matter what the challenges are! Because challenges will be there! Just stay the course!
Since African women are invisible,the potential to be visible is,of course , enormous –only if we stay the course, which means that the glass ceiling is perhaps less of an issue than mobility from lower ranks.The prospects for leadership are therefore immense as our critical mass manoeuvres us to a better position and higher education beacons to us an open opportunity for intellectual growth,personal development and career advancement,with an eye to feminising universities by changing ways of knowing,ways of doing and ways of leading to achievea more equal society.
As you start the conference,letme encourage you to make the most of every opportunity you have here tol earn,to connect with fellow researchers,to make friends and to take leadership! Because leadership starts now and its starts with you! Thank you!
References
- Cloete, N. (2015, August 28). The PhD and the ideology of ‘no transformation’.University World News. Issue No: 379. Retrieved from http://www.universityworldnews.com/
- Hassim,S.(2009).Genderandpolicy-making:termsofengagement.InW. GumedeandL.Dikeni(Eds.).*SouthAfricanDemocracyandtheretreatof intellectuals.*2009:p.183)
- Marcus,T(1988).Thewomen’squestionandnationalliberationinSouth Africa.M.VanDiepen(ed.).*TheNationalQuestioninSouthAfrica.*Zed BooksLtd.,London.Pp.96–109.
- Netshitenzhe,J(2015)Interrogatingtheconceptsanddynamics ofracein publicpolicy.InX.Mangcu(ed.)*TheColour ofourFuture:DoesRaceMatter inPost-ApartheidSouthAfrica?*WitsUniversityPress. Johannesburg.Pp.107 –132.
- Obbo,O.(2006).Butweknowitall:AfricanperspectivesonAnthroplogical knowledge.InM.Ntarangwi,D.MillsandM.Babiker(Eds). *African Anthropologies:History,CritiqueandPractice.*ZedBooksLtd.,London.Pp,
154–169.
