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The month of August is special. It is Women’s Month in South Africa – a time to celebrate the strength, resilience and contributions of women to social justice and community well-being. It is also a time to reflect on the progress we have made towards gender equality and consider where persistent inequalities remain. We have come a long way. From a time when women were explicitly excluded from academia to an era when the appointment of a woman could be celebrated as a milestone: the first woman in a department, the first woman professor, the first woman in a leadership position. Today, we have moved further still. We recognise that historical exclusion does not correct itself and that achieving greater representation requires us to intentionally create opportunities for women to enter and progress through academic spaces.
But are we there yet? Has intentional inclusion translated into genuine gender equality in academia? What is the ideal goal of gender equality?
In my opinion, the goal of gender equality in academia should extend beyond simply counting numbers to achieve a 50:50 split in every department or at every career stage. In many disciplines, women are well represented among undergraduate students, postgraduate students and early-career researchers, yet their representation declines progressively as seniority increases creating a scissor effect. At every career transition, women are disproportionately lost, not because of a lack of ability or ambition but because academic systems are structured in ways that make it harder for women to remain, progress and, ultimately, thrive. This creates the scissor shaped curve that is characteristic of many academic institutions (Fig 1).
But why are women disproportionately lost from academia?
Well, I would like to address this issue by discussing some of the challenges that women in academia face that we may not be aware of. There are many but I will focus on a few:
Reasons why we are still losing talented women in academia
- Fixing women vs fixing systems – The idea of a “leaky pipeline” can inadvertently frame women themselves as the problem, as if women need to be “fixed” to succeed in academia. We often focus on what women need to do differently: develop their leadership skills, become better negotiators, improve their time management, build confidence or learn to write more compelling grants. These interventions are valuable and can undoubtedly support women’s careers. However, they should not distract us from a more fundamental question: what is it about the academic system that makes it harder for women to thrive?
We need to shift some of the focus from fixing women to fixing the systems in which they work. This means recognising caregiving responsibilities and career interruptions in promotion and appointment processes; valuing the many forms of academic contribution that extend beyond publications and grants; ensuring that service and administrative responsibilities are distributed equitably; and creating childcare and family-friendly policies and practices that make academic participation more accessible. Supporting women to navigate the system is important – but so is asking whether we can build a system that does not require women to constantly adapt themselves in order to succeed.
- The motherhood “penalty” – Many women in academia struggle to reconcile their personal and professional lives, not because they lack ambition or commitment but because academic careers are often built around an unrealistic model of the “ideal academic”: someone who is continuously available, works well beyond normal hours, is geographically mobile when required, publishes relentlessly and maintains uninterrupted productivity.
For many women, starting a family can make meeting these expectations considerably more difficult. Women are more likely to experience interruptions to their research, publication output and geographic mobility following childbirth, often because they continue to carry a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities. Yet academic systems frequently fail to account adequately for these realities. Hiring decisions, fixed-term contracts, performance assessments and promotion criteria can continue to measure academic success as though everyone has had an uninterrupted career trajectory.
If universities want to retain talented women, we need to rethink what we mean by productivity, career progression and academic excellence across different stages of a person's life.
- The “double bind” of women in leadership – Academic leadership is challenging for anyone but many women who have led or are currently leading academic institutions will tell you that it can be particularly difficult for women. Women leaders are often expected to succeed while navigating societal expectations about how women “should” behave, including the expectation that effective leadership must resemble traditionally masculine models of authority. The same behaviour can therefore be interpreted very differently depending on who displays it. An assertive woman leader may be perceived as “difficult” or “abrasive”, while a woman who is less assertive may be labelled “weak” or “indecisive”. The standard seems to shift for women, creating a double bind in which they can be criticised both for being too much and for not being enough. This can be deeply discouraging and may deter talented women from pursuing leadership altogether. Universities therefore need to reimagine what effective leadership looks like and create environments where women do not have to conform to traditionally masculine leadership models to be taken seriously. Women should be able to lead with authority, empathy, collaboration and authenticity, and still be recognised as effective leaders.
- The productivity paradox of inclusion – Women working in academic fields where they remain significantly underrepresented may find themselves repeatedly called upon to serve on committees, participate in transformation and equity initiatives, mentor students and junior colleagues and provide support and representation because there are simply too few women in the field. Individually, these requests may seem reasonable and often reflect a genuine desire to contribute. However, they can collectively create an “inclusion tax”, requiring women to spend a disproportionate amount of time serving the academic community in ways that are not always reflected in measures of academic productivity.
This creates a paradox: the very contributions that help make our institutions more inclusive can come at a cost to the careers of those doing the work. My argument is not that women should not contribute in these ways. These activities are essential to building healthy and inclusive academic communities. Rather, universities need to recognise and appropriately reward this work, distribute these responsibilities more equitably and ensure that those who contribute to building better institutions are not professionally penalised for doing so. We need to hire more women in underrepresented fields not only to improve representation but also to ensure that the few women already there are not overburdened by the responsibility of representing all women.
These are by no means the only factors driving gender inequality in academia. Gender bias in recruitment and promotion, unequal access to funding and research opportunities, informal professional networks, the gender pay gap, sexual harassment and hostile work environments, unequal access to mentorship and sponsorship, and the intersection of gender with race and other forms of inequality all contribute to shaping women's academic careers. Together, these factors create a system in which women may face not one defining barrier but a cumulative series of small and large disadvantages across their careers.
Tackling gender inequality in academia is therefore not about simply getting more women to join the academic pipeline. The current pipeline is leaky. We need to build institutions where gender no longer determines who gets an opportunity, whose contributions are valued, who is expected to carry the invisible work, or who is able to thrive. We have made incredible progress in including women in academic spaces, but the next step is to move beyond simply opening the door for women and to redesign the path so that they can walk through it, progress and lead without having to overcome unnecessary barriers along the way. That is the university of the future we should be building, not just for women but for everyone.
Rachael Dangarembizi is an associate professor in the University of Cape Town’s Department of Human Biology and Neuroscience Institute.
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