Becoming and being senior female academics in Ghanaian public universities

This research addresses three fundamental questions about the under-representation of females in the academy and their consequences within Ghanaian public universities. The questions are: i) How do senior female academics explain the under representation of women in Ghanaian public universities? ii) How do the senior female academics account for their career progression within Ghanaian public universities? iii) What are the key challenges in being a senior female academic in Ghanaian public universities? In addressing these questions in this research, I employed qualitative research methods to elicit information from 9 senior female academics within three public Ghanaian universities. A multiple case study design was adopted to provide a wider set of contexts in which to explore the research questions. Using a post-colonial and a socio-cultural theoretical lens, the research explores the experiences of senior female academics by analyzing their perspectives on under-representation of females and their experiences of career progression within public universities in Ghana. The analysis of the data discussed in chapter five illustrates that becoming a senior female academic in a Ghanaian public university is a struggle replete with gender tensions and misogyny. The process is rooted in traditional Ghanaian practices and colonial vestiges in education and gender that ensured the academy is male- dominated. The discussion in chapter six produced knowledge that being a senior female academic ushers them into a field where their numerical invisibility places them into two disadvantageous positions that are mutually-reinforcing. First, due to their restricted numbers and gender representation requirements, the senior female academics served on multiple committees. The time taken on these duties left them both ineffective in other realms of academic work and unable to support the development of junior colleagues. Second, the senior female academics were seen as gender representatives rather than professors expressing opinions in their own right. Contrary to views that characterized female academics as beneficiaries of affirmative actions and irrespective of tokenistic policies, the senior female academics attained and maintained their positions through hard work, private networking and collaborations as well as transgressions of traditional gender boundaries, institutional misogyny and male-dominance. The thesis proposed by this research is that becoming and being a senior female academic is a persistent struggle. Further, neither the efforts at career progression nor the accomplishment of professorial status have significant influence on the traditional normative social positioning of women within HEIs. As such, it is evident that national policy and institutional practices need to consider how they might accommodate and promote females. It raises questions about how institutions might develop policy frameworks and strategies to support the career progression of females. In this respect, the experiences of senior female academics explored in this thesis can offer valuable insights.