Performing and defying gender: Women’s leadership experiences in African higher education

Ane Turner Johnson, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Educational LeadershipRowan University

What to expect…A bit about

me

Background of the study

Contextual factors

Theoretical lenses

New narrative

Methods

Data collection

Data analysis

Findings Outcomes Theory generation

Current work

Comparative study

A bit about me…

• Rowan University in New

Jersey, USA• Advise 17 doc students• Coordinate, WGS & Ph.D.• Research higher education

in sub-Saharan Africa• Most recent work: higher

education post-conflict

Starting Point

Obstacles to women

Few women in

H.E. Admin

But these women

made it!

Lived Experiences

of African Women Leaders

Informed by normative & limited empirical literature

Observation

Higher Education in Africa• Gendered nature of higher education

– “organizational saga” – “constructs and regulates” (Morley, 2010, p. 547)– Relegated to informal, invisible work

• Pre-existing cultural relationships and gender-based violence in African higher ed

• Women do not usually contest the script

Women as leaders in higher education• Not always described as such.

– Mabokela (2003): women as the “donkeys of the university” – an allegory for their roles as managers with challenging responsibilities and a lack of accompanying respect (p. 136).

• Gendered division of labor• Hegemonic vision of leadership

– The “care-less manager” (Lynch, 2010)– “She will be asking you for permission to take her

children to hospital’ (Lindow, 2011, p. 114).

There are “swaths of activity, processes, statistics and attitudes” within higher education and society at large that defy the mediation of gender mainstreaming and call for “shifting the paradigm of patriarchy” in order to make lasting change for women within the academy

(Morley, 2010, p. 547).

Framing gender• Series of acts• Stylization of the body• Creates expectations• Enforced

– “punishments for contesting the script” (Butler, 1988, p. 531)

• Complicated by culture– “sites of resistance” (Chilisa &

Ntseane, 2010)

Intersectionality

gender

race class

gender

sexuality ethnicity

Varied identifications “intersect” constructing complex experiences

(inequality regimes) for the individual (Collins, 1990).

Critique of intersectionality• Western feminist perspective

– Troubled by conceptions of identity in postcolonial Africa (Mama, 2001)

• Victimization narrative– Common trope in African studies (Roe, 1995)– Focus is on obstacles to women and how

gendered/racialized processes within organizations may victimize them

– May contribute to continued othering

Exploring positive intersections

Research question

How do women within higher education administration in Africa describe their life and career paths, in light of lived space, time, body, and human relations?

Methods• Phenomenology

– Lifeworld existentials – create heuristic for exploring women’s lived experiences (Van Manen, 1990)

• Data collection– Interviews (with hermeneutical thrust)– 1-2 hours

• Data analysis– Thematic selective reading– Reflexivity

ParticipantsAlias Country Education Title Institution

Antsa Madagascar Ph.D. Natural Sciences

Vice President of International Relations

Public

Abena Ghana M.S. Industrial Management

Dean of Entrepreneurship

Public

Anodiwa Zimbabwe Ph.D. Teacher Education

Pro Vice Chancellor - Academic

Public

Mudiwa Zimbabwe Ph.D. Educational Administration

Vice President for Research & Scholarship

Open & Distance Learning

Adiaba Nigeria Ph.D. Educational Technology

Vice Chancellor Public

Caution!

• Africa is not a monolith.

• Positionality• Research efforts• Description of what

women do in addition to formal career expectations.

Intersecting trajectories

FaithGod made a way for me and I got it.

VocationI’ve got a teacher who taught me, she was very progressive.

AgencyI don’t shout all the time to say we’re equal. But I defy this culture by the effort that I’ve made.

Intersecting Identities

They expect me to be a model and as matter of fact, my students do look to come to me as a mother.

‘Um, Madame, it looks like Mrs. [Abena] everybody calls you either Momma or Mommy or Ma. So can I also call you, address the same?’

They think I’m right out there I should be a role model for others around me particularly female students.

Gendered work

It’s not a woman’s job being a Vice Chancellor. And things like that. And even after the interview, after the interview and the appointment, my husband was abducted just to prevent me from taking up the position.

I read it in the Bible somewhere, a woman is in some way a setting (decoration) in her home, so a woman must take care of herself.

And the students are able to come, even though we have counselors in the school, our students are able to just come to you with some personal problems because you are a mother.

It’s exerting. If I ever come back, if there’s reincarnation, I will be a man.

Performing and defying gender• Absence of gender

– Work hard and gender shouldn’t be an issue• Motherhood = agency & influence within the

organization (in conflict to lit)• Legitimate gender beliefs through replication• Replication altered by agency

– “I defy this culture…”– Naturalizes gender within org

• Intersection is a site of resistance– “outsider within” (Collins, 1999)

Theory generation Intersections

of Identity

“Outsider within” Status

Threshold for Agency

Gender Performance

Neoliberal carelessness

Future work

Carelessness and culture/socio-historical antecedents and women’s leadership

Gender violence in conflict-affect higher education

Racism, colonialism, tribalism, contextual factors

Public universities in sub-Saharan Africa – focus on

students/faculty

Thank you!

johnsona@rowan.edu

@researcher_prof

ReferencesButler J. 1988. Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theater Journal 40(4): 519–531.

Chilisa B. and Ntseane G. 2010. Resisting dominant discourses: Implications of indigenous, African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research. Gender and Education 22(6): 617–631.

Collins P.H.1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Collins P.H.1999. Reflections on the outsider within. Journal of Career Development 26(1): 85–88.

Lindow M. 2011. Weaving success: Voices of change in African higher education. New York: Institute of International Education.

Lynch, K. 2010. Carelessness: A hidden doxa of higher education. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 9, no. 1: 54-67.

ReferencesMabokela, R. O. 2003. “Donkeys of the university”: Organizational culture and its impact on South Africa women administrators. Higher Education 46, no. 2: 129-145. Mama A. 2001. Challenging subjects: Gender and power in African contexts. African Sociological Review 5(2): 63–73.Morley, L. 2010. Gender mainstreaming: Myths and measurement in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania. Compare 40, no. 4: 533-550. Roe, E. M. 1995. Except-Africa: Postscript to a special section on development narratives. World Development 23, no. 6: 1065-1069. Van Manen, M. 1990. Researching lived experience. New York: SUNY Press.