Browsing by Author "Williams, Lorryn Glynis"

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    Decelerating factors that impact on the career progression of women academics at Stellenbosch University
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03-15) Williams, Lorryn Glynis; Prozesky, Heidi Eileen; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology & Social Anthropology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In 2014, Stellenbosch University’s (SU’s) Transformation office released an infographic displaying the percentage of women and men at the various academic ranks throughout the university. This display emphasised a clear-cut gender divide: as rank increased from junior lecturer to full professor, the percentage of women in these positions steadily decreases and the percentage of men steadily increases. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, this thesis aims to investigate gender-related influences on career progression among women academic staff. More specifically, it sets out to determine whether women academic staff at SU experience a lack of career progression and if so, what factors they attribute this to, and how these factors differ in terms of faculty, marital and motherhood status, and highest qualification. This thesis pursues these objectives by following a mixed methods approach which entails both a qualitative study of women working in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Western Cape, as well as a cross-sectional survey conducted among women academic staff at SU. A theoretical framework is used which attributes differences in career progression between women and men to psychosocial factors, structural features or “deficits” of HEIs, and/or family-related factors. The results show that women academics often refer to structural deficits of HEIs as contributing to their slow career progression. These deficits do not, generally, indicate overt discrimination, but rather that certain assumptions about gender roles, particularly in relation to family responsibilities, are ingrained in the institutional culture of HEIs and that this limits considerably the ability of women to climb the ranks in their institutions.