Amina Mama,
"Rethinking African Universities: Gender and Transformation"
(page 4 of 7)
II. Inequitable Institutional and Intellectual Cultures
The GICAU project followed up on the compilation of statistics using
career history and experiential interview and observation methods. These
generated a vast body of rich and detailed findings (initial reports are
available in two special issues of the continental gender studies
journal Feminist Africa,
issues 8 and 9).
All five studies provide detailed qualitative evidence that no matter
what the mission statements may proclaim, universities operate in ways
that sustain and reproduce unequal gender relations in both the social
and the intellectual life of those inhabiting it. Although there are
often explicit expressions of negative attitudes toward women as
scholars and academics—and some blatant practices of harassment and
intimidation (directed especially at women who are junior faculty and
students)—the more invidious manifestations of gender are implicit.
Gender dynamics often operate "below the radar" in the informal
assumptions, behavioural practices, institutional habits, and pedagogic
and learning practices of students, faculty, and administrators. As
such, they are embedded in other ongoing struggles that have specific
manifestations in each locale. Common to all, however, are the
conditions of economic decline and resource scarcity, along with the
various postcolonial cultural contradictions. Gender dynamics reflect
the broader political climate of each national context, manifesting
through class and ethnic and ideological aspects of culture.
Across all of the campuses studied, researchers observed that
precarious institutional conditions lead to new levels of violence and
insecurity. These create a climate of fear that impinges on the freedom
and mobility of staff and students, particularly those who are women.
This leads to serious implications for intellectual culture and the free
expression of ideas. The observed resurgence of patriarchal values,
expressed, for example, in restrictive dress codes and regulations, and
more broadly in the policing of social behaviour, has an impact on
women's self-confidence and can work directly and indirectly to hamper
their career advancement.
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