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Gender Equality in Education: Looking beyond Parity

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GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION: LOOKING BEYOND PARITY

An IIEP evidence-based Policy Forum

3-4 October 2011, Paris

GLOBAL LITERATURE REVIEW ON GENDER EQUALITY IN

EDUCATIONAL PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

ANNA P. OBURA WITH SHEILA P. WAMAHIU, WARUE

KARIUKI, GRACE W. BUNYI, FATUMA CHEGE, EVA NJOKA,
SARA RUTO, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, KENYA
This document, not published by IIEP, has been presented on the occasion of the IIEP Policy Forum
on Gender Equality in Education held on the 3-4 October, 2011 in Paris, France.

The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily
represent the views of UNESCO or IIEP. The designations employed and the presentation of material
throughout this review do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of
UNESCO or IIEP concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or
concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

International Institute for Educational Planning

7–9 rue Eugène Delacroix, 75116 Paris, France
info@iiep.unesco.org

www.iiep.unesco.org

© UNESCO 2011

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1. INTRODUCTION

The present review of global literature is intended as a backdrop for current thinking on
gender representation in the leadership of education. It will review research on the rationale for
addressing gender balance in education policy making; the mechanisms which facilitate or prevent
the full participation of women in education policy making; measures countries have taken to attain
female participation; and the documented outcomes of female representation in education system
management. The IIEP research programme of study on women in education system management is
being conducted at an opportune moment when global debate on the topic of women’s continued
underrepresentation in decision making positions in both the public and the private sector is
growing (Eagly and Carli on global trends, 2007; Bagati and Carter on India, 2010; Akuamoah-
Boateng et al. on Ghana and Tanzania 2003).

Four factors are at issue: the absence of women in education system planning and policy
making is not only a human rights concern but it is a democratic representational requirement and a
matter of efficiency, which encompasses diversity.

There is another point to make at the start of this paper: there is nothing unique in countries
with low participation of women in public policy in ministries of education as compared with other
areas of senior management in the public sector. There is, however, one feature that singles out
ministries of education from other sectors. Their role in education is crosscutting and wide-ranging.
They span the formal sector of education but also have the mandate of educating the public and the
nation in general. They are ministries of education and not ministries of schools. They can therefore
be expected to lead in educating the nation on all subjects of fundamental interest to the state and
of intrinsic interest to the individual citizens of the state, through a variety of modes of delivery. One
of the time honoured methods of educating is by example and by modelling. Further, pedagogical
theories indicate that curriculum content transmission is nullified when teachers fail to practise by
example what they are advocating.

Rights: The rights of women are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). On
Human Rights Day in 2009, thirty years after the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women’s (CEDAW) came into force, the United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the recognition and enjoyment of women’s equal rights
with men “still remains elusive for large sections of women around the world” (OHCHR, 2009). The
rights of women as an integral part of human rights were re-affirmed by the Beijing Platform for
Action in 1995, addressing the specific need for the inclusion of women in senior education
management. The Beijing Declaration urged for positive measures to ensure “full and equal
participation of women in educational administration and policy and decision making” as a means
for achieving social justice and affirmed “the principle of shared power and responsibility... between
women and men... in the workplace”. However, as the literature indicates, in most countries,
women remain underrepresented at senior level in ministries of education, resulting in little or
inadequate female contribution to education policy development.

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 At this point, in 2011, it is salutary to remind ourselves of the statement of principles on
which our current work is based, the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, dating from more than
six decades ago, which proclaims that: “Member States have pledged themselves to achieve...
universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms... and the equal
rights of men and women”. The document continues: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the
authority of government”; “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country,
directly” or indirectly; and “to just and favourable conditions of work”. This implies a special
obligation on the part of ministries of education to promote gender equity and to make visible the
will of the people in the image of the ministry through appointing women to half the ministry posts
and to engaging them fully in policy development, decision making and implementation. It is the
view of this paper that the achievement of gender parity in ministries of education will contribute
significantly to creating “a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth
in the Declaration can be fully realized”. Since “[e]veryone has duties to the community” that
promotes their human rights, the promotion of gender equity in ministries of education is an
obligation and constitutes one critical way of achieving social justice and the fulfilment of
fundamental human rights (UDHR, 1948: Preamble and Articles 2, 23, 28 and 29).

Democratic Requirement: Democratic systems of government require the representation of all

social groups in a nation, and special provision for the inclusion of minority groups, in order to
guarantee articulation of and attention to their needs. Democratic rights include the right to take
part, directly or indirectly, in government and the right to equal access to the public service. At the
same time they imply an associated duty of responsible citizenship, that is, a willingness to play a
role in public affairs and to respect the rights and freedoms of others. Taken together, these rights
ensure the ability to participate in public and political life (Ataman, 2007; New Zealand Action Plan
for Human Rights (2005); Africa Focus, Benin, 2005). In the present study, it is the participation of
women in public sector education policy development in ministries of education that is at issue.

Efficiency: India has an annual GDP of 7 per cent and an acute need for skilled and executive
workers. Women’s participation in the labour force is 36 per cent as compared with male
participation at 85 per cent. The most immediate new source of labour could therefore be drawn
from the female population; and more women could be appointed to management since only 3-6 per
cent of senior managers are women and 5 per cent of corporate board directors (Carter and Bagati,
2010). The argument goes that to fail to tap into the enormous pool of national, female population is
to squander talent and to waste a nation’s human resources. It is noted that in the current globally
competitive marketplace, organizations cannot afford to underutilize any segment of the population,
nor should they place constraints on what counts as effective behaviours (Catalyst, 2007) which
means that new, unfamiliar, useful leadership traits need to be welcomed.

Diversity: There is a growing body of research which addresses the positive returns to constituting
diverse management systems. Diversity means representation of men and women, and of minority
social groups (ethnic, racial, religious, etc.) not typically represented in the top echelons of
management, be it government or in corporate boards. Findings indicate that diversity at top
management level is profitable for big business. There is a correlation between diversity and a
company’s financial performance of between one third and one half increased earnings. It is
advantageous for governance in general. Recent analysis of complex systems indicates that groups of

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socially homogenous decision makers are less efficient than diverse groups (Castellani and Haffert,
2009). The value that diversity brings to group planning and to solving complex tasks has been
translated into a mathematical formula called the Diversity Prediction Theorem which predicts that
the collective ability of any crowd is equal to the average ability of its members, plus the diversity of
the group. The theorem identifies the conditions under which the diversity advantage applies (Ernst
& Young, 2009):

a. Managers need to be intelligent (not geniuses)

b. They must have diverse ways of perceiving the problem and devising solutions to it
c. The problem must be difficult or complex.

Researchers conclude that the diverse group almost always outperforms a homogenous
‘group of the best’ by a well documented and substantial margin (Poniachik’s study on women in
management in Chile, 2010; The Whitehouse Project in USA, 2009). It seems that as regards the type
of challenges involved in complex developmental options, such as sector development, creativity
and problem solving gain from diversity and that teams of leaders work better if they span diversity
of thought and engage in diverse problem solving processes (Eagly and Carli, 2007). These findings
point to the need for sectors, companies and organisations to ‘hone a competitive weapon’, as they
put it, in order to gain advantage or to review the composition of policy development teams.
Diversity is a new found management and governance strategy. The work of Nishii and Goncalo
(2008) caution that diversity in groups functions well when there is equality of subgroups, that is,
equality of genders or a numerical match between more than two subgroups. The benefits of gender
diversity were estimated in the Women To Work Project in the European Union as listed on the left
of the matrix below. The likely benefits for education sector policy development are posited on the
right.

Relevance for the Education

Corporate Benefits of Diversity
Sector

 Correlation between women in  Improving education sector policy

management and improved outputs development

 Access to the full talent pool  Utilisation of wide-ranging national

talent

 Investing in diversity  Investing in historically

marginalised social groups

 The customer perspective  Pleasing a wider national

constituency
 Minimising risks and costs
 Maximizing opportunity thus
reducing cost

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  Aiming to be the employer of choice
 Attraction of the best national
(adapted from Trollvik, 2007) talent

Over the last decade the metaphors on gender and pathways to leadership have changed as
understanding has deepened. The image of the glass ceiling has been replaced by the glass house,
glass walls, the glass cliff and the labyrinth. The limitations of the glass ceiling metaphor were that it
focused only on the topmost positions, implying that there was a single invisible barrier and an
invisible conspiracy to stop women from reaching the last level, the very top management; and it
failed to take account of the challenges for women at entry and through mid management levels
(Santovec 2010). In reality the situation was found to be far more complex. First, research revealed
that problems did not start near the apex of a woman’s career; and the rare women chairs, vice
chancellors, permanent secretaries, chief executives and even presidents of nations, were proof that
there was no absolute barrier to women’s advancement. Findings indicated that problems started at
recruitment level, and continued through mid career stages. They were not distant or hardly
discernible, as depicted by the invisibility of the glass ceiling. They were proximate, visible and
varied. Eagly and Carli (2007) argued for a change of metaphor in order to diagnose the problem
better and to address the real issues.

Trollvik’s glass house image (2007) had an invisibly sticky floor, a tendency to keep women
stuck at low status levels. It had a glass escalator for men, who were fast-tracked through fast
promotion processes. The glass walls of the house represented the job sectors women chose to
remain in rather than risk an attempt at moving away, outside or taking the risk of a change of job.
The roof – sometimes known as the glass cliff – represented the risky perch at the top, from where
women are more quickly replaced and dislodged. Eagly’s labyrinth represented the turns and twists
of career pathways; the many obstructions along the road to promotion; the puzzles that need to be
anticipated and solved; but also the ultimate hope of reaching the goal.

Annually, the World Economic Forum monitors gender equality on four quantifiable
dimensions (The Global Gender Gap Report 2010): education, health, participation in the economy
and political empowerment. Education is measured in terms of level of education attained, for
example, percentage of women in tertiary education. Political empowerment deals strictly with the
presence of women in elected government and the legislature. Economic participation includes
representation of women as “legislators, senior officials and managers” but not explicitly in the
public sector.

Another approach to understanding gender equality and development – and, by extension,

to deciphering the dynamics of the workplace – is adopted by the World Development Report 2012
Outline (The World Bank, 2011a). The report will address three dimensions of gender equality: the
accumulation of endowments (education attained, health levels acquired, etc.), the use of
endowments to access economic opportunities and generate returns and their application to take
action or agency, for the wellbeing of the individual (and the household). All three are dependent to
varying extents on the socio-cultural context and on the multiple identities of the individual.

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 In pursuit of gender justice in the workplace, the International Labour Office notes the so far
unquantified, unmeasured and unappreciated experience of the workplace. The ILO 2010 report
advocates that, to appreciate the reality of gender equality in the workplace and to level the playing
field, the information base needs to be broadened to explain the gender differentiated experience of
working and to showcase the advantages and disadvantages accruing to the two sexes. Indicators
would include:

• The decision-making process that a male or female parent faces regarding employment.
• The full extent of the working day of a parent, incorporating all aspects of child and home
care.
• The internal struggle of a man or woman determined to have both career and family.
• The extent of invisible and indirect discrimination and valuation of gender-biased skills as
factors in the career advancement of men or women.
• The number of marriage dissolutions driven by disagreement regarding the sharing of
household responsibilities.
• The household dynamics of a family when the principal earner loses a job.
• The child welfare consequences of a working, single-parent household. (ILO, 2010: xiii)

Inspired by the input of Mukhopadhyay and Singh (2007), the report affirmed that gender
justice “cannot be achieved when biases remain embedded in economic and social institutions and
development processes.” It advocates for avoiding the general premise of aiming to fit women
better into the male dominated workplace: “The aim must not be to force women to fit into a labour
market construct that is inherently male, but rather to adapt the labour market construct to
incorporate the unique values and constraints of women.” Some suggest (Rodrigues, 2004) that
women will not gain leadership in education in any country before women’s political empowerment
is attained.

The theory of intersectionalities, which is a further source of insight into the experience of
women in the workplace, highlights the multiple identities of women (Shah, 2006; Stets, 2004), the
compound marginalized status of women from minority communities and the correspondingly
increased difficulty in reaching leadership levels (Lumby, 2009), and depicted in the literature from
Brazil (Pinto, 2007), India (Smulders, 1998) and South Africa (Chisholm, 2001).

Mullally (2007) examines the interface of feminism and multiculturalism, and addresses the
tension between traditional values and norms, and the rights of women. She proposes that the
search for a “proportionate response in a democratic society to a pressing social need” can lead to a
satisfactory and just outcome, to reviewing and re-negotiating the roles of women in the private and
public spheres.

In all, global experience suggests that the rate of increase in the proportion of women in
leadership is slow, sporadic, subject to reversal and requires stimulus to attain the goal of equity. The
obstructions and challenges to women’s career advancement described in the literature will now be
reviewed.

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2. PATHWAYS TO WOMEN’S ADVANCEMENT

Two generic types of obstacles can be identified in the literature to women’s advancement
in ministries of education: the pipeline problem and the labyrinthine challenge. The first concerns
lack of sufficiently qualified and skilled women for leadership in education – and that supply is
hampered by traditional attitudes to women which result in excluding significant numbers of girls
and women from the education system. The second, labyrinthine challenge is one that faces women
in every country in the world, including the Nordic countries which are so near to closing the gender
gap (The Global Gender Gap Report 2010). Obstacles to the advancement of professional women in
education ministries derive directly from traditional prejudice and discrimination against women.
They manifest themselves in two ways: (a) institutional and workplace related barriers; and (b)
societal/home related barriers.

The Catalyst, the organization which has arguably done the most to research and globally
disseminate the latest findings on women in corporate management, says that barriers to women’s
advancement are becoming more elusive. The manifestations of the barriers will be discussed before
discussing the underlying causes. The next section is presented through a supply lens and followed
by an investigation of the literature describing the experience of women in the workplace.

2.1 SUPPLY OF QUALIFIED WOMEN - THE PIPELINE

In terms of sheer numbers, the different supply lines will be examined. At each level, at
primary and secondary school level adequate numbers of qualified girls are required to fill the next
stage leading to recruitment into ministries of education, namely:

 The pool of qualified female school leavers eligible for teacher training
 Recruitment into the teaching profession
 Appointment of female school principals
 Appointment of local education officers
 Appointment of national education officers

As a corollary to entry into ministry employment, education sector development is

influenced in the best of circumstances by research and analysis, and interaction with the nation’s
universities. At the same time, the universities provide the research qualifications increasingly
demanded by senior appointments in ministries of education and particularly used by women as a
strategy for career advancement. It is therefore relevant to examine issues relating to:

 The pool of qualified female school leavers eligible for university entrance
 Involvement of women in research
 And the presence of women at senior levels of university management

Supply of Female Pupils

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 There are still countries where girls’ enrolment in primary school is significantly lower than
boys, such as Niger and Yemen (with a gender parity index (GPI) for gross enrolment ratios at 0.80 in
2009 and 2010 respectively, GMR 2011); and countries emerging from conflict (Côte d’Ivoire GPI
0.79, Somalia 0.55) with very unbalanced gender access to schools and widely varying situations
from year to year; countries without data (Gabon, Nepal, Haiti, Turkmenistan). There are also many
countries with national level gender parity enrolment ratios but with whole provinces or disparate
pockets of serious gender disparity. Kabeer (2005) describes the differing state patterns of school
enrolment in India. Kenya’s education statistics indicate 21 per cent girls’ primary gross enrolment
ratio in one province in 2007, compared with 89 per cent nationally (Ministry of Education, Kenya,
2008). Cambodia’s provincial statistics show disparity (Mid-Decade EFA Report, 2007).

At secondary level, gender disparity is more pronounced than at primary level: the gender
parity index for Chad is 0.45, Democratic Republic of Congo 0.55, Niger 0.61, Burkina Faso 0.74,
Pakistan 0.76, Saudia Arabia 0.85, Morocco 0.86 and Tajikistan 0.87. Countries without available
data, which is a situation that often goes unreported or highlighted but which receives increasing
justifiable attention in UNESCO reporting, include Algeria, Angola, Benin, Congo (Brazzaville), Nepal,
Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Timor Leste and Turkmenistan (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011,
UNESCO).

Countries such as these are expected to experience a pipeline problem, that is, a challenge
to produce adequate numbers of women for recruitment into ministries of education and a
challenge to ensure national representation of the women recruited. There is ample access to
national data on the internet but little on sub-national data. Neither UNESCO, the World Bank, nor
UNICEF publish sub-national data, except in disparate and irregular reports. Few governments post
these data on the internet. Consequently, the full picture of in-country supply by gender cannot yet
be fully appreciated. There are notable exceptions, such as the laudable examples of the ministries
of education of Mozambique and Burundi who post copious sub-national data on the web.

Supply of Women Teachers and Principals

Personnel in policy making in ministries of education originate from the teaching force and
many are selected from headship level. It is therefore pertinent to examine female representation
among head teachers. In Nepal 97 per cent of the head teachers are male (Bista and Carney, 2004).
In the Chinese provinces of Guangzhou and Nantong, female primary teachers represented 73 and
52 per cent, respectively, while female school principals were 53 and 12 per cent. At secondary level
in the same provinces, female secondary teachers were 58 and 38 per cent, while female principals
represented 23 and 2 per cent (Qiang et al., 2009). In Burundi, 53 per cent of the primary teachers
are female and 53 per cent of the qualified teachers in the country are female as compared with
only 21 per cent of female school principals (Obura, 2009). In Mexico 63 per cent of the teaching
force are women but only 37 per cent of school principals are women, despite research indicating
that pupils perform better in schools headed by female principals, and that women teachers are
better qualified and experienced than male teachers (Reimers, 2006). Nine per cent of school
directors are women in Cambodia (Velasco, 2004). While many countries publish data on the
proportion of women teachers, few report gender disaggregated data on senior teachers, heads of
departments, deputy heads and principals. Conversely, there is growing research on the conditions

8
of headship and gender, such as Hungi (2010) on female principals in Eastern and Southern Africa;
Sperandio (2009) on female leadership in non-formal education in Bangladesh; Moorosi (2007) and
Thakathi (2002) on principals in South Africa; Davies and Gunawardena on education management in
Sri Lanka and other countries (1992).

Supply of Female Local Education Officers

Nepal had not one woman among its 75 district education officers (Bista and Carney, 2004).
Work at district level is characterized by a high level of transfer, sometimes as often as every six
months. The officers report moving with their families and changing their children’s school as often
as twice yearly. In Cambodia’s provincial and district education offices, men make up about 80 per
cent of the total staff (Velasco, 2004).

Women in the University - Students and Academics

The South and West Asia region and sub-Saharan Africa are lagging behind other regions in
terms of university enrolment (Bunyi 2008; Luhanga and Mukangara, 2007; Kwesiga, 2002; Mlama,
2001), despite increased female enrolment, raising the GPI from 0.3 and under 0.5 in 1970 to nearly
0.8 and to almost 0.7, respectively, in 2010. The most spectacular gains have been made in the Arab
States, rising from a GPI of around 0.3 in 1970 to near parity today. Globally, rising female
representation in higher education has not yet been reflected proportionately in the labour market
or in access to leadership and decision-making positions. There is therefore a noted disconnect
between access of the female population to the highest echelons of education and advancement in
the workplace. The Global Education Digest (UIS, 2010) points to the extraordinary fact that while
women represent 70 per cent of the student body at the National University of Lesotho, the
administration and senior management remain dominated by male officers. Such a situation
suggests the need to review the current indicators of gender disparity used by the World Economic
Forum.

As regards women in senior academic positions, among professors, Norway has 12 per cent
female professors, Sweden 11 per cent, 16 per cent in Australia and 27 per cent in Turkey. In
Argentina, despite high national indicators on education, women hold only 8 per cent of the highest
university management posts (ELA, 2009). Female academic staff advancement is seriously impeded
globally by the competing treble work burden of research, lecturing, and home responsibilities, the
complexities of managing then multiple roles of workers, wives and mothers, interrupted careers
due to maternity and childcare, impact of family dynamics, lack of mentoring and networks, and the
power of the male dominated work culture and the socio-cultural mores, as described in studies on
women academics in countries as varied as Australia, Canada, Ghana, India, Malaysia, New Zealand,
Philippines, Turkey and the United Kingdom (Ozkanli et al. 2008; Adusah-Karikari, 2008). The
qualities needed by women for advancement in university careers considered by a Brazilian study
included upgrading qualifications, continuous updating one’s knowledge through participation in
research programmes, meetings and seminars, publishing in scientific journals; good interpersonal
relations with university colleagues; willingness to take on responsibility, to practise and
demonstrate leadership skills; and the courage to innovate (Miranda, Cassol and Silveira, 2006).

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 In conclusion, there are few remaining countries with a pipeline problem, a problem of
supply of women and girls for the workplace. In many countries, there is an equal or almost equal
supply of female school leavers and graduates as males. However, female representation at the
senior research and management levels of academic institutions does not match the available pool
of qualified women aspirants in any country.

Figure 1: Global Trends in Gender Disparity at Tertiary Level, 1970 to 2088

Source: Global Education Digest, 2010

2.2. OBSTACLES TO WOMEN’S CAREER ADVANCEMENT - THE LABYRINTH

(a) Institutional Barriers

Over-recruitment of Male Officers

In many countries, recruitment into ministries of education advantages male applicants. It is

not even true to say that all ministries have a high concentration of women in the lower grades.
Women start as a minority and continue as a diminishing minority right through several ministries of
education, as noted by Davies and Gunawardena (1992) on Botswana, the Gambia, Hong Kong,
Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Zambia, and Onsumbah (2011) on Kenya. Yet the literature

10
is replete with the caution that a critical mass, that is, one third, of any minority group is necessary
in order to initiate change and to have influence (Del Campo, 2005).

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Lower Retirement Age

In some countries in Asia, for example, in Vietnam and China, the age for retirement is five
years lower for women (The Vietnam Case Study 2011, IIEP; Qiang et al., 2009). This has serious
repercussions on the acceptability for promotion of women in their last ten years of work.

Maternity Leave

Time and pay accorded for maternity leave varies across countries but women who opt to
take maternity leave are often viewed as failing to show the same commitment to the institution
and to their work as men. The United States is one of the few industrialized countries that does not
provide paid maternity leave. The Nordic countries generally oblige new fathers to take paternity
leave and this appears to have the effect of increasing the acceptability of maternity leave. Paternity
leave is starting to be discussed in the developing world.

Male Perception of Women’s Lower Economic Need and Entitlement

As in Canada (Davidson 1998), women professionals in most countries and particularly in the
developing world, are often considered as secondary wage earners, to some extent still dependent
on their husbands’ pay and status. They are not considered to have the same entitlement to a
decent wage, to the wage of a breadwinner and to promotion. Male professionals feel that they
have historically been the core of the public service and that women are newcomers, with less
entitlement. This can lead to nonrecruitment of women, to lack of promotion or slower promotion
to levels with higher pay and emoluments.

Gender Differentiated Allowances

No mention was made in the current literature on any gender differential in housing, child or
family allowances. Differences were rife until the 1990s in some developing countries but it would
be interesting to know if any persist.

Less training

Women have fewer opportunities than male peers for study tours, for professional training
in special programmes or in universities, less follow-up after training courses; and less opportunity
for further studies at home and abroad (Smulders 2008; Bista and Carney, 2004). In this respect the
expansion over the last decade of private universities in many parts of the developing world, and the
new access to distance and/or online programmes, has suddenly produced proximate and available
“liberating” opportunities for evening and distance study for women, which they are using to great
advantage.

Less exposure to workshops, seminars, conferences – less recognition

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 Proportionately, women are given less opportunity for attending professional seminars,
workshops and conferences, less chance to present their own papers and less opportunity to display
and receive recognition for their professional skills (The Kenya Case Study 2011, IIEP).

Less opportunity for displaying managerial skills

Women are not often given the chance of acting or deputizing for their male superiors, of practising
managerial skills and of displaying their potential for leadership. (Miranda et al., 2006, on Brazil).

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Women Suffer from Low Visibility

In addition to the above, the management skills women already possess are less visible,
since seldom used; less spoken of among senior staff who are male; and consequently presumed
absent or yet to be proven. Since women tend to be ‘less pushy’, less assertive in asking for
promotion, they find themselves in the position of having to prove supposedly untested skills to
interview panels or to male bosses who have never noticed their skills. Catalyst advises that women
managers need to work more on demonstrating their skills and achievements, achieve visibility.

In countries where political affiliation, ethnicity, cronyism or nepotism play a role in visibility,
the nature of social interaction generally results in men being more visible to and more numerous
around the (male) powerbrokers. The interim findings in both the Argentine and Kenya IIEP Country
Case Studies point to a similar phenomenon. In Francophone Africa rare women join party political
action as a strategy for fast-tracking to senior civil service positions.

Less Benefit from Fast-tracking

Men have a faster career advancement pattern than women. Anecdotal information supports this
existence of this pattern in ministries of education but evidence needs to be accumulated on the
issue.

Exclusion of Women from Powerful Networking Mechanisms

Networking among peers or between junior and senior members of staff is difficult or
impossible for women either because it occurs after office hours or at the week-ends, when women
are busy with family work or because the networking locations are not traditionally or commonly
open to professional women, be they the cantinas of Mexico, the bars of India or the meat-roasting
nyama choma roadside cafes of Kenya. Despite the hope of new female graduates that they will
benefit from informal networking and mentoring in their careers in Tanzania (Akuamoah-Boateng et
al., 2003), it is not borne out once in post.

The exclusion of women from informal interaction which is dominated by male norms has
the result of locking women out from not only the grapevine of information exchange but from
important peer discussion on strategies to use for promotion, on the exchange of wisdom gathered
over time on how the system works, on advice, and on insights into the values of the institution
which might assist with promotion.

Less Formal Support from Women Peers

Research from Ghana and Tanzania documented positive expectation of support from female
managers for young women as compared with their Ghanaian counterparts but in both countries
males perceived that female managers would be unsupportive of junior women (Akuamoah-Boateng
et al., 2003). In all, research on this topic is mixed. There is a difference between formal and informal
support mechanisms and between empowered and disempowered support. Women near the apex

14
of their career have realised that it is not the support of (relatively disempowered) women in the
ministry of education that they need to boost their drive to the top seat, but that of men.

Mentoring

Echoing the above, it is useful for juniors to have mentors in the system. The literature
speaks of informal mentoring systems among women and initiatives taken by individual women to
mentor their juniors but there seems to be no organised mentoring of young women in ministries of
education. It has been recognized that the more influential the mentor, the more useful he may be.
In many contexts, older men, however willing to mentor junior females, may not be at ease in
initiating such mentorship. This has implications for strategies for women to use in the future, using
women mentors for encouragement and enlightenment but using powerful figures (be they male or
female) to assist them through networking to rise to the top. It also has implications for the type of
formal mentoring mechanisms which organizations need to put in place.

Orientation

A need for orientation has been noted by women in ministries but not yet formalised.
Counselling in schools has produced specialist counsellors within ministries who could be used for
staff orientation. The manner in which women are perceived and the way women perceive
themselves are factors that need constant examination and which need to be addressed in any
programme attempting to raise the numbers and profile of women in leadership (Eyinade, 2010).

The Effect of Male Dominated Institutions

Male dominated institutions produce a work environment alien to women, from Canada to
Cambodia to Great Britain, described as:

“ a culture which does not formally exclude women but which makes very few concessions
to the existence of any different set of values and patterns of behaviour. It is a culture
where few women feel at ease and where most find difficulty in expressing their views.”
(Davidson, 1998: 37, reporting Cunnison and Stageman (1993: 114)).

Yukongdi and Benson (2005) describe the Japanese management system as a set of
institutionalized practices that perpetuate gender inequality. The effect of these cumulative factors
undermines women’s confidence and reinforces their subordinate status.

Change in Working Conditions

Institutional reality has long been viewed from a male perspective. No attempt has been
documented to modify working conditions in ministries of education along the lines of the
recommendations of the ILO, below. If there is any practice of flexi-time in ministries of education in
the developing world, it has not been reported. If there are rotas for travelling out of post over time,
shared between male and female staff, or arrangements to schedule office meetings at family-
convenient times, they have not been documented. Ongoing studies have found that toilet facilities

15
for males are overprovided in central ministries while planners have overlooked the fact that in
addition to professional staff, there are many female secretaries working alongside the male and
female professionals.

Socialization

Traditionally, women have been socialized to conform to a feminine stereotype, to be warm,

kind, selfless, quiet, unassuming, compliant and obedient; and they are reputed to be emotional,
irrational, concerned with trivia and detail. The common perception of a leader is a male who is
forceful, rational, competitive, decisive, strong, self-confident, independent and sometimes
aggressive, a person with vision, report Yukongdi and Benson (2005), on China, Hong Kong, Japan,
India, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Perception of Women’s Inherent Attributes and the Characteristics of Leadership

There is a general perception by males that women do not possess the skills or behavioural
characteristics required to perform competently in managerial and leadership roles. This view is
conditioned by gendered stereotypes that perceive women to be inherently indecisive, passive,
lacking in confidence, incompetent and needing direction. Across cultures, the appropriate traits of
managers in the workplace have been aggressive, independent, overtly confident and decisive
characteristics, which are generally associated with men.

Incongruence of Female Behavioural Traits with Leadership

Thakathi (2002) documented the many female behavioural traits which are perceived by
both males and females to be unsuitable in leaders, among them relatively low volume of voice,
compliant tone, unobtrusive manner of interaction at meetings. On the one hand some would say
the situation calls for change in attitude and perception of both males and females to leadership
attributes, while others would advocate training for women to acquire stereotypically (male)
leadership traits. There is, however, a double bind associated with this which is summed up by the
insight: “Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t!” That is, women are castigated for behaving like
men yet they will fail in leadership if they do not assume leader-like (male) behavioural traits.

Refusal/Reluctance to apply for Promotion

Various reasons are reported to account for the fact that proportionately fewer women than
men apply for promotion. It can be explained by lack of information on vacancies in some countries
where promotions are not advertised and the female network is less efficient at picking up such
information. In other circumstances, women may feel they are insufficiently qualified or skilled. They
know that they will be judged by far higher standards than men in a managerial post and may not
choose to place themselves in a hyper-challenging position, which is not the type of challenge men
face when they are promoted. Alternatively, they may know that their networking contacts are
inadequate to secure the promotion. They may choose not to add to their work burden, given the
treble work load they have with household, husband and children. It is also said that women fear
promotion. Investigation has attempted to unpackage some of these factors. Starting with the latter,

16
fear of promotion, the supposed “fear” is generally described by researchers as reluctance rather
than fear. Women may perceive that a dominant male culture at a higher level of the institutional
hierarchy will cause them increased discomfort due to the necessity of constantly dealing with an
unfamiliar, excluding (male) culture, and place them in a state of relative peer isolation. Women
know that these factors can significantly reduce work satisfaction. Status is less important to women
(Barsh, 2009). They tend to look more than men for meaning and reward in the nature of their work.
Men focus more on remuneration levels and status. Consequently, assessing all the negative factors
noted, promotion at this accumulated high price may have less attraction for women than for men
and can lead to reluctance to apply for promotion.

The Hard Work

(b) Societal Barriers “The traditional obstacles are gone,”

Spar continued, referring to past policy
changes that allowed women to
Less space will be given in this paper to the achieve education and entry to the
subject of societal and cultural obstacles to women’s workforce. “The problems that remain
leadership and stereotypical prejudices since the topic are even tougher, more difficult to see.
There are no more switches left to flip.
has been extensively researched. There is no situation Now we have to do the harder work.”
specific to ministries of education described in the
literature that distinguishes them from other places of Debora Spar, President ,
Barnard College, USA
work. This does not diminish in any way the severity of
the restrictions women face and the burden of tradition which assigns women to subordinate,
invisible roles in society and to low expectations of their contribution to public life, including
participation in ministries of education. The elusiveness of the barriers is now the topic of discussion.

Society has assigned women the role of house worker, assistant and supporter of the
husband, and primary nurturer of children; and in some cultures, as Charrad (2007) notes on North
Africa and the middle East, but which is also true of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, women are
also beholden to and governed by the precepts of the extended family or the kin. Despite some
increase in the hours contributed by male partners to unpaid domestic work in industrialized
countries, the situation remains that women are still the world’s major workers in the home (ILO,
2010). Literature from all countries attests to this. Women are generally the sole home/family
managers in developing countries where affordable paid help is available but where technology of
the home and the market place is still at a low level and where convenience strategies and
appliances remain largely unavailable. While women are accorded more options in terms of public
and professional roles in industrialized countries, developing countries provide relatively fewer
opportunities and less acceptance of female role development. Nothing is static in this situation but
while change has been slow in the industrialized world, it is also very slow in the developing world.

The trade-off between relief from daily chores in developing countries and the weight of
sole house/family management together with simultaneous continuing tight restrictions on women’s
social behaviour is of interest. Observers are saying that the disadvantages of the latter cancel out
the benefits of the former. The conclusion is that while the family and workplace environments
differ across the globe, professional women are disadvantaged in these varying contexts; and that
women in ministries of education face continuing challenges arising from socially imposed norms.
Some of the principal features are listed below. They differ in degree and kind according to different

17
countries but they appear to be critical, according to the global literature, in creating enabling
contexts for women to advance to senior management in ministries in education. As noted above,
none of these features are specific to ministries of education but all of them are of immediate and
direct relevance to women who work in ministries of education.

Industrialized Countries Developing countries

 Housework and childcare with uneven
partner contribution
 High technology (appliances/delivery
services) cut work time
 Unavailability of affordable house/
childcare help
 Uneven availability/affordability of
decent daycare centres for infants
 Diminishing societal restrictions on
female professional roles
 Declining male dominated cultures in
ministries of education
 Sole female management of house-
work and childcare
 Low technology requiring extensive
labour/time
 Availability of affordable house/
childcare help
 Unavailability of decent daycare
centres for infants
 Continuing severe societal
restrictions on female professional
roles
 Male dominated cultures in
ministries of education

3. WOMEN IN POST

Since demands on managers are changing, calling for new skills - requiring teamwork,
collaboration, insight, adaptation, good communication, good listening skills and flexibility, among
others - it is now argued that the transformative skills women currently demonstrate will be more
suited for leadership in the future than the transactional skills traditionally displayed by men, which
were described by Sikdar and Mitra, researchers in Dubai (2009).

A second point is that there is nothing to demonstrate that women well prepared for
leadership or women currently in leadership roles fail to demonstrate the traditional qualities
required of leadership: that is, capacity, willingness and courage to lead; decisiveness; and vision.
Evidence is accumulating, now that women are speaking up for themselves and now that
researchers are looking for it, that women make excellent managers. They are accounted to be good
organizers, planners, advisers, mentors, and calm, rational thinkers. Women excel in relationship
building. In general they take fewer risks than men, which is now viewed, in the context of today’s
financial crises, as an asset (NCRW, 2011; Carter and Bagati, 2010; Sobehart. 2009; Catalyst, 2009;
Barsh, 2009; Ernst & Young, 2009; Eagly and Carli, 2003).

4. STRATEGIES FOR ACTION PROPOSED IN THE GLOBAL LITERATURE

There is increasing invisibility of the barriers that hold women back from career
advancement. This is occurring in a context where many of the overt discriminatory structures have

18
been removed, such as unequal pay and gender differentiated allocation of family allowances.
Discourse on gender equality is familiar to policy makers, as is the necessity for politically correct
official statements. However, this very familiarity masks the fact that entrenched gender
discrimination persists in structural organization of institutions, including ministries, and societal
contexts. Recent research, particularly the work of the organizations Women Leading Education,
reflected in Sobehart’s seminal publication Women leading education across the continents (2009),
and Catalyst with its many publications quoted throughout this paper, are focusing on the
fundamental issues still to be addressed: on the nature of work, the nature of success, the nature of
leadership, the nature of work outcomes and the new roles that women seek to play in the sphere of
private and public work. WLE has scheduled its third global conference one week before the IIEP
Forum, in September 2011. The demand for change is multifaceted and ambitious; and it is
questioning our work ethic, our goals, our work-life balance and the current organisational
structures of workplaces, including those of ministries of education. We expect ministries of
education to model positive change in the future and to demonstrate effective methods of
stimulating change.

The global literature describes consensus on the need for increasing the numbers of women
and is agreed, as Del Campo (2005) puts it on reviewing the Latin American situation, that a critical
mass of at least one third women need to be included in any management group for it to become a
functional agency in terms of diversity. A critical mass is the number or proportion sufficient,
according to theory and demonstrated by practice, which starts a chain reaction, an irreversible
propulsion into a new situation or process (The White House Project, 2009). 1 The critical mass
theory rejects the tokenism of one woman window dressing on a committee or a board, or even
two. The “rule of three” is cited as the beginning of change, that as soon as more than a couple of
women are observed in a new situation, their new role becomes less remarkable. Once women start
to be one third of a group they cease to be unusual and are under less pressure. When some
institutions operate a mandatory representation of one third women it normally has a ripple effect
and leads to widespread voluntary increased quotas of women in management. Interestingly,
experience of quotas in the Indian electoral system (Bhavnani, 2009) have demonstrated that even
the imposition of very temporary quotas, can have a sustained effect. A one-off experience of
quotas increased fivefold the probability of a woman being elected in the next election. It
significantly increased the acceptability of women as elected representatives of the people and
demonstrated their abilities in office.

The White House Project recommended six mechanisms which proved effective in
promoting women to leadership and which were adapted for the purpose of advancing women in
education management (National Council for Research on Women):

 Require a minimum critical mass of women at policy making levels

 Use financial resources strategically, for training, exposure and review purposes
 Amplify women’s voices , representing the ministry publicly
 Collect, analyze, disseminate and discuss gender representational data

1
The project is not connected to any presidential residence but uses the image of leadership as a metaphor for
reaching the top.

19
  Maintain accountability through setting targets, timelines and sanctions for non-
compliance
 Increase workplace flexibility, promoting work-life balance for men and women in the
ministry
(adapted for ministries of education)

A review by Ibeh and Yaw (2011) of Africa’s business schools finds that little is being done to
foster women’s leadership in the corporate world and advocates for specific programmes to boost
women’s participation in executive positions through a series of specific measures which could be
adapted to promoting women’s advancement in the public sector. Strategies proposed include
planned career development, that is, a planned lifelong series of training and related activities that
contribute to a person’s career success and fulfilment, mainly through two mechanisms:

1. Talent management - a planned and coordinated process for identifying, attracting, recruiting,
hiring, managing, developing and retaining employees in an organization

2. Developing leaders - through processes such as coaching, feedback, training, mentoring and
challenging employees – and providing training and coaching in dedicated programmes, higher
degree/certificate programmes, executive education courses, targeted incentives, such as
fellowships or scholarships, and providing access to skill-enhancing, networking and mentoring
opportunities.

In sum, pointers from the literature on action for the future include:

Addressed to ministries of education:

 Impose temporary quotas at every level, from one third to one half positions
reserved for women in ministries of education
 Set targets, timelines and sanctions for non-compliance regarding quotas
 Periodically use external monitoring bodies
 Collect and regularly exploit gender representational data on recruitment,
promotion
 Start gender justice in education from the top in MOEs, lead by example
 Review the goals and scope of MOE gender units
 Analyse MOE workday experience from a gender perspective
 Use financial resources strategically
 Initiate change of practice in the workplace to reflect women’s life needs
 Develop orientation programmes for new female and male recruits to MOEs
 Tackle entrenched traditional attitudes at the top of MOEs, invite participation in
change
 Involve all MOE male professionals in personal and organizational transformation
 Establish formalized networking and mentoring programmes
 Facilitate informal networks across male and female MOE professionals – open a
staff coffee room
 In professional development programmes include specific courses dedicated to
women’s advancement in MOEs and leadership skills

20
  Provide more study programmes and tours for women professionals, and other
exposure opportunities, under a temporary affirmative action programme
 Give women opportunities for practising managerial skills, deputizing for bosses,
running projects

Specific proposed tactics in the literature for improving transparency in recruitment and
promotion procedures included the following recommendations:

 Set up online application procedures, obviating the need for outside or internal
applications to pass through ministry bosses
 Develop functional schemes of service and job descriptions in the ministry/public
service
 Provide clear guidelines on promotion criteria (specific skills and/or well defined
prior professional experience, minimum years of prior experience, requisite
qualifications)
 Ensure the short listing and appointments committees are gender balanced
 Eliminate gender bias from interviewing procedures (standard questions to
candidates, avoidance of gender ‘trap’ questions)

Addressed to governments:
 Provide an enabling context for women’s career advancement in the public service
and throughout the labour force, through legislation, self-analysis and action
 Lead change in the workplace

Addressed to women in MOEs:

 Take cognizance of all of the above: analyze, reflect and act strategically
 Advocate for change, support change
 Demand workplace transformation for the good of all workers and their families
 Improve skills, prepare for leadership, support women aspirants to leadership and
women leaders currently in post.

21
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