In a man’s world: The experiences of women in academic employment in Nigerian universities

Umekwe, Joy

Abstract

Despite the fact that women are increasingly embracing academic opportunities, evidence suggest that not only are women numerically underrepresented in academic employment, their progress is often slowed down and stifled by a range of barriers and challenges. The study set out to investigate how the gender gap in university based academic work is perpetuated. From a post-colonial feminist perspective, the central assumption is that African women were doubly colonised by imperial and patriarchal ideologies which permeates African institutions and operates to limit women’s choices, agency and career aspirations. Semi-structured interviews with 24 women employed at public and private universities, reveal that although academic women in Nigerian universities are privileged by virtue of their academic qualifications and profession, their lives are marked with glaring contradictions. The possession of higher education and participation in academic employment comes with personal and social gains, gains which also comes with a range of dilemmas. Women’s academic identities are not often constructed in line with the model of a typical male career trajectory which assumes a linear path from graduate school to professorship. Many of the women in this study report meandering academic career paths, giving priority to their traditional roles as wives, mothers and primary care givers. Given that the male career mystique is still the taken for granted model which is used to gauge the performance of both male and female academics, women’s progression in academia is consequently stalled. Women lack appropriate mentors have excessive academic workloads and work a never-ending shift. All of which work to exclude them from important networks and hinder their capacity to engage in activities which are required to build the capital necessary for advancement in academia. The implication is that many women are stuck in a rung as a result of overwhelming socio-cultural and institutional limitations that work together to make aspiration to senior levels of the academic career hierarchy either unsustainable or undesirable. Even with this reality, their narratives suggest that they are not passive victims, many of these women employed strategies such as working harder to cope with or change their situation and advance to senior positions.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 21, 2023
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5250164
• Award Date: Jan 27, 2020