- Women make up more than half of South Africa’s population, yet remain significantly underrepresented in research.
- Structural inequalities in funding, mentorship and institutional support continue to favour men.
- Sustained investment in women-centred research programmes is essential to achieving meaningful transformation.
This Women’s Month, I want to share some thoughts on South African women in research. Since 1994, we have seen a growing number of girls and women leaving primary school with Grade 12 and entering the higher education sector.
These numbers continue to overtake those of boys and men. While the declining number of boys is concerning, the numbers of women in education are heartwarming. However, when looking at women in higher education leadership, the numbers remain concerning.
This is also true for women in research. According to the 2024 Status of African Women in Research report, only 33.5% of African researchers are women. The same is reported globally, with women making up only 33% of the world’s researchers.
The importance of representation
Why does it matter that women are “missing” in research? It matters because women are the majority in the South African population. According to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), women represent over 51% of the population.
Even though representation is significant, it is not the only reason why it matters to have women lead research. Substantively, this matters because women continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of societal challenges, and their issues continue to be understudied and under-resourced.
UN Women recently reported that women the world over are experiencing increasing justice gaps, and when they do not set the research agenda, their lived experiences will not inform the solutions that research proposes.
The justice gaps mentioned in the UN Women report include disparities in legal frameworks, social norms, policy and implementation, among others. These justice gaps, I argue, manifest in social institutions like universities through the inequitable positioning of women in research, among other spaces.
Modest shifts in transformation
While transformation imperatives are shifting how women show up in research, these shifts are too modest. The National Research Foundation’s (NRF) Breaking the Glass Ceiling report on women’s publication trends shows an increase in the contribution of female authors in scientific articles from 31.1% in 2005 to 36.8% in 2020. Only 20% of engineering research capacity is made up of women, and the smallest increase, 21%, is observed among Black female authors in the health sciences.
Barriers to women in research
In terms of research, the continued low numbers are a result of how we continue to think about what knowledge is and who is considered a credible knower. Dr Siphokazi Tau, in her work on women’s leadership in the South African higher education sector, suggests that, given the colonial histories of universities in Africa, it is not surprising that women are missing in key knowledge development roles.
She argues that the extension of Western university models to Africa imported the idea that the university is meant for men, and this explains why women remain “outsiders”. What current research shows is that we continue to have low numbers in STEM disciplines. We often have men as leading scholars, more men as NRF-rated scholars, and more men as research chairs.
This is not because women are not able to achieve the same, but because of structural challenges that continue to privilege men. For example, workload models, research funding mandates, access to mentorship opportunities and institutional research support are more often biased in favour of men.
This favouritism towards men is a significant barrier because women’s experiences in society continue to be gendered. Hence, women experience their everyday lives differently because they are women, mainly because ideas about what their roles should be, compared to those of men, persist, and these are usually exclusionary.
The way forward
Many universities and supporting institutions have various programmes aimed at improving the numbers of women in research, including special programmes and funding set aside for women. As university funding agendas shift towards other developments like artificial intelligence (AI), one should caution that these should not be seen as justification for reducing gender mainstreaming funding.
Reducing such funding will leave women behind and will not be sustainable. Women-centred support programmes can only happen if there are committed leadership efforts to improve access for women.
According to the NRF, significant shifts have been noted between 2020 and 2024. The number of women researchers increased from 673 to 878, support for women researchers increased from 1,318 to 1,489, postdoctoral scholars who are women increased from 280 to 391, and South African women contributed 42% of national research, compared with 41% in 2023. Whilst these numbers show progress, more can and should be done.
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The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conviction.co.za
