- Title
- African feminism(s) as it informs the experiences of African women leaders at universities in South Africa
- Creator
- Tau, Siphokazi
- Subject
- Feminisms--Africa
- Subject
- Leadership in women
- Subject
- Higher education -- South Africa
- Date Issued
- 2022-04
- Date
- 2022-04
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/59991
- Identifier
- vital:62731
- Description
- The South African higher education geography is one that is met with contesting ideas. The establishment of the university in Africa was a project to mimic the exclusionary nature of the western university. Of centering a particular knowledge and way of being, leaving African women and other marginalised groups outside of the culture of the space and away from the possibility of being knowledge producers. The end of Apartheid, signaled an opportunity for new policies that address racial, gendered and various other lines of oppression and marginalisation. Universities, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges with different histories were merged to make way for the new South Africa. Access to institutions of higher education opened up across geographies, making way for a multicultural student and staff demographic. This transformation has also led to the transformation of the leadership structures of such spaces, with currently only five institutions being led by female and women, out of twenty-six in the country. The aim of this study is to understand the experiences of African women who are leaders in universities, focusing on how they negotiate a history of being excluded in the space with the present context of being able to influence the future of higher education. Using an African feminist lens, I draw on five individual interviews and secondary data from previous studies to excavate phenomenological experiences. The findings reveal that feminist traits of equality of social justice are integral in how the participants perform their leadership. The findings also show experiences of belonging in the culture of the university cause a great deal of tension of which the leaders are constantly working to change, to establish different cultures of being and existing in the South African university.
- Description
- Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of governmental science and social sciences, 2022
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (133 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Humanities
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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NMU School of Governmental and Social Sciences
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Tau S.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |