The government has been urged to develop deliberate policies to support women pursue higher education. A Senior Lecturer at Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Dr Gifty Oforiwaa Gyamera, who made the call, said that would help bridge the gender parity gap at the higher education level. She said this at a forum last Tuesday to discuss the gender inequality gap in higher education and measures to address it. It was under the Gender Equity and Women in Higher Education Writing Programme, and sponsored by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) at University of Newcastle, Australia. The programme which was developed by the Director of CEEHE, Professor Penny-Jane Burke, and Dr Gyamera, aimed at creating collaboration and mentoring opportunities for women in higher education.

CEEHE has adapted the research Writing Programme for Widening Participation Practitioners to engage women in higher education with the critical theoretical tools to examine questions of gender equity in a collaborative space of co-mentoring and exchange of women’s differently located experiences across a two different national contexts of Australia and Ghana and a range of disciplinary fields. Dr Gyamera observed that there were more male lecturers than female lecturers at higher education level which ought to be addressed. “Now you cannot teach without PhD at the University and so there must be conscious effort by the government or stakeholders to promote female in higher education to pursue their PhD,” she stated. In view of this, she said scholarships must be provided for women to pursue their PhD in order to be at par with their male counterparts at the higher education level. She suggested that the number of ‘academic papers’

that women PhD holders needed to publish to be promoted, though debatable could be reduced for them and urged women to collaborate with their counterparts both in and outside the country to co-author academic publications. At the institutional level, she said, organisations needed to support their female staff to pursue higher education to help train more female lecturers.
“There should also be deliberate policies to emphasise mentorship and coaching particularly for the early career academics,” she added. The Human Resource Director at GIMPA, Mrs Victoria Kumbuor also said academic work at the higher education level favoured men than women. She proposed that “Professors should pair with women who have the capacity to write academic papers for
publication.” That, Mrs Kumbuor said, would help equip them to assume leadership positions at the higher education level. “We do not say that standards must be lowered for women but what we are asking for is support be provided for women to be able to meet those criteria so that they could assume leadership positions and the gap can be bridged,” she added.

By Vivian Arthur