Gender and social cohesion 12

GENDER TRANSFORMATION SYMPOSIUM REPORT

change to implement gender equality and equity in the higher education sector and more broadly beyond the campus gates. such a movement would profile the levels of violence and injustice experienced by women, as well as the structural barriers that continue to marginalize women, facilitating discrimination against them and preventing them from realizing equal socio-economic opportunities. Various views of how such a movement should be constituted have been suggested.

in seeking to promote gender equity, universities and colleges, which are diverse in their missions and capacities, may adopt various approaches. some have transformation offices, others prefer a diffusion model, in which everyone – all members of staff and students – should act as change agents. in relation to the actual capacity to address gender-equity issues, it is also important to note that universities of technology are generally not equipped with the psycho-social knowledge and support services that can be found at comprehensive universities, which have social science faculties, and lack the means to reach each and every student in and outside residences. in this regard, adopting a more diffused approach to transformation, compared with the more centralized approach that may be adopted at comprehensive universities, makes a virtue of necessity.

The socio-economic and cultural challenges faced by tertiary education institutions in promoting gender equality and equity are shaped by patriarchy. Communities raise children. if a student or staff member is escaping abuse at home and seeking to overcoming trauma, they may come to their tertiary education institution in the hope that they can overcome these challenges. universities and colleges have a responsibility to support them in this.

at CPuT, a participatory, engaged approach to promote a more conducive learning environment has been adopted. The university has taken the view that this kind of approach can help to deepen democracy, strengthen social accountability and promote equity and social justice both within the institution and more widely. accordingly, CPuT has sought to adopt a diffusion model for its transformation work in which students and staff become change agents for inclusivity. The underlying principle is that espoused by american diplomat and activist eleanor roosevelt, who said that human rights begin in the “small places” – the home, the neighborhood, the lecture room, the classroom, the residence, the sports field, the office – and if they have no meaning in such spaces, they have no meaning anywhere.

The implementation of human rights must be undertaken through genuinely democratic processes. as the Ghanaian scholar-diplomat and late former uN secretary-General, kofi annan, once said: “Today’s real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.” Thus, the work of gender transformation should be everyone’s business in all spaces at all times. since only about 10% of students stay in residences, with the rest lodging elsewhere in local communities, broader gender transformation in their daily lives can only be achieved by canvassing their inputs and fostering their engagement as ambassadors of women’s emancipation both inside and beyond the campus gates.