Although women's participation in STEM research is increasing globally, this has not yet translated into equitable career advancement or leadership representation. Across higher education institutions, women remain under-represented in senior academic and leadership positions. This pattern is evident across Sub-Saharan Africa, where many female STEM academics aspire to build successful academic careers and move into leadership roles yet continue to encounter gendered barriers to progression.
Writing for publication sits at the centre of this challenge. In many African higher education systems, publication is closely tied to visibility, recognition, promotion and access to leadership. Yet the conditions that make publication possible, including time, mentorship, research networks, access to funding and institutional recognition, are themselves gendered. North-south collaborations can strengthen these conditions, although they often focus primarily on research outputs.
Our recent project, Addressing Female STEM Lecturers’ Underrepresentation in Leadership in Technical Universities in Ghana, sought to address this challenge. Funded by the British Council’s Gender Equality Partnerships programme, it brought together the University of Nottingham, Ho Technical University and the Association of African Universities (AAU). Because the barriers facing female STEM lecturers are interconnected, we deliberately combined writing support, mentorship and leadership skills development in a single, connected programme for 28 female STEM lecturers. A two-day writing workshop focused on the practical realities of academic publishing in participants’ disciplinary and institutional contexts. A 10-month mentorship programme supported them in advancing their research, publication plans and academic careers. Three online leadership sessions, led by senior academics, invited participants to reflect on leadership identity, values and resilience and on what it takes to lead with confidence, care and purpose.
The outcomes are promising. Ninety-two per cent of participants submitted a manuscript during or following the programme, 65 per cent authored or co-authored a paper, and 94 per cent reported that the mentorship component was useful or very useful. The leadership component also produced encouraging outcomes: 93 per cent of participants reported feeling confident or somewhat confident in their ability to pursue leadership, and 38 per cent had already taken steps towards a leadership position. Importantly, 89 per cent indicated that they intended to mentor other female STEM lecturers in the future.
For colleagues planning similar initiatives, five lessons stand out.
1. Eligibility criteria can quietly reproduce the exclusions we set out to address. The programme was designed for female STEM lecturers with a doctorate yet several prospective participants were still completing theirs. Their inclusion required a rethink of our eligibility criteria to align them with our goal of promoting equitable access. Part of the problem lay in the definition itself. What counts as an early career researcher is contextually specific, and in many African universities the category includes lecturers with master’s degrees expected to publish while completing doctorates. A completed doctorate criterion imports an understanding of the academic career that does not reflect how research labour is organised on the continent.
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2. Programme design should reflect the realities of women's working lives. Female STEM lecturers’ time is divided between teaching, administration, family and community responsibilities. A two-day intensive workshop made participation possible for women who would have been unable to participate otherwise. We covered transport and accommodation yet lecturers from some of the technical universities could not attend owing to distance. We also recorded workshop sessions for those unable to attend in person, including one participant with a young child, and scheduled the online sessions around personal, family and religious commitments. Not everyone agreed with the workshop format, however. One participant would have preferred a week-long workshop, and a two-day format inevitably limited how far manuscripts could be developed during the sessions. Duration involves a trade-off between depth and access, and we prioritised access.
3. The conditions in which women work shape what any programme can achieve. When we asked participants to name their single biggest challenge, the most common answer was time. They described teaching, administration, doctoral study and care competing for the same hours. Some women joined online sessions while travelling to collect data: evidence of their commitment and of how much is asked of them. A programme can design around time scarcity, as we tried to, and can even buy back time through measures such as funded retreats. Durable time, however, is allocated by institutions, via workload models and career structures.
4. Mentoring relationships require structure as well as commitment. The mentorship model was highly effective overall. Yet mentoring relationships are sustained within the same gendered norms that constrain participants’ career progression. In one group, engagement was disrupted, and this came to our attention later than it should have. Participants’ accounts point to difficulties engaging with mentorship because of clashes with their teaching schedules. Future programmes should therefore incorporate regular check-ins, mechanisms through which concerns can be raised early, and more structured monitoring of engagement.
5. Mentoring is academic labour that must be resourced. Participants quoted ongoing access to mentors as most vital to sustaining their publication and leadership journeys. That demand rests, however, on the labour of senior colleagues and is rarely counted in workload models or rewarded in promotion criteria. Treating this work as goodwill renders it precarious and inequitable. Mentoring should be funded within programmes and built into budgets from the outset. It can also be designed reciprocally, for instance through mentors involving mentees in their own writing, so that confidence develops through co-authorship and mentees progressively assume the lead.
We will take these lessons forward into future initiatives alongside participants’ recommendations, which included extended mentorship, continuous training, grant-writing support, writing retreats and sustained opportunities for networking and collaboration. Participants also emphasised the need to attend more explicitly to well-being, including confidential counselling and support around stress and work-life balance.
Although the AAU has committed to cascading lessons from the project across its network of some 450 institutions, the real challenge extends beyond supporting female STEM lecturers to publish more. It lies in addressing the gendered conditions of academic work so that women have the time, resources, networks, recognition and well-being support needed to participate fully, progress and lead.
Alicia Bowman is assistant professor at the University of Nottingham. Juliet Thondhlana is Unesco Chair in International Education and Development at the University of Nottingham. Liticia Effah-Manu is a faculty member in the department of food science and technology and gender affairs officer of Ho Technical University. Felicia Nkrumah-Kuagbedzi is acting coordinator for ICT, communications and lnowledge management at the Association of African Universities.
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