Across most of South-east Asia, women now enter undergraduate programmes in equal, and sometimes even higher, numbers as men. Women constitute 40 to 55 per cent of faculty. This progress is worth recognising.
But the equity ends here. Women hold barely a quarter of dean and department head positions, as researchers found in a 2019 Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) study.
Drawing on both shared and personal institutional experience, this article examines three areas where change must happen – teaching and learning, research and knowledge production, and faculty career progression.
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If we are committed to building gender-equitable and inclusive academic communities, we have to pose a direct question, one that cuts to the heart of value systems and orientates us towards action: what must change?
Teaching and learning: a gendered authority issue
In most universities, we rely on student feedback to measure teaching quality. Yet this assessment easily reflects deeply socialised expectations and stereotypes. Often, women are praised for being “caring” and “supportive”, while men are lauded as “brilliant” and “dynamic”.
The problem arises when institutions implicitly value one characteristic over another. For a long time, the dominant model of “excellent” teaching has been the “sage on the stage” – the authoritative expert, often socially coded as masculine, who lectures with confidence, projects certainty and commands the room. Women, by contrast, are more likely to adopt discussion-based, student-focused or facilitative approaches.
How aware are we of our implicit biases? Studies show that, often, women receive similar numbers of nominations but achieve lower success than men in finally securing teaching awards.
The question before us is whether our institutions will continue to assume women will adapt to pre-existing expectations or if universities will recognise the fuller spectrum of teaching excellence. With the surge in artificial intelligence and the anxieties around AI’s impact on teaching and learning, higher education globally is moving towards active, enquiry-driven experiential learning. This means a shift away from authoritative sages to empathetic facilitators experienced in relationality, responsiveness, collaborative leadership and the ability to create communities of enquiry.
Research: whose knowledge counts?
Women academics remain clustered in teaching-intensive roles and under-represented in research leadership. No surprise there. Some research disciplines, particularly STEM, favour uninterrupted productivity. This disadvantages those with care responsibilities, who tend to be women.
The Covid-19 period exposed these inequalities with uncomfortable clarity. Caregiving surged and the uninterrupted time needed for deep research became vastly unequal. Publication rates diverged sharply – men’s outputs continued or even increased, while women’s declined. I have written previously about how expected geographical mobility shapes advancement unequally.
We should ask: what does research lose when gendered perspectives are missing? Gender influences the questions asked, the methodology used and the interpretation of results. For example, health, urban development and climate adaptation are not neutral domains. Without recognising or analysing the gender differences, we allow knowledge gaps to become policy gaps.
Inclusivity extends to methodologies; it emerges in elements such as gender-neutral language and research designs. In data collection and analysis, sensitivity to gender differences, risks and outcomes is critical. Consciously, we must collect and disaggregate data by gender.
Faculty: the leaky pipeline problem
While gender parity may have been achieved at undergraduate levels, dramatically fewer women occupy senior positions such as full professorships and chair professorships. We also see a growing proportion of women in precarious academic roles – short-term contracts, teaching-only positions and administrative-heavy portfolios. While these roles are essential to the functioning of universities, they offer limited progression and little protection.
Women also take longer to reach associate and full professorship due to heavier teaching loads, disproportionate service expectations and constraints on research time. All these disruptions hold women back from performance metrics used to justify promotions: publications, grants and conference visibility.
These are consequences of labour allocation, how work is valued and how we measure achievement.
Bias may not manifest as overt discrimination, but differences prevail in whose achievements are amplified, and whose potential is assumed. Hiring and promotion committees are often gender imbalanced and composed of senior academics who may unconsciously reproduce longstanding norms.
What might bold change look like?
Possible solutions are hardly easy but could ignite our thinking and dialogue. These include:
- diversified hiring and promotion committees, inclusive of colleagues with varied experiences and pathways
- promotion criteria that recognise non-linear academic trajectories and scholarly contributions
- transparent workload allocation models that value pastoral care, service and teaching leadership and distribute them equitably
- rotational service expectations, ensuring that administrative and community-sustaining work does not fall repeatedly on the same individuals.
These measures require intentional implementation and must withstand what needs to be undone culturally. They demonstrate the possibility of redesigning the architecture of opportunity.
Gender equity as a foundational value of the universities we build
Those of us in leadership have a responsibility that goes beyond just holding roles; we must build communities. Mentorship helps us do our work better, but we will also need sponsors and allies who can open space for more women.
This means being candid about barriers and deliberate in redesigning how opportunities are distributed. Are the present measures sufficient? Not yet. Are they changing conversations? Yes.
Women should rise to leading roles in a system that allows them to thrive, not despite it. Not just because it’s fair but because universities with diverse leadership ask better questions, solve harder problems and serve more complex societies.
Lily Kong is president of Singapore Management University.
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