Addis Ababa University Gender Policy: A glimpse of hope or a mere document for women in academia at the university?

Abstract

Addis Ababa University (AAU) usually called the largest, oldest and parent University in Ethiopia has its first ever gender policy only in 2015. The number of women senate members never been more than five, which is about 3.5 % of the total. As members of the senate are academic staff in the middle and top management levels; this is a clear indication of gender disparity in the university management. The main objective of this work is to see if women academic staff are happy with the gender policy and have some glimpse of hope for gender equality and recommend solutions for the betterment of presence, participation and achievement of women academic staff in the senate, which, by default, is composed of the top and middle management. Purposive and incidental sampling technique with a qualitative analytical method was employed. Three current female members of the senate and three incidentally encountered male senate members participanted in the study. The majority of the participants revealed that there was a glimpse of hope for the betterment of female academic staff academic life in the university and identified the need for awareness creation regarding the gender policy contents including putting it online for dissemination and implementation and for female academia in the university to use their rights.

Keywords: Gender Policy, Women Academia, Glimpse of Hope