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Higher Education Leadership in Indonesia: Where are the Women?

Tue, March 7, 8:00 to 9:30am, Sheraton Atlanta, Floor: 1, Georgia 3 (South Tower)

Proposal

Today, Indonesian higher education has attracted more women than ever before and the numbers of female students, lecturers, and staff at higher education institutions throughout the country has increased dramatically over the past decade. According to 2016 data from the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (KEMENRISTEKDIKTI), 2.7 million female students are enrolled in an Indonesian higher education institution. Nationally, female students account for 53 percent of total students, a figure comparable to the world’s most equitable countries. However, the proportion of female lecturers in teaching positions and the number of women leaders serving as professional role models has yet to catch up to the high rate of female student enrollment. For example, out of the fourteen regions of the Coordinator of Private Higher Education Institutions, only three regions are led by women. Further, out of 4, 438 higher education institutions, only four institutions currently have a woman holding the highest position of rector. In 2015, the USAID Higher Education Leadership and Management project, with the support of the Indonesian Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, collaborated with five women lecturers from universities across the archipelago to further understand issues related to gender disparity in higher education.

This presentation discusses the main findings of the collaborative research, presenting quantitative comparative data on the proportion of female higher education leaders and the amount of time it takes for women to be promoted at six universities studied. This is supplemented by qualitative data analyses that examine the constraints that are commonly identified by women as they advance their careers and the influences these constraints have on women’s abilities to lead efforts in research, university management, and women’s empowerment. The results show that the gender gap in higher education leadership grows as the level of authority and influence increases. Further, women with master’s-level degrees are promoted at a slower rate than men with master’s-level degrees, while women with doctoral-level degrees are promoted at comparable rates than men with the same educational attainment levels. Qualitative data collected from surveys and interviews suggest that women implicitly and explicitly understand this limit.

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