Until relatively recently women have entered professional spheres of life. Although women are born to win in professional spaces due their social DNA, mothers and grandmothers have always governed household services such as budgets, saving, purchases, care, education of children and social relationships.
Yet, women still sit on the fringes of professional development in society. Globally, the difference in earning between men and women vary, but is consistently lower for women.
After completing the first graduation, women earn about 10% less than men with whom they graduated, and by mid-career that number increases to more than 20%.
Women graduates entering workplaces face the challenge of economic decline with few jobs available for them. When in employment they must manage competitive environments and work-life integration.
The challenges of modern educated women are even greater than before. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that South African women in academia were not able to sustain their research and publishing outputs while working from home.
In East Asian countries, women sacrifice their rights to bear children so that they can advance their careers. Now more than ever, women are forced to realise that the work for equality and empowerment is far from over in modern society, as women from native villages in India share common challenges with women in South Africa.
More than thirty years after women have risen to being more than 50 % of college graduates in the US, and with the increasing number female graduates from South African universities, men still hold many leadership positions in government, academia, and industry, in both countries. This means women’s voices are still not being heard equally in decisions that mostly affect their lives. We need to examine why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, examine the root causes, and find solutions to empower women to achieve their full potential.
Women graduates in the developing world are increasing as women tap into the potential of education as a tool for social mobility, but the goal of equality still eludes us.
So how do we move forward? The first step lies in realising that true equality will only be achieved when more women rise to the top of every institution in society.
Women graduating from institutions of higher learning is only the first step, while the real work begins after graduation. Women need to make the effort to transcend the differences and focus on choices and opportunities for women to aspire to leadership.
One way of doing this is by building networks.
Deborah Gruenfeld, a professor from Stanford University says: “We need to look out for one another, work together and act more like a coalition.”
As individuals, women have relatively low levels of power, but working together as more than 50% of the population, we have collective real power.
Joining woman network organisations such as Higher Education Resource Services for young graduate professionals in academia or South African Association of Women Graduates open a space for empowerment.
I argue that building your network is a development pathway for graduate women empowerment.
No matter what life deals us, we are ultimately left with the dilemma of how we choose to respond.
That is where our strength as graduate women lie. It lies in the actions we take in response to our situations. Women’s organisations provide graduate women with the opportunity to connect with other women who believe in empowerment in employment and social areas.
This is important because graduate women need to realise that professional success and development comes from not acting more like a man but aspiring to be more like the many successful women who tap into their social DNA to care, guide and protect society, as part of their professional journeys.
- Naidoo is the president-elect of the South African Association of Women Graduates and sociology lecturer at the University of Mpumalanga. She writes in her personal capacity
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