Gender_Identity_and_Institutional_Cultur

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First published 2009
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Acknowledgements iv
1 The Carnegie--South Africa Undergraduate
Women’s Scholarship Programme:
An overview 1
Thandi Lewin
2 Overview of the research project 17
Linda Chisholm
3 Female undergraduate students’
constructions of success at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal 29
Pontso Moorosi and Relebohile Moletsane
4 Negotiating social and gender identity:
The worldview of women students at the
University of Pretoria 47
Iriann Haupt and Linda Chisholm
5 Social and academic integration of young
women at the University of Cape Town 61
Monica Mawoyo and Ursula Hoadley
6 Conclusion 75
Linda Chisholm and Relebohile Moletsane
Contributors 81
References 83
CONTENTS

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This publication was made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of
New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of
the authors.
We gratefully acknowledge the role of Nasima Badsha, the former Deputy Director-
General for Higher Education in the Department of Education, who originated the
Carnegie–South Africa Undergraduate Women’s Scholarship Programme and was
responsible for initiating the research undertaken here. Both she and Thandi Lewin, who
participated in the research process, were pivotal in ensuring that the research conducted
went beyond a conventional evaluation and gave researchers the opportunity to probe
deeper questions and conduct the research over a period of time that enabled reflection,
a rare luxury in work of this kind.
Andrea Johnson of the Carnegie Corporation was extremely supportive, and Renschè
Bell, who succeeded Thandi Lewin as Programme Officer of the Carnegie–SA Scholarship
Programme, was exceptionally helpful and understanding.
Thanks also to Sibongile Vilakazi, a student at the University of Pretoria and an intern
at the Human Sciences Research Council in 2006, for the role she played as part of the
research team at the start of the project, as well as to Lameez Alexander in Cape Town for
her participation in the project, also in 2006.
Our final thanks go to Amina Mama and Claudia Mitchell for their extremely insightful
and helpful comments that helped to reshape the chapters in this monograph.
Responsibility for the problems that remain belongs to us.

1
Chapter 1
The Carnegie–South Africa
Undergraduate Women’s Scholarship
Programme: An overview
Thandi Lewin
Introduction
As part of its international development programme, the Carnegie Corporation of New
York (hereafter referred to as Carnegie) has supported two types of initiatives with the
aim of enhancing women’s opportunities in higher education and strengthening African
universities. First, Carnegie has given a grant to the South African national Department
of Education (DoE), and has funded women’s scholarship programmes at other African
universities (Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in
Tanzania). In South Africa, the funding of the national scholarship programme led to
a follow-up investment by Carnegie in undergraduate scholarships for women at the
universities of the Witwatersrand, KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town. Second, Carnegie has
supported the development of women academics in South African and African universities
through its support for HERS-SA, an organisation involved in professional development
programmes for women academics and managers in higher education.
The Carnegie–South Africa Undergraduate Women’s Scholarship Programme was set up
in 2002 as a national scholarship programme targeted at young women wishing to study
primarily in the fields of science and engineering at undergraduate level. With funding
from Carnegie, three cohorts of 50 scholarship recipients each were selected from
across the country’s high schools in 2003, 2004 and 2005 to study at eight institutions.
As the programme manager from the start of this project in 2002 until the year after
the programme produced its first set of graduates in 2006, I present an overview in
this chapter of the scholarship programme, as well as some key reflections on student
experiences gathered from my personal interactions with the scholarship recipients
over the four-year period. In addition, by examining the higher education context that
motivated the study, I provide an introductory context for the case studies that follow in
later chapters.
My involvement with the research team engaged in this study was as a person with
insider knowledge of the scholarship programme and ideas about the experiences of
women students in South African universities. Carnegie included a budget for research
in the original grant to the DoE. Given the dearth of literature on women students in
universities in the science and engineering fields, the establishment of the scholarship
programme offered a useful opportunity to engage in some related research in this
area. However, while Carnegie and the scholarship programme itself were interested in
addressing some key questions, the focus of the research, its methodology and operation,
and any reporting or publication decisions were left to the discretion of the research team
(see Chapter 2 for a description of the research project and methodology).

2
Gender, Identity and institutional culture
Why scholarships for women?
Since 1994 significant progress has been made in addressing the representation of both
black1 students and women students in the higher education system in South Africa. The
proportion of female students in the higher education system grew from 44 per cent in
1993 to 55 per cent in 2006.2 While the participation of women in the higher education
system overall has improved significantly, women are still particularly under-represented
in certain disciplines, including areas of science and technology and all areas of
engineering. Some figures from 2006 reflecting participation rates of women in particular
subject areas demonstrate this quite clearly: mathematical sciences, 39 per cent; computer
science, 37 per cent; and engineering, 24 per cent. In addition women, particularly black
women, continue to be under-represented at master’s and doctoral level in all fields, and
senior academic posts remain dominated by men. In this regard the patterns of gender
participation seen in South Africa are beginning to mirror international trends. In other
words, although South Africa has its specific forms of inequality, the gender-inequity
figures are not that different from those of the developed world. Yet the inequalities
at all levels are still stark, and hence are a major policy concern. The South African
Reference Group on Women in Science, in its study on the participation of women in
science, engineering and technology in South Africa, highlights some of these trends and
proposes ‘initiatives that reduce sex-based discipline choices (for men and women) and
promote the career advancement of women in academia and public research institutions’
(Department of Science and Technology 2004: 47).
Much of the key international and South African literature on women in higher education
has focused on women in postgraduate studies and in academic positions, and on the
barriers that women face in climbing the academic ladder (De la Rey 1998; Morley 1999;
Shackleton 2007). This literature also highlights the barriers to progress in academia
that exist for women. There is, however, a paucity of literature on how and why young
women in the sciences make decisions not to continue with postgraduate degrees and
become scientists. In South Africa, very little research has been conducted on student
experiences beyond a few individual campus reports. Not much has been published on
the experiences of women students in male-dominated areas of study, despite some work
carried out by the Centre for Research in Engineering Education at the University of Cape
Town (UCT), particularly by Jeff Jawitz and Jennifer Case (1998, 2002). Hence there were
strong motivations for commissioning this study.
In places such as the United Kingdom, where the school curriculum has focused on
encouraging girls to enter science careers for some time now, young women still do
not choose to go into certain careers that are perceived to be male-dominated, such as
engineering (Hill 2004). In South Africa, the current policy context encourages gender
equity in higher education at all levels, women participate in higher education overall
in greater numbers than do men, and all the universities involved in this study have
missions and policies supporting gender equity. The universities also have policies in
place to discourage sexual harassment (see Bennett et al. 2007) as well as programmes
that specifically aim to help women be successful at all academic levels. At the policy
level at least, then, there is a supportive framework for women to succeed in science and
engineering subjects and in academia generally.
1 In this monograph, ‘black’ is a collective term referring to the African, Indian and coloured population in South Africa.
2 The statistical data in this paragraph were extracted from the DoE Higher Education Management Information System
(HEMIS).

3
The Carnegie--South Africa Undergraduate Women’s Scholarship Programme
The policy context is, in general, a positive one. It is not yet clear, however, how much
the recent changes in both national and institutional policy have contributed to greater
equity. Very little research has focused on the choices that young women make in
contexts where they are being encouraged to take up careers in science. Debates about
student choice remain to be examined. It is not clear to us, for example, how many
students in the Carnegie scholarship programme chose to apply for the scholarship
merely because it was available to them and was their only obvious source of funding for
higher education study. (Some discussion about student choices of study appears later in
this chapter.)
The study reported on in this monograph was conceptualised in a broader context of
policy concern in South Africa with the lack of sufficient high-level skills in all areas,
including the economic sciences (hence the inclusion of some students in these fields in
the scholarship programme). The National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE) advocates
a shift in the ratios of students studying in different fields – moving towards a greater
proportion of students in the sciences and economic sciences and towards a lower
proportion in the humanities and social sciences than are reflected in the current ratios
– and seeks to address the ongoing equity concerns particular to the South African
context, especially the numbers of black students in these fields (DoE 2001). In this
context, government programmes such as the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition
(JIPSA) were introduced in 2006 to speed up the implementation of the National
Skills Development Strategy. High-level skills in engineering, science and technology,
particularly information and communication technology, are one part of the group
of targeted skills in this strategy, which is part of a broader programme to accelerate
economic growth and development.
An additional policy concern is the low throughput rate of students in the public
higher education system. A DoE study of a cohort of students commencing in 2001 and
concluding in 2004 showed high rates of dropout (30 per cent after the first year, 50 per
cent by the fourth year) (DoE 2005b). Unfortunately, a sex-disaggregated analysis of these
data has not been conducted. Further research and analysis into these issues needs to
be done, investigating in more detail what contributes to dropout and accounting for the
issues related to completion time (that is, the fact that the majority of students do not
finish in the minimum time allowed for undergraduate degrees).
It is clear that poor throughput rates are a significant problem for the public higher
education system. Scott, Yeld and Hendry took this as a starting point for their study on
improving teaching and learning in South African higher education. They note that while
access to higher education has increased significantly for black South Africans, black
students continue to perform more poorly than white students, and the participation
rates of black South Africans are still low relative to those of other population groups,
in particular white students. While the overall participation rate in higher education is
16 per cent (taken as the total higher education enrolment as a percentage of the 20–24
age-group cohort), the participation rate for white students is 60 per cent; for Indians,
51 per cent; and for coloured and African students, a mere 12 per cent each (Scott, Yeld
Hendry 2007: 10). This is a significant concern, and one that relates to complex social,
economic and schooling-related factors. Scott, Yeld and Hendry also analysed completion
rates of black and white students, and found that in most programme areas black students
complete at half the rate of white students (2007: 17). Their analysis points to the effect
of this as a negation of the achievement of greater access by black students. In addition,

4
they make the point that ‘in material terms, the overall performance of the sector indicates
unsatisfactory utilisation of scarce resources. The loss in terms of human resources is,
however, arguably much greater’ (2007: 19).
Further research on the factors that influence students to drop out or interrupt their
studies is also required. Certainly student funding is one such factor and has been
recognised by government as a key policy concern. The National Student Financial
Aid Scheme (NSFAS), to which government contributed over R1 billion in 2006, is a
key vehicle for helping academically able students in financial need to access higher
education. In 2006, over 100 000 students were given NSFAS funds to support
their studies.
However, because of the increasing demand, compounded by high tuition fees in public
higher education institutions, greater amounts are needed to contribute to financial aid for
needy students. Private sector funds often target certain professional study programmes
such as engineering, actuarial science and accounting, making it more difficult to find
private funding outside of these fields. Universities also contribute significant funds of
their own towards student support. Even students funded by the NSFAS, however, have to
contribute some of their own funds to their education, as it is rare for a student to receive
a bursary or scholarship which covers the full costs of study.
While the majority of NSFAS-funded students have to supplement the financial aid they
receive with their own funds, often with difficulty, many of the privately funded students
and the Carnegie scholarship recipients are all fully funded. This means that the total
amounts of their tuition fees, living expenses and book costs are paid in full. Those
students living in university residences are able to study without any financial contribution
from their families. Indeed, many of the students living at home have been able to
contribute to family living costs through their living stipends. The students in the Carnegie
scholarship programme are all in financial need (although need is defined differently and
more broadly than in the NSFAS criteria). Scholarship recipients include students whose
parents and guardians are reliant on state pensions or social grants through to those
whose parents are informal traders and to those whose family members are teachers and
nurses. All the families of Carnegie scholarship recipients would find university education
a prohibitive cost without significant financial aid.
Scholarship programmes for women are not unusual. FAWE (Forum for African Women
Educationalists) has initiated girls’ scholarship programmes in many parts of Africa.3 In
addition, several organisations fund girls-only scholarships in the developing world (for
example, Room to Read, which has programmes in Cambodia, Laos, India and Zambia,
among other countries).4 Other interventions which aim to increase the participation
of women in higher education include affirmative action programmes. For example,
Kwesiga’s comprehensive study of women’s access to higher education in Uganda reports
on Makerere University’s adjustment of entrance requirements (commencing in 1990) to
provide a points bonus of 1.5 to qualifying women students entering higher education,
which has substantially increased enrolments of women (Kwesiga 2002). In countries
where disparities in education between boys and girls at school level are still marked,
affirmative action projects have been seen as necessary to create access and ensure the
3 The FAWE website is www.fawe.org.
4 The Room to Read website is www.roomtoread.org.

5
success of women in higher education. Arguably, without these programmes access
patterns with low involvement of women would continue. Similar assumptions are behind
the Carnegie scholarship programme: without comprehensive financial support and an
affirmative targeting of women students in under-represented areas, the numbers will not
change, as women students continue to access courses traditionally viewed as the domain
of women.
A key question informed the conceptualisation of the research project reported on in
this monograph: If the element of financial concern for women students is eliminated,
how are they affected? Do they all become successful? Do they persevere in their studies
and complete in the minimum required time? Indications are that this is not the case, as
success at university depends on a combination of educational preparedness, schooling
background, personal factors, motivation, and social and institutional factors. Thus, the
study was guided by the understanding that financial support is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for student success. The scholarship programme was thus set up
based on the belief that scholarships increase access to higher education for people who
may not otherwise have access, and increase their chance of success.
The scholarship project: selection of students and support structure
At the time of this study, the Carnegie scholarship programme was open to South African
female students who were entering higher education institutions as full-time students and
who had matriculated within the previous two years. Preference was given to students in
financial need. All students were first-time entrants to higher education. Application forms
were distributed via the provincial networks to schools. No more than two grade 12
applicants were permitted per school, and principals were asked to decide which two
students to put forward for the scholarship application.
Students were selected for a scholarship on the basis of academic merit. They were
required to be within the top 5 per cent of their class in their grade 12 school year, and
they had to demonstrate high marks in maths and science, particularly if they intended to
study in the science or engineering fields. The final scholarship offer was conditional on
their matriculation results and their acceptance into a public South African university. The
selection process was two-tiered: an initial screening and grading of applications and a
provincial shortlisting process (which involved provincial education department officials
who had been part of this project or of some other gender-related schools project in their
province), followed by a final national selection process.
The scholarship programme office was set up primarily as a funding centre responsible
for administering and managing the scholarships, but it also provided a core formal and
informal support programme. A career development workshop was held for each new
intake of scholarship recipients before they began their university careers, focusing on
preparing students for the university experience (including financial planning advice)
and offering a session encouraging the students to begin thinking about their career
choices and decisions. This initiated a process of self-reflection, which was intended to
assist students in succeeding at their studies but also raised questions about how they
had chosen their course of study and whether or not they had made the right decision.
The workshops were initially planned as a once-off starter support, but as we came to
appreciate the importance of continuing to support and engage with the students, as well
as of building a network among each cohort of students, the support workshops were
implemented as an annual activity, with regional-based workshops to keep the costs down.

6
The workshops drew on expertise from the higher education institutions where some of
the students were located, and relationships were formed between students and support
staff at each of the institutions, primarily through the staff’s role of making payments to
students and monitoring their performance, but also by the staff’s provision of broader
support. Additional support for students was provided through a project webpage, which
included an access-controlled zone for students only. The webpage was also used as
a communication tool, although cellphones remained the principal vehicle for student
communication, given the relatively high levels of access to cellphone technology in
South Africa.
Although a sample of students from three institutions participated in this research project,
a total of 150 students were recipients of the scholarship at the time of the study. Of these,
the majority (more than 80 per cent) were black students, and thus broadly representative
of the racial demographics of South Africa. The students were also broadly representative
of the nine South African provinces, although there was some dominance from the larger
provinces and those with a greater number of high-performing schools (Western Cape
and Gauteng). Students in the total cohort were spread across eight institutions in
four regions of the country: the universities of the Free State, Pretoria, Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, Cape Town, Western Cape, Stellenbosch and KwaZulu-Natal. The students
were studying primarily in the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering
programmes. A small number of students were in the economics and commerce fields,
with an even smaller number in the humanities and education. The primary aim of the
scholarship was to provide funding to increase the numbers of women studying in the
science and technology fields, hence the small numbers in other fields, particularly the
humanities, where women were well represented. As indicated above, all students were
identified as being in financial need, but even within the total cohort there was great
diversity of family income (for example, some students had unemployed parents/guardians;
others came from middle-class families of teachers and small business owners).
Reflections on student experiences
This portion of the chapter consists mainly of personal reflection stemming from my role
as scholarship programme manager. Ongoing monitoring was necessary in order for the
programme to adapt and respond to the needs of the students. The opportunity to reflect
came from ongoing close communication with the 150 scholarship students on various
academic and personal matters throughout my tenure.
As programme manager I had privileged access to both personal and academic
information about the students, who came from a variety of academic and social
backgrounds and were studying in a range of programmes at different institutions. While
carrying out my responsibilities gave me an overview of a wide spectrum of student
experiences, writing about them for this research report is a very different activity from
feeding back ideas to the management of the programme. To illustrate, my role produced
a paradoxical relationship with the students: I was both a support person and a controller
of funds. I controlled the students’ access to the scholarship and their continued funding
from year to year and, at the same time, supported them and facilitated their access to
services. Thus, on the one hand, I provided positive encouragement and support and,
on the other, pressure and sanction where necessary. I had some privileged information
about them and their studies, as well as about their scholarship support. This paradoxical
relationship meant that information could also be withheld from me, as someone in
power over the students, if it was deemed not suitable for my ears.

7
My position required that I provide support to students while keeping an eye on the
interests of the scholarship investment. For example, I would have regular telephonic
discussions with students who had produced worrying mid-year results. I would ask the
student: What is happening? Do you need any help? Is there anything I can do? Have
you thought about obtaining additional support by joining a study group or getting
academic counselling? I would try to ensure that they were making full use of the support
mechanisms available to them and that they were being realistic about their academic
situation, and I also wanted them to know that someone cared. However, behind my
supportive questions and statements lay a strong concern about whether students were
making sensible decisions and choices about improving their academic results. I needed
to assess whether they had analysed their situation accurately and whether they knew
what needed to be done to improve their marks. Further, did they realise that their
scholarship would be in jeopardy if they did not improve their results? I would also
be trying to ascertain whether there were more complex personal reasons for poor
performance. Had something happened in their personal life to affect performance –
such as a family problem or a relationship difficulty – or were they experiencing some
form of depression where a professional intervention might be necessary? Perhaps they
were just partying too much?! In many cases, this kind of information was very difficult to
get out of the student from my relatively distanced position, and because I was not acting
in a professional counselling capacity, I often remained ignorant about the actual reasons
for a student’s poor performance.
On a professional level, my concern was motivated by the need for accountability to the
programme funder. Could we be sure we had selected the right group of students for the
scholarship? Were they headed for success? Could we minimise any likelihood of student
failure? The more successful the group of students, the happier the funder will be and the
more funding can be mobilised for further scholarships.
The reflections that follow are made with an acknowledgement of the study’s
methodological constraints. Many of the ideas discussed emerged in feedback from a
series of student support workshops held between 2003 and 2006. Some of these were
introductory workshops and others were part of the ongoing support programmes put in
place through the scholarship programme. In the absence of a formal evaluation of the
programme, much of the insight gained comes from anecdotal evidence and informal
interaction with students, as well as their comments within the workshop settings. I should
reiterate that I gathered information not as a researcher or an interviewer, but as an insider
working towards the dual goal of supporting students as much as possible while ensuring
responsible disbursement of scholarship funds. It is because of this that my status as
author of this chapter is not so much that of researcher as that of inside commentator.
The perspectives come from a combination of active programme reflection, student
observation, and reports on the student workshops, which include students’ own
reflections (usually offered on an anonymous basis within a group of 20 or more
students) and informal student evaluations of workshops. It is important to note that
the primary role of the workshops was to provide student support, and not to provide
research material for this project. However, it was through the engagement with students
at all these levels that the project was able to grow and develop in response to the
students’ needs, and researchers were able to learn more about the students’ experiences.
Comments and reflections from the scholarship recipients are therefore privileged
information that can provide only a general overview of these students’ experiences
at university.

8
Student experiences of higher education institutions
The reflections on student experiences in this section are organised around five themes:
coping with academic adjustment and pressure; messages of officialdom; career planning;
health; and coping with different identities.
Coping with academic adjustment and pressure
Coping with the academic demands at university was a substantial issue for the
scholarship recipients, and possibly the one into which I had the most insight given my
role in relation to the students. Regardless of one’s academic background, the adjustment
from school to university is an enormous one. Very few students are prepared for the
volume and level of work that they face when entering university. This is often quite a
shock for students, some of whom adapt better and more quickly than others to the new
situation. The scholarship students in this study had particular expectations of themselves
as they were all top performers at their school and in many cases top matriculants in
their province.
Many high-performing students enter university with the expectation that they can
continue to score over 80 per cent in tests and assignments, and they find it difficult
to adapt to receiving lower marks. Families also sometimes find this change difficult to
understand. For many students the transition from school to university is so huge that
they fail subjects in their degree area, particularly in the first year. There can be many
reasons for this: school background is key, but students find academic integration difficult
for all kinds of reasons. Managing study time without regular supervision is a challenge
and takes self-discipline. Finding a balance between the new social life of university and
the heavy academic workload is another challenge. Nearly all the scholarship students
claimed the transition was a major shock, even if they managed to adapt quite effectively.
Such issues are not new to the academic community in South Africa and elsewhere. For
example, Carolyn Jackson (2003) has studied the gendered implications of what she
calls ‘academic self-concept’ and notes that many university students move from being
‘big fish’ in their sixth-form environment to being much smaller fish in a bigger pond.
Positive academic self-concept has been shown to improve academic performance. In
South Africa, university academic development and support programmes have been set
up in response to the fact that South African matriculants are generally under-prepared
for higher education study and that the adjustment they face can be steep. What surprised
those of us in the programme was the consistency of the shock response among the
scholarship students. Our assumption was that students would be affected differently
depending on the quality of teaching and support they had received at their school.
However, although the quality of schooling may influence student academic experiences
differently (from which stems the assumption that students from high-performing schools
tend to cope better in higher education institutions), this should be further tested. It is
not clear from the scholarship students’ experience that quality of schooling has a direct
correlation with success at university.
Furthermore, my reflections on the students’ experiences are informed by the belief
that living arrangements are key to being able to study effectively. Students commuting
between home and the university spend significant amounts of time actually travelling
and may be responsible for home chores as well as their studies. Students in residence
have easier access to university libraries and computer facilities. However, the latter can
be distracted by activities around them in the residence, and unless they have a quiet

9
place to study in their living space they may find studying very difficult. At a number of
universities, first-year students are exposed to a lot of pressure to participate in residence/
hostel activities, including Rag (a fundraising event), house meetings and social events.
In some institutions hostels have their own uniforms, which first-year students are
expected to purchase and wear. There did not seem to be a universal response to these
pressures among the scholarship students. While some black students in particular were
uncomfortable about participating in these activities and felt that residence life increased
their alienation from university culture, others felt that such participation was a way of
making people feel at home.
Some of the psychological challenges for students may be related to the expectations
of family, scholarship providers and the university. Although students are expected to
complete a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in three years, or an engineering degree in
four years, the majority of students do not complete in the minimum time required. Most
students in South African universities will take at least an extra year to complete their
degree. This may be the result of a structural problem in the higher education system,
but it is important to recognise that it is unusual for students to finish in the minimum
time. What the student throughput study mentioned earlier may show us is that not only
have students dropped out along the way, but some students are finishing their degrees in
greatly extended time. Indeed, it may be that you set a student up for failure if you expect
her to struggle to finish in a prescribed time-frame when in fact she would perform much
better with an additional year to complete her studies. Although in the minority, a number
of students in this programme did require an additional year of support.
Data obtained in 2008 from the Carnegie–South Africa scholarship office in the DoE
indicate a 3 per cent dropout rate overall for the programme, which is significantly lower
than the national average – as would be expected where full funding is available. Of
the students that have graduated, the majority are employed in a related area of work
or are continuing with postgraduate study. Seventy per cent of the scholarship recipients
will have completed by 2008. Some of those still to complete are students in medical
programmes, who may take six or seven years to finish their studies.
Messages of officialdom
It is clear through my interactions with students that they took very seriously the formal
and informal messages they received from within the university. Formal messages refer
to those that students received from representatives of the university administration,
residence supervisors or lecturing staff, while informal messages are those they picked up
from fellow students and from the wider university environment.
In this regard, two strong messages predominated in the university culture for a number
of students. The one was a surprisingly common message from lecturing staff to
undergraduate students: one or other version of ‘you will fail’, ‘only 50 per cent of you
will make it through’, or ‘look at the person next to you, one of you will not be here at
the end of the year’. In one support session for a group of over 50 scholarship recipients,
students were asked how many of them had received messages like this, and all but one
or two hands went up.
This negative-encouragement approach attempts to frighten students into hard work but
also feeds into students’ own concerns about their ability to succeed at university. With
students already feeling overwhelmed in many cases, the negative approach can further
undermine self-esteem and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Among the scholarship

10
students, it is possible that there were some who responded well to the ‘fear’ approach,
but most students seemed to be made uneasy or worried by these experiences. Some
of them seemed to take the messages to heart and assumed that they would be among
those on the failing end. A combination of a negative lecturer and a few low marks can
seriously affect the self-esteem of a student already struggling with the academic and
social challenges of university life. Despite this, a number of students reported that they
liked the independence that being at university offers, and although the work was a
struggle, they accepted this as a reality of the journey towards their goals.
A counter-message was adopted within the scholarship programme: a ‘we believe in
you’ approach, conveying to the students that they were supported even if they did not
do as well as we – or they – had hoped. This approach was informed by the belief that
while it is necessary to build in checks and balances for poor academic performance, it
is still possible to send students encouraging messages. It may be that the ‘sink or swim’
message works for students who are comfortable with their direction and confident about
their own ability. In our experience, however, it was damaging to young people who
were questioning their own abilities, facing tough challenges for the first time and
feeling uncertain about where they are going. We spent a lot of time countering these
negative messages.
The second strong message for many students was that a university career should be a
smooth journey from point A to point B, first year to final year – passing, having fun and
graduating at the end of it. This particular message appeared to exist most strongly in
the informal culture of a university, and suggested that a person is somehow not good
enough if he or she does not fit perfectly into the linear pattern. The reality, however, is
that very few students do in fact proceed smoothly through their university careers.
Roughly one-fifth of the scholarship recipients were formally placed by the university
in programmes with extended completion times. These programmes have been seen by
some as a racist plot to undermine and ghettoise black students, while over time the
success of certain programmes has brought about greater belief in and support for them.
Although the stigma continues, in my experience many students seemed to appreciate
the space, time and support allowed them by extended programmes. Given the reality of
slower completion rates, students who are formally placed in a programme with the space
to complete their studies in a longer period are often in a much stronger position than
students in mainstream programmes. They receive more support, greater understanding
and often special attention which the mainstream students do not get. The additional
strength of formal extended academic programmes is that students do not feel alone
and isolated. While some scholarship students were initially upset about their placement
in these programmes, most of them understood after a while that they were in a much
stronger position. Students not on extended programmes would be held back for failing a
key subject, a much more frustrating and depressing experience.
How do students define success, then, in relation to these messages and their own
standards of performance? They come to university and find out it is tougher than they
thought; they discover they have to adapt to lower performance; in many cases they have
to learn what it is like to fail something; and they are faced with the hard reality of the
study choices they have made. What also influences success or failure is how students
respond to such challenges. Are they willing to access the support that is available at
the well-resourced universities? All the students in the scholarship programme were well
informed about the kinds of services, both academic and psychological, available to

11
them. However, it was often only with significant encouragement from those of us in the
scholarship office, or in some circumstances after making it compulsory, that many of the
students accessed these services. Some answers to how the students in this study defined
success are found in the case studies reported in later chapters of this monograph.
Career planning
Career planning was a key concern of the scholarship programme from the point of
receiving applications through to the graduation of scholarship recipients. The challenges
of recruiting high-performing young women for undergraduate study in the science fields
were considerable. The minimal levels of career guidance at schools, the poor support
and subject advice offered at schools, and the formidable financial barriers to applying
for higher education admission were highlighted through this process. Access to higher
education and science courses in particular is influenced by a complex set of factors.
These include the lack of information about higher education study and subject mix;
misconceptions about the relationship between finance provision and admission to higher
education; the timing of application for higher education study; and the lack of clarity
about what students actually want to study.
In 2003, out of an application group of around 2 000 grade 12 students, only 86 per
cent of the applicants for science programmes were actually studying mathematics at
the Senior Certificate level. Of these students, only 29 per cent were doing mathematics
at higher grade level, increasingly a prerequisite for entrance to university science
programmes. In 2004, out of a group of 1 800 applicants, only 70 per cent were taking
mathematics. Furthermore, out of the 2003 applicant cohort, only 42 per cent of the
applicants had applied for a university place by the time of application for the scholarship
in October of their grade 12 year. This suggested that although the students applying for a
scholarship intended to study at university, very few had actually taken steps to make this
a possibility. Discussions with teachers and principals revealed that many of them were
under the misconception that students should obtain financial assistance before applying
for a university place, whereas most such funding is obtained once a student has obtained
a place to study.
This misconception affected a number of students on the scholarship shortlist. In one
case, a student had applied for a provincial scholarship to study medicine, with the
understanding that by applying for the scholarship she was also applying for a university
place to study medicine. Once she had received a provisional scholarship offer, we
discovered that the university had no record of her application. At this stage, it was far
too late for her to apply for admission to study medicine, one of the most competitive
university programmes, but it was possible for us to assist her in getting a place in the
BSc degree programme. Another student applied to study chemical engineering, another
competitive course. Despite having good results, she was turned down by the university
concerned. She was not placed on a waiting list or in an alternative programme. On
investigation we discovered that she had not put down a second-choice course of study,
and the university had rejected her outright. Again, after some negotiation, we were able
to obtain a place for her in the chemistry department by adding a second choice to her
university application form. At registration, she managed to gain a place in the chemical
engineering programme, because she had by then been placed on the shortlist. Both
these cases are examples of students who may have not made it to university without
our assistance, because they did not have adequate information about how to apply for
admission to university programmes.

12
A number of the scholarship students began to question their choice of study programme
early on. Within strict frameworks we were in most cases able to accommodate changes
to the students’ courses, where the changes were carefully considered and supported
by advice from university career counsellors. However, some changes could not be
considered because they were ill-considered or badly planned. A small number of
students made radical changes to their courses which we could not support and advised
against. These decisions were often influenced by family members and, in a small number
of cases, students and their families were prepared to jeopardise scholarship funding
rather than maintain their original choice of study programme.
In several cases, however, we were able to accommodate changes to students’ choice of
study programme, especially in cases where students were able to carry over credits from
previous courses or where the change was well motivated. In one instance, a student
changed from a microbiology degree programme to a degree in film and media studies.
This choice was well supported by the student’s careers advisor, and the student realised
her desire to change early on in her studies. She was persistent in wanting to make the
change and was clearly passionate about her new choice of study programme.
The scholarship programme attempted to address these issues early on through a pre-
university career development workshop, which encouraged students to think about the
reasons for their choice of subject and their future plans, and to reflect on their own
skills and strengths in relation to their course of study. Early discussions with students
showed that their choices of study programme were often haphazard – influenced by
the suggestion of teachers or families; chosen because the scholarship opportunity arose;
and very often selected because the degree course was perceived as the best route to a
good job. Very few students had chosen their courses based on a passion for the area of
study. Ill-considered choices often provoke an identity crisis down the line, as students
realise that it is too late to change their course of study. From experiences with students
in the scholarship programme, it became clear that student decision-making about
career choices is a complex area requiring deeper research, as it is questionable whether
students are in a position to make solid career decisions at the time of entering university.
Only a small number of scholarship students were interested in continuing to
postgraduate studies. Many expressed the view that they wanted to go straight out and
work after receiving their undergraduate degree, and believed that postgraduate studies
would over-qualify them for a job. Very few students had been encouraged to pursue
postgraduate study and to consider academic careers. After a student support session in
which scholarship recipients were introduced to young women academics in the early
stages of their academic careers, one student commented that she would really like
to become a researcher, but that she had no idea that ‘someone like me’ could be an
academic. She was in the third year of a BSc degree programme, and this was the first
time that she had been encouraged to consider postgraduate study.
Nonetheless, a number of the scholarship recipients have gone on to do postgraduate
studies.5 While the majority of students, particularly those who did not attend formerly
advantaged ex-Model C schools, reported receiving no career guidance support at school,
a more important issue they raised was that school did not prepare them for the level
and rigour of academic work at university. This comes through in more detail in the case
study chapters as a dominant challenge for many students.
5 Carnegie–South Africa scholarship office, DoE, 2008, pers. comm.

13
Health
Students in higher education are often affected by stress-related problems. For some
students, this stress is directly related to coping with rigorous academic demands,
but students also experience stress as they face the complexity of adjustment to
university life at all levels, including academic, social, financial and other personal
issues. My reflections with regard to this theme are informed by the belief that financial
independence does not appear to eliminate stress entirely. A number of students
identified as being generally ‘stressed’. However, a few also identified as being depressed.
With support from student counsellors and, in some cases, from external psychologists
and psychiatrists, these students were able to address at least some aspects of their
depression. Some of the depression may well have been influenced by external factors
such as family pressure, but it is impossible to state this with certainty. The real causes of
depression were not clear from interactions with students and from limited psychological
reports. In a few cases, it is possible that the students had some kind of substance-
abuse problem. What is certain is that depression, in whatever form it comes, has a clear
effect on academic performance. A small number of the scholarship group developed
depression in their second and third years. This was evidenced by high-performing
students dropping their marks in some cases by 30 or 40 per cent.
A majority of the scholarship students were preoccupied with issues of food, exercise and
weight. These issues were brought up regularly by students at the support workshops.
Students found it difficult to manage their weight, particularly those students in catering
residences or hostels who were not in control of cooking and preparing their own food.
Students struggled with finding time to exercise and controlling the amounts and type of
food they ate. Having to eat at set times also left little flexibility for students wanting to
control their eating. Student discussions often revealed strong views about weight. They
believed that women should be thin and should be able to control their weight, that fat
is a sign of weakness, and that having the right looks and wearing the right clothes are
a very important part of being at university. Peer pressure to look a certain way was a
particular difficulty for students who did not come from wealthy backgrounds but were in
a university where there were large numbers of wealthy students.
Despite these issues being a common topic in my interaction with students, they do not
come through strongly in the case study chapters that follow. Indeed, concern about
weight may be too ordinary a set of experiences, or perhaps too personal an issue, to have
been mentioned. In fact, the discussions that informed this theme may have happened
simply as a direct result of the necessary administration of a scholarship programme.
During my four years as programme manager, there were six cases in which students
suffered family tragedies, losing close relatives and breadwinners during their course of
study. Obviously, this impacted negatively on the students’ performance in their studies.
Among the students in the programme, there were two cases of serious illness, and one
student passed away.
Coping with different identities
One of the most interesting and rewarding things about running a scholarship programme
like this was watching students meet challenges, grow, and develop their own identities.
The first year of university is hard. These three cohorts of students entered university with
a strong sense of pride at their huge achievements – getting a place to study at a top
university, and winning a scholarship on top of that. They truly believed that they could

14
do anything, that they were young women in the new South Africa and that this was
their time. This was a highly individualistic group, the TV generation repeating popular
mantras of ‘you can be anything you want’. The dynamic of expectation was fairly high.
Unfortunately, the feeling of ‘I can do anything’ turned quickly into the shock of false
self-esteem for many students. The reality that they were not alone in their brilliance
or achievement, or that no one at university thought they were brilliant, forced them to
re-evaluate what they thought of themselves. This is a difficult process for students to go
through. Toni and Olivier (2004) wrote about this in relation to African female first-year
students at the University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University).
They found that students entering university had very clear goals for successful careers
and felt positive and proud, but that over time they became discouraged and confused,
and this affected their academic identities. The students related this negative trajectory to
the university environment being unsupportive and alienating.
In the case of the scholarship recipients, many students came to value the freedom and
independence that comes with being a scholarship student at university with no financial
worries. Gradually becoming aware of their independence over time, they learnt to
embrace and celebrate it. Those in their second year and beyond would start to focus
on this independence as a very important part of their identity. Many of them mentioned
this as the best thing about the scholarship programme and about their experience of
university. The scholarship programme gave them the freedom to make their own choices
and determine their own lives because they had financial independence, which appeared
to give many students the opportunity to regain some level of confidence in themselves.
At university, students must also learn the difficult lesson that with agency and choice
comes responsibility. In particular, scholarship students had to learn that they had a
responsibility to their scholarship sponsors: they needed to pass their subjects well and to
take the initiative to address problems when they arose. They had to take responsibility
for their work, for their personal decisions and for their own mental health. Some
students had difficulty taking on these responsibilities. For example, one student planned
to abandon her studies in the third year to take on a full-time job, another student took
up an alternative scholarship after two years of funding and a third student changed to
a different course without seeking the permission of the scholarship manager. These
students struggled with decision-making in the context of their academic careers and did
not seek advice. A dilemma for the scholarship programme staff was how to treat students
as adults, allowing them the space to make their own decisions while ensuring that they
were monitored and held to a certain set of values and rules, yet also supporting them
where necessary. Our concern was, where did our responsibility end and theirs begin?
Other challenges related to handling independence and responsibility were budgeting
and managing funds; dealing with diversity (religious, racial and class diversity and other
identities); maintaining one’s own values in the face of peer pressure; making friends and
negotiating relationships; dealing with the challenges of language; and so on.
Family expectations influenced many aspects of student life, but were mostly hidden
from us. In poorer families the scholarship money could create tension as students were
expected to help cover family costs rather than divert funds to their own needs as a
student. Other issues included a lack of understanding of the challenges of academic
achievement by some families, and in some cases strong interference in student decisions.
Sometimes students would take the advice of parents that clearly contradicted the
advice of the university or scholarship programme. In two cases students forfeited their
scholarship because of parental decisions.

15
We discovered that cohort-building was an important way of assisting students in dealing
with the challenges of university. Through being part of a group of students, scholarship
recipients knew that they were being supported and that they were not the only ones
experiencing something difficult or overwhelming. Knowing that an experience is
common to others boosts self-confidence, and workshops gave students a space to share
their problems and to feel less alone.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a broad overview of the Carnegie scholarship
programme that funded the students in this study and others across eight universities in
South Africa. It has also presented my reflections of the programme and the students’
experiences thereof over my four years as programme manager. The five themes I identify
as impacting on students’ experiences – coping with academic adjustment and pressure;
messages of officialdom; career planning; health; and coping with different identities –
were discussed in the research planning and incorporated into the project methodologies.
For the scholarship programme, the questions that remained unanswered were: What
are the issues students could not raise through official channels? How can this research
project tell us more about student identities and decision-making in the context of their
university experiences?
While financial support may offer students the freedom to find their independence and
use their agency, this is not a sufficient mechanism for ensuring success at university.
While scholarships offer some protection from financial concerns, they are not enough
to counter the effects of the students’ schooling backgrounds. Nor can the scholarships
ensure students’ preparedness for university study or their social and academic integration
into university life. My experiences in my four years as programme manager have made
it clear that although young people may emphasise their independence and autonomy,
social dynamics and their effect on students need to be investigated more deeply. The
case studies that follow provide insights into what factors students view as significant
influences on their experiences of university.

17
Chapter 2
Overview of the research project
Linda Chisholm
Introduction
The focus on women students by the Carnegie–South Africa Undergraduate Women’s
Scholarship Programme emanates from a foundation’s interest in women’s access and
rights to higher education and public positions.6 It parallels a development discourse that
spans bilateral and multilateral organisations, national governments and non-governmental
organisations. Within recent years this discourse has begun to cohere around the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs include two
goals that deal directly with girls and gender equity, but these focus only on primary and
secondary education. Not only do they beg the question of whether potential is realised
when full enrolment is achieved for both boys and girls at secondary level; they also beg
the question of access to higher education.
Since 1994, the South African government has to all intents and purposes revolutionised
women’s access to higher education. Never before in the nation’s history have the
instruments existed to this extent to enable women to succeed in institutions from which
they were previously barred. Substantial gains have been made, and yet the evidence for
women’s under-representation in traditionally male areas and in high-level degree work
continues to stream forth. International evidence suggests that such gender patterns in
higher education are deep and intractable but not unalterable (Arnot, David Weiner
1999). The literature also indicates that providing access is not enough on its own. More
must be done to realise gender equity in terms of participation and outcomes.
In Australia, which experienced a similarly heady but eventually disillusioning period as
did South Africa, feminist studies of institutional culture began to emerge in the 1980s
when it became clear that simply emphasising access and parity in order to redress a
gender imbalance was not in itself either desirable or sufficient to ensure institutional
power and improved outcomes for the majority of women (Blackmore Kenway 1989;
Ferguson 1984; Franzway, Court Connell 1989). These studies were situated mostly
within a strong socialist feminist movement and its broader understandings of the
state and bureaucracy. They highlighted the informal rather than the formal culture of
institutions and explored how ‘hegemonic masculinities’ and ‘femininities’ might operate
to reproduce the ‘impersonal technical rationality of bureaucratic discourse which is the
major barrier to gender equality’ (Blackmore Kenway 1989: 22). Their concern was not
focused only on institutions of higher education, yet the analysis seems pertinent. When
politics and economics no longer seem to pose the main barriers, then there is commonly
a turn to institutional, or cultural, or institutional culture explanations.
This turn has occurred in higher education studies in Africa, where a substantial literature
has developed that focuses on institutional culture to explore the gender dynamics of
universities on the African continent (Barnes Mama 2007; Gaidzanwa 2007; Ismail 2000;
Kwesiga 2002; Mabokela 2000; Mabokela King 2001; Manuh et al. 2007; Pereira 2007).
6 This chapter was written in discussion with, and benefited from the insights of the team members.

18
Some of this recent work, as Lewin shows in Chapter 1, is supported by the Carnegie
Corporation and other foundations. These studies are interested not so much in
quantitative analyses illustrating gender discrepancies in student and staff bodies of
universities as in more fine-grained, qualitative analyses of powerful patriarchal cultures
in the African academy. They describe and analyse attempts to change policy, as well as
programmes that create women’s-only spaces for professional development (Orr, Rorich
and Dowling 2006 and Shackleton 2007; see also Barnes and Mama 2007). They parallel
similar work conducted on race and institutional culture (Jansen 2005; Steyn Van Zyl
2001). Examples of this work are contained in two recent issues of Feminist Africa (issues
8 and 9) that published research from the Gender and Institutional Culture in African
Universities (GICAU) research project undertaken by the African Gender Institute at the
University of Cape Town to investigate institutional culture in African universities. Much of
this work has focused on institutional culture in relation to academic staff.
From this perspective, institutional cultures in South Africa are important to consider
when attempting to understand the differentials in outcomes and effectiveness of the
system or projects for students. After more than a decade of interventions and policies
focusing on structures and access, and apparently little to show for it, institutional culture
seems to hold the key to understanding why, for example, women are enrolling in
higher education in significant numbers but not entering traditional male fields in greater
numbers. Why this is, and how successful or not students are both at university and
beyond, seems to be linked to institutional culture.
But researchers who have used the concept of institutional culture to explain and describe
the discomforts students and staff experience in South African universities all acknowledge
the difficulty of defining it. They invariably discuss it in terms of their own concerns, either
with institutions’ ‘whiteness’ or ‘maleness’ or ‘new managerialist’ practices (Higgins 2007;
Jansen 2005; Shackleton 2007; Steyn Van Zyl 2001). As Higgins has pointed out:
[T]he instability of the term…arises from the fact that institutional culture
looks different, depending on who is seeing it and from where…in the end
institutional culture is less of a concept than a representation that screens
a number of problems…It serves as a surface on which various social
contradictions and tensions can be projected…It is a term that mimes conceptual
density, but lacks conceptual force, while its apparently appealing explanatory
force is often undermined by its actual contents. (Higgins 2007: 114, 116)
For these reasons, our research study was less concerned with an ill-defined institutional
culture than with students’ experiences of academic and social life in institutions that can
be considered to be raced, gendered and classed in specific, historically defined ways,
and with how these experiences link to subjectivity and identity-formation.
The concepts of academic and social integration, subjectivity and identity are also
problematic and elusive ideas that embody a range of assumptions. A theoretical
framework for understanding student integration into university academic and social life is
developed in Chapter 3, on the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The framework is not used
in the same way in Chapters 4 and 5, on the University of Pretoria and the University
of Cape Town respectively: while the broad concepts shaped the approach, analysis
was guided by emerging evidence and research orientations of individual, collaborating
researchers. As far as identity and subjectivity are concerned, researchers in this project
all worked with a non-essentialist concept of identity, an understanding that emphasises
its context-bound – albeit fluid and changing – character and the contradictions and
intersections of class, race and gender identity (see Chapter 5 for further discussion).

19
Methodological framework and design
Focus on gender or women?
Understanding the experiences of both male and female students at universities is
important. Very little is known about how both women and men from different class
and race backgrounds experience these institutions. Both men and women students
undoubtedly experience similar class, race and gender challenges. We know, for example,
that financial constraints and poor preparation in secondary schools trouble the success
of male and female students at university equally. How are dominant gender institutional
cultures and regimes experienced by different genders? How do gender and hegemonic
masculinities and constructions of ‘success’ affect men who come into institutions
diversely constituted as men? How, too, do they affect women? Both international
and local literature suggests that universities, being male-dominated in terms of their
institutional culture and androcentric in terms of their intellectual culture, are tougher
places for women to succeed than they are for men, whether women voice this or
not. This is especially the case when women enter fields such as engineering that are
historically male-dominated and ‘masculinist’ in their culture.
The project reported on in this monograph was originally intended as involving both
men and women students’ experiences of academic and social institutional cultures and
the ways in which these experiences are linked to gender identity and subjectivity. In the
end, the study focused only on women students for two main reasons. One was financial:
available resources limited the size of the study. Another was that the experiences of
young women are themselves worth exploring.
When the study began in 2006, a ‘boys’ failing’ and ‘crisis of masculinity’ discourse had
emerged in South Africa similar to that in other parts of the world. Public discourse was
positioning girls and women students as successful in relation to boys and men students
and drawing away from the continuing inequalities between boys and girls in schools and
the wider society. Any discussion of the position of girls in any public or policy space was
constantly countered by the statement, ‘And what about the boys? The boys are the problem
and require the intervention.’ Similarly, research of higher education was emphasising
high enrolments of women students relative to men and inviting a similar focus.
Researchers first began to highlight the achievements of girls at school as opposed to
boys in the early 2000s (Perry 2003). Provincial departments of education, such as the
Gauteng Department of Education, produced internal research showing that significantly
more boys than girls were failing and dropping out.7 The national Department of
Education (DoE) ministerial committee report on learner retention (DoE 2007) did not
disaggregate information by gender, but the high numbers of dropouts at the upper end
of schooling are often assumed to be male, as DoE statistics have shown that girls stay in
school longer than boys. The DoE’s official statistical analyses that now include a Gender
Parity Index (DoE 2008: 7, 11) enable more careful tracking of gender inequality in
education, and also reveal that in both school and higher education women students are
ahead of men in some areas but not in others. Such evidence does have the potential of
making an argument for greater focus of attention on boys and young male students.
7 M. Sujee 2004, pers. comm. Sujee is the Director of Education Evaluation Planning and Monitoring in the Gauteng
Department of Education.

20
Discussing the impact of the boys’ movement in Australia, Kenway (2004) called for a
contextualisation of its emergence and the recognition that a distinction needs to be
drawn between gender fundamentalism (in the boys’ and women’s movement) and
a gender politics that is more open. The context of emergence of a boys’ or men’s
movement in South Africa and recognition that it is important to consider men in the
society is economic, political and social. On the one hand, financial austerity programmes
and the inability of the state to turn around deep-seated and high levels of unemployment
through economic policy have continued to leave thousands of young men (and
women) on the margins of the society, unable to gain a foothold in it. Efforts to improve
enrolments in the education system have also been unable to stem the extrusion from
schools of boys (along with girls) living in economically stressed households. Politically,
South Africa’s democracy emerged out of intense conflict and violence. As is typically the
case in post-conflict societies, the sudden and very visible rise of women to positions of
power as well as the guarantee of constitutional rights provoked a backlash among men
(Turshen, Meintjes Pillay 2002). Violence against women has thus continued in the new
democracy. Within this context, a discourse of ‘crisis/victim/restore the balance’ (Kenway
2004: 48) has resonated across the board. Important work has been done in South Africa
to highlight the particularities of masculinity in the society and its relationship to the
broader social context. Starting out on this project, we believed that a new focus on
young women students could be illuminating in unanticipated ways. They are part of a
new generation schooled in post-apartheid South Africa. Their gender subjectivities and
how they experience gendered institutional cultures are likely to say something not only
about gender and new constructions of the nation, but also about differentiations between
men and women and among women themselves.
Relationship between the public and private
When we began the study, we had three institutions in mind: family, school and
university. Although the focus was on women’s experiences in higher education, we
wanted to understand the link between public and private institutions. The link between
students’ public educational experiences and their private, personal and family lives –
especially the roles of mothers, fathers, siblings and friends – was considered important
(Arnot 2000; Stromquist 2003). We thus aimed to explore the students’ family and school
background and experience, as well their experience of the higher education institution
in which they found themselves. ‘Experience’ is a tricky concept and is not immediately
accessible or transparent to the researcher. For this reason, we quickly began to interpret
‘experience’ through more specific concepts.
University institutional culture was seen as comprising social and academic dimensions.
Students’ sense of integration into both would provide an understanding of the nature
of the university’s institutional culture and students’ relationship to it. Here, we intended
to focus on the social relationships between young men and women, curricular
content, classroom dynamics, labelling practices, lecturer expectations, peer dynamics,
organisational arrangements, sexual harassment, lecturer and student support and other
academic experiences. These, in turn, were to be contextualised within wider institutional
history and the institution’s social goals and objectives. The links between subject
positionings and the sense of integration into academic and social university life were to
provide the basis for the analysis of gender subjectivity and institutional culture.
Specific questions were formulated for each of these areas. Institutional culture, academic
culture, home and university and adjustments, and career decision-making were all
considered in relation to students’ constructions of themselves and in relation to the

21
concept of ‘success’ and what it meant for them. Through this construct we specifically
intended to understand how students negotiate gendered terrains and constructions of
themselves and others, but we also anticipated that we would elicit a range of responses
from commitment to the institution to indifference (drawing on a typology provided by
Bernstein 1975). As it turned out, some of our assumptions were turned on their heads.
And to understand this, we needed to situate the discourses much more firmly within a
broader historical context.
Negotiating subjectivities in gendered institutional spaces
It was clear from the literature reviewed that much of the existing research was either on
barriers and constraints to entering historically male-dominated fields and more senior
positions in academia or on the success stories of academic women (see Chapter 1).
There was a gap in our knowledge on women at undergraduate level and their social and
academic experiences of institutions.
By far the most exciting work to us was that which probed policy in practice and the
cultural processes of identity formation. The work was originally inspired by the work
of Jane Kenway and Sue Willis (1998), and particularly by Kenway’s cultural materialist
approach to understanding gender relations. Concerned with the material, social and
cultural conditions of subjectivity formation, this approach includes analysis of macro-
and micro-level policy. At the macro-level, gender regimes of education institutions are
written through their policy- and curriculum-making processes. At the micro-level – the
domain of policy in practice – such framings are received, understood and enacted in
different ways.
Through discourse, subjects are constituted and constitute fields of practice. But it is
important to bear in mind that ‘social institutions…are made up of many different and
often contradictory discourses and discursive fields’ (Kenway Willis 1998: xviii). Some
of these are dominant, some subordinate, some peacefully coexisting, some struggling
for ascendancy. For Kenway and Willis, gendered meanings are unstable and constantly
struggled over – it is this aspect, of struggle, negotiation, contingency and instability,
that we wanted to explore more closely in this study. Is social and academic integration
in institutions linked to struggles over gender, gender identity and gender boundaries?
How are these identities linked to family and educational history, career decision-making,
choice and perceptions of success?
Selection of students
Our research focused on students from the geographically and historically distinct
universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and Cape Town. We selected eight scholarship
students from each institutional site on the basis of race, social class, year and field of
study. Of the total cohort of 24 students, 5 students were designated white, 3 Indian, 4
coloured and 12 African. The majority of parents were in low income to lower-middle
income brackets. All the students were in traditionally male-dominated fields of study.
Profiles of the student participants are given in Table 2.1.

22
Table 2.1 Student profiles
Name* Racial classification Parents’ income source Field of study
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Khanyisa African Pension grant Physiotherapy
Lucia Coloured Small business Medicine
Nonhle African Disability grant Biomedicine
Sarah White (with a disability) Small business Psychology
Seresha Indian Small business Biomolecular
technology
Thobile African Small business Biomedicine
Thula African Pension grant Medicine
Zoe Indian Small business Engineering
University of Pretoria
Keshani Indian F: Teacher**
M: Teacher**
Medicine
Lerato African F: Correctional officer
M: Unemployed
Economics
Lizette Coloured M: Financial assistant Maths and Science
Marijke White F: Draughtswoman Architecture
Marise White F: Minister of religion
M: Pension grant
Biochemistry
Nolwazi African F: Not known
M: Not known
Informatics
Susan White F: Self-employed
M: Unemployed
Multimedia
Thandeka African M: Deputy Chief
Education
Specialist
Aunt: Unemployed
Chemical engineering
University of Cape Town
Angela White M: Tutor
F: Lecturer
Electrical engineering
Ayanda African M: Teacher
F: Teacher
Medicine
Camilla Coloured M: Unemployed
F: Driver
Biology
Kelebone African M: Unemployed
F: Unemployed
Business science
➔

23
Name* Racial classification Parents’ income source Field of study
Lulama African M: Lecturer Medicine
Nazeema Coloured M: Hawker
F: Driver
Chemical engineering
Ntswaki African M: Unemployed Chemical engineering
Tumelo African M: Unemployed Medicine
*The names used here and throughout the monograph are all pseudonyms.
**F = father; M = mother.
Methods
Our research methods combined a range of qualitative methods: a short biographical
questionnaire, focus group and life history interviews, and visual methodology
(photographs selected by and/or taken by participants). Researchers were divided
into teams of two people per institution, except for the programme officer. Each team
employed the same strategies in each institution. We prepared for the study through
extensive discussion and joint training sessions. All students filled in bio-questionnaires
that provided the information in Table 2.1. An initial focus group interview was conducted
with the eight students (or with however many were available at any one time). Four
students were then selected from the eight and were individually interviewed, once in
2006 and once in 2007. Based in part on existing and new photographs that the young
women had selected, depicting their past, present and future experiences, the interviews
obtained a life history from the students, and also elicited specific information around
their academic and social integration into university life. Finally, one of the students was
observed for a period of a week, in lectures, in the university residence and on campus.
Detailed field notes of observations were recorded. These three data sources – the focus
group, the in-depth interview and the observation data – were used as the basis for the
analysis that follows in Chapters 3–5.
Each method provided information that provided the basis for further, more in-depth
work. Our initial questionnaire was intended simply to glean background information and
perceptions that we could probe in focus group interviews. Our focus group questions
probed different aspects of university culture and students’ sense of integration into
academic and social life, as well as their conscious experience of the university as a
gendered institution. Responses to these questions provided the basis for more in-depth
interviews and observations. We tried to ‘read’ these interviews and observations in
complex ways, as discursive practices, and not as if they provided a direct window into
subjectivity. We also used visual methodologies, not so much as a photo-voice analysis
exercise but rather to ensure that the researched themselves took on the role of researcher
through the use of the camera. The use of photo albums as a methodology was inspired
by similar work conducted at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Instead of photographing
the young women, we handed a camera as well as small photo-albums to the students
themselves. We asked the students to photograph themselves, their friends and their
families, and to write captions beside the photos expressing what the pictures said
about what was important to the students. These albums supplemented the life history
interviews. Students took photographs of themselves with family, friends and boyfriends,
at both formal and informal events marking their lives at university, and described why
these people and events were important to them. One student cogently ended her album
➔

24
with a photograph of her own eyes and the observation that she had photographed them
because that was what she valued most about herself. The photographs thus provided
insight into what the students valued about themselves and their lives.
We met as a team before each major stage of research, assessed the progress of the
previous stage and normally included a training session in some aspect of the research.
Each research team processed, made sense of and wrote up their data separately. While
this decentralised process provided a sense of ownership of the research and data among
everyone on the team, it meant that a unified picture was harder to achieve than might
have been the case with a more centrally controlled study that was less concerned with
the insights of each team member.
The original intention was to return the research to the students for their comments. This
did not happen, firstly because of the difficulty of locating all of the students and bringing
them together in one place at the same time or even separately, and secondly because
the preparation of the chapters themselves went through a lengthy process of internal and
external revision. Indeed, once the first draft had been written, many of us had moved on
to other work, and it was hard to sustain the initial momentum. This also coincided with
the programme officer of the Carnegie–South Africa Scholarship Programme, who had
initiated the project, taking up employment elsewhere.
A study by women on women should engage with questions of feminist methodology.
Standpoint feminists have argued that a feminist qualitative approach inserts the
researcher into the research process and analyses the way that gender power relations
manifest themselves in the research process itself (Harding 1987). We did not conceive of
this project as engaging a specifically feminist approach to methodology, but it is possible
to reflect on the relationships among ourselves and between ourselves as researchers and
students as the researched.
Among ourselves as researchers there were differences, if not of class, then of race, sexual
orientation, age, academic interests and, not least, understandings of feminism and gender.
The research group included younger and older researchers, established researchers and
interns, feminists and non-feminists, black and white scholars. All of us came from the
field of education, but we reflected a diverse spread of interests and theoretical leanings.
As the different chapters in the monograph illustrate, our approaches to the analysis of
the data we collected were informed by these subjectivities.
Moreover, we needed to consider the differences between ourselves and the students,
as well as the relationship of the researcher to the researched, often a relationship with
which the researched feel uncomfortable. In one institution, we tried to ensure that
younger researchers conducted the research, but there were still differences between the
researchers and the students: age did not make the difference; it was the relationship
between researcher and researched. We were meticulous about ensuring that only those
young women who wanted to take part in the study actually participated. In all sites and
institutions, because of the participants’ varying programmes of study and the busy lives
they led, we experienced difficulty in sustained interaction: on the one hand we tried
not to push ourselves into their already crowded lives, and on the other we had to try
to ensure completion of the interviews while respecting participants’ separate lives and
spaces. Maintaining contact was difficult: the use of cellphones among the students was
erratic, telephone numbers often changed, appointments were often cancelled, and we
had to recognise that the project was not as much of a priority for them as it was for us.

25
Among the students, too, there were class, race and status differences. These differences
may have been a factor in some participants dropping out of the study, or being
inconsistent in their participation. These differences certainly emerged in the focus
group interviews through which we probed the students’ experiences of integration into
university culture.
Understanding women students’ gender subjectivities and
institutional culture
The research was conducted just over 10 years after South Africa’s first democratic
elections. It was a time of assessment of the country’s progress on many fronts, and
especially the extent to which economic, racial and gender equality had been achieved.
The most far-reaching assessments placed South Africa in a global context and explored
how globalisation and changes in the national political economy had impacted on such
inequalities. Structurally, South Africa’s integration into the global market remained
uneven, and inequalities and poverty within the country persisted. But political changes
were visible, and members of a new generation had entered universities from schools and
a social context that registered these changes in subtle but quite fundamental ways. These
universities were themselves undergoing significant change.
All our research suggests that the students’ experiences of social and academic integration
were not wholly unpleasant. Although students found the adjustment to university from
school an extremely challenging one, they all appeared to draw on diverse personal
and social networks consisting of various combinations of family, friends and partners
for support. The social class background of students seemed to shape how well they
integrated and performed. Research did reveal ongoing inequalities between men and
women in institutions, as well as the class and race conditioning of those experiences, but
the scholarship recipients themselves denied that such social categories were important
in their lives or had shaped their experiences. Across the board there appeared to be a
resistance to analysing either their own or others’ social experience in terms of gender,
race and class. Both the black and white students we interviewed seemed to us to turn a
blind eye to inequalities even though they were aware of them. They seemed not to want
to name their experiences as sexist or racist; they shied away from such naming, and
did not want to relate it to themselves or accept it. Such identification would probably
associate them with feminism, which, many maintained, was a thing of the past, a ‘white
woman’s thing’, too hard-core and extreme.
The students we interviewed espoused an individualistic, meritocratic ideology in which
the individual is more important than the collective or group, and family and friends are
central to one’s own and others’ success. They argued that they had arrived where they
had through hard work and individual merit. This apparent race and gender denial and
the strong assertion of individual achievement and merit nonetheless sat side by side
with an awareness of race and gender belonging. Also strongly marking the discourse
of the students with whom we worked was the aspiration to live lives in which they
are in control, shape their own destinies, and balance work and family life. The linkage
between public and private spheres was important: they complemented each other; the
students related their public success to their private lives; their private lives reinforced and
supported their public success; and they were expecting this to continue into the future.
It appeared to us that power was operating here in very subtle ways. Choice and agency
seemed to be linked to power and responsibility. Students negotiated power relations

26
through a denial of and resistance to their categorisation but also by taking responsibility
for themselves, owning agency and taking power away from the institution to themselves
in a discourse that says ‘I am responsible for my destiny; I choose (whereas they didn’t
choose); I choose to be included and not to be excluded: it is up to me.’ But that
power came from the fact that they had financial independence, itself the result of a
conscious choice by the programme to select only women. The students were financially
independent, but dependent. These issues were linked to the students’ sense of agency
and independence, but were invisible to them. This abstraction of the individual from the
social and economic context is typical of neo-liberal as well as liberal feminist discourses
(Ringrose 2007). Our research suggests that a powerful unconscious (and sometimes
conscious) liberal feminism existed among the scholarship students, who were selected
and groomed for success by a programme whose raison d’être is a liberal feminist
one in a society that has chosen a social democratic route within a liberal democratic
constitutional framework. Thus the discourse of the students was consistent with the
programme that supported them, and with the public discourse of gender rights and
individual opportunity in post-apartheid South Africa.
To end here, however, would be to deny our own positioning as researchers, our
complicity in the liberal feminist project, and our own struggles and negotiations
over gender meaning. Recent work by Jessica Ringrose (2007) draws attention to
new discourses of successful girls as a metaphor for the rise of a neo-liberalism that
emphasises individual achievement and success while denying the racial, class and ethnic
foundations of such success. Our research is complicit in so far as it has focused on
successful young women students.
Highlighting the individualistic, meritocratic consciousness operative among the students
may help to further the discourse of ‘successful girls’ when the evidence is patently clear
that their lives are as diverse and full of struggle as their social and economic positioning,
and that their achievement remains a class-related phenomenon both inside and outside
the programme. The success of a small group of young women can occlude the relative
failure of a much larger number, who were not fortunate enough to be selected for the
scholarship and thus be freed from financial constraints to become the agents that these
young women claimed they are and wish to be. As Ringrose has argued:
[L]iberal feminism’s gender-only analysis has culminated in measures of
equity through gendered test results which violently obscures socio-economic
difference. This brand of feminism…holds up ‘the girl’ as proof that an
individualising ethos of hierarchical competition, performance and standards in
education is working. (Ringrose 2007: 486)
There is some irony in a situation in which researchers who do not see themselves as
liberal feminists conduct a study that affirms its strength.
In conclusion, then, all the studies observe that students generally disowned group
identities and interpreted most of what they experienced in terms of their individuality and
agency. This discourse is clearly located in South Africa’s national context, in university
cultures that privilege the liberal discourse of individual merit or meritocracy and in the
very selection process of the scholarship that positioned each student as ‘exceptional’.
A feminist analysis is interested in inequalities between men and women, power relations,
the agency of women, links between public and private lives, and institutional culture
in relation to women’s experiences of it. It aims to give voice to the women themselves.

27
When this approach is applied to the subject positioning of young women in this study,
it is clear that there are strong social conditions for its emergence across all institutional
contexts. It echoes dominant national and university discourses, as well as the discourse
of exceptionalism encouraged by the scholarship itself.
The chapters
The chapters that follow cast light not only on the discourses of success of these
successful students, but also on the unstable nature of this success, its constructedness in
discourse and its links to class- and racially-structured experiences. By examining these
students, the lives of those not so chosen are thrown into relief. They require much
greater research and public attention. And finally, by showing how the students navigated
the possibilities open to them and the complex demands and contradictory requirements
made of them, the chapters question the ‘success’ of the discourse as it manifested in
their lives and experiences. Despite financial support, these were full of ambiguity and
struggle, hardship and pain, consciousness of constraints on freedom and boundedness
of choice. The evidence in the chapters that follow ‘troubles’ the discourse of successful
students in different ways.
Across all the institutions, students’ perceived integration was facilitated through
strong supports – from families, friends and schools. The strength of individual cases
demonstrates that in some instances it was mothers – in others, fathers – that mattered
to students; sometimes it was female friends and at other times it was male friends
who supported them; with some, it was a strongly supportive school and community
environment. These social networks were highly significant in mediating institutional
cultures that are not only very different from one another but also acknowledged in much
of the literature to be harsh.
The first of the case studies considers the social and academic integration of young women
at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Chapter 3), the second at the University of Pretoria
(Chapter 4) and the third at the University of Cape Town (Chapter 5). The case studies
are all quite different. Although a common approach and methodology was employed to
explore similar issues, researchers brought their own interests and concerns to bear on
the analysis of the data. The collaborations also produced relatively novel analyses. Thus,
the chapter on the University of KwaZulu-Natal provides a feminist reading of students’
experiences analysed through a framework developed as part of a PhD dissertation to
understand academic and social integration of university students. The chapter on the
University of Pretoria combines historical, ethnographic and discourse-analytic methods
arising from a particularly fruitful collaboration between a South African researcher and
a foreign-born researcher. The chapter on the University of Cape Town draws on the
strengths of social class identity and curriculum analysis frameworks. The chapters all
provide different insights, but ultimately converge on a set of common conclusions.
Chapter 6 attempts to draw these together to answer two different sets of questions
that are posed, on the one hand, by the practical–social concerns of the scholarship
programme and, on the other, by the more theoretical concerns of the researchers.

29
Chapter 3
Female undergraduate students’
constructions of success at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Pontso Moorosi and Relebohile Moletsane
Introduction
Available literature suggests that gender is a powerful dynamic in shaping the experiences
of women overall, including their experiences of success in academic institutions as well
as in the workplace. However, women do not always see their experiences through a
gendered lens. For example, Smulyan (2000) studied women principals who claimed that
gender did not have any influence in their lives, yet her findings suggest that gender did
have an effect on them both personally and professionally. More recently, in a study of
female students and their success in mathematics and science, Mthiyane (2007) revealed
that while these young women believed issues of gender did not have any impact in their
lives, their stories suggested otherwise. Likewise, in the study reported in this chapter,
while the young women university students did not associate their academic experiences
with issues of gender, our analysis of interview data indicate that gender was a major
influence in their lives.
This study was undertaken to examine the ways in which a group of young women
scholarship recipients experienced their lives as university undergraduate students in their
respective institutions. In particular, their construction of success in general and their
own success at university was examined. To do this, we employed two frameworks. The
first framework acknowledges the contextual realities of social and academic integration
in the construction of success to highlight the diverse nature of these young women’s
experiences. The second framework seeks to problematise the notion of doing feminist
research with/on young university female students who do not necessarily use gender as
a frame of reference in explaining their own experiences. In this chapter, we specifically
want to highlight the lack of feminist consciousness among young women in South
African institutions and its implications for interventions aimed at changing the gender
regimes of university classrooms.
Women, science and success
The gender debates in mathematics and science have long moved away from the
suggestion that women are innately less able to succeed in these subjects. The debates
are now characterised as a more constructive discourse about factors that shape women’s
success, or lack of it, in these areas of study. Much of the literature on gender and science
focuses on factors preventing girls from participating in science subjects in schools, or on
women scientists who have negotiated the obstacles and are performing well in science
(see Baker and Leary 1995 and Hannan et al. 1996) and the strategies they employ to
succeed (Pritchard 2005).

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