Do you want to enhance gender equality in higher education? Begin by bridging the policy gap: Report

• Universities play a critical societal role in advancing gender equality.
  
• While many institutions are successful as instructors, they are not making enough progress as employers.
• A new research identifies significant examples of policies, procedures, and activities that universities may use to improve their performance in this area.

Since International Women's Day was established 111 years ago, gender equality has come a long way. Universities, in many respects, have been a beneficial influence in this process.

Academic research has revealed the ways in which girls and women are discriminated against, while rising female enrollment and recruitment has resulted in more women in positions of authority and more women with control over their lives.

However, colleges have a broader obligation to advance gender equality in their communities - a responsibility that is becoming increasingly pressing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on inequalities in general and created new barriers for girls and women, raising concerns that most of the equity gains of recent years could be lost if adequate intervention is not provided.

In universities, there has been progress toward gender equality.

In this backdrop, a new analysis from Times Higher Education (THE) and the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) assesses how well higher education institutions around the world are doing in terms of progress toward gender equality.

The report, Gender Equality: How Global Universities Perform, is linked to THE's impact indicators, which are concerned with understanding higher education's progress toward all 17 of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 776 universities that have provided data against SDG 5, which is a demand to take urgent action to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, require a magnifying glass.

The report demonstrates that there is much to be thankful for. Female students currently outnumber male students internationally; 54 percent of degree recipients in 2019 were female. Although women continue to outnumber men in STEM fields globally, certain Asian countries have a higher proportion of women enrolled in STEM degrees than in arts, humanities, or social sciences.

The majority of universities also claim to have various policies and services that contribute to the goal of gender equality, such as a non-discrimination policy (89 percent of institutions claim to have this) and the provision of appropriate women's access schemes, such as mentoring or scholarships (81 percent ).

Gender disparities that must be addressed

However, there are some significant lessons to be learned. The majority of colleges were unable to give pertinent evidence of their policies and programmes that promote women's growth. This is a problem for a number of reasons. It implies that there is a policy-practice gap, which means that while certain codes may appear to be in place, they are not yet being implemented throughout the organisation.

It also reveals that university students and employees may be uninformed of the existence of gender-equal policies or the provision of programmes geared at aiding women, implying that these efforts are having a limited impact. It also raises concerns about how honest higher education institutions are regarding their progress toward gender equality.

As educators and employers, we must set a good example.

When it comes to gender equality, universities will continue to be essential change agents; via their teaching, research, and outreach, they may have a transformative impact on society. They can teach curricula that include equal representation of women and educate students on gender competence; they can ensure that datasets in research studies include women's perspectives; and they can help address gender inequality in larger society by participating in outreach projects that support women with education, employment, and empowerment.

However, universities are large organisations with thousands of employees, students, and academics, and they should be setting a good example for other industries by not only developing policies and services to support women's advancement, but also ensuring that these measures are properly documented, promoted, and implemented. They must ensure that female employees are treated equally in terms of recruiting, promotion, salary, funding, and workload, and that they have mentors and role models.

What steps can universities take to improve their approach?

There is no need for departments and institutions to achieve this alone; the case studies in our report provide excellent examples of successful policies, procedures, and activities, as well as larger lessons for other universities wishing to increase their commitment.

One common advice is the significance of a comprehensive and institutional-wide approach to addressing gender imbalance, which includes senior leadership support, dedicated offices, a clear distribution of tasks, and ensuring men are involved in initiatives.

If all universities took this broad approach while also implementing specific initiatives tailored to their institution's mission and values, as well as measuring and reporting on their progress toward gender equality, they could ensure that they not only expose the ways in which girls and women are discriminated against, but also set the example for others to follow in addressing it.