Status of African Women in Research Event Report

On 25 June 2024, the Mawazo Institute and INASP held a joint roundtable event focusing on the perspectives and experiences of African women researchers. The event drew on and presented findings from:

• The Mawazo Institute’s upcoming Status of African Women in Research report drawing together data from almost 2,400 respondents to their 2023 Academic Needs survey and Mawazo Fellowship application
• INASP’s Voices of Early Career Researchers survey of almost 8,000 early career researchers from the Global South [1] and an accompanying gender report: An equitable knowledge ecosystem must include the voices of women and men.

Globally only 33.3% of researchers are women. This is mirrored on the African continent where only 33.5% of researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa are women (Bello et al., 2021). Both the Mawazo Institute and INASP work with early career researchers to strengthen their research capabilities and develop their careers – with a specific focus on making research and knowledge systems more equitable through supporting women researchers.

While developing and establishing a career is challenging for all researchers – particularly for researchers in the Global South – women researchers face additional difficulties and obstacles. Our event focused on four sub-themes emerging from our surveys and what can be done to better support women researchers to overcome obstacles related to these.