Gender issues at the University of Zimbabwe: an introduction

A book chapter on gender issues at the University of Zimbabwe.Gender concerns at the University of Zimbabwe informed the production of this volume. This work is a result of sustained interest in the gender relationships prevailing at the University of Zimbabwe. In 1989, Gaidzanwa et al conducted a study on students and staff at the university, in an attempt to establish the factors affecting women’s academic careers at the university. That work has been widely circulated and provided the basis of further studies in this area by Gaidzanwa. The research was part of a growing body of academic work, often by women, and on women and gender in different societies and institutions. The interest in issues relating to women tended to be dismissed as trivial then. In 1988, a male colleague dismissed this work as ‘unacademic’ and the whole question of gender as ‘misconceived’.The Ford Foundation