Women’s Experiences of Academic Tenure at a Women’s University in Pakistan

Abstract

The study aims to understand how teachers and academic leadership have experienced the implementation of the Tenure Track System (TTS) as a new educational reform in a female university. Although the need for change in education has been widely researched, the dynamics of how the international academic reward system affects women working in a women’s university, especially in the context of developing countries, have mostly been ignored in the literature. This case study is based on the experience of interventions in the university reward system at a public university for women established in 1922. It provides unique insights into how the participants perceive the change process and the unintended side effects of these policy-level changes on the personal and organizational culture and structure levels. The results reveal that participants overburdened themselves with administrative, teaching, and research work but could have voiced their concerns more assertively. The study concluded that TTS faculty had been marginalized in the university based on their compensation and TTS is struggling to foot its ground as a main academic reward system. The faculty on TTS at large felt frustrated and alienated.