Women leaders in Pakistani academia: Challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT Research on women’s leadership has been largely male-centric and has used masculine characteristics to measure and evaluate such roles. This paper aims to unveil women’s leadership in Pakistani universities. Using a feminist perspective, we argue that female academics encounter multiple barriers at work. The data for this paper was collected via in-depth interviews with twelve women leaders from public universities in Islamabad, Pakistan to understand their experiences. Our findings show how our research participants struggled in order to navigate their careers. This paper documents organizational factors such as male-dominated networks, stereotypes and personal factors, for instance, time spent on familial roles that may hamper their positions. Clearly, they encountered constraints in reaching top management levels and sustaining these. However, in order to achieve such positions these women acknowledged the support of family, their high socioeconomic status and effective networking and mentoring relations with peers. The insights gained by this study illustrate how they navigated the male-centric realm of higher education and these should be useful for those who aspire to be leaders. Our research should also offer some potential strategies for closing the gender gap in universities by facilitating women to assume leadership positions.