Opinion article by Pikolomzi Qaba, PhD Fellow, Higher Education & Human Development Research Group (HEHD), University of the Free State

In 1984, Soromini Kallichurum became the first woman, and the first person who was not white, to be appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Natal. She died in December 2002, having steered South Africa’s medical council through its democratic-era handover. Reading today’s governance lists, she might ask one question: has the door widened, or did it let a few more through before closing again?

In 2014, four of South Africa’s 23 vice-chancellors were women, 17%. Adele Moodly and Elron Fouten, writing in Transformation in Higher Education, found female representation across university leadership rose from 23.7% in 2014 to 39.6% in 2024, though senior posts moved slowest. As of 2026, the Universities South Africa board counts 10 women among 26 vice-chancellors, 38%, including Prof Hester C. Klopper at the University of the Free State, one of the few women leading the country’s oldest, best-resourced research universities. Two of the 10 titles are acting or interim, both filled after loss: Prof Dini Mawela took over at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in June 2026 within a year after Prof Tandi Matsha-Erasmus, its first female Vice-Chancellor, died in office. Prof Rushiella Songca, Walter Sisulu University’s first woman Vice-Chancellor, was succeeded there by Prof Thandi Mgwebi, then became interim Vice-Chancellor at Mangosuthu University of Technology in March 2026.

The vice-chancellor’s office is not where most academic power sits. Councils and senates decide tuition, appointments, curricula, and disciplinary weight. At the University of Cape Town, Senate stood at 449 members as of April 2026, of whom 319, roughly seven in 10, were professors, who sit on Senate as of right under UCT’s own Institutional Statute, alongside just 12 seats elected from the rest of academic staff.

Argument is about approach

The most current institution-level breakdown available, Stellenbosch University’s 2025 transformation report to the Department of Higher Education and Training, recorded a Senate that was 72% white and 37% female that year, barely moved from 78% white and 34% female in 2020. Nationally, the last full count of professor ranks by race dates to 2018, when white academics held 67% of professor-level posts. The most-cited figure on gender is not a published dataset but a ministerial claim: then-Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande told a UNESCO webinar in May 2023 that women held roughly 18.5% of professorships and 29.8% of associate professorships nationally; no more recent official figure has followed. South African professors stood at under 15% as of 2017, counted separately from African professors of other nationalities. That gap in current, verified national data is itself worth flagging, but Stellenbosch’s own annual figures show the underlying pattern holding into 2025.

Senate does not decide alone. Institutional Forum, by statute, advises Council on race, gender and equity policy and on shortlists for senior appointments; Senate Teaching and Learning, Senate Research, and the Postgraduate Studies Committee draft the recommendations Senate later ratifies. A woman at the top inherits rooms beneath her that, term after term, are staffed largely as they always were.

None of this argues that women decide better than men; that claim does not hold up, and the case does not need it. The argument is about approach. Feminine leadership, as the literature describes it, favours collaboration over command: it consults before it concludes, spreads credit, and treats dissent as information rather than an obstacle. A university runs on argument, testing competing ideas before they harden into policy. A leadership style built to draw that argument out, rather than shut it down early, is close to the actual job description.

Every August, the seminars return, and they are not worthless. But recognition was never the finish line Kallichurum was working toward, nor the one Matsha-Erasmus was still building when her time ran out. South Africa is closer to an equal university than it was in 2014. It is not there yet. Whether the door these women opened keeps swinging wider, or quietly settles shut, is worth answering with data rather than ceremony.