Gender responsive multidisciplinary doctoral training program: the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) experience

ABSTRACT

Doctoral training has increasingly become the requirement for faculty in institutions of higher learning in Africa. Africa, however, still lacks sufficient capacity to conduct research, with just 1.4% of all published research authored by African researchers. Similarly, women in Sub-Saharan Africa only constitute 30% of the continent’s researchers, and correspondingly publish little research. Challenging these gendered inequities requires a gender responsive doctoral program that caters for women’s gender roles that likely affect their enrollment in, and completion of, doctoral programs. In this article, we describe a public and population health multidisciplinary doctoral training program – CARTA and its approach to supporting women. This has resulted in women’s enrollment in the program equaling men’s and similar throughput rates. CARTA has achieved this by meeting women’s practical needs around childbearing and childrearing and we argue that this has produced some outcomes that challenge gender norms, such as fathers being child minders in support of their wives and creating visible female role models.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender equality
• research capacity building
• higher education research
• multi-disciplinary doctoral training
• Africa
• public and population health

Responsible Editor Stig Wall, Umeå University, Sweden

Responsible Editor Stig Wall, Umeå University, Sweden

Acknowledgments

None.

Author contributions

All authors have had substantial contributions to the conception and design of the paper. All authors participated in the ideation, acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data that formed the basis for the commentary paper. Anne Khisa drafted the work and revised it critically for important intellectual content on each round of iteration. All authors had substantial input in writing various draft versions of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript. All authors have agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported conflicts of interest report directly to the journal.

Ethics and consent

The authors did not need to apply for an exemption or approval from an ethics and research committee since the comment we make is based on preliminary observations made on a cohort of doctoral fellows’ database. No primary data was collected from the fellows.

Paper context

Enrolling and succeeding in a PhD program is influenced by various factors, including gender. Consequently, few women researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa contribute to publications and hold academic positions of leadership. We enhance knowledge on how CARTA doctoral program has responded to the needs of students arising from their gendered roles, in SSA context, to contribute to narrowing gender gaps in admission to PhD, winning research grants, publishing and rising to academic leadership positions.

Additional information

Funding

Anne M. Khisa’ s Post-Doctoral fellowship, during which this article was written, was supported by the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA). CARTA is jointly led by the African Population and Health Research Center and the University of the Witwatersrand and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Grant No–B 8606.R02), Sida (Grant No: 54100113), the DELTAS Africa Initiative (Grant No: 107768/Z/15/Z) and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The DELTAS Africa Initiative is an independent funding scheme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS)’s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) and supported by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) with funding from the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the UK government. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the Fellow.