Microsoft Word doctoral thesis final[1]. doc

part-time lecturers, and support personnel was less than eleven.  
 
5.2.3  Motivation, career  preparation and advancement opportunities 
 
Of the 23 women participants, 21 were encouraged by colleagues to apply for the HoD 
position, and twenty attributed their rise to the position of HoD to self-motivation.   
Family support was cited by fourteen women as one of the factors which had helped them 
advance to their present position, while ten women were assisted by their involvement in 
managerial work. While publications and qualifications played a major role in helping the 
women get to the position of HoD in thirteen and eighteen cases respectively, 
employment equity and encouragement by a mentor did not. Only six of the twenty three 
women had mentors. Five of the mentors were female and one was male. 
  
On the question of formal preparation, only four women (17.39%) out of twenty three 
said they had formal preparation for the position of HoD. Three of these were UK 
participants and one was South African. The rest did not have any formal preparation and 
one woman did not respond.  Three of the four women received managerial training 
offered by the university and one had self-initiated managerial training. Asked if they had 
any specific steps or actions to advance further in their academic career, nine women 
(42.86%) responded positively. Twelve of the women (57.1%) had no specific plans to 
further their career, and two did not respond. Further investigation revealed that most of 
the women who had no specific designs to advance their careers were either due to retire 
soon or had already reached the top of the ladder in their academic rank and 
qualifications.  For one of the women, this was her second career and so she had a late 

---

 
135
start in academia and was about to retire at the time of this study. It is interesting to note 
that the majority of the women who had definite plans to advance in their careers were 
full professors and some were in the age group 51-55. This appears to suggest that some 
women academics are determined to advance even in the latter part of their working 
lives. The section which follows presents the results for sections D-L of the 
questionnaire. For each section, the following are presented: 
 
•   frequency table on each questionnaire item 
•   summary table of sub-item means 
•  an ordered combined frequency table.   
 
A final summary of results tables the cross-tabulations between the variables of age, HoD 
experience, teaching experience at current institutions. The various managerial issues 
regarding woman in HoD positions are also presented as a separate table at the end. 
Although a chi-square test was calculated for each of the rank-ordered frequency tables in 
each section, only significant results are reported.