Smaller institutions are losing out as they struggle to pay competitive salaries to keep their staff "gender-balanced".
At hearings on transformation at institutions of higher learning held in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, this week, the Gender Commission heard that only 26% of professors were women.
The two-day hearings are intended to establish the progress made in transformation at universities across the country. Sexual violence on campuses is also expected to be debated.
Rhodes University vice-chancellor Sizwe Mabizela told the commission that there was a serious shortage of senior black women academics.
"All 26 universities are fishing in the same pond, which is highly depleted ... People are simply moving from one institution to another and my hope is that higher education institutions will enter into some kind of agreement that will contribute to developing women academics and not rely on poaching from one another.
"We invest so much in developing these young people and then the other university simply comes to poach, to offer them better salaries, a higher rank. We can't do that because we (Rhodes) are not financially indulged ... and so it does not serve the sector," said Mabizela.
He said universities were competing with the state and private sector, which paid well and attracted the few black females in the pool. One of the barriers to female academics obtaining professorships was the years they took out of their careers to start a family, said University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Max Price.
Price and Mabizela lauded the Next Generation of Academics programme, which funds the training of new academics, many of whom are young black women.
The grant for each lecturer on the programme is about R2m over six years.
Source: The Times
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