| Abstract: | Communal justice and development in a country depends on the citizens’
access and equality to opportunities in all areas, education being the
foremost. Education accelerates economic, political, social and cultural
growth of nations. However, gender-based landscape that has characterized
society and the higher education system perpetuated inequalities in
opportunities which generate differential outcomes for females and males
students. Subsequent to this developmental challenge, the government of
Tanzania (GOT) committed itself to eliminate the imbalances in
opportunities for women and men by taking different measures in Higher
Education (HE). The important reform was the establishment of Higher
Education Accreditation Council (HEAC) which was succeeded by Tanzania
Commission for Universities (TCU). The two institutions’ remarkable
success is the facilitation and accreditation of a number of Private Higher
Education Institutions (PHEI) which led to the increase of student
enrollment. Pertinent to this has been gender equality promotion, gender
mainstreaming, and bridging the gender gap in higher learning institutions
(HLIs- both PHEI and public universities-PU) through different affirmative
action and establishment of gender sensitive policies. In ensuring this, the
need for accelerating participation, access and ensuring equity required the
provision of loans to all needy students in HLIs where special efforts have
been made to increase student enrolment with special emphasis on science
programs. This has been made by lowering entrance pass marks through
Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) and establishment of higher
education students’ loan board (HESLB). Also, to simplify monitoring of
gender representation and access in all programs, TCU enroll all
undergraduate students for both public and private universities through the
institutionalized central admission system (CAS). The establishment of the
CAS system makes it impossible to isolate the discussion of PHE from PU
especially in enrollment. Through TCU initiatives, there are a number of
HLIs each with an enrolment capacity ranging from five to ten thousand in their regular programs. However, there is a disproportional representation
of the sexes in the programs where men outnumber women in sciences. The
reasons for the female low proportion emanates from institutional, sociocultural
and economic factors. The study relied on reviewing of published
and unpublished documents accessed from different research and academic
institutions and through internet browsing. The significance of this study is
to enable national decision makers and other development practitioners
working on Education to better understand the impediments to the increase
of females in the sciences. Understanding these is critically important to
promoting appropriate interventions associated with the disproportional of
female representation in the science programs in HLIs in Tanzania. |
