Systematic document review of gender policies in higher education: Analysis on policy formulation, adoption and implementation practice

Formulating sound gender policies is vital to dismantling systemic barriers that women face and transforming academic institutions into equitable environments. While previous studies have focused on the barriers to women's leadership in higher education, little research has been devoted to gender policies in South African public universities. This study aims to explore the existing gender policy formulation, adoption, and implementation practices at South African academia. To this end, the study adopted an interpretivist research paradigm and employed a qualitative research approach. The review documents were screened using the PRISMA flow chart, and a total of (n=24) documents were included, comprising (n=16) gender policy documents and (n=8) past studies. The findings indicate that the absence of a comprehensive, supportive, and clear gender policy is evident in South African academia. The majority of the existing formulated gender policies do not refer to international, continental, and regional legal instruments. The study further uncovered that the presence of poor implementation of the formulated gender policy is another key challenge that obstructs gender equality in South African public universities. This study contributes to South African higher education and gender policy literature by revealing a critical gender policy-practice gap.