Abstract:
While the South African legislation is an enabler for equity, inclusiveness, social justice and
the advancement of women for academic leadership roles, institutional cultures and structures
are often debilitating. This paper presents the development trajectory of a Black woman as an
academic development leader in a South African University of Technology. It examines
structural and cultural factors acting as enablers or constraints to leadership development and
career advancement for Black women. It analyses dominant structural frames and
undertakings of different University stakeholders (agents), which cause stagnation and
resistance to morphogenesis and government’s transformation agenda. Using Participatory
Narrative Inquiry (PNI), I narrate personal experiences and insights as a participant
researcher. I interrogate the experiences, observations and influence of various structural and
cultural modalities within Margaret Archer’s (1995) social realist framework of structure,
culture and agency. I highlight the implications of these for development of a Black female
academic development leader.
