In universities, Black women academics find White men are their main allies
A study of African female professors in South Africa found that White male colleagues were their primary sponsors for advancement, while Black mentors and peers played little visible role—raising questions about how support networks form in academia.
Research into the career paths of African female professors in South Africa has found an unexpected pattern: White men have emerged as the primary allies enabling their rise to senior leadership roles.
The finding comes from a qualitative study of 21 African female professors across three universities in Gauteng province, conducted as doctoral research in social work. The study sought to understand how these women—a minority within a minority in their institutions—navigated academic advancement in environments shaped by interlocking inequalities of gender, race, and nationality.
A striking absence
The research revealed a stark reality: many participants credited White male professors with critical sponsorship—encouraging them to pursue doctorates, nominating them for leadership positions, advocating for their promotions, and creating pathways to influential academic networks. By contrast, few identified Black female mentors as instrumental in their advancement. References to Black male academics in enabling their careers were largely absent from participants' accounts.
The finding challenges common assumptions about mentorship and belonging in universities. It points to a deeper structural question: in institutions where Black women are vastly underrepresented at senior levels, the simple mathematics of proximity and power mean that White men—who dominate senior academic ranks—become the gatekeepers of opportunity.
The scale of underrepresentation
The research is grounded in documented realities. Globally, only one-third of senior academics are women. In the United States, universities employ twice as many male as female professors. South Africa presents a particularly acute picture: in 2017, Black women made up just 16% of university academics despite comprising 40% of the population, making them the most underrepresented group. This imbalance deepens at the senior level, where most Black senior academics are male and most female senior academics are White or Indian.
"Academic advancement is often shaped not only by individual effort, but also by those who are willing to create opportunities for others."
What drove these women into academia
Across the 21 narratives, personal motivation formed the bedrock. Participants consistently cited intellectual curiosity, strong academic performance, and a genuine quest for knowledge as their entry points into the academy. One described her early trajectory by noting strong performance; another spoke of being "always attracted to understanding." These personal drivers sustained them through their careers, but the research found that staying motivated depended equally on having supportive environments—something not equally available to all.
The sponsorship gap
The research underscores a distinction rarely articulated in university diversity discourse: the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors advise; sponsors actively create opportunities and advocate for advancement. The study found that while individual effort and resilience mattered, actual career progression often hinged on whether someone in a position of power was willing to sponsor the next generation—and in these cases, that someone was typically a White male professor.
This pattern hints at a systemic vulnerability. If women of colour in academia are disproportionately reliant on allies from the dominant demographic group for career advancement, what happens when those individual relationships fail? And how sustainable is a system of opportunity that depends on personal goodwill rather than institutional design?
What universities must do
According to the research, the challenge for universities is to move beyond a model of patronage. Rather than hoping individual senior academics will choose to mentor and sponsor junior scholars from underrepresented groups, institutions need to systematically embed sponsorship into their cultures, policies, and practices—making it a structural feature rather than a matter of chance.
This might include transparent nomination processes for leadership roles, mentoring programmes that deliberately pair senior and junior scholars across difference, and accountability measures that track whether senior academics at all levels are actively creating pathways for others. Without such shifts, universities will continue to replicate the very inequalities they claim to be addressing.