Gender-based pedagogical inequity: Exploring faculty perspectives in Ethiopia

Abstract In Ethiopia, women’s access to higher education is a priority for many higher education leaders. Moreover, education access and participation are often measured quantitatively through enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. Often overlooked, however, are qualitative outcomes related to gender. To address this gap in the literature, we explore faculty perspectives on gender inequities in Ethiopian higher education by describing specific challenges to gender-equitable pedagogy and reporting participant-generated recommendations. We used an equity pedagogy framework and thematic analysis to examine qualitative data from interviews with 32 university faculty. We found that participants conflated equality with equity, and thus justified the use of a uniform pedagogy for all students. Barriers to gender equitable pedagogy included: pervasive gender stereotypes, curricula and learning environments centered on male learners, and the perception of “gender issues” as ancillary In relation to this last finding, faculty often viewed “gender issues” as political, societal, or outside the realm of their teaching responsibilities. Based on these findings, we discuss how gender inequity in Ethiopian higher education is systemic and should be approached as such. We conclude the paper with participant-generated recommendations.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Higher education access and participation are often measured quantitatively in academic literature about Ethiopian higher education.Our study explored the qualitative experience of faculty perspectives on gender inequities.Using a qualitative, interview-based data collection approach, we explored the experiences of 32 university faculty.We found that: gender inequity exists in all departments and in every aspect of teaching-learning processes.The contributing factors to this include faculty that view present Ethiopia as more gender-equal and that women in universities are free and exposed to equal learning resources with men; wide-spread gender stereotypes; uninformed gender policy and practices; confusion over the difference between gender equality and gender equity; externalizing gender matters as a societal problem; and viewing it as extra-tasks beyond the faculty's primary professional responsibilities or relegating this work to institutional Gender Offices.We recommend that faculty members, universities, and the government must consider such realities when designing/implementing gender policies.

Introduction
Educational disparities related to gender have long been a priority for researchers (Brown & Zong, 2017;Fennell & Arnot, 2007;Glazer-Raymo, 2008;Nuamah, 2019;Spencer et al., 2003).In Ethiopia, gender disparities are evident in public universities due partly to the insufficiency of academic, counseling, and financial support for women (Molla, 2018;Semela, 2006).In some ways, Ethiopian society is also widely misogynist, with marked gender differences evident in many aspects of life, including education (Aemero Tekleselassie & Roach, 2021).Additionally, gender intersects with ethnicity and rurality to shape educational opportunities (Molla, 2018;Smith, 2013).At the same time, due to a broader collectivist culture, "Ethiopians encourage interdependence and place family and religion before individual and secular interests" (White, 2011, p. 197).Meanwhile, "women, as the guardians of traditions and cultures, are also found to be more religious than men, adhering strictly to their religious obligations" (Biseswar, 2008, p. 142).These types of cultural norms and values are part of the broader context that Ethiopian women navigate while pursuing higher education.
In recent decades, the Ethiopian government has been promoting the United Nations "education for all" initiative, implementing affirmative action policies to increase women's participation.These policies aim to address the "historical legacy of inequality and discrimination suffered by women" (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, Article 35. No.3. p.93).Despite gender-focused affirmative action policies, gender inequality in higher education remains a persistent problem (Abraha, 2012;Semela et al., 2020).This partly reflects that enhanced access to higher education does not necessarily translate to the improved success of female learners.As a result, female Ethiopian students experience lower retention, lower performance, higher dismissal rates, and lower graduation rates than men (Kassie, 2018;Semela, 2007Semela, , 2017)).
Previous research on gender equity in Ethiopian higher education has focused primarily on quantitative educational outcomes: enrollment gaps (Diaw, 2008), dropout rates and academic scores (Bzayene, 2019), and factors contributing to the attrition of women (Ashcroft & Rayner, 2011).Relatively few studies have considered qualitative data, except for some studies describing the: academic journeys of female academics (Semela et al., 2020), pedagogical experiences of women (Diaw, 2008) and gender inequity in curricula (Mlama, 2005).In those studies, the geographic focus was broad at the continental level, and students' lived experiences were not considered.Meanwhile, in their qualitative investigation of students' experiences at two public universities in Ethiopia, Molla and Cuthbert (2014) found that women still had to maneuver through sexual violence, prejudice, and a hostile environment.Authors explained that the social relationships within higher education institutions reinscribe the patriarchal elements of Ethiopian society.Thus, the social environment of universities often reinforces women's ". ..conformity to gendered assumptions which contribute to their lack of assertiveness, low self-esteem, and subordinate position" (Molla & Cuthbert, 2014, p. 771).Such observations suggest that gender-focused affirmative action policies have not led to widespread equity for women students.
Meanwhile, affirmative actions (often numerical scores added to women's exam results) only increase access to universities.After admission, women students in Ethiopia continue to experience qualitative inequality (e.g., prejudice against women and sexual violence).Ultimately, this inequality undermines the desired outcomes of these affirmative actions focused on quantitative measures (Molla & Cuthbert, 2014).The "taken-for-granted gender assumptions and beliefs at institutional, social-relational, and individual levels operate to make women conform to structures of disadvantage and sustain repressive gender relations" (Molla & Cuthbert, 2014, p.1). Building on limited qualitative evidence of gender inequities in higher education that was informed by public university students, we sought to explore faculty perspectives regarding perceived gender inequities in Ethiopian higher education, analyze specific challenges to gender-equitable education, and generate participant-generated recommendations to make pedagogy more gender-equitable.To date, faculty represent an untapped stakeholder voice.Since faculty members design and deliver educational content, they set the tone for classroom culture, and are major drivers of students' experience given the frequency and context of their interactions.Keeping this important role of faculty in mind, we crafted the following questions to guide this research study: (1) What are the perceptions of faculty regarding gender-equitable pedagogy at their institution?
(2) How does gender inequity manifest in the pedagogical dimensions of instruction, assessment, curriculum, and learning environment?
(3) How, according to faculty participants, can pedagogy be more gender-responsive?

Literature review
Out of 189 countries assessed on the Gender Development Index, Ethiopia ranks close to the bottom as 173 rd (Human Development Report, 2019).Gender differences in Ethiopia are more pronounced than those observed in neighboring countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Human Development Report, 2019).While inequity and inequality are highly contested concepts, and in this paper we define gender inequity as unfair, unnecessary, and avoidable treatment of men or women originating from injustice (Ilinca et al., 2019;Kawachi et al., 2002).Gender inequality, on the other hand, is the treatment of men and women the same way regardless of historical discrimination.In higher education, gender inequality remains a pervasive problem.
The history of Ethiopian higher education shows unequal access between rural and urban, rich and poor, and men and women (Molla, 2018).Ethiopia "ranks among the bottom 35 countries on the index for offering equal access to education to both boys and girls" (Global Gender Gap Report, 2021, p. 36).According to this report, the overall gender gap in higher education in Ethiopia is still large, where only 5.3% of women, half the share of men, are enrolled.Although female students' enrollment in higher education is increasing, gender disparity is still very large.For instance, there are very few female faculty in higher education (INASP, 2022).Moreover, women's enrolment in higher education in Ethiopia varies widely across regions, with the highest (24%) in the capital city Addis Ababa and the lowest (2%) in the Somali regional state (Hussen & Workie, 2023).Women still face discrimination when trying to access services and resources (Global Gender Gap Report, 2021).
Gender disparities are also stark at specific universities.For example, at Debub University, a public university in southern Ethiopia, the attrition rate for female students was 43%.In comparison, only 6% of males, and in 2004, 35% of female students dropped out of the university (Abraha, 2012).At Jimma University, another large public university in Ethiopia, the attrition rate for female students was 70%, whereas for male students only 17% (Abraha, 2012), making the male graduation rate higher than for the female (Semela, 2010).In 2018, at Addis Ababa University, the country's flagship institution, Kassie (2018) identified that gender disparities are even more pronounced in the science and engineering fields: The gender gap in enrolments, in graduates, and in honors lists in the last five years remains wide in favor of males.Females' underrepresentation was worse in science and engineering . . .females' educational attainment was lower as compared to males; and their attainment in science and engineering fields was lower than in social sciences.(p. 1) Such alarming figures suggest that current affirmative action policies are needed, and those in existence have not been entirely effective.

Faculty development, the relevance of pedagogy, and women on leadership
Similar issues exist for women that are faculty and staff.Although research argues that teachers are "critical allies in schools ' [efforts] to achieve gender equity" (Towery, 2007, p.1), women students lack women teachers to serve as positive role models in Ethiopian postsecondary settings.Women make up 10.5% of all academic staff across institutions in Ethiopia (Semela et al., 2020).Niemi (2008) argues that "there is a vicious circle that links the lack of female teachers with girls' low educational performance, under-achievement, and deepening poverty" (p.155).Likewise, Molla (2013) states that ". ..beyond its effect on the success of female students in higher education institutions, the absence of many women in teaching and research positions is a serious problem by itself and deserves considerable public attention" (p.204).As part of efforts to address gender issues in higher education, pedagogical practices such as cooperative learning and genderresponsive strategies have been one area of intervention (Abraha et al., 2021;Tadesse et al., 2020).
Nearly 20 years ago, Lasonen et al. (2005) noted the presence of gender mainstreaming efforts in the Ethiopian higher education landscape, but noted that often these efforts do not apply to upper-level administration: In Ethiopia, gender mainstreaming in education has had two elements: incorporating a gender focus into planning, design, and implementation, and moving towards equitable participation in decision-making processes. ..The first element has received much attention.However, markedly less emphasis has been placed on the second aspect, which involves issues of representation and political power within key government structures and institutions.(p.59) Currently, these issues persist.For example, that many women do not receive clear information about the promotion processes and a lack of transparency related to gaining leadership positions keep women out of upper administration positions.Adamu (2019) has documented areas of confusion in the selection and appointment process, e.g., "eligibility of applicants, and minimum educational qualification/academic rank required for President and Vice Presidents positions" (p.16).To equip women for top management capability, Tadesse (2019) argues for leadership professional development opportunities, especially the ones that "offer a change of heart at the level of the unconscious" (p.316).There is other work that suggests that women continue to be underrepresented and under-supported in higher education administration and in leadership roles (Semela et al., 2020).Our study builds on this work by investigating how faculty perceptions of gender equity inform their behavior in the classroom.

Global landscape of challenges to gender equity and strategies to address them
Globally, scholars have analyzed diverse barriers to gender inequity in schools and offer various ideas to address them in different country contexts.When provided with the right tools and support, Tracy and Lane (1999) found that pre-service teachers would exhibit and practice more gender-equitable teaching.These authors explained that "by providing preservice teachers with an educational experience that reinforces the necessity of creating an equitable learning environment, . . . the implementation of GETBs [Gender Equitable Teaching Behaviors] requires very little additional monetary support nor does it take much extra time" (p.99).However, sexism and gender bias have been pervasive and persistent in U.S. society and schools, and teachers face significant individual and structural challenges to address (Masland, 1994;Towery, 2007).Similar misogynist norms appear in Ghanaian society, which perpetuates gender inequality and inequities in education Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and professions (Boateng & Sharma, 2017).Meanwhile, Edres (2022) evaluated Jordanian textbooks and found that misogyny was expressed in textbooks via gendered stereotypes and limited representations of women and girls.Recently, Camangian (2022) conducted critical teacher action research in the U.S. about how widespread gendered stereotypes continue to inhibit pedagogical praxis.Camangian (2022) posited that addressing gender stereotypes is complicated, messy, and a difficult task for teachers.Nevertheless, this author reasoned that teachers can help address gendered contradictions and help students reflect on gendered issues as it benefits all students.Additionally, Camangian (2022) suggested that women students speak back to men's supremacy whenever and wherever they encounter it, including in classrooms.
Furthermore, research has shown that teachers, based on their gender, have differing beliefs yet are vital allies in combating gender inequity.Cress and Hart (2009) conducted a study composed of qualitative and quantitative data.Qualitative data were from two campuses: a large public research university and a small private elite women's college.Quantitative data were from a national survey, e.g., the Triennial National Faculty Survey (1998-99) from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which the institution participated.In an analysis of survey data, Cress and Hart (2009) found that men and women faculty had differing beliefs on whether gender inequity exists on their campus, rationalizations for the persistence of gender inequity, and the likelihood of including gender-focused readings in their teaching.They found that "over 90% of male faculty [compared to only 57% of women faculty]. . .believe gender equity exists on their campus" (p.479).Male faculty perceived that gender inequity persists because women's "time [is] spent on family issues, and women may be perceived as less serious about their careers" (p.474).In contrast, women faculty believed that "gender inequities persist because . . .competitions . . .are not equally valued" (p.475).Additionally, they found that "women are more likely to incorporate readings on gender (31% vs. 13%)" (p.481).Women faculty in Maldives expressed that they worked harder than men, and observed that men fill out senior decision-making positions at the university regardless (Maxwell et al., 2015).Due to the selection process, gender stereotypes, and lack of support, networking and mentors, women in South African universities experience unequal representation in leadership (Mankayi et al., 2021).Given the role of subjective belief and how it shapes interpretations of reality, bringing in all faculty in the work of gender equity, not just women, is imperative.To this end, Towery explained that: Bringing men into the conversation about gender equity . . .Unless all teachers engage in this process, the struggle for gender equity in schools will remain unfulfilled.Teachers have the potential to interrupt biased behaviors, alter gender-based expectations of students, create gender equitable curricula, and transform their schools into more equitable settings for student learning. 2007, p. 20) Moreover, to attain equity in schools, Galloway et al. (2019) recommended a type of culturally responsive education called anti-oppressive pedagogy.This is a pedagogy that is explicitly identity conscious (e.g., language, class, ability) in order to describe and push back against structural oppression.Galloway et al. ( 2019) also emphasized that educators should unlearn the established stereotypes and "fabricated notions of . . .group-based hierarchies" (p.3).On the other hand, Brezicha and Miranda (2022) advocated for enhancing a sense of belonging in educational settings where the academic community "celebrate all students' academic progress, even when imperfect, . . .consider students' past, present, and future" in classrooms, curricula, and school environment (p.9).Beyond psychological empowerment, Boateng and Sharma (2017) argued that stakeholders such as schools, teachers, and parent-teacher associations can socialize women into STEM majors and fight gender discrimination in STEM in Ghanaian education.Emphasizing the importance of multiple interventions and stakeholders to fight gender inequality, Gudyanga et al. (2016) recommended that parents and teachers should challenge gender and cultural stereotypes in mathematics, while schools should hire women mathematicians to serve as positive role models for women.
Despite the diversity of gender-related challenges and corresponding diverse ideas to address them in various national settings, the Ethiopian government has largely focused on implementing numerical-focused affirmative action policies.These policies focus on increasing the enrollment of female students to reduce gender inequality, that is, different minimum academic performance scores are used to admit male and female students.To this end, a 2013 study described a twopoint entrance examination difference in test results (Yasin, 2013, p. 149).There were more dramatic gender-based differences for natural science and social science admission on the 2018 Ethiopian university entrance points.Men were admitted with minimum entrance scores of 352 and 335, respectively, while women were admitted with 330 and 320, respectively (MySchooleth, 2020).Despite implementing these policies, gender inequality in higher education persists in Ethiopia to the present day (Semela et al., 2020;Sidelil et al., 2023).
Equity in access is admittedly one of the first significant steps to achieving gender equality.However, equitable access or entry does not necessarily translate to an equitable learning experience or outcome.Diaw ( 2008) stated that "equity in schooling processes, as well as gender-fair learning materials, are equally, if not more important for high rates of retention and performance" (p.263).Despite affirmative action and the creation of women-focused student affairs units called "Gender Offices'' at higher education institutions in Ethiopia, inequity has not been eradicated.Female students disproportionately score lower academically, and experience higher dropout rates than their male counterparts (Ashcroft & Rayner, 2011;Bzayene, 2019).At the public university where we collected our study data, none of the 20 "Gold Medal Winners'' (valedictorians) in academic years 2017 and 2018 were women.Meanwhile, only 13% of students graduating with very great distinction (CGPA ≥3.75) were women (Academic Performance Report, 2019).

Theoretical framework: equity pedagogy
We use equity pedagogy as the main theoretical framework.Conceptualized by McGee Banks and Banks (1995), equity pedagogy was developed to study, analyze, and interpret the fairness of education practices among diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural student groups in the US.It is a wellestablished framework that has been applied by researchers for decades, including Cassese and Bos (2013), Malhan (2016), andYagiz et al. (2016).As such, equity pedagogy emphasizes "teaching strategies and classroom environments that help students from diverse . . .groups attain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively within, and help create and perpetuate, a just, humane, and democratic society" (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995, p. 152).While their explicit definition focuses on race, ethnicity, and culture in the US, we use this framework in an Ethiopian context because McGee Banks and Banks (1995) explain that students whose thinking is transformed through an equity pedagogy go on to be engaged members of society that advocate for social change.When discussing potential applications of this framework to address gender oppression, the authors explain that "providing an equal voice for women may sometimes require an unequal focus on women's views and issues in classroom discourse" (p.156).Additionally, since our research questions are primarily concerned with examining equity, this is a fitting framework for our analysis.
Because equity pedagogy is fundamentally a student-focused framework, faculty that implement it should apply its tenets to all aspects of teaching, including curriculum, assessment, and the organization of the physical learning space.Additionally, an equity pedagogy helps shed light on the "hidden curriculum" of schools and universities (Calarco, 2020).A hidden curriculum refers to the unspoken school norms that reflect racial, economic, and social inequalities.Arguably, an equity pedagogy requires instructors to engage in considerable thought, a "reflective self-analysis [that] requires teachers to identify, examine, and reflect on their attitudes toward different ethnic, racial, gender, and social-class groups" (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995, p. 156).
As McGee Banks and Banks (1995) suggest, there are several ways to make the classroom democratic, fair, and student-centered.One of such strategies is feminist pedagogy (Maher, 1999;Walsh, 2009), in which instructors are expected to think not only about what but also how to teach-using approaches that foster power-sharing and confronting inequality between teachers and students, or among students regardless of gender.Thus, any contemporary school and teacher education reform agenda should not overlook gender inequality.Feminist pedagogy is not just about "good teaching."It goes as far as analyzing and sharing power wherever it resides, between teachers and students, men and women, and bringing women to the center and front (Maher, 1999).
We adapted equity pedagogy to investigate gender in the Ethiopian context and to analyze education equity between male and female students, where significant educational outcome disparities exist.And while we recognize that this framework was not designed with Ethiopian universities in mind, we decided to use it because its focus is primarily on fairness, not exclusively on race and ethnicity.It provides us with the analytical tools to look at how power is distributed in teaching and learning environments and not necessarily the identity of the teachers or learners.

Design, site, and participants
This study used an exploratory qualitative study design emphasizing subjective meaning-making (Crotty, 1998;Liamputtong, 2011).Informed by past research and quantitative evidence of apparent education performance gaps by gender in Ethiopia, we sought to further explore the phenomenon of gender inequity from a faculty perspective arising from their lived experiences, describing if faculty perceive the pedagogy at their institution as gender-equitable and how they perceive gender inequity manifesting in different pedagogical dimensions of instruction, assessment, curricula, and learning environment.Additionally, this study design was selected for its suitability for generating participant-driven solutions to increasing gender-responsiveness of higher education in a way that is appropriate to the specific socio-cultural context of Ethiopia.More pointedly, qualitative research in particular may be especially useful for challenging positivist approaches to understanding how gender influences educational experiences and outcomes (Oakley, 1998).
In terms of research site, the study was conducted at a mid-sized public university in Ethiopia in 2019.Nineteen individual and group interviews were conducted with 32 faculty members or administrators (30 men and two women).Participant characteristics are summarized in Table 1.Only two women faculty participated in the interview due to the small population of women faculty at the study site, and those who were available were on leave.The participants came from diverse schools and colleges within the university, including engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, business and economics, health sciences, and education.Purposive sampling (Tongco, 2007) was used to select faculty based on: familiarity with the topic, commitment to equity, representation from diverse departments, and willingness to participate.Key informants were identified through the professional and personal networks of the lead author.Accordingly, faculty members that work with the university Gender Office and some faculty members that also serve as school directors/department heads were included in the sample.Researcher logs were kept to document notes, ideas, reflections on data quality and relevance for each interview, and emerging themes.Recruitment ceased when the authors reflexively determined that content saturation had been reached, as indicated by redundancy of concepts, and that sufficient data were available to richly contextualize and support each of the qualitative themes (Fusch & Ness, 2015).The authors obtained institutional IRB approval prior to the start of data collection, as well as informed consent from all study participants.

Data collection
The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews using an interview protocol with 13 questions about inequality and inequity in education, gendered learning experiences, and faculty perceptions.Examples of interview questions and prompts include: • Walk me through your experience of teaching and assessing men and women students.
• Do men and women students learn in the same or in a different way?How?
• What are some of the challenges you experienced in teaching and/or assessing women and men students?
• Do you think your pedagogy (e.g.assessment strategies, curriculum, and teaching resources) is gender-equitable?If so, how?If not, why not?
• In your view, how can gender inequity be addressed in different pedagogical dimensions?
To develop the questions, the authors relied on: extant literature, their own lived experiences, and tenets of equity pedagogy (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995).Intuitive and lived experience is valuable in this setting because the lead author was born and raised in Ethiopia, and also has professional experience teaching at a university in Ethiopia.The two co-authors also have significant research experience, including collecting their dissertation data in Ethiopia.Because of this, authors were able to place study data in a culturally specific context.
Meanwhile, equity directly informed the interview questions.For instance, by explicitly asking, "Do you think your pedagogy is gender-equitable?" in the interview protocol, we foregrounded a major component of the equity pedagogy framework, which is equity itself.Similarly, this framework helped us develop other, more subtle interview questions that evaluated equity perceptions among participants (such as "What are some of the challenges you experienced in teaching and/or assessing female and male students?").In these ways, equity pedagogy helped us consider how we could unearth open-ended responses from participants about their positive or negative experiences with enacting equity pedagogy in their classrooms.Additionally, the interviews were primarily conducted in English, but in cases of limited English fluency among participants, two Ethiopian languages (Amharic and Afan Oromo) were used.The interviews ranged from 26-40 minutes for individual interviews and 51-80 minutes for group interviews.

Data analysis
All interviews were audio-recorded.Due to the usage of three languages, meaning-based translation and transcription were manually conducted by a research team member fluent in all three languages (English, Amharic, and Afan Oromo).This approach reduced researchers' misinterpretations and the challenges that word-for-word translation can cause in cross-culture studies (Birbili, 2000;Liamputtong, 2010).After transcribing audio files, the researchers engaged in inductive and deductive coding.Inductive coding involved iterative and ongoing coding and analysis of documenting emerging insights, common themes, and unique ideas from researchers' journals and interview recordings (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).Examples of inductive codes include: "uniform pedagogy," "gendered stereotypes," "culture-uninformed pedagogy," "untargeted interventions," "diagnosis, but no interventions," and "entanglements of religion and culture."Deductive coding involved applying research question-based codes guided by a codebook (Ravitch & Carl, 2016).
Examples of deductive codes include "perceived inequity," "pedagogical dimensions" (instructional methodologies, assessment strategies, curricula, learning environment), "how inequity manifests in each pedagogical dimension," and "faculty-generated recommendations."Next, we sorted thematically similar codes and placed them into conceptual categories in such a way that it enabled us to address the three research questions (Rubin & Rubin, 2012).Some of these categories include "faculty perceptions of gender equity," "ways gender inequity manifests in each pedagogical aspect," and "faculty-generated recommendations for more gender-equitable pedagogy."Finally, the research team met to discuss the cultural context and historical background of what participants shared during interviews and discussed implications of findings based on this context.

Results
After coding, we arrived at three main themes: (1) misconceptions about the difference between equity and equality, (2) ways gender inequity manifests in different aspects of pedagogy (instructions, assessments, curricula, learning environment), and (3) faculty-generated recommendations for enacting gender-equitable pedagogy.In the remainder of this section, we explain how these themes are supported by participants' descriptions of their day-to-day lives.

Faculty overall perceptions regarding pedagogical equity in terms of gender
When first asked about their experiences, our study participants often reported that they perceived campus services as generally equal for men and women.Upon further probing, faculty explained that they meant that men and women receive "the same" treatment and presumably "equal" opportunities.For example, men and women attend the same university, learn from the same instructors, and receive the same instruction and assessments, all of which were perceived as equal opportunity.Five faculty compared gender equity in higher education to gendered experiences during primary and secondary school and perceived university to be more equitable.These five faculty thought this because women in universities not only had access to the same services as men, but were also less likely to have extensive homemaking responsibilities when living on campus, which is a major barrier to gender equitable early school experiences.
In addition, because universities have gender offices to provide different forms of support, some faculty perceived women as having extra resources and attention to assist them if needed.Some male participants even expressed resentment toward women because they perceived genderbased affirmative action as a form of special treatment.In contrast, a female faculty member stated that the "gender issue is the most neglected aspect in the university . . .It is our work only . . . it is assumed as our [Gender Office's] sole responsibility" (Participant 16).Another female administrator added, "Their [Gender Officers'] work is to monitor whether gender is mainstreamed and practiced in all university plans . . .but nobody is doing that" (Participant 24).Clearly, men and women perceive the amount of institutional support for women differently.
When equality and equity were defined for participants, the faculty generally perceived pedagogical practices at their institution were inequitable (summarized in Table 2).Furthermore, when asked to reflect on inequities within distinct pedagogical dimensions (instructions, assessments, curricula, learning environments), participants said there was no dimension or department that was immune from gender inequity.Nevertheless, respondents reported some variation concerning the type of inequity manifested in each dimension.For example, there were gender stereotypes in instruction and curricula.In the learning environment, there were limited gender-related institutional policies and supports.Additionally, there was an entanglement of culture and religion, reinforcing gender inequity across different aspects of pedagogy.Gendered stereotypes: Female students are less assertive to follow-up their scores, easily satisfied by the grades they receive, prioritizing grades over key competencies.

Curricula/Content
Old: Not updated with contemporary national and global changes such as gender equity, female students' perspectives and experiences, role-models, and revision for gendered-stereotypes.
Socially, culturally, economically, and religiously uninformed: These macro-contexts have different effects on female and male student groups.

Learning Environment
Political: Politicization and imposition of gender issues such as gender equality, gender equity, gender support, and tutorials for females tend to be imposed for political reporting rather than for genuine educational improvements for female students.

Untargeted interventions:
Blanket affirmative actions (e.g., academic support in the form of tutorials for females).
Students' background: Rural vs urban; not prepared at lower grades.
Lack of consistent institutional gender related policy and support: Thus, female support depends on individual faculty commitment and will.

Limited or lack of gender and pedagogical training:
Particularly for newly hired faculty and faculty from non-education/social science disciplines.

Ways gender inequity manifests in different aspects of pedagogy
We also found that gender inequities were present in different aspects of pedagogy, including instructional methodologies, assessment strategies, curricula, and learning environments (see Table 1 for a summary).In subsequent sections, we provide more details about how faculty described these inequities, along with supporting quotes from participants.

Imbalance in the delivery of instructions
Gender inequity is evidenced in instruction as the faculty members tailor their instruction to high-achieving students, who have historically been men.For instance, Participant 13 explained, "I focus on male students most of the time due to background [better academic performance at prior schooling]. ..In our [Ethiopian] context active students mean males."This inequity appears during planning, teaching, and assessing lessons.In another example, one woman faculty interviewee explained that group work (compared to paired work) tends to "swallow" the women students who may not be as comfortable speaking up or asserting leadership in large groups (Participant 24).Thus, while group work is well-intentioned and meant to enhance the participation of all students, this method may not be as equitable for female learners unless it is tailored to specific contexts, such as a specific students' learning style.
Furthermore, female students appear to lack more educational resources, such as laptop computers, compared to their male counterparts.This is most prevalent in disciplines that require more technological resources, such as engineering.As Participant 1 shared when describing inequity in how families prioritize distribution of their limited resources for students, "They [family] don't have trust in them [women students]," which limits their access to technical materials.Inequitable distribution of resources leads to inequitable access to educational materials, affecting the overall ability of the woman student to perform academically, thereby reinforcing and solidifying gender gaps in achievement.
There was also a prevalence of gendered stereotypes among faculty, especially in engineering, natural and computational sciences, and law.One participant explained how women students are viewed as passive by faculty."Most of the time female students are not as assertive to just follow patterns of their assessment.Most of the time, women are not as confident to ask you why they just get these grades" (Participant 21).Another participant shared: "Women lack motivation; they don't like math and physics" (Participant 5).Another faculty member stated, "Women are quiet, hidden, silent; they don't want to struggle; some courses attract women, while others attract men; women are less proficient with technology; they are shy" (Participant 1).Such responses from faculty suggest that they prioritize more dedicated instruction time for male students, who they perceive as more ambitious and hard-working, compared with their biased views of women as uninterested, incompetent, and apathetic.
Another challenge around instructional pedagogy is the variation or diversity among female students.Some women come from rural areas or poorer families, while some are from urban areas and raised by socioeconomically advantaged families.Rurality was frequently discussed as a critical intersecting identity with gender, and rural ideologies viewed as more traditional with clearly delineated gender roles and norms.Conversely, urbanity was associated with "modernity" and less conventional gendered expectations.During class participation, different women may exhibit different behaviors, participate differently, or may have unique needs that the faculty and the institution should attend to.For example, women from urban areas were perceived as more active and more participatory.In contrast, women students from rural areas were described as shy, but "if you [faculty] ask them slowly, they tell you the right answers" (Participant 24).Through data such as these, we observed the impact of intersectional oppression in shaping educational opportunity and preventing equity pedagogy from being enacted (Crenshaw, 1990;McGee Banks & Banks, 1995).

Faculty perception of students' assessment priorities
Faculty also generally considered women as less assertive.This meant that female students were often less likely to follow up on or challenge their assessment scores and were perceived as people that accepted the grades they received without any pushback.Moreover, women were also perceived as less intellectually curious, and they appeared to seek academic interventions, such as tutoring, simply to improve their grades and not because they wanted to master the course content.To this point, one faculty participant elucidated: Most of the time we are initiating to give tutorials for women students, but most of the time we are not achieving . . .I started discussing with the faculty.Some of the faculty started giving a tutorial for women, but what the students were also doing was . . .they were requesting only marks.[grades] (Participant 18) Comments such as these from professors show that there is an entrenched bias against women because they are viewed as intellectually inferior to men.

The limited relevance of curriculum
Our faculty participants also perceived the curriculum as outdated and at odds with contemporary Ethiopian society.Participants noted the curriculum at their university, across disciplines, did not incorporate women's perspectives, push back against gendered stereotypes, or reflect gender-sensitive content in any meaningful way.Moreover, the faculty noted that the distribution of women and men students was not similar across disciplines; very few women students were enrolled in STEM and medical sciences (Participant 30).One faculty participant noted that, in the previous year, only two women had majored in mathematics, and none had majored in physics (Participant 5).This same participant explained that women currently enrolled in each program were not there by choice, but that the university had forced a small number of women students into the disciplines to ensure that the department would not be shut down.Overall, such insights suggest that faculty rarely challenged dominant perceptions about women in STEM or were reluctant to advance institutional change to support women in these departments.

Learning environment shaped by policy barriers
Gender was perceived by some participants as a politicized issue and not a pedagogical one.For example, some faculty saw the following aspects of higher education administration as examples of how gender is politicized: appointment of women by upper-level administrators, (de)funding of gender initiatives, and instances of imposed tutorials for women students tied to faculty's performance evaluations.Such tutorials are offered by faculty, but the absence of consistent institutional policy on tutorials for women and, at times, the fact that the tutorial was tied to faculty evaluations upset some faculty.Several faculties (e.g., Participants 8, 9, 10, and 21) expressed such frustration.When speaking about this, Participant 21 explained: When you come to the government [policy], they [the government] say that everything is defined in terms of number, but as to my understanding, the number cannot define. ..all the things that exist on the ground.The chance [access] can be given, but why do we just increase the number?The number is every time the defining factor, but that cannot be the means by which we achieve [gender] equality, so we have to have other standards.(Participant 21) Here, the participant explains how faculty are evaluated based on how many women attended women's tutorial classes and the focus on numerical goals over qualitative experiences.This type of policy move puts the onus of institutional change on individual faculty instead of making gender equity a university-wide priority.
Another challenge in the overall learning environment was the faculty's perceptions of tutorials as "extra work," thus, they demanded "extra incentives." Most of the time . . .we are initiating to give tutorials for female students, but most of the time we are not achieving that one.The reason is the teacher is also asking for payment, extra payment for those extra classes.When we discuss gender issues with staff, nobody cares . . .they don't [offer tutorial classes for women] or they do based on their personality, the way I grew up, environment, so they do what they want based on their interest only.(Participant 18) Thus, gender equity was viewed as a greater societal issue from external forces, such as culture, religion, and family influences.Therefore, it was not considered something the university should be responsible for.Responses from faculty participants reflect broader institutional policy issues, including the lack of consistent and measurable gender policies; policy-to-practice gaps; limited gender and pedagogical training, particularly for newly hired professors and professors from noneducation disciplines; and overly vague affirmative action policies.Some affirmative action initiatives were reported as ineffective because they were vague and not tailored.For instance, academic support, such as tutorial classes, tends to be applied to all women, regardless of academic performance or need.Yet, simultaneously, male students with poor performance who may benefit from tutorial classes are excluded.Furthermore, Participant 25, a male faculty member, shared that the additional five points for women students during university entrance examinations was unfair.He argued that this policy was inequitable, especially for academically struggling male students from rural areas and outstanding female students from urban areas.While well-intentioned to be gender-responsive, these gender-conscious institutional policies seemingly led to hostile attitudes among some faculty.Often, this adverse reaction was directed towards representatives of the Gender Office.Additionally, participants were resistant to do equity work that they perceived as discriminatory against male students, ultimately ineffective, and "extra" work that they resented having to do for free.

Entanglement of religion, culture, and gender
Our data also showed that there are clear connections between religion, culture, and gender in the context of Ethiopian higher education.Many faculty participants interviewed for this study believed that religion and culture are inextricably linked.These terms frequently arose in interviews as an end-all-be-all explanation for traditional attitudes and behaviors.Several times, religion and culture were described as being incongruent with gender equality.For example, one of the faculty participants quoted teachings and values from the Christian Orthodox Bible: "Ye Beta Christian Christos indehone, ye bet degmo, baal new" roughly translated "As the head of Church is Jesus Christ, so is Husband for the household" (Participant 26).Participants' reflections represent some of their attitudes about gender, religion, and leadership.Furthermore, the two most prevalent religions in Ethiopia, Orthodox Christianity (43% of Ethiopians identify with this faith tradition according to Diamant (2017)) and Islam (33% of Ethiopians identify as Muslim; according to the U.S. Department of State (2019)), were described as prescriptive of gender roles.Participant 26 explained that "Religion [Orthodox Christianity] dictates 'good' and 'bad' habits and expects these values to be reflected in the daily cultural or social practices . . .Ethiopian culture draws from religion, or it is very interwoven, to say the least" (Participant 26).Thus, it is likely that faculty perspectives relating to equity are shaped by participants' religious beliefs.
Because religion and culture are so interwoven in Ethiopia, it is difficult to tell if expectations such as "females should not go in front of guests" and "females should be respectful of their husband" are religious or cultural expectations (Participant 26).Both culture and religion reinforce the other and arguably come into conflict with academic notions of gender equality (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995).This echoes what Jansen (2009) calls "knowledge in the blood"-an "ingrained belief, sure knowledge, and firmly established truths" (p.4).Our experiential knowledge of Ethiopian culture, based on our positionality as researchers, corroborates faculty perception.

Participants-generated recommendations to make pedagogy more gender-equitable
In this section, we present and expand upon participant-generated recommendations.To enact more gender-equitable pedagogy, faculty participants recommended diverse ideas to diverse stakeholders, including those described below.

Tailor interventions based on needs
This recommendation was based on the idea that different factors influence student groups' academic, social, and professional development.For instance, adding five points to women's entrance exams may be appropriate for some fields or departments but not others.Other student identities that were viewed as important were income, residence (rural vs urban), religion, and ethnicity.Thus, "assertiveness training" for women students from rural and urban areas should not necessarily be the same.

Early intervention at lower school (not just at higher education) is needed
Participants linked higher education experiences with experiences in primary and secondary schooling.Additionally, they recognized how background and upbringing significantly changed the types of gender ideals students may carry with them to university.Study participants wanted to see interventions target younger students before arrival at university to create more equitable higher education outcomes.In some disciplines, such as the medical sciences, that currently have a 1:10 women-to-men ratio of enrollment, increasing the entrance exam scores of women by large amounts will not overcome the inequity that exists from the time of enrollment.Thus, interviews concluded that performance in lower school has a tremendous effect on performance in the university, implying stronger university and high school linkages are necessary.

Informed gender training for faculty, especially new hires
While faculty reported receiving some gender training, they criticized the workshops as boring and focused on single issues, such as awareness of gender-based violence or improving women's assertiveness.For instance, Participants 18 and 19 called on university leadership to update the content of the trainings, involve various stakeholders in the planning and execution of the trainings, and embed gender-consciousness into all faculty development programming on campus.These interviewees were especially interested in learning how to incorporate theoretical concepts about gender-responsive pedagogy into their everyday teaching practice.

Focus on the qualitative experience, not just quantitative goals
Additionally, faculty suggest that the university focus on female students' qualitative experience.According to participants, one way the university could do this is by separating gender issues from politics.They thought imposing gender issues, gender initiatives, and gender reporting through different mechanisms; for instance, faculty evaluations are less effective.A few examples of these numerical reporting mechanisms include how many women were enrolled in STEM, graduated, and participated in tutorial classes-are less effective if not accompanied by qualitative indicators.Because gender inequity is a cross-cutting issue to be addressed by a collaboration of all stakeholders.It is not enough to have gender inequity addressed just by the government or a particular department.Participants suggested discussions and awareness-raising efforts instead of forcing gender-based initiatives through specific mechanisms, such as teaching evaluations.

Engage all stakeholders (as gender inequality is a cross-cutting and societal issue)
Gender inequality is a societal problem, often entangled with culture and religion.Thus, it requires an integrated and simultaneous involvement of diverse and multiple institutions such as religious leaders, parents/extended family members, and community leaders.The faculty underscored that the entire federal government, let alone individual universities, cannot fully resolve gender inequality.Because culture, religion, and gender are intertwined in Ethiopia, it requires the collaboration and mobilization of all these stakeholders.

A call for specific, measurable gender goals
Faculty called for measurable gender initiatives and plans so that progress towards gender equality is measured.According to some participants, many individuals "failed to plan [on gender], and led blindly without strategies" (Participant 16).Consequently, individual departments cannot know to what extent they achieved their gender goals.Hence, many departments on campus seem to lose motivation over time to enact gender equity.

A call for more focus on women and less on men and clear institution-level gender policies
Some faculty recommended the focus on motivating and empowering women.Specifically, some called for a more precise university-wide gender policy to mainstream gender-equity efforts across offices, enhance the effectiveness of gender initiatives, and for enhanced accountability.However, many participants had mixed feelings about gender equity efforts, while others had even hostile attitudes towards the Gender Office and affirmative action policies.Interviewees perceived that the Gender Office promotes lower standards for women by implying that gender equality efforts benefit only women.For instance, Participant 21 explained how an excessive focus on female students and faculty were not needed at the institutional level.He explained how numerical parity should not be the only way to measure gender equity and that such an emphasis jeopardized the reputation of women broadly.

More gender support systems
Some faculty acknowledged the existence of a "Counseling and Guidance" office in the Psychology Department.However, they suggested this be promoted to an institutional-level center to enhance the reach and equity of its services.Meanwhile, other faculty called for the representation of women in every administrative committee (Participant 2 and Participant 3).

Discussion
We explored faculty perceptions regarding the equity of pedagogy in terms of gender, how gender inequity manifests in different aspects of pedagogy, and faculty-generated recommendations to make higher education pedagogy more equitable.It is important to note that only two women faculty members were interviewed in this study owing to various recruitment challenges including few women in faculty positions.The similarities in the women's and men's responses support our interpretation, even when women were underrepresented in the sample.However, future research focusing specifically on the perspectives of women faculty would be valuable.
One of our most prominent findings was that most faculty in our sample, the majority of whom were men, initially conflated gender equality and equity and therefore believed that women and men students were receiving equitable pedagogy.This mirrors Cress and Hart's (2009) findings where over 90% of male faculty [compared to 57% of women faculty]. ..believe gender equity exists on their campus" (p.479).This initial perception was rooted partly in misconceptions and faculty's relative comparisons across historical times and education levels about gender equality.The perceptions related to misconception were rooted in different interpretations of some gender-related terms, including: gender "equality," gender "equity," and equating "same" pedagogy as "equal" pedagogy.Consequently, most faculty perceived access to similar educational resources and experiences as equal treatment and assumed that this was essentially the same as equitable pedagogy.
Our findings also show that gender inequity is present in all aspects of pedagogy such as instruction, assessment, curricula, and learning environments, and in all departments of the university (as demonstrated by responses from faculty participants from diverse schools and colleges, e.g., Engineering, Business, and Economics, Natural Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Education, Languages).In light of McGee Banks and Banks (1995) equity conceptualizations, professors pointed out elements of the learning environment that did not reflect an equity pedagogy because the balance of power was not disrupted.Instead, pedagogical control remained concentrated among men faculty and students, while women faculty and learners were not encouraged to co-construct knowledge.
The other factor informing faculty members' perceptions was their use of relative comparisons across historical times and education levels.The faculty believed there was more gender equality in contemporary Ethiopia than in historical Ethiopia.For instance, three participants justified their evaluation of higher education as gender equitable by comparing it to lower-level education, where women have a greater responsibility to assist with house chores in their family's home and therefore have less dedicated study time than at university, where all students live in dormstyle university housing away from their families.Participants' perceptions of the difference in gender equality across historical lines were valid.Historically, there was pervasive discrimination and many injustices against women, which the government has overtly acknowledged in the Constitution and has been attempting to address through various affirmative action policies and initiatives Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1994);Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1995).As a result, women in contemporary Ethiopia exist in relatively more gender-equal conditions.However, an improvement in gender equality does not necessarily equate to achieved gender equality or equity in Ethiopia.And although there has been progress for women and girls across the educational pipeline, the literature still shows marked gender disparities in educational outcomes, such as overall GPA and graduation rates and perennial bias in textbooks (Bachore & Semela, 2022;Lemessa et al., 2023;Molla & Cuthbert, 2014).Furthermore, gender-based inequitable access to educational resources is perpetuated by the greater misogynist Ethiopian culture, which largely grants access to financial and physical resources to men.In some families, as Participant 1 described, "they [parents] have no trust in them [women]."This may result in lower expectations of daughters to succeed and fewer perceived financial prospects after graduation, which may lead the families to doubt the possibility of monetary return on investment for women students.Particularly in families where financial resources are limited, and if the family has both sons and daughters in higher education, priority may be given to the men when distributing the existing resources (Camfield, 2011;Semela, 2010).Thus, our data and extant research both show that there is still much more work that needs to be done in order to attain gender equality in Ethiopian higher education.
Faculty members may also want to compare gender inequality with global standards and practices progressively.In this study, professors tended to focus on comparing gender equity in higher education with past experiences and were limited to their own personal experiences within Ethiopia.The faculty were right that women students in higher education enjoyed more genderequal experiences than in lower schooling.However, while such comparisons seem straightforward at first, this comparison is problematic in numerous ways.First, using a relative, instead of absolute, comparison of higher education with lower education does little to answer questions about fairness within higher education.Second, by pointing out that women university students are freed from home chores, the participants are acknowledging an underlying issue that systematically disadvantages women and girls all the way through primary and secondary schooling until they reach higher education.Third, the relative comparison across education levels could blind us from measuring gender equality with more meaningful criteria-based standards.Finally, access to uniform resources does not automatically erase the impact of historical and deeply-entrenched discrimination.This is particularly the case when women's representation in decision-making and leadership structures such as the University Senate or upper administrative positions, is scarce (Aemero Tekleselassie & Roach, 2021).There are few women faculty or few women authored curricula and education materials, and a misogynist society that forms the macro-ecosystem in which women work.
When evaluating how gender inequity is present in all aspects of pedagogy and across all departments of the university, different forms of gender stereotypes were pervasive.For example, in instruction, women were perceived as less proficient, while in the assessment, they were perceived as more easily satisfied with low grades or as prioritizing grades over learning.Combined with the curricular and learning environment that foregrounds the experience of men over women, the prevalence of gender stereotypes contributes to inequitable learning experiences.
Qualitative descriptions of faculty's perceived stereotypes are consistent with previous descriptions of women student's experiences with gender stereotypes in their interactions with faculty (Molla & Cuthbert, 2014) as well as research using discourse analysis to demonstrate just how pervasive gender stereotypes are in educational textbooks, with gendered differences in men and women's representations and identities that depicted men as assertive, naturally good at mathematics, and prominent in public-facing professions while women were depicted as submissive, overburdened with domestic activities, as housewives and gender-stereotypical professions such as primary school teacher (Gebregeorgis, 2016).
We also observed how some factors were interconnected in our data.For example, when faculty focused their instructional practices on high and medium-ability students, they diagnosed learning gaps via continuous assessment but did not provide any interventions.Instead, they viewed gender inequality as a societal problem and were frustrated by the politicized nature of gender initiatives on campus.Although it was perceived as a distinctly feminine practice by faculty respondents in this study, the issue of student motivation to participate in tutorials is, in fact, reflective of a general trend in Ethiopian higher education.Since a few summative evaluations drive assessment over the entire course in Ethiopian education institutions, it is common for students to seek additional tutoring support (Melese & Abebe, 2017).These gaps in policy and practice were further highlighted when university and department leadership focused on quantitative goals over qualitative targets.Additionally, relegating gender matters to a single gender office instead of mainstreaming equity to everyone's work creates an illusion that gender is not inextricably linked with every part of education and students and participants' lived experiences in the campus environment.
The gaps in gender policy and practice continue when the university applies uniform intervention for all women students.Although well-intentioned, using the same affirmative action initiatives for all is ill-informed.It wrongly assumes all women need extra marks to be accepted into the university, that women from rural and urban areas need uniform interventions, and that men do not need additional marks for admission.This contributed to the hostile reaction of some faculty members and leaders towards gender-related affirmative actions.Moreover, the lack of a roadmap to achieve gender equality created an environment with unclear and unassessable gender planning.This conspicuous absence frustrated some faculty and contributed to the perpetuation of gender inequality.
Additionally, the Gender Office seems to be cornered and burdened with gender routine tasks that, in principle, should be mainstreamed to and shared by all individual professionals and institutional substructures.The university management may provide the necessary attention, commitments, and support so that the Gender Office can focus on institutional-level strategic gender initiatives, and planning, monitoring, and facilitating tasks.In the broader context of addressing gender equitable policy reforms for higher education in Ethiopia, the policies themselves need to provide more clear guidance to institutions on how to tailor and enact reforms, evaluate outcomes over time, and make tangible progress toward clearly defined goals.As described by Molla's analysis of key policy documents, our study corroborates the idea that the fundamental framing of gender inequality in Ethiopian higher education is plagued by four key features that inhibit the effectiveness of the policies' implementation: silences, superficial framing, mislocating the problem, and problematic categories (Molla, 2013).Furthermore, we posit that most participant-generated recommendations fit the challenges described by faculty in this study.For instance, the need to tailor interventions based on specific students' needs, enhances the effectiveness of the intervention and may reduce hostile reactions against some affirmative actions.We agree that gender inequality is a societal problem and thus demands the involvement of multiple stakeholders, such as the state, educational leaders, religious/cultural institutions, and family.Because gender inequality is reproduced at various levels of education, corresponding interventions should consider multiple levels of schooling.This may happen through university/high school linkages, where universities may help the surrounding highschool students via creative academic initiatives, such as mentorship, tutoring, workshops, or training high school teachers and students on gender-equitable teaching and learning experiences.
Likewise, the call for measurable gender goals is indispensable.Measurable gender plans can serve as road maps that can guide higher education institutions in their efforts toward a genderequal Ethiopia.Without such plans, it is difficult to identify which gender initiatives were working and were not working and know what progress is being made.Additionally, faculty should consider assigning paired work, not just group work, which may limit women's participation in class.While many rural women students are perceived as "shy," this does not mean they are incompetent.Thus, faculty should not equate a lack of "assertiveness" with a lack of knowledge.Finally, higher education institutions should train all major stakeholders, mainly newly hired faculty and faculty from outside education schools (Shishigu et al., 2017).
Finally, for students that received poor grades on assignments, few opportunities to improve a grade may lead to the faculty's misunderstanding of students' priorities in assessments and tutorial support.A shift in assessment culture where more opportunities are presented for students to demonstrate content mastery maybe more gender equitable.Faculty should be trained on different assessment strategies and recognize that continuous assessment approaches can benefit all students.Moreover, we agree with the faculty participants that gender work should focus on qualitative goals.In addition to being concerned about the sex ratio, or the number of women enrolled in STEM, the university should also be worried about their qualitative experience and the performance of both men and women because it is not as productive to measure just against quantitative indicators (Molla & Cuthbert, 2014).While access is needed, monitoring their experience, performance, and outcomes is equally important after women arrive at universities.

Conclusion
The findings and analysis from this study expand our thinking about gender equity in Ethiopian higher education.Interviews with 32 university faculty members analyzed using an equity pedagogy framework (McGee Banks & Banks, 1995) revealed barriers to gender equity that were present across different pedagogical dimensions and academic departments.These barriers included: pervasive gender stereotypes, men-centered curricula, and learning environments, and a sentiment by faculty that "gender issues" were beyond the scope of their primary professional responsibilities and that addressing gender inequities would require "extra work" on their part.Importantly, a lack of clarity on the nuance between gender equality and equity led faculty to assume that equal access to educational resources and opportunities would lead to equitable outcomes for men and women learners.Improvements to gender equity over time within Ethiopia and comparisons between higher and primary/secondary educational settings also contributed to a perception that university education was relatively equitable, without full acknowledgment of the challenges that remain or performance with regard to any international, objective measure.Uniform pedagogy and curriculum, which often ignores the historical and policy-based subjugation of women, perpetuates the status quo of inequity and must be challenged moving forward.
Strengths of this study include a focus on a previously untapped stakeholder voice, that of faculty who, given their positionality, are important figures in the implementation of educational policy reforms.The limitations of our study include: an underrepresentation of women faculty perspectives, resulting from a recruitment challenge faced due to a systematic shortage of women faculty.Alemayehu (2018) posits that Ethiopian feminist consciousness requires emancipatory knowledge that recognizes the specific ways women in this country have been marginalized.Relatedly, this study contributes to our understanding of how gender inequity manifests in higher education, contextualizing gender disparities in quantitative educational attainment outcomes with qualitative descriptions of barriers to gender-equitable education and faculty-generated solutions for improved practices moving forward.Research such as this is needed, particularly as Ethiopia moves from broadening access to higher education for women to enhancing the quality of education and translation of educational opportunities to other end goals such as employment and economic development.