Gender Equity And Career Progression In The Ministry Of Health And Social Services In Khomas Region Of Namibia

ABSTRACT

Namibia is not spared from inequalities in terms of gender. There is a need to understand the status quo of gender equity and career progression amongst Namibian government institutions. This will help accelerate the realisation of the objectives of the national plans on gender equality namely; the National Gender Policy of 2010-2020, Vision 2030, National Development Plan 5 and Harambee Prosperity Plan that prioritise women involvement in governance and decision making. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, this thesis aims to assess gender equity and factors impeding career progression of women in the nursing profession. The study was guided by four specific research objectives that are; to understand gender equity within career path in the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS); to explore the level of women participation in decision-making in MoHSS; to explore the structural barriers in terms of social factors such as patriarchy in employment policies and organisational practices that hinder women’s career progression, and to assess whether organisational culture and operations of MoHSS affect career progression and gender participation in nursing profession.

The thesis pursues these objectives by adopting a narrative research design. A purposive sample of twenty-three respondents was interviewed from five classifications namely; enrolled nurse; registered nurse; senior registered nurse; chief registered nurse and control registered nurse. In-depth face-to-face interviews were employed to collect information from selected respondents. The collected data were analysed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics in the form of frequency and cross tabulation to examine the relationships between variables of interest.

The study was confined to public clinics, health centres and intermediate hospitals in Khomas region and concluded that nursing profession continues to be a feminised career in Namibia. The study revealed two main folds; firstly, added weight to previous researches that empirically found that female nurses are more dominant in the profession of health care provision and secondly, disputed the conservative belief that in nursing, women generally have less successful careers in comparison to their male counterparts. The study also found that there are fewer cultural factors that are impeding career growth for both male and female nurses as opposed to organisational structure which is regarded as the main hindrance towards career progression in the MoHSS. Furthermore the study reinforced the existence of vertical segregation in the

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MoHSS whereby more male nurses are placed in areas where hard labour and intensive skills are required. Finally, in the quest to attain gender equity in nursing, the study recommends that MoHSS and training institutions design deliberate strategies to attract more male students into nursing training.