Two Unisans have been nominated for this year’s South African Women in Science Awards (WiSA). Prof Venitha Pillay, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Management, and Prof Azwihangwisi Mavhandu-Mudzusi, full professor in the Department of Health Studies, join a select group of other South African women in the 2017 search for excellence.

Every year the Department of Science and Technology (DST) calls for nominations for the South African WiSA. These awards recognise and reward excellence by women scientists and researchers, and profile them as role models for younger.

Prof Venitha Pillay (Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Management).

Pillay has been nominated because her research focus is arguably unique in the sphere of women empowerment at the workplace: women who are mothers in higher education.

Her study on academic mothers is believed to be the first and, to date, only research of its kind in South Africa. Having opened up this much-neglected field to academic scrutiny, Pillay is now, through a three-year NRF competitive grant of R1 million, delving deeper into the topic, with the aim of generating further knowledge that could contribute to the empowerment of women in higher education. This grant gives Pillay the opportunity to extend the scope of her study beyond academics who are mothers to all women in higher education.

A C2-rated researcher, her academic career of 30 years reflects her strength as a scholar with academic rigour and a passion for social justice, with a specific focus on gender in the academy. Some of her published work has reached audiences well beyond academics in her own field and has even earned popular acclaim. Academic mothers, one of three books she has authored, was nominated by the South African Sunday Times Literary Awards Committee in 2007 as one of 30 books worthy of an award.

Pillay’s most recent publication, of which she is the lead author and researcher, Academic mothers in the developing world:  Stories from India, Brazil and South Africa, is a conscious effort to extend her research beyond South Africa and to locate findings related to academic mothers at South African universities within an international context.

In addition, Pillay has published 30 journal articles and book chapters, many of them in international, peer-reviewed publications. These include articles on the complexities of engaging in research in the South African and African political context, exploring issues of race, class and gender. These are critical areas for a country seeking to claim its space in an international conversation dominated by western approaches to research methodology.

An equally strong nominee, Mavhandu-Mudzusi’s main research objectives are to reduce new HIV infections and improve the quality of life of people living with HIV in rural universities and to advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) students. This shift led Mavhandu-Mudzusi to develop an advocacy, care and support model for LGBTIQ students and management model for staff and students living with HIV. Implementation of these models assist in empowering women living with HIV, homosexual and gender non-conforming women to be economically empowered in the changing world of work.

Prof Azwihangwisi Mavhandu-Mudzusi (full professor in the Department of Health Studies).

With an NRF C3 rating, Mavhandu-Mudzusi is the author of 28 peer-reviewed publications, a book chapters  and 23 peer-reviewed conference papers. Mavhandu-Mudzusi is involved in a multi-country and multi-university project entitled “Destabilising Heteronormativity in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Institutions of Higher Education”. She is a principal investigator in a collaborative cross-national research project with the University of Liège in Belgium and Alliant International University in San Francisco, on the attitudes of heterosexual university students towards same-sex marriage and parenting.

She is supervising ten PhD and ten MA students at Unisa. She mentors two New Generation of Academics’ Programme (nGAP) doctoral students (Sefako Makgato and Limpopo Universities). She has successfully supervised three PhDs and 15 MA students.

A professional nurse, registered with the South African Nursing Council, Mavhandu-Mudzusi is a M.A.C. AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative Fellow of the University of Columbia, University of California at Los Angeles and Human Sciences Research Council. She is a guest editor for the South African Journal for Higher Education and Health SA Gesondheid Journal for special issues, as well as a reviewer for several international and local journals and conferences.

The theme for the 2017 WiSA is Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work, which is the 2017 priority theme for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW).  The 2017 WISA will be presented on 17 August 2017 as part of the Department’s celebration of Women’s Month.

*Compiled by Kirosha Naicker