New times and new vocabularies: Theorising and evaluating gender equality in Commonwealth higher education

SynopsisThis article examines contrasting approaches to theorising and evaluating gender equality in higher education across the Commonwealth. The most common approach conceives gender equality as the inclusion of women in higher education. This perspective generally does not challenge the form of institutions, their power dynamics or epistemological frameworks. Critical approaches highlight gendered processes within institutions, often obscured by rhetoric and complex means of silencing. The capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, for example, explicitly advocates connections between aspirations for gender equality within higher education and wider social justice concerns. This approach requires a consideration of questions of gender equality within and beyond the institution pointing to the need for further work on a global ethics that deepens meanings of gender equality, higher education and Commonwealth.