Dr Niaz Mahmud Faysal

Although gender diversity management (GDM) practices in the so-called Global North have seen success, gender equality remains elusive, especially in culturally complex Global South regions such as the Middle East, in which these practices often overlook local disparities. This study examines women’s lived experiences of diversity and equality in two public-sector higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia, employing Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to explore the alignment between organisational policies and women’s substantive freedoms to achieve valued outcomes. Based on semi-structured interviews with 34 women, the findings reveal three context-specific gaps in Saudi Arabia’s GDM practices: (1) a disconnect between organisational policies and women’s lived realities, (2) inequitable access to opportunities and favouritism towards women with privileged networks, and (3) superficial policy advocacy and implementation that fails to challenge systemic barriers. To address these challenges, this study introduces polychronous GDM, a framework that operationalises the capabilities approach by advocating flexible, phased human resource management (HRM) interventions responsive to immediate and evolving inequalities while sensitive to local sociocultural and institutional contexts. Situated within international debates on gender equality, this study advances the strategic HRM literature by critiquing one-size-fits-all GDM and the power dynamics perpetuating workplace inequalities, proposing polychronous GDM as a transformative, context-sensitive framework for advancing gender equality in the Global South.

Globalisation in higher education has significantly increased the number of postgraduate students from different countries pursuing their studies abroad. According to data published by HESA, UCAS, the Home Office and ONS. In the UK, there has been an almost 89% increase in Indian students attending postgraduate programs, with nearly 118,000 students only in 2023. This growth can be attributed to the internationalisation of higher education and the opportunities created by Brexit, which has made it easier for students worldwide to study in the UK. To cope with the competition by globalisation, UK higher education institutions devote substantial resources to training employees on communicating and interacting effectively with those from other cultures. Hence, student academic challenges, life experiences, racial discrimination, and difficulties in adopting an inclusive learning experience, and the services provided by academic tutors, administrators, and the International Student Office (ISO) have remained unexplored (Mok et al., 2021; Ammigan and Jones, 2018; Ahmad and Shah, 2018). Indeed, there is limited evaluation or regulation of existing policies in UK higher education institutions concerning staff engagement and appropriate training provisions for coping with this increasing international cohort of students. Similarly, while support and resources are provided to international students to facilitate their learning, important information on the challenges they experience during their academic journey is lacking.