Gender equality remains an important concept for thinking about the place of women in historically exclusive spaces. This chapter focuses on how an uncritical use of the term equality dissuades us from a more critical engagement with the hidden yet visible reasons why women remain marginalized in societal institutions. Over 30 years after democracy we still have not reached similar numbers of Black women leading the higher education sector in South Africa. To engage critically with the idea of gender equality this chapter looks at women in the South African academy with a focus on why they remain invisible in leadership and other important spaces in the university over 30 years after democracy. To do this the chapter unpacks how Black women are marginalized via three narratives, that they are not ready, they are incompetent, and they are seen as space invaders. The chapter also presents how similar arguments have been made of the experiences of women and Black women in American and European universities. In conclusion the chapter shows that to think about gender equality effectively we need to center Lugones idea of gender as raced and race as gendered.