HEA briefing on improving gender-equality amongst academic staff in higher
education institutions
While female students out-perform male students in higher education, there remains
gender inequality in the academic profession, especially at senior levels.1 The European
Commission’s 2012 report, Gender in Research and Innovation, showed that, across the EU
Member States, women represented only 20% of professorial staff;2 and, while a 2013
survey of the professoriate in the U.K. revealed that 45% of non-professorial academics are
female, it likewise found that only 1 in 5 professors are women, with a number of
universities falling well short of this low benchmark.3 Similarly in Ireland, while women
represent 43% of academic staff in the universities and institutes of technology, only 21% of
professors and associate professors in Irish universities are female,4 and the national
average is around 19%.5 This gender equality amongst academics in the Irish context was
highlighted in the recent book of Pat O’Connor, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at
the University of Limerick, Management and Gender in Higher Education (2014), in which
she analyses ‘the gendered world of senior management in universities’ and ‘the processes
through which institutions of higher education reproduce themselves in gendered terms, in
a societal context increasingly dominated by neo-liberal processes’.6 Professor O’Connor
reports that, while in wider Irish society ‘half of the professionals and one third of the
managers overall are now women’, ‘just under one fifth of those in senior management
positions in Irish public universities are women’, and that ‘in Ireland no public university has
ever had a woman president’.7 More broadly, this gender-inequality is reflected in purely
economic terms in the differences in earnings between men and women across the world:
in 2011, the average annual earnings of women aged 25–64 with tertiary education within
the OECD were 67% of those of men—and in Ireland they were 71% of those of men.8 This is
clearly a matter for concern: as the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama,
remarked in a speech of 26th September 2011:
If we’re going to out-innovate and out-educate the rest of the world, we’ve got to
open doors for everyone. We need all hands on deck, and that means clearing
1
An analysis of 2004 data showed that, in Ireland at undergraduate level, females out-perform males in terms
of the proportion of graduates who achieve a 2:1 or First Class Honours degree, and that they perform on a par
with males at postgraduate level. See Muiris O’Connor, Sé Sí: Gender in Irish Education (Dublin: DES, 2007),
129–130. Females also represent a higher proportion of graduates: in 2010 58% of honours degrees obtained
through full-time study in Irish universities were awarded to women. (Data source: HEA statistics.)
2
European Commission, She Figures 2012: Gender in Research and Innovation (Luxembourg: European Union,
2013), http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/she-figures-2012_en.pdf.
3
See Jack Grove, ‘Gender Survey of UK Professoriate, 2013’, Times Higher Education, 13th June 2013,
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/gender-survey-of-uk-professoriate-2013/2004766.article.
4
Source: HEA Systems Funding Unit. This figure is extracted from December 2013 data.
5
John Holden, ‘The Everyday Reality of Gender Imbalance at Professor Level at Third-Level’, The Irish Times,
18th March 2014, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-everyday-reality-of-gender-imbalance-atprofessor-level-at-third-level-1.1725396.
6
See Pat O’Connor, Management and Gender in Higher Education (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2014), 26.
7
O’Connor, Management and Gender in Higher Education, 149, 25.
8
OECD, Education at a Glance 2014 (Paris: OECD, 2014), Table A6.3b, 145.
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hurdles for women and girls as they navigate careers in science, technology,
engineering, and math.9
Nevertheless while, historically, Ireland has been ‘behind the curve’ relative to other
western countries in advancing gender-inequality (retaining a marriage bar on employment
for women up until 1973, and legalising divorce as late as 1996), significant progress has
nonetheless been made in recent years. In the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index
2014, Ireland was ranked 8th, above the U.S., which was ranked 20th, and above the U.K.,
which was ranked 26th.10 Furthermore, in the sphere of higher education, gender equality is
well-established in Irish legislation. One of the key functions of the Higher Education
Authority (HEA), as stipulated in the Higher Education Authority Act of 1971, is ‘promoting
the attainment of equality of opportunity in higher education’; and the performance of this
function has in recent decades been greatly facilitated by the passing of the Universities Act
of 1997 and the Institutes of Technology Act of 2006. These acts require our higher
education institutions to promote gender-balance and equality of opportunity among
students and staff, and to prepare and implement statements of policy in respect of
equality, including gender equality, across all of their activities—policies which the HEA is
charged with reviewing. In addition, the Irish Research Council’s Gender Strategy & Action
Plan 2013–2020: Ensuring Excellence and Maximising Creativity and Innovation in Irish
Research aims to ensure gender-equality in the research arena.11
Significant headway is now being made to build on this strong foundation for genderequality across the higher education sector. In recent years there have been a host of
initiatives to address the under-representation of women in science—a matter of growing
concern amongst policy-makers internationally in recent years. In the U.S.A., this is being
addressed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in collaboration with the White
House Council on Women and Girls through the multilateral ‘Equal Futures Partnership’, a
key priority area of which is ‘Opening Doors to Quality Education and High-Paying Career
Opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math’.12 Within Europe, the
European Commission (a member of the ‘Equal Futures Partnership’) has funded a plethora
of initiatives to promote gender-equality in STEM, and, in line with the European
Commission’s Strategy for Equality between Women and Men 2010–2015, the promotion of
gender equality is also enshrined in Horizon 2020.13
Within Ireland, Trinity College Dublin’s Centre for Women in Science and Engineering
Research (WiSER), established in 2006, is making an important contribution to addressing
the gender imbalance in STEM disciplines, promoting practices to recruit, retain, and
advance women in academic science, engineering, and technology.14 Similarly, the European
Commission-funded ‘Towards Women in Science and Technology’ (TWIST) project and the
FP7-funded Institutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality in Research (INTEGER)
project, in both of which WiSER is a partner, aim to promote gender-equality in STEM
9
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/women.
10
See http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/rankings//
See http://research.ie/sites/default/files/irish_research_council_gender_action_plan_2013_-2020.pdf.
12
See http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/23/fact-sheet-equal-futures-partnership-expandwomen-s-political-and-econom.
13
See https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/FactSheet_Gender_2.pdf.
14
See http://www.tcd.ie/wiser/.
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disciplines.15 In the U.K., the Institute of Physics ‘Project Juno’ aims to recognise and reward
departments that can demonstrate they have taken affirmative action to address the underrepresentation of women in university physics.16 Similarly, the U.K.’s Athena SWAN initiative
has, since 2006, conferred awards on U.K. universities to certify institutional commitment to
addressing gender-inequalities in science, technology, engineering, medicine and
mathematics.17
While these initiatives have been focused on science, they are providing a catalyst for
affirmative action in respect of gender-equality at institutional level. For example, to be
recognised as a ‘Juno Champion’ through ‘Project Juno’, an institution must demonstrate
that it has in place organisational structures, and appointment and selection procedures,
that support gender-equality.18 Likewise, the Athena SWAN Charter aims to effect cultural
and systemic change in participating higher education institutions to support genderequality, and the Athena SWAN awards recognise institutions that succeed in so doing by,
for example, increasing the proportion of female employees, improving the representation
of women on committees, improving the career-paths of early-stage academics, and
improving practices to support women’s career progression and networking across
institutions.
In response to strong interest from the Irish higher education community, the Athena SWAN
Charter is now being rolled out within Ireland as an HEA-funded shared-service for the
sector, which is initially being provided on a 3-year pilot-basis. With TCD serving as the
custodian of the initiative for the sector, the Athena SWAN Charter will be formally
launched in Ireland in February 2015, and promises to have a very positive impact on
gender-equality across Irish higher education, enabling the recognition of higher education
institutions such as the University of Limerick, which boasts the highest rate of female
professorial staff (39%) in Ireland.19 That the Irish higher education community itself called
for the extension of the Athena SWAN Charter to Ireland demonstrates the commitment to
the advancement of gender-equality by Irish higher education institutions and promises to
maximise the performance of the sector within the global higher education landscape in the
years ahead.
The Women for Election’s INFORM programme to engage young women within universities
and colleges and to develop their leadership skills, is also making an important contribution
to addressing gender-inequality amongst future generations of academics. Aiming to raise
awareness amongst female students about opportunities for young women to participate in
decision-making at university; to create an environment that encourages and supports
young women to contest leadership positions; and to develop young women’s leadership
potential, the INFORM programme trained 140 young women for student leadership roles in
UCD and St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra in 2013/14, leading to a 55% increase in the
15
See http://www.the-twist-project.eu/en/.
See http://www.iop.org/policy/diversity/initiatives/juno/.
17
See http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charter-marks/athena-swan/.
18
See http://www.iop.org/policy/diversity/initiatives/juno/principles/page_42621.html.
19
See John Holden, ‘The Everyday Reality of Gender Imbalance at Professor Level at Third-Level’, The Irish
Times, 18th March 2014, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-everyday-reality-of-genderimbalance-at-professor-level-at-third-level-1.1725396.
16
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number of women contesting student union sabbatical positions in UCD, and a 66% in St.
Patrick’s College Drumcondra.20
As Professor Kathleen Lynch has argued, it would seem that part of the reason that women
fail to obtain their fair share of professorial positions in higher education is the
incompatibility between the 24/7 demands of twenty-first-century academia and the
fulfilment of the caring responsibilities (in respect of children or elderly relatives) that
invariably fall to women.21 In particular, the focus on research performance as the primary
criterion for promotion to professorial grades seems to militate against women’s
advancement: the 2013 survey of the U.K. professoriate revealed that only 6 out of the 24
research-intensive universities which comprise the Russell Group had higher than (the
modest) average of female representation among professors (the average being around
20%): at Imperial College London the proportion was 14.1%, and at the University of
Cambridge it was 15.6%.22
However a consensus is emerging across the international higher education community that
the criteria for academic promotion should be broadened to reflect the importance of all
aspects of the mission of higher education. In their recent report on improving the quality of
teaching and learning, the European Commission’s High Level Group on the Modernisation
of Higher Education called for promotion criteria ‘to take account of an assessment of
teaching performance alongside other factors’23—and within Ireland, the National Forum
for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning is playing a leading role in raising the profile
of teaching in Irish higher education. Following international exemplar, one of the criteria
for designation as a technological university in Ireland is that the institution will have in
place recruitment, management, and promotion procedures that give weight to professional
practice and institutional engagement activities, and provide staff with a balance between
teaching, research, engagement activities and academic administration that is appropriate
to their subject-area and their academic experience.24
More broadly, valuing the rich diversity of higher education institutions, with their distinct
strengths, will underpin a shift away from an exclusive focus on research-performance as
the sole criterion for advancement. Ireland’s National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030
emphasises the equal importance of the three core roles of higher education institutions—
teaching and learning, research, and engagement with wider society; and the on-going
structural reform of the Irish higher education system is supporting the development of a
coherent system of diverse institutions with distinct missions. The multi-dimensional
profiles of higher education institutions which the HEA now publishes annually provide the
evidence-base to support this reconfiguration, showcasing the individual strengths of
institutions and supporting them to carve for themselves a niche in the national and
20
See http://www.womenforelection.ie/our-programmes/third-level-program/.
See Kathleen Lynch, Bernie Grummell, and Dympna Devine, New Managerialism in Education:
Commercialisation, Carelessness and Gender (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
22
See Grove, ‘Gender Survey of UK Professoriate, 2013’.
23
High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education, Report to the European Commission on
Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning in Europe’s Higher Education Institutions (Luxembourg:
European Union, 2013), 33.
24
HEA, ‘Towards a Future Higher Education Landscape’, 13th February 2012, 15, http://9thlevel.ie/wpcontent/uploads/TowardsaFutureHigherEducationLandscape.pdf.
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international higher education landscape. These profiles provide the framework for the
enhancement of data-collection by the HEA across all areas of the mission of higher
education, and they will be complemented by the development of a database of staff
employed in the sector, empowering us to ensure that gender-equality at all levels within
the academic profession in Ireland becomes a reality.
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