I am sure that some of you are very familiar with the Regional Technical College (RTC) sector, but that others know little about it. In this paper I will try to give a broad picture of this sector and of the women who work in it. 1
My methodology was as follows: I formulated a questionnaire concerning grades and working areas of staff, and I sent this to all the colleges. I received replies from only some of the colleges, and have used this information as best I could. I have tried to supplement the information gathered from the questionnaires with what I could find from reading the various college handbooks. The Department of Education was able to give me a breakdown of roughly 25% women and 75% men in academic posts in the RTCs in 1995. The person I dealt with in the Department was helpful and interested, but simply did not have more detailed information on the matter. He could give me no information on gender structure outside the academic area, but I understand that the Department intends to collate information on gender distribution in the future.
The result is necessarily an incomplete picture. I must emphasise at this point that my tables of figures, as well as being incomplete, may contain inaccuracies for several reasons. I am not a statistician or a data analyst, and may have made mistakes, perhaps by not asking the right questions, or by erroneously taking the structure of other colleges to be similar to my own. Also, where I have used supplementary information, such as college handbooks, the information could be a year older.
The RTCs were, for the most part, established in the early 1970s. They were to provide further education for young people in their own geographical region, and the emphasis was on a practical, rather than an academic approach to subject areas. The colleges trained people in the trades, trained them to be Mechanics, Technicians and Typists. This emphasis on technical and practical subjects meant a bias towards those skills which have traditionally been perceived as `male'.
Both the regional and the technical emphases of the colleges have changed. The CAO/CAS system means that students travel all over the country to attend courses, and one by one the colleges are introducing degree programmes, with a more academic approach. The system of training trade apprentices in the RTCs is being trimmed down. These changes may bring about a change in the perception of RTCs as `male institutions'.
The RTCs are thus in a state of flux. I am taking a contemporary view here, but there is no doubt that a historical overview would be interesting, and, from an equality perspective, perhaps encouraging. The Department of Education was able to tell me that in 1994, the ratio of women to men in teaching posts was more like 20 : 80 in comparison with 25 : 75 in 1995.
Until a few years ago, the RTCs were under the authority of the VECs. The 1992 RTC Act changed this, making each college an autonomous body, and establishing structures for the running of these bodies. Some new structures are outlined in the Act itself, others were agreed subsequently.
Each college is run by a Governing Body and a Director. The Governing Body is appointed by the Minister. I have not analysed the make-up of Governing Bodies, because the members are not college staff, although they include staff representation. The present Minister has made efforts to achieve a gender balance on the Governing Bodies. The chairperson of Limerick RTC is a woman. All the other chairpersons, to the best of my knowledge, are men.
Each college has a Director, Heads of Schools, a Registrar and a Secretary/Financial Controller. Some colleges also have an Assistant Principal or Vice-Director. A look at the salary scales helps us to appreciate the hierarchy here. (Table 1)
Table 2 shows the gender distribution of staff in the RTCs. A glance at the table shows a dearth of women in the upper part of the table and a healthy scattering in the lower part.
As you can see, there are no women Directors, Assistant Directors, Heads of School or Registrars.
When the Colleges Bill came into force, the Principal of each college became Director. Since the Principals were all men, naturally the Directors are all men.
This is not true of many of the other posts in the table, which were created to run the newly autonomous colleges. These include the positions of the Registrar, Secretary/Financial Controller and Head of Development (this post does not exist in every college), as well as other posts which appear below. By and large the position of Registrar was filled from within the colleges, and the position of Secretary/Financial Controller from outside, but there are exceptions to both of these generalisations.
There were no precedents here - these were new posts, but throughout the colleges, only two of these senior posts are held by women, in both cases, the position of Secretary/Financial Controller.
Each college is divided into schools (usually 3 or 4), with a Head of School, normally at Senior Lecturer 2 grade, in charge (some colleges use a slightly different terminology, but I have had to ignore such distinctions for the purpose of my tables). Without exception, these posts are held by men. (Table 2) In many cases, the posts have been occupied by men for a considerable number of years. Naturally, there is not much movement out of such posts. The overall age profile of the RTCs is very different from that of most universities. Since nearly all the colleges date from the early 70s, retirement is not a common phenomenon so far. The point I wish to make here is that such posts have traditionally been held by men, and there is little opportunity for change, since few vacancies arise.
Librarian in Table 2 refers to the most senior person in the library, whether that person has been upgraded at this date or not. The colleges always had librarians, but recent restructuring has altered the grades in this area.
The office of the Industrial Liaison Officer existed in the colleges before the restructuring, but in some cases the functions of the Industrial Liaison Officer are now covered by the Head of Development. I am not aware of any woman Industrial Liaison Officer or Head of Development in the colleges.
The other posts listed in Table 2 - Buildings Officer, Administrative Officer, Finance Officer, Personnel Officer and Student Services Officer- are for the most part new appointments; again, some are internal appointments, some are not. Some of these posts are still vacant in some of the colleges - usually an indication that the college has failed to fill them internally. They are not necessarily all at the same grade, and the titles may differ slightly from college to college.
As you can see, there is a good sprinkling of women in the lower part of the table. Looking at the posts from Buildings Officer down to Student Services Officer, and looking only at the information I have, we see 19 women and 33 men. We see that one Buildings Officer is a woman, compared to 5 men, that 6 Librarians are women, compared to 5 men.
The question of perception as opposed to statistics, is an interesting one, and here it is curious that several members of college library staff remarked to me, when I started looking for this information, that the figures for Librarians would come down heavily on the side of women. We can see that this is not so. This perception exists perhaps for two reasons:
1. That there is an expectation that the Librarians will be men, and therefore, each time we hear of a woman, we register it with a sort of double weighting.
2. That many of the other, less senior library staff are women.
Tables 3, 4 and 5 show the distribution of staff within the various schools.
Within the schools, there are departments, each with a Head, who will normally be at Senior Lecturer 1 grade, though some may be `Structured Lecturer 2'. In my analysis of the figures in the colleges, I may not always have placed the department heads in the appropriate school - this reflects an inadequacy in the format of my questionnaire, rather than in the quality of the answers received.
Under Head of Department, little scrutiny is needed. In the colleges dealt with here, there are two women holding Head of Department posts. I know that there is a woman Head of Section in at least one college.
In each school, the lecturing and teaching staff are in the categories of Lecturer 2, Lecturer 1 Permanent Whole-time, Lecturer 1 Temporary Whole-time, College Teacher, Eligible Part-time and Part-time. Many colleges have very few College Teachers, so I have only included these where the numbers were significant. I know that in certain areas of some colleges, many staff are in this bracket, but I do not have figures.
Lecturer 2 and Lecturer 1 are teaching grades whose contracts are identical. Only the salary scales are different. As part of a restructuring package in 1982, each college was allocated a number of Lecturer 2 posts, which Lecturer 1s were entitled to compete for. Lecturer 1s who were unsuccessful in this competition but who were at the top of the Lecturer 1 scale at that time, had a chance to put a personal case and perhaps get an Lecturer 2 position. Since then, further Lecturer 2s have occasionally been allocated to colleges. No clear criteria emerge to explain how Lecturer 2 posts have been awarded, but all serving permanent Lecturer 1s are entitled to apply for any Lecturer 2 post which arises. Tables 6-10 show the relevant figures.
The figures for Lecturer 2 and Lecturer 1 posts require a lot of study and I greatly regret that my information here is incomplete. These figures can only be gathered from official sources, so where I received no official reply from a college, I simply have blanks. Teaching Lecturer 2s, Lecturer 1s and Eligible Part-times may do exactly the same work, though under rather different conditions - the differences between Lecturer 2 and Lecturer 1 you can see from the salary scales. Between these grades and Eligible Part-time, there are differences of incremental recognition and of security.
We need to look at the number of women Lecturer 2s in relation to total Lecturer 2s and compare this to the relationship between the number of women in the entire Lecturer 2- Lecturer 1 area and the total numbers in the Lecturer 2- Lecturer 1 area. We can do this college by college or school by school. (Tables 6 and 7) I have details here for colleges. There may be some inaccuracies, and, of course, 5 colleges are missing. The figures here have to be taken on their merit, and cannot really be seen as representing the colleges as a whole.
The extent to which women are under-represented at Lecturer 2 level in proportion to their numbers is expressed (Tables 8, 9 and 10) by the discrepancy between the percentage figures in the tables. The first percentage figure shows the extent to which women are represented at the higher grade (Lecturer 2). The other percentage figure shows the proportion of women in the total pool of those who are or could be Lecturer 2s (i.e. Lecturer 2s and Lecturer 1s combined). If women and men are treated equally in the system, there is no reason why these two percentage figures should not be roughly equal. These tables of figures do not even approach the broader question of why there is such a low proportion of women in the system.
Several more points need to be made here.
First, I will repeat that the Lecturer 2 and Lecturer 1 contracts are identical. The successful candidate for a teaching Lecturer 2 post does not take on additional duties or responsibilities (this may be different in colleges such as Tallaght, which has recruited at Lecturer 2 level). There are no prerequisites in terms of qualifications. However, we can see that the figures indicate a fairly consistent under-representation of women at this grade. Where we see a figure close to 25% on any of these tables, there is an interesting implication: we have seen that in more senior academic posts, women are under-represented, or not represented at all. If women are approximately 25% at some of these middle grades, it can only mean that women are over-represented at the lower grades (cf. Department of Education figures).
In defence of the colleges and what claims they may have to exercising an equal opportunities policy, I must make the following point: many Lecturer 2s were allocated in 1982. The proportion of women to men in the system was probably not as great then as it is now. Furthermore, if the posts were allocated at the time on the basis of length of service, men would probably have had the advantage there. However, my task is not to defend the colleges, but to present the facts available to me as best I can, so I must add that the posts were certainly not consistently allocated on the basis of length of service. A source in one college told me that of the very small number of women Lecturer 2s in the college, up to 75% of them might have been awarded on a personal case basis (i.e. because they were at the top of the Lecturer 1 scale), rather than through open competition - in other words, the arm of the establishment had to be twisted.
The numbers here are so small and I have so little data that not much analysis is possible. Certainly, we can see that in these areas, which are either lower-paid or less secure, the numbers of women approach, and in some cases, exceed those of men, which they never do at the higher levels. When we take this in the context of the Department of Education's figure of 25% women, 75% men, in the teaching area, these figures take on a new significance. In one college I consulted, women represent roughly 63% of the College Teacher staff, and in another, roughly 50% of the College Teachers are women.
Another point I attempted to analyse was membership of the academic council, but I did not succeed in getting a lot of information. These councils came into being as a result of the 1992 Act and consist of ex officio and elected members. In my own college, women represent roughly 15% of the elected representatives of the teaching/lecturing staff on the academic council. Individuals who were interested had to nominate themselves - I am sure that different colleges used different mechanisms - but there certainly were not many unsuccessful women nominees. In other words, not very many women declared an interest. I do not have enough details to present an analysis here, but several other colleges tell a similar story - a low proportion of women have shown an interest in membership of the Academic Council.
The administrative area needs a detailed analysis, which I am afraid I have not been able to give it. I did include this area in the questionnaire, but it was only through discussing the matter with the people involved that I came to appreciate that the crucial issue is the grade and numbers of women and men at each grade. I did not ask the questions in such a form as to elicit the correct information. However, I will tell you what I have managed to find out.
My information on college libraries is that women greatly outnumber men if one counts all the full-time staff, and they outnumber them even more dramatically if one includes the part-time staff. There are approximately 66 full-time library staff members in the colleges, of whom approximately 10 are male. Of these 10 men, 5 are in the senior library post.
As a result of the RTC Act, the administration of colleges has been restructured. In some colleges the matter of gender was scarcely an issue for the restructuring, as the administrative staff are almost entirely female. Yet we have seen, among the better paid administrative officers in Table 2, there are 19 women and 33 men. Many of the female administrative staff are working under these officers.
All of the secretarial staff, to the best of my knowledge, are women. These include the school secretaries - in each case a woman working under a male Head of School, and secretaries to other senior staff members - again we see the stereotype of male boss, female subordinate.
In some cases, the men in the administrative area have emerged from the restructuring process, as distinct from the filling of new posts, with the most senior posts. This has been explained by the fact that the men in question had degrees, while the women in competition with them did not. However, a degree was not a prerequisite for any of these posts, and years of service or knowledge of the institution did not seem to carry weight against a degree.
I came up against the idea again and again that women simply do not compete for things - that women are not interested in the job of Head of School or Head of Department, that women do not want to be on the Academic Council or to be Chair of their Union Branch.
We have heard all the reasons before - childminding arrangements, the feeling that, in spite of everything, the brunt of child and home-care duties falls to the women, and the feeling many women have that they are simply `not able for' these posts.
The job of lecturer in a third level college is probably unique in many respects - it is a reasonably well-paid job which allows you to structure your own time outside of timetabled hours. To take on duties with the Governing Body , the Academic Council or the Union is extra, unpaid work which takes away from other disposable time. To take on the duties of a Head of School or Head of Department would mean an increase in salary, but in many cases, the salary of a woman Lecturer 1 and Lecturer 2 is one of two coming into the household, and it is quite likely that the woman will value her free time too much to be prepared to trade it in for an increase in salary with increased duties. The fact that the same woman who uses the phrase 'free time' has just told you that she finds herself doing the lion's share of the childcare and housework raises many more questions. A woman whose salary is the only one in the household, with children to raise, is even less likely to take on a more onerous job. She needs that `free time' more than anyone.
In the administrative area, the picture is different. The job is more-or-less 9 to 5, so naturally you would rather do it on a grade 7 salary than a grade 2. Your free time is not going to suffer, although your job will carry more responsibility.
Here, the same phenomenon as above can apply in a different way.
There is a perception that having a degree or other further qualification is a help towards promotion, but for many women, the idea of committing themselves to a degree programme while they are working and managing a home, is just too difficult. For the men it is also horrendously difficult, but some of them manage to do it. I spoke to some women who realised, looking back, that they had been doing various short courses over a period of 4 or 5 years, but felt they could not commit themselves to a degree programme. They realised that if they had started a degree 4 or 5 years ago, they would be finished it now - they would have had it on their CV when this round of promotions came up.
Is the secret ingredient here ambition? When we say 'X is very ambitious,' is this a compliment or a criticism? The answer to this question sometimes depends on whether X is a woman or a man. I was told of one woman in a college who is pursuing a difficult course of study while working, and the comment was added: 'but then, she's very determined.' Would this remark have been made, if she were a man? Was there an implied criticism?
Another woman doing a difficult job in one of the colleges explained how she managed it. She said, 'I'm not a sensitive person.' Coming from herself, it was an interesting statement, but if someone else had said it about her, I would probably have felt the need to defend her. After all, we are supposed to be sensitive.
One woman said she felt gender was not as big an issue in recruitment to the colleges as 'who you know'. Another felt that the divide between lecturing and non-lecturing staff was a greater equality problem than the gender issue. I spoke to many women who felt that gender equity is less pressing than the many other inadequacies and shortfalls, both financial and organisational, that they perceived in the system.
I report these things as hearsay, as what people have said to me, as perceptions, rather than as facts. People's perceptions can be as important as what we call facts.
Finally, I must mention the people I did not speak to, and who by definition are not in the RTC sector and therefore fall outside the scope of this paper - all the women who have applied unsuccessfully for jobs in the RTCs, and all the women who have struggled painfully through many years as part-time, eligible part-time or temporary whole-time staff always hoping for a permanent post, only to leave in the end to take up more secure but possibly less well-paid work elsewhere, or only to find one September that their services are no longer required - all the women who have never managed to get enough education or qualification to enable them to apply for a job in an RTC or anything of the sort - all these women who contribute to that Department of Education statistic of 25% women, 75% men in lecturing posts in the RTCs.
1 I would like to thank all those who helped me to put this information together, particularly those in my own and other colleges and in the Department of Education who took the time to speak to me and to help me to fill out the picture behind the statistics. Back to Main Text