When I was asked to do this paper, I thought that a possible way of approaching the subject might be to look at what had changed over the past ten years and what further changes are proposed and, by comparing our situation with that in other countries, to assess the potential effectiveness of the proposed measures as well as suggesting alternatives that might be more effective. What I found was a general perception that very little had improved in the situation of women in Irish Colleges and that in many respects, it has disimproved. The major change has, of course, been in the relative numbers of men and women students entering the system. (See attached Table.) There are now almost as many women students in the system as men and more women than men in the university sector. This last fact demonstrates that in spite of the thrust of recent policies aimed at breaking down gender-specific subject choices, these still remain, while even in those subject areas where women tend, traditionally, to be concentrated, there appears to be a reversal when it comes to numbers entering postgraduate study. A study in UCC shows some interesting trends. [1] For example, in 1989, 28 males and 35 females sat the final examinations for the BCL, and 23 males and 27 females were awarded a second class honours or higher, but 9 males and 6 females progressed to postgraduate study. 8 men and 13 women did the B.Mus. in the same year; one man progressed to further study. In that year, the ratio of male to female Electrical Engineering students was 13:1 and this constituted a disimprovement on the previous years ratio of 9:1. Of course, it is possible to read statistics as one wishes but it would seem that, in spite of the policies, significant changes have not yet taken place either in the choice of subject area or in the movement of women into postgraduate studies in proportion to their numbers in the subject.
With noticeable change in the numbers of women at college, one might have expected a corresponding increase in the ratios of female to male staff in the various colleges but there has not, of course, been anything like that. The percentages remain pretty nearly the same with women staff in all areas concentrated in the lower grades and in the part-time and temporary positions and, oddly, while there have been efforts to recruit more women staff into, in particular, Engineering Departments, the ratio of women to men in what are often regarded as 'women's subjects', languages and social sciences, has often disimproved. Most of the concentration in the past has been on academic staff issues and to some extent, on upper administrative and library staff but what we know about other grades of general staff would seem to indicate that the pattern here is the same. In advance of the work which is badly needed in this area, I am assuming that our situation is similar to that described in Australia where a recent report on all women staff in Colleges poses the question “How similar are academic and general staff?” and proposes this answer:
“The concentration on academic staff issues in the past has prevented our appreciation of the continuities in the operation of gender bias across the industry and the similarities in the situation of general staff. There are noteworthy differences in the way the two types of employment are organised and in the gender composition of the workforces. The issues of permanency and female participation rates are not as acute for most of the general workforce as they are for the academic workforce, but when those differences are taken into account, the similarities between general and academic staff are more striking than the differences. Both academic and general staff women are less likely to have secure employment than their male counterparts. More importantly, both academic and general staff women are clustered in lower levels of the occupational hierarchy. The difficulties women face in gaining career advancement, even into modest levels of seniority, were described in similar terms by managers of academic and operational departments. The same dynamics that affect academic women also affect women on the general staff. This makes gender equity in higher education employment an issue that requires a unified strategic approach by universities, not a piecemeal approach which sees the two groups as fundamentally different. [2]
Over the past ten years, most Colleges have become aware of issues of gender equality at some level. In many ways, there has been an enormous amount of activity in relation to this topic, both at international and local level. The Second Commission on the Status of Women spent a good deal of time on educational issues. [3] The White Paper on Education [4] clearly foregrounds the principle of equality and the recent Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education [5] also deals in a major way with issues of equality of access for all underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. The principle of gender equality no longer needs to be established. What is more at issue is why, with all the correct aspirations established for years, the situation remains as unchanged as it is. Part of the answer appears to be that the specific measures proposed are neither sufficient to the task or to the changing circumstances in which we now find ourselves.
The Second Commission recommends the adoption of the recommendations in the Report of the Committee on Women Academics. [6] However, a large number of Colleges have, in effect, already done this. Most Colleges have Equal Opportunities Committees and some have published or are in the process of devising Equal Opportunities policies. The Committees are differently constituted from College to College, sometimes including all women employees, sometimes only women academics or administrators. Most, however, have addressed themselves to issues of sexual harassment and to such essential issues as the provision of crËches and of maternity leave. Most colleges have implemented the idea of having at least one woman on interview boards. Nevertheless, many of these measures have not worked, and some have been positively counter-productive.
Our first strategy for change then must be to look at what has worked and what has not, and why UCG, for example, has an extremely active Equal Opportunities Committee which has produced one of the best documents on Sexual Harassment, but so far has not succeeded in securing a crËche. TCD has produced an excellent series of 'Recommendations to ensure Equality of Opportunity for Women Academics in College', [7] which would certainly meet the requirements outlined in the White Paper, but the rate of implementation has been minimal. A look at the Trinity experience is instructive and I shall use it as the basis of further comments on adequacy and implementation of provision. While it only covers women academics - and this was a source of distress to the group of women at whose instigation it was produced - it includes the main features that one would expect in an adequate equal opportunities policy. The recommendations cover General Ethos, Recruitment and Promotion, College Government, Employment Contracts, Maternity Leave and Childcare, Graduate Studies, Sexual Harassment and Alcohol Abuse. Some of these have been sufficiently dwelt on already and I shall refer to them only in passing.
Under the first head 'General Ethos' the TCD document recommends amending the statutes to express the commitment to equality of opportunity, the establishment of a permanent committee to monitor and report annually to Board, and the removal of sexist language in official documentation.
A recent report from New Zealand, where there is a statutory obligation on each tertiary institution to develop and publish annually an Equal Employment Opportunity programme and to ensure that it is complied with, comes to the conclusion that “EEO programmes have not changed the position of women to any great extent.” [8] One of the reasons cited for this is that there is “no mandatory requirement to include reference to EEO in the Charter of a tertiary institution.” [9] TCD proposes doing just this and there is an opportunity in terms of the forthcoming university legislation to make this mandatory for all institutions. However, if there was to be a gain in this compared to the New Zealand experience, it would be offset by the implementation history of the second proposal for the establishment of a committee to monitor and report. The TCD equality committee did not, to the best of my knowledge, report to the Board this year at all. If it did, its report would have been confidential and therefore could not have contributed to increasing awareness of equality issues in the College. Experience elsewhere has indicated that it is not sufficient to simply establish an Equal Opportunities Committee. It must be headed by a senior person with sufficient drive, commitment and power to make it effective and the issue of the nature of its monitoring is very important. Again the New Zealand report identifies the nature of monitoring as crucial and suggests that there should be a coherent and uniform system of reporting for all institutions and that this should be different to the “reporting requirements of the accountability regime” which “being output driven, are not relevant to the equal employment opportunity management function.” [10] The Australian National Tertiary Education Union, (which organises all types of staff in colleges) endorses this point when it says:
“After many years of each institution reporting as it saw fit, resulting in most of them changing their reporting format each year (which made it extremely hard to keep track of their progress or lack of it), the government's Affirmative Action Agency has now introduced a standard report form, which means that we now have available from each college and university, a report of their staffing profile, broken down by gender, classification, appointment type, etc. that is comparable from year to year and comparable between institutions. This means the universities cannot obscure or distort (much) their appalling track record.” [11]
The New Zealand report goes on to say, and here we must be mindful that we are shortly to acquire systems of external accountability, “the crux of the matter is that, while the focus of the legislation governing tertiary education institutions is on external accountability (both to central government agencies and to the community), the reporting regime precludes external accountability on equal employment opportunities to any meaningful extent” [12]. From this it follows that the HEEU and all other relevant organisations must lobby the minister to ensure that uniform EEO monitoring is written into forthcoming legislation. It also seems to follow logically that an ad hoc committee, no matter how committed, might not have the necessary expertise to collect and analyse the data and here, I suggest, is a crucial role for a properly trained Equality Officer in each institution.
The Australian experience, however, suggests that monitoring on its own will not effect any change.
“In Australia we have now had over a decade of compliance with the reporting requirements of Affirmative Action for Women legislation. Although the legislation has no penalty for non-compliance other than being named in Parliament (shock! horror!) there has been little difficulty in getting Higher Education Institutions to comply. The political and social opprobrium for failing to report is sufficient to convince even the most troglodyte Vice-Chancellors to play the game. But, unfortunately, the legislation is also very mild in what it requires the employers to do. Simply establishing a set of policies, appointing someone to administer them, and reporting to a government agency annually on staffing statistics is all that is required. There is no requirement for actually achieving the targets set in policy or being able to report real changes in the composition of staff. At a recent national conference, women from all walks of University life generally agreed that almost no practical gains had actually been made over the last decade.” [13]
It is to be noted here that the programme in Australia is one of Affirmative Action, rather than merely Equal Opportunities Policies as in New Zealand, but the feeling of no progress having been made is shared. I shall return to this point a little later.
Recruitment and promotion
The Trinity document lists 15 proposals which include having at least one woman on nominating committees, that short-listed candidates should give a research seminar, that heads of departments should be requested “actively to encourage suitable women academics to apply for vacancies, especially in departments where the representation of women is particularly low”, and that committees should establish appropriate evaluation criteria for promotions. [14]
The first of these is one that has proved to be in some ways counter-productive (though it is better than nothing) since it has led to the small number of women in the system being called upon too often, and to charges and feelings of tokenism. The number of women on a nominating committee has come to be regarded almost as maximum one, rather than minimum one. In relation to the second, it can be argued that asking candidates to give a research seminar unnecessarily limits the criteria for deciding on appointments, inhibits consideration of other qualifications such as teaching ability, and unfairly discriminates against women who more often than their male counterparts have had their research interrupted by family commitments. In addition to that, it seems inadequate only to encourage women to apply. A recent experience in my own department will usefully illustrate the point. Four appointments were made in the department, which has a far higher number of women than men students and in which the numbers of women staff employed have decreased noticeably over the past few years. Twelve people were short-listed, gave research seminars and were interviewed. Six of these were men, six women. It was the universal agreement of the assembled department on the basis of these presentations that five of the women were very highly qualified and eminently employable. Following the interviews, four men were appointed. It would appear, then, that the research presentations carried no weight compared to the interview. On enquiry, I was informed that the question of evening the gender balance in the department had been raised but was ruled out of order since Trinity, as an Equal Opportunities Employer, could not take gender into account. This seems to me to follow the letter but certainly not the spirit of the meaning of Equal Opportunities and the whole process raised doubts as to what precise selection criteria were in use. Any strategies for change will have to address the real meaning of Equal Opportunities as well as addressing appointments and promotions criteria. The White Paper, in similar vein to the TCD document, talks of encouraging women to apply for senior promotions but does not address the question of the criteria for promotion.
Limited Access has this to say about academic promotions:
“What emerges clearly through the interviews, however, often in asides and implications, is the crucial role of research in differentiating academic careers. Without vigorous research activity, an academic is doomed to languish in the lower echelons of the hierarchy. Research is clearly privileged over teaching. The implication of this for women, is that research is constructed as an activity with stereotypically masculine connotations. Women's lack of success (especially in moving into higher level positions) was linked to their role in teaching.” [15]
And in relation to general staff:
“The major problem for general staff women is that they are overwhelmingly clustered at the bottom....Despite years of service in the university, they are unable to move up from the bottom of the general staff hierarchy. Analysis of the payroll data showed that women's position here cannot be explained by their recent arrival in the labour force, their age or the fraction of time for which they are employed. The independent effect of gender is clearly demonstrated here. It certainly appears that the work these women do is not highly valued by the largely male managers.” [16]
or, as the Women's Officer put it “Our problem is not a glass ceiling - it is a sticky floor.” [17]
Clearly, what is needed to redress these problems are more than pious injunctions about encouraging women to apply for senior level jobs. What is required is a fundamental rethink of the criteria for promotion and extensive attitudinal and work place changes to allow for proper career structures for general staff.
The Australian study lists a number of advantages which are held to give men the edge and states that these are not connected to competence, ability or commitment but reflect entrenched social patterns. These advantages are career continuity, lack of family responsibility, personal styles, organisational culture and network connections. Given the rigidity of most College administrative and decision-making structures, it is unlikely that the institutions can, of themselves, bring about changes in these social patterns though the 'Ten Commandments' devised by Meredith Burgmann shows how some of them can be challenged on a personal basis. (Appendix 1) More fundamental changes which make colleges more user friendly for women will probably have to be forced by legislation and there will certainly be a conflict between institutional autonomy and equality of opportunity in this regard.
The New Zealand report makes much of this clear and also refers to the other important constraints on appointment and promotion:
“Main barriers to satisfactory implementation of EEO include: inadequate compliance provisions in the legislation; inadequate resourcing; constrained and finite university budgets; university autonomy creating barriers to review by the Education review office. The general climate of major change in the universities - increased competitiveness; increased casualisation; increased workloads and staff; student rations; devolved budgets; managerialism etc., - has also contributed to limited gains in the EEO area.” [18]
In Carleton University in Canada, the local Staff Association has attempted to redress many of these problems. Their solutions are summarised in Strategic Choices to Enhance Terms and Conditions of The Academy, [19] and include restrictions on the number and kind and consequences of casual appointments, recognising that these fall most heavily on women, a clause which says that where two candidates are relatively equal, the underrepresented gender will be hired, but most significant in their negotiations was that their first collective agreement provided 'a fund of $60,000 to correct female anomalies'. These were anomalies primarily in terms of grading. In the situation in Ireland where more and more appointments are being made on a contract basis, which rules out the possibility of promotion for many people, and where Colleges are being encouraged to shed expensive senior staff and cut back on promotions, it is not feasible to infringe the rights of male colleagues to promotion by insisting that women be promoted at their expense. There will not be equalisation of opportunity unless there is an anomaly fund such as that at Carleton. Such funding will have to come separately to normal college budgets and a good deal of the stated commitment to Equal Opportunities will be judged by the extent to which it is resourced. Some colleges in Australia have also developed particular initiatives to equalise promotion possibilities. These include the institution of women's research awards, of research fellowships for women with career interruptions, a time release programme for academic women which is funded by the National Staff Development fund, and for general staff the institution of merit based selection workshops, of staff development programmes and of affirmative action grants. Details of these can be found in By Steps and Degrees [20]which contains details of a number of institutional initiatives and best practices in this and other areas which have been found to work and which could feasibly be introduced in some of our institutions.
Trinity's recommendations call for the drawing up of a list of women academics willing to serve on committees and the monitoring of nominating procedures to committees. In the period since the document was drawn up, the whole procedure of nominating to committees has been changed with the idea of representative bodies providing nominations being dispensed with. A list of people willing to serve on committees was compiled. There is still a measure of dismay about who has been chosen and who not and it is notable that none of the women who were responsible for conducting the survey into the condition of women academics was selected for membership of the Equal Opportunities Committee. A colleague recently conducted a study of what bodies had in the past nominated women to committees. His findings were that all the women were nominated either by the non-fellow representative body or by the local branches of the unions. This experience would seem to suggest that the provisions in the White Paper in relation to statutory gender representation on Boards should be extended to the Third level sector where they have been inexplicably excluded.
This section of the Trinity Report deals primarily with part-time appointments. Since its writing, all Colleges have greatly increased the number of short-term contracts made and a disproportionate number of these are held by women. The policy of appointing on short-term contracts should be vigorously opposed except for certain restricted categories of staff, and every attempt made to ensure the application of EU regulations protecting people in such employment from the worst effects. In addition, work practices which diminish leaves of absence, job-sharing and career breaks should be opposed and the growing tendency towards very long working days (early starts and late finishes) should be opposed since it is arguable that these more adversely affect women with family commitments. Above all else, we need to collect proper information about the numbers and kinds of part-time and contract employment, and women should be encouraged to join Trade Unions. Many general staff, particularly in the secretarial grades are not unionised and are, consequently, less able to protect their terms and conditions of employment. It is also essential that, in those institutions, where women staff are fragmented by grade or occupation, the women themselves form a central committee where a unified position on common problems can be worked out.
TCD's proposals extend no further than recommending that opportunities for graduate studies and funding should be widely advertised and that 'unintentional sexism' should be avoided. Again this is inadequate. Strategies for change in this area should include at a minimum the collection of factual data on the situation including a study of why women do not proceed to graduate work in proportion to their numbers and their success rate in the various disciplines and the provision of special financial assistance and child care facilities.
There are other issues related to pensions and superannuation, campus safety and women's health which urgently need to be addressed for all women employed in higher education institutions.
In the course of this analysis, I have suggested many ways in which even the best of the existing equal opportunities policies is inadequate in practice. The question remains as to whether there is anything better and, in particular, if much more positive or affirmative action is needed.
There are, I suppose, two things to be considered here. The first is the 'Time Heals All' syndrome, that is, the belief that, even without intervention, the situation will improve with the passage of time. Perhaps, but there remains the fact that changing employment policies are worsening the situation at the moment and new policies of accountability have the potential to disimprove it even more. Additionally, the situation of the absence of role models for the increasing numbers of women students becomes more acute each year and, finally, there is just the sheer frustration of always having to wait for some bright new dawn, a frustration clearly expressed in a letter to me from Linda Gale, Women's Officer of the NTEU, who said “The Union is sick of waiting for good intentions and nice policies to change the world.” [21]
I think a lot of women would echo that and would look for something more than good intentions and nice policies. But there is considerable opposition to the idea of positive action policies. Opposition ranging from the notion that women don't want to be appointed or promoted just because they are women, to the idea that, because some women have made it in the system, everyone ought to be able to, to the idea that Colleges will get around legal provisions in one way or another, and so on. These arguments can probably only be countered by factual data and not just general impressions since it seems clear from experience here and elsewhere that Equal Opportunity Policies will be insufficient to effect real change in the short or even the long term.
I propose that we adopt the strategy, for the long term, of preparing a new study, on the lines of Limited Access, covering all aspects of women's employment in third level institutions and including something like the kind of questionnaire/interview which is attached as an Appendix to that report. This report must be funded by the HEA. On the basis of this study, I propose the drafting, and carrying into legislation, with real penalties for non-compliance (such as the reduction in institutional funding) of a positive action programme with stated targets and with attached funding (which can be termed anomaly adjustment payments or compensation if that serves to make it more acceptable).
A part of that policy should be the necessity for gender-proofing the recommendations and enactments of the HEA itself. Recent directives on third-level funding have led to such practices as 'downsizing, delayering and outsourcing', all of which impact more adversely on women than on their male counterparts. The HEEU will have to add to its functions the role of lobbying on the drafting of bills and of monitoring the HEA itself. Clearly, this will necessitate additional staffing and funding. All this will obviously take some time but there is no time to waste if the forthcoming legislation on universities is to be influenced. Representations in relation to that, which have to accommodate the strictures of existing legislation, should include the writing of Equal Opportunities policies into Statutes, provision for uniform and consistent monitoring along with penalties for non-compliance and statutory requirements in relation to female representation on boards and committees. In the medium term, and because the long-term strategy may not succeed, I have suggested a number of ways in which existing practice could be improved and initiatives similar to some of those listed in By Steps and Degrees could be attempted.
A lot of this depends on individuals being prepared to persist, against the odds, and sometimes at the expense of their own careers, but the evidence seems to be that this kind of persistence, though painful, is both essential and effective. Many people trying to explain to others the strange ethos of third level educational institutions, (institutions which are often held by outsiders to be places in which reason holds sway, but which we, the inmates, know to be dominated more by fixed attitudes and unquestioned traditions), have resorted to Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass in an attempt to convey the logical illogicality of the world we inhabit and I shall do so too. Let's forget glass ceilings and sticky floors as metaphors and imagine running a race in which one makes, as in a dream, no progress:
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast as that”.(Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland).
We have been running in the same place for too long. Now it is time to run twice as fast.
Report on Unequal Distribution of Men and Women by Discipline/Area of Work and by Grade; Committee for Equality of Opportunity for Men and Women in UCC; 1990.
Recommendations to Ensure Equality of Opportunity for Women Academics in College, TCD; 1989.
Finn, P.A., (CUASA), Strategic Choices to Enhance Terms and Conditions of the Academy; Carleton University; 1993.
Rouse, Jenny, Monitoring Equal Employment Opportunities: An Analysis of Tertiary Institutions; Charters and Statement of Objectives for the Triennium; 1993 - 1995, EEO Unit, Ministry of Education; New Zealand; 1993.
Castleman, T., M. Allen, W. Bastalich, P. Wright, Limited Access: Women's Disadvantage in Higher Education Employment; National Tertiary Education Union; Melbourne: 1995.
By Steps and Degrees: Affirmative Action Initiatives from Higher Education Institutions; Affirmative Action Agency; Canberra; 1992.
[1] Report on Unequal Distribution of Men and Women by Discipline/Area of Work and by Grade; Equality Committee; UCC; 1990.Return to Main Text
[2] T. Castleman, M. Allen, W. Bastalich, P. Wright, Limited Access: Women's Disadvantage in Higher Education Employment; National Tertiary Education Union; Melbourne; 1995. pp. 118-119.Return to Main Text
[3] Second Commission on the Status of Women, Report to Government; Government Stationery Office; Dublin; January 1993.Return to Main Text
[4] Charting our Education Future, White Paper on Education; Government Stationery Office; Dublin; 1995.Return to Main Text
[5] Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education; Higher Education Authority; Dublin; June 1995.Return to Main Text
[6] Women Academics in Ireland; Higher Education Authority; Dublin; 1987.Return to Main Text
[7] Recommendations to Ensure Equality of Opportunity for Women Academics in College; Trinity College; Dublin; 1989.Return to Main Text
[8] Letter from Margaret Ledgerton, Research Officer, The Association of University Staff of New Zealand, to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text
[9] Jenny Rouse, Monitoring Equal Opportunities : An Analysis of Tertiary Institutions' Charters and Statements of Objectives for the Triennium 1993-1995; Report compiled by Jenny Rouse for the EEO Unit (Education Service); New Zealand Ministry of Education; November 1993. p. 8.Return to Main Text
[10] Ibid. p. 4.Return to Main Text
[11] Letter from Linda Gale, Women's Officer, National Tertiary Education Union, Australia, to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text
[12] Jenny Rouse, op. cit. p. 4.Return to Main Text
[13] Letter, Linda Gale to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text
[14] Recommendations to Ensure Equality of Opportunity for Women Academics in College; op. cit.Return to Main Text
[15] T. Castleman et al, op. cit. pp. 92-93.Return to Main Text
[16] Ibid. p. 116.Return to Main Text
[17] Letter, Linda Gale to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text
[18] Letter, Margaret Ledgerton to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text
[19] PA. Finn, (CUASA), Strategic Choices to Enhance Terms and Conditions of the Academy; Carleton University; 1993.Return to Main Text
[20] By Steps and Degrees: Affirmative Action Initiatives from Higher Education Institutions; Affirmative Action Agency; Canberra; 1992.Return to Main Text
[21] Letter, Linda Gale to Anne Clune, 6 September 1995.Return to Main Text