Since the early 1980s women staff in Irish colleges have been the subject of increasing attention. Various studies and conferences have highlighted the unequal and segregated position of women working in the colleges.
Ailbhe Smyth's 1984 study, Breaking the Circle, indicated that there was 'cause for grave concern, even alarm, about the extent to which women teachers and researchers are discriminated against in and by the third-level system of education.' 1 The study concluded that women staff were 'beyond all shadow of doubt, the victims of a complex system of indirect discrimination, which the system itself or, more precisely, those who control it, have taken no steps to combat, if they are even aware of it. The third-level education system through its governing, teaching and servicing structures, reproduces the traditional segregation of tasks and roles in the wider society; and thus reinforces in both women and men, staff and students, the segregated conceptual system of the sexes.' 2
Following the publication of Breaking the Circle, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) established a Committee on the Position of Women Academics in Third-Level Education in Ireland. This Committee presented its report to the HEA in 1987, stating that 'striking imbalances are evident between men and women academics in third-level, both in the level of the post held and in the fields of study. Furthermore there is little indication that the situation has changed significantly in recent years.' The HEA Committee found that 'there was no indication of overt discrimination against women at third-level......However, procedures, processes and attitudes in third-level institutions seem to be affecting the situation and retarding desirable change.' 3
Five years later, speakers at the Higher Education Equality Unit (HEEU) Forum on Equality of Opportunity in Third Level Education in Ireland were again highlighting the horizontal and vertical segregation of women staff in Irish Colleges: 'Female academic staff tend to predominate in the Arts and Social Sciences and are largely absent in Engineering and Technology. While close to 50% of students are female, only 17% or so of academic staff are female, and they tend to be concentrated in the lower, part-time positions.....Only 4% of professors in third level colleges are women......While the majority of administrative staff are women, the majority of the top administrative posts are held by men. Most, if not all, security staff in colleges are male, secretaries are female, carpenters and electricians are male and cleaning staff are female. Thus the notions of `women's work' and `men's work' persist in universities.' 4
This publication contains the proceedings of a Higher Education Equality Unit conference on Women Staff in Irish Colleges which was held in University College Galway in September 1995. The conference was held to re-examine the position of women staff in Irish Colleges and assess what progress had been made over the past ten years.
Unfortunately, the overall finding of the conference was that, despite a decade of unprecedented attention being paid to the unequal position of women staff in the colleges, very little has really changed.
Ailbhe Smyth in her paper Reviewing Breaking the Circle: A Pilot Project finds that in the past ten years 'very little has changed generally for women working in universities, and some of the more positive developments now appear to be undermined by negative trends and practices......Overall, there is no question in the university sector of a significant redistribution of power between men and women. The universities unequivocally remain `bastions of male power and privilege'.'
This sentiment is echoed in Anne Clune's paper Strategies for Change, Where do we go from here? '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......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 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.'
This situation is not unique to Ireland. Anne Clune reports that at a recent Australian national conference, 'women from all walks of University life generally agreed that almost no practical gains had actually been made over the last decade.'
Many participants at the conference expressed their frustration with the lack of change and at having to continually raise the same issues time and time again.
Much of the focus to date has been on the position of academic staff in the universities. This collection examines the position of women staff in different college sectors and in different categories of work within the colleges. While the problems faced by different groups of women staff are unique in some ways, many common themes emerge which affect all women working in Irish colleges. Each author suggests strategies and actions which could bring about real change in the position of women staff in the colleges.
An overview of the current position of women staff in Irish Colleges is presented in the first two papers in this collection. However, as both authors point out, difficulties in getting access to accurate statistical information created difficulties in presenting a complete picture.
Ailbhe Smyth's paper Reviewing Breaking the Circle: A Pilot Project examines the position of all categories of women staff in the Universities and finds 'that although the numerical representation of women academics has improved, the gendered division of labour in the Academy is still very marked. Women staff are heavily concentrated in non-academic, lower-paid, lower-status jobs in a sharply sex-differentiated pyramidal pattern - i.e. men dominate the top of the hierarchical structures, with women clustered on the lower levels and at the base.'
MaryRose Burke provides a preliminary overview of the position of Women Staff in the RTC Sector. She examines the gender distribution of staff in the RTCs and finds 'a dearth of women' in the top posts, and a 'healthy scattering' in the lower posts. Many of the senior posts are newly created posts: '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.'
Irene O Sullivan highlights the gender imbalance amongst Administrative Staff in a University Environment. In UCC, for example, 75% of administrative staff are female, but they are concentrated in the lower grades: 93% of Grade 4 or lower posts are held by women while 61% of Grade 5 or higher posts are held by men. 'So much for equal opportunity when 62 out of a total of 87 males are employed in senior administrative posts, while 39 out of a total of 263 females are employed in senior posts.' She points to the different recruitment process for higher grade posts and to the resistance to seeing women administrative staff 'as anything other than `the secretary'.'
Mary Leahy and Mary Muldowney draw our attention to workers who have usually been ignored in any discussion of equality for women staff, i.e. Catering and Cleaning Workers in a University Environment. Women are a majority in catering and cleaning jobs throughout Ireland and this is also true in the colleges. These jobs are typically low paid, low status and insecure. The women are often employed on short term contracts, with no guarantee of reemployment. The small number of men employed in the catering and cleaning areas are generally employed on better terms and more secure contracts than the women staff, and the women are also paid less than men working in equivalent areas in the colleges. 'The fact is that the women in both the catering and cleaning areas, at the highest point of the scale, are paid less than the male general operatives.'
Given the insecure nature of their employment, women working in the catering and cleaning areas are afraid to complain about their conditions of work because of fear of losing their jobs. 'Despite the abilities that allow many of them to perform multiple roles - often under pressures that would make the most high-powered businessman disintegrate - because of the unvalued nature of so-called `women's work' in this country, the women in the catering and cleaning areas of Trinity College are unfortunately representative of so many of the women in accepting the distorted image of themselves as unskilled and replaceable and therefore less worthy of being valued as employees.'
Monica Cullinane examines the position of women working in the college libraries in Handmaidens to the Faculty: Female Library Staff in Irish Colleges. 5 The majority of library staff are women, but most Librarians (the most senior position) are male, while the majority of staff working in low-status, part-time, temporary positions in the libraries are women. 'Although there are now female Librarians in large institutions in the Republic....very little has changed, it seems. Most recent appointments at senior level have been men.' For the majority of women working in the college libraries, there is frustration with the lack of opportunities for career development and promotion. Overall there seems to be 'very little perceived consciousness of gender as an issue.'
Grace Neville, in The Lady Vanishes: Vertical Segregation and Barriers to Promotion for Female Academics, points to the lack of change in the position of women academics: 'The statistics are eloquent and have hardly changed over the past twenty years: the vast bulk of women academics still teach in the lower grades; most part-time/temporary (and consequently low-status) academic posts are filled by women. Universities have been run, and continue to be run, largely by men. Most senior academics are men. This is the case not just in Ireland but also abroad.....The fact that the appointment of a woman academic to a senior position merits comment, analysis, even photos in newspapers, indicates how unusual this continues to be, how little things have changed.'
Grace Neville raises the question of why women are not applying for senior positions in colleges. This is often explained by suggesting that the problem lies with women's lack of ambition and suggested solutions usually include assertiveness training and speech training for women. But, as she points out, 'maybe we have been focusing on the wrong issue: maybe the reason why women are still the foot-soldiers but not the generals of academia springs less from any personality defects than from the job itself as it exists in its present form.....the reality of many academics' lives - with long, unsocial and irregular hours - ....represents a life-style and life-choices that are, in my opinion, more difficult for women to assume than for men, and go some way towards explaining the absence of women from the inner sanctum, the inner groves of academe.'
Maeve Conrick's paper, Gender and Linguistic Stereotyping, examines how stereotypes about women's speech and language patterns have been used to explain why women do not `succeed' in the workplace. Recent attention 'has focused on women's linguistic behaviour in the workplace and whether, at least in part, it can be blamed for the existence of the `Glass Ceiling'.' Women are often under pressure to adapt and alter speech patterns, lower pitch, reduce the range of intonation patterns etc. but many women have objected 'to being expected, yet again, to change their behaviour to fit in with a male norm.'
Nuala Keher's paper Academics Don't Have Babies! Maternity Leave Amongst Female Academics, presents some of the finding of an IFUT survey on the incidence, uptake and experience of maternity leave among a selected group of female academics in 1985/86. The survey found that many academic women encountered difficulties in availing of full maternity leave entitlements and had to employ a variety of strategies to avoid causing disruption to their department. These strategies included taking shorter leave, undertaking work while officially on leave, doubling up on work before and after leave and planning pregnancies to coincide with holiday time. 'As long as individuals (in this case women) are required to solve problems which originate in institutions and social structure, discrimination will result.'
This sentiment is echoed in Grace Neville's paper: 'it is surely depressing to think that at the end of the twentieth century.....we are still talking about women having to choose between career and family.....as long as entry to the senior academic careers under discussion here means getting a Masters by the age of twenty-three, a Doctorate by the age of thirty, a book out by the age of thirty-five, and so on, then women are going to have to continue to make `choices' that their male colleagues rarely have to make.'
Anne Clune in her paper, Strategies for Change: Where Do We Go From Here?, assesses various measures to redress gender inequality which have been suggested and tried over the years. She finds that many of these 'have not worked, and some have been positively counterproductive.' She stresses that we need 'something more than good intentions and nice policies.' Her suggestion is a HEA funded study covering all aspects of women's employment in third level institutions. 'On the basis of this study, I propose the drafting, and carrying into legislation, with real penalties for non-compliance......of a positive action programme with stated targets and with attached funding.' She warns that the success of such measures will 'depend on individuals being prepared to persist, against the odds and sometimes at the expense of their own careers, but the evidence is that this kind of persistence, though painful, is both essential and effective.'
I would hope that this publication will contribute to our understanding of the issues and of what needs to be done to improve the position of women staff in Irish colleges. It is to be sincerely hoped that we will not be organising another conference in five or ten years time, asking, yet again, why nothing has changed.
The Women Staff in Irish Colleges conference was organised by the Higher Education Equality Unit. The HEEU is a HEA funded organisation which promotes equal opportunities for staff and students in third level institutions in Ireland. It aims to enable and encourage higher education institutions to more effectively tackle discrimination against (potential and current) staff and students on the grounds of, for example, gender, class/socio-economic background, disability, race and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, religion.
The HEEU is involved in developing and resourcing formal and informal networks of people with a concern about equality in third level education. We organise a series of conferences, produce a national newsletter, publish booklets on equality issues and provide information on request to individuals and institutions. A comprehensive resource centre and computerised database is being developed.
The HEEU is hosted by University College Cork and is staffed by an Organiser (Orla Egan), an Assistant Organiser (Rose Morris) and a Secretary/Administrator (Meta Collins-Powell). The work and development of the HEEU is overseen by a Management Board, appointed by the HEA. The HEEU Management Board is chaired by Dr. Sheelagh Drudy, Member of the HEA and Senior Lecturer at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.
I would like to thank the following people: Ailbhe Smyth, MaryRose Burke, Maeve Conrick, Grace Neville, Irene O' Sullivan, Mary Leahy, Mary Muldowney, Monica Cullinane, Nuala Keher and Anne Clune for presenting papers at the conference and for this publication; Frank Imbusch, Dearbhal NÌ Charthaigh, M·ire NÌ Annrach·in, Caroline Hussey, Liz Steiner-Scott and Sheelagh Drudy for chairing the conference sessions; Meta Collins-Powell and Alex Horstmann for their excellent administrative assistance in the organisation of the conference; Meta Collins-Powell and Gertrude Cotter for their assistance in the production of this publication.
The HEEU is grateful to University College Galway for hosting the conference and in particular to Frank Imbusch, BrÌd Carr and the other members of the UCG Equality Committee and to Anne Duggan, Conference Organiser, for their co-operation with the organisation of the conference.
1 Ailbhe Smyth, Breaking the Circle: The Position of Women Academics in Third-Level Education in Ireland; EEC Action Programme on the Promotion of Equal Opportunities for Women, National Advisory Group; 1984. p. 1.Return to Main Text
2 Ibid. p. 22.Return to Main Text
3 Women Academics in Ireland, Report of the Committee on the Position of Women Academics in Third Level Education in Ireland; Higher Education Authority; Dublin; 1987. p. 5.Return to Main Text
4 Orla Egan, 'Overview of Equal Opportunities in Third Level Education in Ireland' in Equality of Opportunity in Third Level Education in Ireland, Proceedings of Forum held in November 1993 in University College Cork, Orla Egan (Ed.); National Unit on Equal Opportunities at Third Level; Cork; 1994. p. 9.Return to Main Text
5 This paper was not presented at the conference but was commissioned in order to draw attention to issues concerning the large number of women working in college libraries. Return to Main Text