The university registrar carefully read down the list of 17 promoted candidates, then looked up with a start and answered: “One.”
Just one woman had been promoted to senior lecturer, though more than half of the junior lecturers were female. I was furious. I felt my grandmother, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, there beside me. She’d been imprisoned for smashing windows at Dublin Castle for women’s suffrage; how could I now not also take up the fight for equality?
It was no longer just about me, though I had spent 19 years as a junior lecturer and been refused promotion four times; it was now clear the university system was at fault. So, though no one had ever succeeded with such a case in academia in Ireland or Britain, I lodged a gender discrimination case with the Equality Tribunal. When, to the shock of University of Galway, I succeeded, I offered my €70,000 award to the five other shortlisted women who were not promoted in that round. I did it because that is what Hanna would have done.
What I learned from Hanna was to speak out and act on injustice. I was lucky in that the case for promoting the five women was so clear and it was so unfair that they faced expensive High Court cases to prove this, that it struck home with staff and especially students. The campaign set out to support the five women, not knowing it would last four years or whether they would succeed. But in fact, the achievements gained by the campaign stretched well beyond getting justice for them and showed how much is possible with right action and strong convictions.
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It is now 10 years since my win and the start of the campaign. Was it all worth it? Looking back, it was. Ireland was then the worst country in the whole of Europe except Malta, for the third-level Glass Ceiling Index, having the lowest proportion of female professors relative to that in all grades. A key to getting change was to expose these embarrassing figures. Galway University cared about its image, so publicity was central to the campaign.
Up to my case win, the Higher Education Authority had failed to release figures for the percentage of female academics by position for each institution. But with all the publicity, they gave in to Emma O’Kelly, education correspondent for RTÉ, and when she revealed those figures on national television there was an outcry. The HEA then published them annually so we could shame the universities to improve: no one wanted to replace Galway at the bottom of the ranking. Publicity aimed well can achieve big goals.
It was our publicity that resulted in the HEA setting up an expert group chaired by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn which made trenchant recommendations. We were later told that it was our publicity lasting four years that forced them to implement all the recommendations in toto. The most powerful one was to make research funding contingent on an institution gaining an Athena Swan award for developing policies on gender equality (bronze) and ultimately putting these policies into practice (silver and gold). The imposition of conditions on funding seriously focused the academic mind.
By 2019, the HEA had founded the Centre of Excellence for Gender Equality. Its objectives included a Senior Academic Leadership Initiative with funding towards gender balance in senior third-level positions. It continued publishing online statistics and set up a gender equality enhancement fund to promote research, training and capacity building to achieve gender balance.
Crucial to our success was the five women’s willingness to take on and stick with their fight for justice. Those four years were incredibly tough for them. They were isolated, prevented from talking to us by their lawyers and avoided by some staff because of the university’s climate of fear. For the campaign it was hard work, but it was also fun. We learned to be creative to sustain interest and so ensure the five women felt supported. We produced some great T-shirts lampooning university management and an anonymous artist started publishing a series of pointed cartoons that we got permission to exhibit. Humour is a wonderful way to make one’s case noticed.
It all started 10 years ago when, in January 2015, we staged a big demo in the university Quadrangle, as governing body members arrived. Our media profile resulted in TV cameras and press reporters turning up. The continued support from many staff and students was heartening. The Students’ Union pledged – and gave – support throughout the campaign.
The campaign culminated in more than 800 attending a benefit gig. We heard that really rattled university management. Finally, in 2018, the five women reached an agreed settlement.
Academia has really changed for women. It’s not yet perfect but is so much better. There had never been a woman president of an Irish university; now three of the seven are women. In 2013-2015, 19 per cent of professors were women, and 35 per cent of senior lecturers. By 2023, 37 per cent of professors were women (slightly higher than in Britain) and 44 per cent of senior lecturers . The campaign undoubtedly accelerated this change, yet governmental pressure must remain so that parity is achieved.
This has had repercussions in other sectors and is slowly bringing Ireland into the 21st century as regards female equality in employment. Hanna would be proud of me.
Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington is an academic and co-author – with Rose Foley – of Micheline’s Three Conditions: How We Fought Gender Inequality at Galway’s University and Won, published by M3C Press.
