A macho culture at students' union meetings prevents many female students from fully participating, the women's rights officer of USI has claimed. At present no university student union president is female, and 12 of the 13 IT union presidents are male.

Three of the nine full-time USI officers are female, holding the welfare, women's rights and lesbian, gay and bisexual portfolios.

Women's rights officer Emma Dowling says women's voices are sometimes drowned out at local union council meetings simply because "the boys tend to shout louder than the girls". When meetings are well chaired, she says, female students participate as much as men.

According to Dowling, women's participation in students' union politics "has dropped over the last year-and-a-half".

USI hopes a women's training conference, to take place this weekend, will help change the situation. Delegates at the woman-only conference will receive training in public speaking, negotiating skills and political campaigning, and will get advice on how to deal with women students who are faced with crisis pregnancies or a violent partner. Dowling says the conference is designed "to encourage women who haven't ever gotten up and spoken in public". She feels it's still necessary to exclude men from the conference. "It's hard to put into words the atmosphere of women's training. Some people have described it as a `safe space'. "It's easier for female students to speak for the first time in front of a group of women because everyone's in the same boat. The women who have never got up and done it before are able to talk to the ones who have. "I don't think men are as ready to admit their weaknesses and say how they got over them. Women tend to be more able to do that more easily when they're in an exclusively female group." Dowling hopes this won't always be the case. "I'd like to see a day when we no longer need a women's rights officer and have an equality officer instead to maintain the status quo. I don't think we've reached that stage - the participation figures show that."

Male union officers will receive training in the topics covered at the conference at a separate session next month.

The women's rights portfolio was downgraded from a fulltime paid position to a parttime, unpaid one at March's USI National Congress. Dowling is confident that decision will eventually be reversed. "I'm sure that once USI gets money in its coffers, the lesbian gay and bisexual and women's rights officer positions will be upgraded again. USI is really in transition at the moment and there are an awful lot of changes taking place. "Financially things are still up in the air, but if the money is there, you can expect the debate to come up at congress again."

Dowling says the main campaigns of the women's rights office this year will be on childcare, campus safety, violence against women and the link between exam stress and eating disorders.