Sir, – Catherine McGuinness ("Why women fail to take an equal share of top posts in academia", Opinion & Analysis, February 19th) suggests that NUI Galway is taking the lead in addressing gender discrimination. Unfortunately, Siptu members at the college do not share her confidence.
She references the call by the university’s governing authority on the Higher Education Authority (HEA) to initiate a statutory equality review of the university sector. It must be made clear that nothing precluded university management from inviting the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission into NUI Galway itself. Then NUI Galway could truly be said to be taking the lead on this issue.
While in theory any initiative to tackle the shocking discrimination in NUIG is to be welcomed, the manner in which this taskforce has been appointed does not inspire confidence. Given the concerns of staff in light of both the Sheehy-Skeffington and Dempsey cases, coupled with the recent HEA figures on gender discrimination, inspiring confidence in staff at NUIG is of paramount importance at this time. A consultative, inclusive process could achieve this. Instead, a taskforce was appointed without pre-published terms of reference, behind closed doors with no possibility of broader staff engagement. There was no consultation concerning this task force with any of the representative unions on campus. Siptu representatives had requested a consultative role but this was denied. – Yours, etc,
SHIVAUN QUINLIVAN,
Lecturer in Law,
Member SIPTU Academic
Equality Sub-Committee,
NUI Galway.
Sir, – Tackling gender inequality in the universities requires a change in the organisational culture at senior management level. It is of course important that procedures and processes are appropriate. However, procedures can be ignored or subverted. Indeed measures which could have helped (such as the identification of caring responsibilities) were effectively used to discriminate against women in NUIG. Unless there is real commitment from the top, whatever recommendations the task force produces will not create change. The optimism of Catherine McGuinness is admirable. But those of us who have struggled with this issue for 20 years know that discriminatory attitudes are typically not perceived as such. Leadership from senior management plays a key role in challenging an organisational culture where such discriminatory attitudes are seen as “natural”.
Change is possible – as is evident by the fact that the proportion of women at professorial level in the University of Limerick increased from zero in 1997 to 34 per cent in 2012 (the highest in Ireland and considerably above the EU average).
However, such change is neither inevitable, total nor permanent.
It is not clear that senior management at NUIG have even grasped the nature of gender discrimination yet. It may be that the Higher Educational Authority will have to implement its own 2004 recommendation concerning the identification of targets and timetables and the names of those responsible for delivering on this agenda. That requires leadership. Michelle Sheehy-Skeffington could tell them something about that. – Yours, etc,
Prof PAT O’CONNOR,
Department of Sociology,
Faculty of Arts, Humanities
and Social Science,
University of Limerick.