Third-level has a lot to learn about women and inequality
Despite policy pledges to the contrary, senior positions at academic, managerial and governance levels in Irish universities continues to be overwhelmingly in men's hands and there still remains no discernible effort to develop an action plan to redress this gross imbalance.
Ireland's inability to address this gender imbalance at universities is very much evidenced in a six country international study (including Turkey and Portugal), that has shown Ireland has the lowest proportion of women at professorial and associate professorial level.
Indeed, an EU study showed that the differential between men and women's chances of promotion to professorial level in Ireland was one of the worst in Europe, with Irish men "being at least five times more likely than women to obtain a full professorship".
Ireland also had the lowest representation at presidential level (all men) and joint lowest with Turkey at dean level. Today, roughly three-quarters of those in vice-presidential positions are also men.
At governance level, in only one of the seven Irish universities does the percentage of women on the governing guthorities reach the State- recommended 40pc.
This may reflect the fact that the HEA has failed to prioritise gender in its guidelines for governance.
Yet the presence of same-sex role models is recognised as being very important in female students' career orientation, confidence and overall success.
Recent policy documents relating to higher education in Ireland have effectively ignored the gender imbalance at faculty, management and governance levels and there is no indication that policies within the proposed €13.5bn to be allocated to higher education during the lifetime of the National Development Plan will do anything to alter the hierarchically male dominated character of Irish universities.
This may not be unrelated to the fact that the executive and administrative arms of the State are male dominated and are advised by a number of bodies (e.g. Science Foundation Ireland and Forfas, with boards below the 40pc gender balance recommended by the State).
It may be no coincidence either then that the areas disproportionately selected for increased spending in higher education includes science, technology and engineering, all of which are predominantly male faculty areas.
By contrast with the hierarchal gender imbalance at universities, there has been much political and public concern in relation to the significant reduction of male teachers ('feminisation') at primary school level, with the implicit suggestion that this is a systematic problem and that it may be related to boys' academic underperformance.
The question then arises as to why women's absence from the higher levels of the university system (it's 'masculinisation') is not seen or discussed to the same degree.
