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A TOTAL OF 40% of senior lecturers at NUI Galway are now female, following on from issues around female representation among academic staff.
A progress report on gender equality and diversity among academic staff at the university shows increases in female representation at senior level.
With 40% of senior lecturer roles filled by women, the university is now above the national average for female representation in that position.
Just 13% of NUIG professors (the most senior academic position) are female, however, which is still one of the lowest percentages in the sector.
The equality reports come following a series of high-profile gender discrimination cases taken against the university by female academic staff in recent years.
A Gender Equality Taskforce was set up in February 2015 to address issues of gender inequality at the university.
This followed a landmark award in November 2014 by the Equality Tribunal to Dr Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington. The tribunal found that she had been discriminated against on grounds of gender when she went for a position at the university in 2009.
Five other women have also pursued discrimination cases against the university.
Update
In its update, NUIG provided data on its latest senior lecturer promotion scheme, through which 33 lecturers advanced.
The report shows that of these promotions, 19 were women (58%) and 14 were men (42%).
NUIG said it had now met its own target to increase the percentage of female senior lecturers to 40% by April 2020.
It also has a target to increase the percentage of female professors to 30% by 2020.
NUIG also pointed to other measures it was undertaking in relation to gender equality.
These included the establishment of task groups on cultural diversity, access and disability; the formation of an LGBT+ Network; and the implementation of actions arising from the University’s Gender Equality Action Plan.
“A key priority over the coming years will be to advance an agenda of achieving gender equality in NUI Galway,” said Professor Anne Scott, vice president for equality and diversity at the university.
We, the NUI Galway community, are moving ahead to ensure that not only matters of gender equality but also other forms of equality, diversity and inclusion are alive and active part of our agenda right across our institution.
All very commendable, but surely there’s a risk now of universities rushing less qualified candidates straight through to a senior position out of the need to fulfil a gender equality/diversity quota rather than on academic merit?
Now if we can just get the equality of 50/50 In primary schools around the country.very few males in it
@dick dastardly: There is a push to get more male teachers at primary level which is a good thing.
@Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa: Says who? We’ve no evidence that encouraging or enforcing a 50:50 gender balances across the professions is necessarily a good thing at all. It might well be, but it’s far from a certainty and to suggest an alternative is treated like walking around in the twelfth century saying the earth orbits the sun and there is no God.
In the other 60% how are the other 62 genders represented?
If it’s all about equality it should not matter who does the job once they do it right.
in my engineering class at ucg we had 25 students of which 2 were female. neither did an engineering post grad. one of them did a masters in womens studies. so with so few and a post grad doctorate (another 4 years so total 8 years) how do you expect a high % of lecturers to be female?
Did it really take a “report” to figure out how many female lecturer’s they have?
Show of hands not suffice?
@BAINNE ATHA CLIATH: you’d need someone very brave or very stupid to ask all the women/men/undecided to put their hand up.
You’d be instantly stoned to death for crimes against gender.
Diversity would ideally involve a percentage representative of each demographic cohort succeeding in appointments identical to the percentage of each demographic cohort that applied and was eligible, ceteris paribus and all the rest.
Problem is that little mathematical exercise in actual equality of outcome will have sailed so far over the head of your average SJW as to be visible from space.
That’s what happens ladies when you turn on your emergency becons
It’s not so much a gender equality issue but more a class inequality issue as many poor students excluded from gaining a better leaving cert as they can’t afford to buy grinds from tax evading teachers and so have less chance of getting into third level & there is no childrens allowance for any one over 18 for the last 8 years which is atrocious as surely it should be paid to atleast the end of the leaving cert so poorer families can try their best in the same way wealthy adults got full childrens allowance up to age 22 in 2008 & halved childrens allowance through 2009. Surely child benefit through school and beyond for the poorest students should be more of a concern for highly paid lecturers especially feminist who should care about their sisters who could end up as poor homeless single mothers as they are priced out of leaving cert grinds & their parents get no child benefit to help with the everyday cost of school let alone foreign school trips that 80% of schools here shamefully encourage peer pressure & bullying for not being able to afford it over.
Referring to the Skeffington case – the claim was that women should get the senior lectureships in proportion to the number of female applicants.
Nothing to do with merit. Who decided this ? – the Equality Tribunal.
@Antony Stack: How the hell does that make any sense whatsoever. Divvie out the posts on the basis of the number of applicants from each gender, and no other concern? That’s bonkers. No wonder our university rankings are so crap.
Only 60% to go
Great to see some improvement on ratio.
Now that Brian Dobson is moving to radio, the only male news reader left is Aengus Mac Grianna. Where’s the equality there?
I hope these ladies are in their positions based on their ability to teach and not their genitalia.
Time to tackle the inequality in teaching and nursing profession’s? Or is that okay because it favors wonen?
Coming soon, to a society near you, Victimhood Fixation.
We need to do the same for male primary school teachers, lots of young boys are now only ever being educated by women, it’s no wonder so many of them are becoming whiney and disobedient wimps.
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