Are You In NUI Galway?

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Free Friday?

The demonstration will take place outside a special meeting of the Governing Body of NUI Galway, which is in the Aula Maxima and starts at 10am. We want to show them the depth of feeling that exists about the blatant discrimination against women in senior roles at NUI Galway and demand the Governing Body tells the university management to put it right. We want them to set the university clear goals for gender balance in all senior posts and roles, and to tell the management to promote the five  women lecturers not promoted in 2009 and the 17 not promoted in 2014.

Demonstration For Gender Equality In NUI Galway (Facebook)

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46 thoughts on “Are You In NUI Galway?

    1. newsjustin

      Seems like they’re saying hire women, any woman somewhat qualified, until women reach 50% of all senior roles, regardless of whether a better candidate exists. No way to run an organisation, surely.

    2. Odis

      There’s no point on hiring people on merit based system, because that’s clearly, a gender discriminatory basis, for appointing people.
      What they need to do is sack some of the males and replace them with females, its only Galway University at the end of the day.
      I suppose we could also look at the relative melanin levels of the current appointees, as well, while we are on the job. To nip that one in the bud.
      The people you sack can have their feelings assuaged by a large redundancy payment from the tax payer.
      Sounds fair.

  1. Jock

    Follow on protests at the hospital to demand 50% male nurses and the primary school for more male teachers.

    1. Weedless

      There’s a high demand for male primary school teachers but not enough men go into it because small minded folk perpetuate the idea of it being a gendered job and it discourages young guys from even considering it an option.
      In this case though there are plenty of highly qualified women who could fill these positions but they are discouraged at every step through academia. In science at least for all the women who make it through a degree less and less stay in academia because the system is biased against them. Short term grants that don’t allow for proper maternity leave and mean less women can get through the post-doc cycle to actually become a lecturer. Poor to non-existent paternity leave options in Ireland mean their partner can’t help either where a male post-doc doesn’t have that problem. Then you end up with more men in positions that do the hiring for the more secure lectureships, men who judge male and female candidates on different criteria and are more likely to hire another man even if there is a similarly qualified woman up for the job.

      1. Jock

        Post docs in Ireland are just like any other job with legal rights to maternity leave. Nice bit of sexism in your posts saying that men are more likely to hire men and ignore a qualified female.

        1. Weedless

          Post docs are entitled to maternity leave but many grants can’t be paused at all or for the full period of the allowed maternity leave.

          Also there’s plenty of evidence that men and to some extent women (although there aren’t as many women in the hiring positions which is why I worded it that way) do favour male candidates when hiring for positions in science (probably for other fields too but I haven’t looked that up).

        2. Odis

          No Jock, clearly Wordless has a point here.
          If I was a white male academic choosing a colleague for a post. I would clearly choose another white male, rather than the person best suited for the job based on merit .

          Just to you know – preserve the patriarchy.

  2. Bluebeard

    All my best lecturers in NUIG were women. They were all appointed on merit not gender. hopefully the tradition will continue.

  3. Soundings

    Maybe if all the women in NUIG didn’t stand around posing hands-on-hips in high heels, and looked more professional like the men with their briefcases, clip board and suits, maybe then they’d be taken more seriously.

  4. Spaghetti Hoop

    The fact that there are less female lecturers than male is not in itself proof of gender discrimination. Is there evidence that high-performing employees were denied a promotion available posts based on their gender alone? March away, but who would be that flighty not to question this?

    1. Bobby

      There was a case recently where some Irish college had clearly chosen an unqualified man over an over qualified woman, so it does happen. Whether or not that’s happening in this case remains to be seen.

    2. Ms Piggy

      the entire point of this story and event is the finding by the Labour Court that NUI Galway were doing precisely that – promoting male staff with fewer achievements or less track records than women who were not being promoted.

      1. sickofallthisbs

        The Labour Court is never wrong and always looks at things in a common sense sort of a way.

  5. Just sayin'

    Will the next protest be about gender balance in the nursing and teaching professions? If not, why not?

    1. sickofallthisbs

      While I know you are being flippant you raise a point: the people who go to college to study nursing or teaching are largely females. So to demand gender equality is mad when men lack the qualifications.

      Likewise to demand a 50/50 gender balance at the top end of universities now, when there was not a 50/50 gender balance in terms of people pursuing Ph.D. research in the 70s and 80s and 90s is lunacy. It is, to put simply, gender balance for gender balance’s sake and encourages the notion that women should be promoted only because they are women, which is not a philosophy any right minded person would want to disseminate.

      Thankfully, the ratio is more even now (in fact, I believe more women graduated with Ph.Ds than men in TCD recently) so really (and sadly) we won’t see this new gender balance reflected in universities for another twenty/thirty years or so.

  6. wearnicehats

    Did you know that 3 out of 4 students represent 75% of the student population????

    Statistics of any kind are utterly meaningless. For it to be of use you would need to know:

    How many Senior Lecture posts were advertised over a set period of time?
    How many people applied for these posts in that same period of time
    How many of the applicants were male / female
    How many of these applicants were suitable for the post
    How many of the suitable applicants were interviewed
    What was the selection criteria
    etc
    etc
    etc

    This doesn’t take tenure into account either where, no matter how many steps have been taken to improve perceived gender bias there are a lot of old school positions in place until these people retire

    I remember back in the days where business in Northern Ireland were legally obliged to employ catholics rather than protestants regardless of ability, regardless of suitability, simply to address a perceived bias in the workforce

    Despite the enormous strides taken in South Africa we still see a situation where some of their best rugby players will not be at this year’s world cup because of a quota system for black players

  7. Boba Fettucine

    And the President is 100% male. They need to create gender balance there too, even if it involves experimental surgery.

  8. munkifisht

    The issue is with the numbers of women who progress to PhD level. I am working in a research department in imaging sciences and the majority of people working in the department are unfortunately male (not that they are unfortunate to be male, but rather it’s unfortunate there are so many). There is nothing about what I do which makes men more capable at their job, but it would seem women are just not taking the places available. When it comes to hiring people into positions, if the most qualified person should be the one getting the job, whether that be man woman, child or dog. The way to resolve this is not to make things more balanced at the teaching end, but to equalise the number of people getting doctorates.

    It’s also important to remember that academics generally need to move to take up a new position. For some reason in todays society, when a heterosexual couple is deciding to move the decision will be weighted by the mans job rather than the womans. This idea needs to be challenged also, otherwise the potential pool of candidates will be weighted by men.

    Positive discrimination can only go so far in correcting the balance, we need a much more fundamental change to address this imbalance.

      1. Sinabhfuil

        Munkfisht, are you saying that the lecturers don’t have PhDs? That postdocs are actually postma? Surely not. Is there information on the age profile of profs and what age they got their gigs, and ditto for the lecturers?

    1. Odis

      It’s a bit off the subject, but if you drop the idea of merit, in the selection of people for doctorates. In particular doctorates that are in male orientated subject areas.
      1) Doesn’t this demean any female who has gained a doctorate in this field?
      2) Won’t any future employer assume that every female applicant, in this field, has gained her doctorate, by virtue of the fact, that she was required, only in order to fill a gender balance quota?

  9. Caboosicle

    Surely the only restrictions around employing people for academic positions should be based on maintaining a proportional representation of the population of any given course, especially considering that to become a lecturer you need a PhD?

    For example, when I was in studying electronic engineering in college there were a total of 65 students in the class , 6 of whom were female. Therefore, even in a corporate environment, having a 1:1 ratio of say board members would be a total misrepresentation of the population of an electronic engineering company.

    It would then get worse if this were applied to academic positions in electronic engineering where, as far as I know, less than 10 students from my class went on to do PhDs, all of whom were male. So to then have a 1:1 ratio of male to female lecturers would be impractical to say the least.

    1. Small Wonder

      It seems like this needs to be spelled out for some people. You’re making the right point, but missing the information above.

      30% of the senior lecturers at NUIG are female. 13% of the professors are female. Therefore, men are getting promoted to professorship more often than women.

      Gender balance does not mean 50:50 as so many of you are suggesting above. It means, reflecting the gender balance of the pool of candidates from which you are choosing.

      Of course there’ll be some variability. Of course. Before you all jump down my throat. But you have to question the large drop in percentage of females as you go up the ladder.

      1. munkifisht

        Nope, that’s not what that means. Does the information included the time each person has spent as a lecturer and the average time it takes for a senior lecturer position to become available? The problem is lag. If tomorrow we ended gender discrimination (and probably without killing or firing men in senior positions) there would still be about a 50 year lag before the gender imbalance would be adjusted for in senior positions.

        1. Small Wonder

          Come on! 50 years?! You’re kidding yourself!

          No one’s demanding a quota of 50:50. If lag was the reason for the discrepancy, then NUIG could pull out the data in no time. That would have sorted out the court case.

          The fact is men are being promoted over women and questions need to be asked.

          1. munkifisht

            Yes, 50 years. You actually really don’t understand the point. Today, there are fewer females enrolling in PhD than males. That’s a simple fact. Therefore the pool you are picking from for these positions is weighted with a bias towards men in the first instance. Thefirst problem that needs to be addressed is this and this is a very real issue and one that should not exist. Women are just as capable as men in academia and there is no reason they should not be applying for these roles.

            Second, the average time a person spends as a professional academic is around 40-50 years. Lets say 30 years of that is spent as a professor. What you would expect in 10 years is for the number of professors to rise from 13% to 30% female in line with the pool of eligible candidates. If you can show me proof that 10 years ago there was still the same imbalance, ie 30% senior lecturers and 13% professors then I’ll gladly concede my argument, I doubt you can though.

      2. Really?

        Eh no. The test should be does the number of new hires into the higher level reflect the gender split in the lower level.

        So of professors appointed in the last year, was the percentage of women 13%, 30%, or other.

        And as mentioned, it would only be 30 if it can be assumed that there is no difference (length or service, quality) between the cohorts of men and women at the more junior level.

    1. Small Wonder

      30% of women at one level, dropping to 13% at the next? Maybe women just don’t like being professors. Not enough time for sewing.

  10. Reborl

    this campaign is as a result of a case taken to Equality Tribunal. In that competiton 17 people were promoted and only one was a woman. The Equality Officer found:

    *Although, on paper, the promotion to Senior Lecturer appears to be a fair process with definitive criteria, its implementation fell short of best practice in recruitment.
    *Worryingly, one candidate (male) promoted was not even eligible for the competition i.e he had not enough service
    *The complainant is correct that three successful male candidates (Candidates 4, 6 & 7) had significantly less than the minimum requirement of contact hours (as opposed to postgraduate supervision) with students and yet got a higher score than her under the Teaching and Examining heading.
    *No candidate (successful or unsuccessful) has supervised more PhDs to completion than the complainant [Dr Sheehy Skeffington].
    * THe candidate that came first on the promotion panel for Senior Lecturer did not even have a Phd!
    *Perhaps the most significant frailty to the respondent’s rebuttal is the statistical evidence. Men are in the minority in the College Lecturer grade (40%) but, significantly, that statistic is almost inverted when it comes to the next promotional grade – 61% of Senior Lecturers are men. The attached table shows the internal promotions to Senior Lecturer from 2001 to 2009:
    Men Women Total
    Applications 97 35 132
    Successful 50 11 61
    It is clear from the above table that male applicants have a one in two chance of being promoted to Senior Lecturer while women who apply have less than a one in three chance of the same promotion. For these reasons, I am satisfied that the complainant has established a prima facie case of direct discrimination and the respondent has failed to rebut it.

    The full decision is found here:

    http://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/Cases/2014/November/DEC-E2014-078.html

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