‘Be wary of plan for women-only jobs’
Men could be discriminated against, official said
A SENIOR civil servant has expressed serious concerns that Government plans to created 45 women-only university posts was discrimination against men.
Louise McGirr, head of the civil service human resource policy unit, said in a letter to an education official that the plan appeared to illegally discriminate against men and she said the Department of Education appeared to be presenting this as something positive.
‘You have described it as positive action but I am not sure if it is more along the lines of positive discrimination. Positive action being lawful and positive discrimination is not,’ wrote Ms McGirr of the Department of Public Expenditure. She sharply noted to a Department of Education official in favour of the proposal that taking positive action on gender was not simply allocating jobs.
Ms McGirr wrote: ‘Positive action is not ring-fencing posts for people of a protected characteristic (ie, in this case female), but you can give preference to an under-represented characteristic (women in this case) all other things being equal and the candidates being equal on merit.’
She made it clear that Ireland does not approve of US-style so-called ‘positive discrimination’ in which university positions have, in the past, been allocated to women and minorities on a quota system.
She was replying to a Department of Education official who was in favour of female-only posts in universities, based on a similar system in Holland.
The Department of Education had been seeking advice about the legality of creating professorship posts that would be open just to women.
In emails, a senior official in the department explained that to bridge the gender gap, they wanted to create posts ‘that would be filled exclusively by females’.
‘This model draws on international experience, in particular from the Netherlands – where the approach has been notably successful,’ wrote William Beausang, the head of higher education policy.
The University of Delft explained it had been able to introduced female-only posts due to a ‘serious and persistent lack of women scientists’.
By May, the Department of Education was still worried the scheme would run into difficulty but kept on gathering evidence to back the proposal.
By November, the posts had been given the green light and the posts were eventually announced by Minister of State Mary Mitchell O’Connor on November 11.
In a statement, the Department of Education said: ‘The design of the initiative was supported by detailed legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General. Detailed implementation arrangements will be guided by further advice to ensure the approach is legally robust.’