Professor jobs ‘only for women’ to end bias

Landmark move in gender wars ‘Jobs for the girls’ backlash fear

THE Minister for Higher Education is to create women-only professorships in a radical move to address persistent gender inequality at senior levels in universities and third level colleges.

Mary Mitchell O’Connor has revealed that she is making some professorial posts in third level institutions open to female applicants only under new plans to counter the “paltry proportion” of women in senior third-level positions. Writing exclusively in the

Sunday Independent, Ms Mitchell O’Connor said she expects a “minor backlash” to the female-only professorships which some may deem “jobs for the girls”.

But she said she will not apologise or shirk from her responsibility “to make the third-level sector an equal one”.

The Minister for Higher Education will formally launch her initiative tomorrow when she publishes an action plan by the Department of Education’s gender equality task force that she says sets out a number of “radical changes” to ensure a more equal playing field for women.

She writes today: “As Minister for Higher Education, in conjunction with the Department of Education, I am creating female-only professorial posts within our universities and Institutes of Technologies. This is just one of a myriad of initiatives that will address and improve on the paltry proportion of women in senior third-level positions.”

She urged third-level institutions to “grasp the opportunity for change”.

The minister’s announcement comes against a backdrop of growing international focus on gender gaps and equal pay in the work place, fuelled by the #MeToo movement that emerged from women speaking out against sexism and harassment in Hollywood.

Ireland’s third-level sector has a consistently poor record of promoting women to senior roles. More than half of all university academic staff are women but they represent just under a quarter of all professors and account for 34pc of associate professors, according to the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

The HEA, which commissioned an expert group to examine gender imbalance, found little progress in its latest report, reporting a “marginal” increase of between 1pc and 2pc in the numbers of women being promoted.

The HEA’s expert group recommended the introduction of mandatory gender quotas in the third-level sector, and financial penalties for those organisations that fail to introduce improvements.

The Minister for Higher Education told a conference in August that funding for higher education institutions will be linked to their progress in tackling gender equality.

It is likely that the initiative she announces today will also be tied to funding.