Understanding success: a case study of gendered

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Understanding success: a case study of gendered change in the professoriate Pat O’Connor

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Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland Published online: 26 Feb 2014.

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Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2014 Vol. 36, No. 2, 212–224, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2014.884675

Understanding success: a case study of gendered change in the professoriate Pat O’Connor*


Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland In this article, the focus is on understanding the success of one university in increasing the proportion of women at professorial level from zero in 1997 to 34 per cent in 2012, considerably above the averages for Irish, European Union and Australian universities. Using a concept of leadership ‘as a process of influence’ and drawing on both documentary and experiential evidence, it identifies four stages and key factors in that transition, including the situational context of a new university; positional and informal leadership; increased transparency and the prioritisation of disciplines with high levels of professorial posts and where the appointment of women was structurally more likely. It illustrates the extent of the change that can occur, even in intractable areas such as the university professoriate. Such change is neither inevitable nor permanent. Keywords: case study; gender; Ireland; leadership; professoriate; success

Introduction Much attention has been paid to identifying the obstacles to academic women’s progress (Bagilhole & White, 2011; Deem, Hilliard, & Reed, 2008; Morley, 2013; O’Connor, in press). It is increasingly recognised that the under-representation of women at professoriate level reflects gendered processes (van Den Brink & Benschop, 2012). Explanations have been located at several levels including the individual (e.g., in terms of gendered constructions of the self); the interactional (in terms of ‘Othering’ and gendered expectations); the organisational (in terms of career paths, leadership and organisational culture); and the institutional (in terms of cultural stereotypes, state policies and priorities). With a small number of notable exceptions (such as Ozbilgin & Healy, 2004; Ozkanli & White, 2008), little attention has been paid to the factors contributing to success in this area. In this article, the focus is on a case study of one university where the proportion of women at professorial level increased from zero to 34 per cent over a 15-year period (1997–2012), moving it from a position where it was among the lowest in Ireland to the highest and considerably above the Irish (18 per cent), the European Union (EU) (20 per cent) and Australian averages (23 per cent) (EU, 2013; White, 2013). Ireland is a small country (population 4.6 million) with seven public universities and, as yet, few private institutions of higher education. Professorial positions in public universities are well paid and are predominantly on a common salary scale. Although 10 per cent of those at rector/ vice chancellor/presidential level in EU universities are women (EU, 2013), and 18 per cent in Australia, a woman has never headed an Irish public university. The wider Irish societal context is one where progress in terms of equality has been uneven, with the *Email: [email protected] © 2014 Association for Tertiary Education Management and the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management


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biggest changes appearing at the level of individual behaviour (particularly as regards married women’s participation in paid employment). Much has been made of the importance of leadership in the transformation of organisations: defining leadership as ‘a process of influence’ (Gunter, 2010, p. 527). This definition includes the leadership exerted by those in formal positions of power, where such influence is underpinned by positional power, defining power in the Weberian sense as ‘the probability that one actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests’ (1997, p. 152). However, it also includes informal leadership exerted by those who endeavour to set agendas (Lukes, 2005) for those with the positional power. In contrast to the typical contingency leadership approach (Garavan, Hogan, & Cahir-O’Donnell, 2009), the wider state context is seen as important in affecting the possibility of synergies with and between both kinds of leadership. The model of change thus involves a focus on leadership not only within a particular organisation, but also in a wider institutional context, involving the state and its priorities; gendered horizontal occupational segregation; a neo-liberal and managerialist context characterised by heightened presidential power; and the synergies, intended and unintended, between these various elements. Characteristics of case study university and methodology In Ireland, ultimate responsibility for the development and implementation of higher educational policy rests with the government as a whole and particularly with the Minister for Education and Skills and his/her Department. The Higher Educational Authority (HEA) is the funding authority for the universities; has statutory responsibility for policy development and has wide advisory and monitoring powers, including equality obligations under the Universities Act (1997). Up to 2012, public universities were individually relatively autonomous organisations with control over recruitment and promotion, under the broad aegis of the HEA. There are clear indications that this is changing, with recent developments including the Employment Control Framework; the Universities (Amendment) Bill (2012), which reduces their power over staffing levels; and ‘compacts’ between individual universities and the HEA identifying indicators of success against which their performance will be measured and funding allocated. The position of university president (i.e., rector/vice-chancellor) is complex. Thus, although under the Universities Act (1997), he is effectively a chief executive and has the power to dramatically affect the opportunities and experiences of staff and students, he is much less powerful in relation to an increasingly dominant and controlling state. This case study focuses on a regional university: one of three relatively young public universities in Ireland. It was initially an institute of higher education and acquired university status at the end of the 1980s. In this Irish university context (as in other former British colonies), the position of full professor is at the apogee of a five step academic hierarchy of permanent positions (see Table 1). This kind of academic structure differs fundamentally from those in Europe and the United States where the permanent academic positional hierarchy is much more attenuated. In the Irish context, the titles of some of these positions have changed over time and vary slightly between different Irish universities. For example, in the past, the titles lecturer and assistant or junior lecturer were used in the case study university, with competitive processes affecting movement between these positions. Now, however, with the initiation of progression between these two positions, they have been relabelled lecturer above the bar and lecturer below the bar.

214 Table 1.

P. O’Connor Percentage of women at various academic levels in the case study university, 1992–2012. 1993/1994* (%)

1998** (%)

2004*** (%)

2009+ (%)

2012++ (%)

0 0 5 16 39

3 17 4 21 49

9 15 31 43 47

14 21 30 46 53

34 17 39 46 49

15

20

37

41

43

Professor Associate Professor Senior Lecturer Lecturer/Above the Bar Assistant/Junior Lecturer/Below the Bar Total


Notes: *Egan 1994; **O’Connor 1999a/1998; ***HEA 2006; +O’Connor 2010; ++HEA 2013.

The latter position is typically accessed competitively after the completion of a PhD The main route to the positions of senior lecturer and associate professor is by internal competitive promotion. In the case study university, (full) professorial positions are usually externally advertised and the appointment boards are chaired by the president. The numbers of faculty in the case study university have increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, as has the proportion of women. Broadly similar patterns as regards increases in the representation of women have appeared in the public university system as a whole, with the proportion of women at professorial level increasing (albeit not in a linear way) from 5 per cent in 1975/1976 to 19 per cent in September 2012 (with the overall proportion of women nationally increasing from 11 per cent to 43 per cent). Table 2 shows the variation in the proportion of women in the professoriate over time in other (anonymised) public universities. The number of those at (full) professorial level increased by 2.7 times from 18 to 50 in the case study university (1993–2012) as compared with an increase of 1.6 times from 317 to 512 at full professor level across the overall public university system (HEA, 2012; Smyth, 1996). Thus, there has potentially been a greater opportunity to shape the gendered profile of the professoriate in the case study university. The sources on which this article is based are both documentary and experiential. This can be seen to raise issues as regards the validity of the data: ‘validity in interpretative social science is complicated by subjectivity’ (Mabry, 2008, p. 221). However, issues related to validity also arise in quantitative research, with Hammersley (2008, p. 51) noting that in assessing the validity of research findings: ‘Judgement is always involved and this necessarily depends upon background knowledge and practical understanding’. Table 2.

Proportion of female staff at professorial level in Irish public universities.*

Universities* One Two Three Four Five Six Case study Overall

1993/1994** (%)

2001 (%)

2004*** (%)

2012+ (%)

3 8 4 0 8 0 0 4

8 6 13 5 5 0 3 7

14 11 10 8 9 4 9 12

21 17 12 23 13 16 34 19

Notes: *Anonymised; **Smyth 1996; ***HEA 2006; +HEA 2013.



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The perspective used in this article is a feminist standpoint one (Stanley & Wise, 1993), based on the author’s involvement from the mid-1990s onwards in the process of influence, lobbing and advocating in the area, very much in the tradition of a ‘tempered radical’ (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). This article involves a critical reflection on leadership, both positional and informal, in creating gendered change in that university (where the author became the first woman to be appointed at professorial level in 1997, and subsequently the first woman to be appointed as faculty dean in 2000). In the faculty for which she was responsible over a 10-year period (2000–2010), the proportion of women at professorial level rose from 13 per cent (1/8) to 43 per cent (3/7). These experiences prompted a critical reflection on the wider institutional and organisational factors that facilitated and limited such developments. In that context, a number of contemporaneous internal documents were produced, as well as conference papers and publications, with her role in the case study university being documented elsewhere (Fleming, 2012). The strategy of focusing on a university context in which one is involved raises challenges but is not unique to this study: having been used by amongst others: Goode and Bagilhole (1998), Kloot (2004) and Webber and Jones (2011). Four distinct stages are identified and discussed below.

Stage 1: State awareness, presidential commitment informal leadership (1993–1996) The proportion of women who were at full professorial level in Irish public universities in 1993/1994 (4 per cent) was roughly the same as it was in 1975/1976 (just under 5 per cent: HEA, 1987; Smyth, 1996). This led the Irish HEA to establish the Access and Equality Unit in University College Cork in 1989. The Department of Equality and Law Reform (1994, p. 74) identified equality as ‘one of the main aims of educational policy’. Lindsay (1993, pp. 5–6). Chairperson of the HEA and former Secretary of the Department of Education concluded that: ‘we may and I think must, consider what the Americans call affirmative action necessary to redress these inequalities’. Interest in gender equality was to a considerable extent driven by the EU in the context of the existence of a separate Department of Equality and Law Reform at national level. During this period, most state and semi-state structures published reports outlining the gender profile of their organisations. The Civil Service commissioned a study on gender equality, which recommended affirmative action to tackle ‘the gender stereotyped attitudes of management’ (Humphreys, Drew, & Murphy, 1999, p. 191). The HEA requested all university registrars to bring the course directors of women’s studies to a meeting on university finance in 1994, where £20,000 designated funding was made available to all university-based women’s studies programmes annually (O’Connor, 1996). Within the case study university, there was a very active tradition of work in the gender area going back to the early 1980s, with a strong tradition of European Union funding at programme and curriculum development level. Gender equality in the case study university emerged as a key issue for women’s studies faculty and students in the early 1990s (Richardson, 1997). From that time onwards, the gender profile of the academic hierarchy was informally monitored by the course director of women’s studies, facilitated by human resources. At this time, women in the most long established and prestigious university in Ireland held 8 per cent of the professorial positions (Smyth, 1996), while in the pontifical university and in the two new universities (including the case study university), there were no women at professorial level. Appointments at professorial level made in 1996 in


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that university reinforced that pattern: of the nine professorial chairs advertised, seven offers were made, all to men. Following an invited presentation by the director of women’s studies to governing authority, the president of the case study university was dismayed to learn that his university was similar to the pontifical university in terms of the absence of women in professorial positions. His subsequent endorsement of a gender agenda in November 1996 led to a further invitation to the director of women’s studies to brief the president on ‘the most effective practical steps the university can take within the law to address the matter of recruiting and promoting a greater proportion of females’ (O’Connor, 1996, p. 1). Plans were immediately put in place to begin to implement four of the eleven shortterm strategies identified: the establishment of an equal opportunity committee; gender awareness workshops for senior management; the development and implementation of equal opportunity and promotion policies; and annual gender reviews by governing authority. Short-term strategies which were not immediately tackled included the appointment of an equal opportunity manager at senior level; the formulation of action plans by line managers at faculty/division level; gender auditing of training and travel budgets at these levels and the identification of mechanisms to sanction breaches of procedure and to reward compliance. In summary, the case study university was a new university and potentially had a greater opportunity to shape the gender profile of its professoriate. However, in contrast to a very similar new university, positional leadership at presidential level in 1996 became committed to championing the issue, supported by informal leadership and in the context of state endorsement of a gendered agenda. Stage 2: Change at state and organisational level (1997–2004) The second stage was characterised by changes at the political and executive level of the state and at the organisational level in the case study university. At the level of the state, the most important negative development was the absorption of the Department of Equality and Law Reform into the larger and more conservative Department of Justice in 1997. In addition, in 2002, the HEA closed the Higher Education Equality Unit, without re-allocating its responsibilities as regards gender equality. Nevertheless, at national level in 1999, legislation was passed, which established the Equality Authority on a statutory basis with a brief to ‘combat discrimination and promote equality of opportunity’ (Crowley, 2010, p. 7). The Universities Act (1997) marked the overt endorsement by the Irish state of a managerialist agenda, and it increased the power of the president as the chief officer. The Act also included (1997:11:12k) among the functions of a university ‘to promote gender balance and equality of opportunity among students and employees of the university’. It required the president to prepare a university policy on ‘equality, including gender equality in all activities of the university’ (1997:36:1b). The HEA was given an advisory and review role to promote gender balance among university staff; to prepare gender equality policies and to monitor their implementation (1997, p. 49). Thus, a legal framework was created, which necessitated a focus on gender in the universities, and the strengthening of the power of the president potentially provided a mechanism to achieve this. In the case study university, in February 1997, the president, who had become committed to the implementation of strategies to improve the position of women, indicated that he would retire in August 1998 (Walsh, 2011). An interregnum ensued in which it was difficult to maintain the gender momentum, although the first woman was



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appointed at professorial level in 1997 and subsequently became the first female faculty Dean in 2000. She used these positions to raise the issue of gender representation in recruitment and promotion boards; to gender audit various aspects of her own faculty; to increase transparency in appointment and promotion boards and to publicly challenge male privilege by highlighting the differential resources available to masculinist areas. Such strategies raised awareness, but also resistance (with a vote being taken at management committee on one occasion to prohibit her presenting any comparative data that might indicate such privileging). The five medium-term objectives, identified in 1996, with a targeted achievement date of 2000, included the identification of specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound (SMART) objectives; the utilisation of gender targets as a criterion for evaluating the efficacy of line management; the clarification of the basis for allocating senior posts at faculty level; the creation of career development opportunities for women; and the availability of gender awareness workshops for all members of interview boards. Progress on these was difficult in an unstable power situation. Time-specific targets were legal and appropriate under the Employment Equality Act (1998:24 (1)) and were in use as part of the strategic management process in the Civil Service. Such objectives, particularly when supported by the commitment of the chief executive, have been very effective in changing the gender profile of those in senior positions (McCrudden, Muttarak, Hamill, & Heath, 2009). Thus, attention was focussed on SMART objectives, which had the support of the president and other key personnel (such as the chair of the equal opportunities committee). In that context, the registrar formally contacted deans (3 November 1998), requesting that they undertake gender audits and identify three kinds of SMART objectives: first, targets related to staffing; second, those related to attempts to change the organisational culture (through, e.g., workshops specifically designed to challenge negative and stereotypical gendered attitudes); and third, those related to fostering a management style that valued diversity (through, e.g., gender balance on interview boards and widening the pool for the allocation of visible career-relevant activities). Only two of the six faculty deans (humanities and informatics) made any attempt to identify targets at the academic staff level, and in these cases, the targets were modest (O’Connor, 1999b). By 2000, the issue of targets had been quietly dropped. There were synergies between developments at the national and the organisational level. In the context of the requirements of the Universities Act (1997), an equal opportunity committee was created in 1998 to advise on the creation of an equal opportunity policy and to monitor its implementation. A search process with a view to encouraging female applications, which could only be waived with the explicit approval of the president, was introduced. The most senior executive decision making body in the university participated in gender awareness workshops. However, gendered appointment patterns were still being reproduced. There was some evidence that women’s willingness to apply for senior positions was increasing. Thus, of the 43 applications for six Associate Professorships (which allowed those at lecturer as well as senior lecturer level to apply), the proportion of women who were eligible to apply and who did apply was exactly the same as the proportion of men (reflecting a tendency for applications by women to increase where application barriers are removed). Although it was anticipated that the proportion of senior academic posts (i.e., at senior lecturer level and above) would rise from 33 per cent to 40 per cent in the case study university over the following three years (in line with national trends), despite vigorous efforts, references to gender in successive reiterations of the draft operating procedures for


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the promotion of faculty over 35 working party meetings were steadily weakened before it was approved by Governing Authority in November 1997. The equal opportunities policy also went through a very long series of iterations before it was approved by Governing Authority in May 2000. The second president, appointed in 1998, was initially very supportive of a gender agenda: seeing it as similar to sectarian ‘Othering’ and discrimination with which he was familiar. This openness to gender was reinforced by the availability of funding for genderrelated initiatives from Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies, a major funding source for Irish universities. All universities were invited to outline their proposals for the development of women’s studies (indicating co-funding). In the case study university, a successful application for €1.4m was drafted by the director of women’s studies, with the support of the president (awarded 2001). There were other initiatives. Thus, a number of women, including one of the female informal leaders, lobbied (despite opposition from senior management) for a university crèche for the children of staff and students. The attraction of European Union funding by a senior (female) administrator ensured that cofunding was provided by the university. Subsequently, an innovative partnership with a local school generated external funding and the crèche expanded. In 2001, women still made up only 3 per cent (1/38) of those at full professorial level in the case study university (Jordan & Richardson, 2001). Atlantic Philanthropies indicated that they would be open to receiving a further application to directly improve the position of women in that university. A loose committee was formed including three women who were informal leaders in the gender area and a new (gender aware) male human resources (HR) director. Actions to ‘deliver higher levels of female representation at the more senior levels in the university’ were identified (Jordan & Richardson, 2001, p. 6). These included not only those to improve women’s individual chances of promotion (e.g., training for women; the formation of a women’s network; writing retreats; assisted research opportunities for academics with caring responsibilities), but also attempts to change the organisational culture through a gender awareness programme targeted at challenging stereotypical managerial assumptions; research to establish the specific nature of gendered cultural barriers and the funding of an academic equality officer to develop and monitor a programme of positive action. A detailed plan for moving forward was devised by the new HR director prior to his resignation. In 2003, an application (Towards Equality; Daly & Healy, 2008) was submitted to Atlantic Philanthropies. In the evaluation process, the informal committee responded to the funder’s queries by identifying targets to increase the representation of women at senior lecturer level from 8 per cent to 20 per cent; identifying measures to ensure that promotional and recruitment boards, as well as those distributing finance, would include at least 40 per cent of the under-represented gender and that the number of positions held by women on faculty and university committees would be proportional to the percentage of eligible women. The practice of hiring in overwhelmingly male areas at a higher level than those in female areas was to be ended. The extent of the commitment of the president to these additions was never clear. Eventually, an application largely focused on ‘fixing the women’ (Morley, 2013) was submitted and funded: prioritising the equal opportunities manager; the women’s forum; a development programme for support grades and support for academic writing. An opportunity to leverage external support for ‘fixing the organisation’ had been missed. In summary, changes at the state level as well as in key personnel at the organisational level weakened the momentum for change. Nevertheless, some change was achieved, largely driven by informal leadership in a context where legal obligations as regards


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gender were recognised and where external funding legitimated a focus on gender. By 2004, 9 per cent of those at professorial level in the case study university were women (similar to the oldest and most prestigious university and marginally below the national average of 10 per cent).


Stage 3: Greater procedural transparency at organisational level (2005–2009) At national level, the focus on gender remained weak. The Irish state has been seen as a patriarchal state (O’Connor, 2008a), reflecting a traditionally close relationship with the institutional Roman Catholic church. It has also been (and indeed still remains) notoriously weak at implementing policies (OECD, 2012). Under pressure from the EU, it nominally endorsed gender mainstreaming in the National Development Plans (2000– 2006; 2007–2013) but no mechanisms were put in place to implement this (OECD, 2012). In the university sector, no attempt was made to implement the HEA’s recommendation that universities develop equality action plans, which set out ‘explicit and challenging targets and timetables as well as the names of those responsible for delivery’ (HEA, 2004, p. 59). The decline in the HEA’s interest in gender equality was reflected in its failure to even publish data on the gender breakdown of academic staff by level (2004–2012). The state’s own regulation as regards the proportion of women on state boards (introduced in the 1990s) was completely ignored by the HEA (2007) in its guidelines for university governance. Only one of the seven public universities met the required 40 per cent gender representation level on governing authorities (O’Connor, 2008b). Neither the state nor the HEA evinced any interest in gender budgeting or contract compliance (McCrudden et al., 2009). State institutions grew increasingly hostile to inequality, in general, and gender inequality, in particular. The economic recession provided an opportunity to further dismantle the equality infrastructure at national level (Lynch, Grummell, & Devine, 2012). Neo-liberalism became the dominant political ethos, and public management became the valorised model for all public institutions, including the universities (Lynch et al., 2012; O’Connor, in press). The focus on quality, accountability and governance, which might have generated a concern with gender, did not do so. (This was not peculiar to Ireland: Morley, 2003.) However, at organisational level, under the leadership of human resources and individual deans, recruitment processes were becoming increasingly transparent and rigorous. Such transparency has been widely seen as facilitating the appointment of women. However, the requirement as regards gender balance on interview boards was overwhelmingly seen as gender representation (i.e., one woman and at least six or seven men). The neglect of gender was supported by national educational policy, with, for example, the Hunt Report (2011) making no reference whatsoever to gender. In the case study university, the second president became increasingly unwilling or unable to push forward a gender agenda. The equal opportunities committee at governing authority level was disbanded in 2005: with faculty equality issues allocated to the human resources committee and students to the (renamed) access and equality committee. Burdened by ill-health, the president resigned prematurely in 2006. The appointment of an acting president (2006–2007) reflected the instability of the power situation. The fourth president within a 10-year period was appointed in 2007 with further changes in key senior personnel, including the appointment of yet another director of human resources. University structures were becoming increasingly managerialist, with increases in the positional power of the president, reflected in his appointment of deans, rather than their nomination. In 2008, under his leadership, the six faculties in the university were reduced to four, and two of the four faculty deans appointed by him were women. Gender


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representation in the most senior management team rose to a third for a short period of time: before falling to two out of nine. The increased visibility of women in senior management positions implicitly challenged stereotypes. The Dean of the (increasingly feminised) Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences became an advocate for gender issues at all levels within and outside the university (Fleming, 2012). Informal leadership also continued to be exerted in other faculties. In 2007, a Science Foundation Ireland Application (SFI) was successfully made for a Gender Audit of Science and Technology (Richardson, 2008). It showed the existence of gendered processes, with women being less likely to be invited to occupy national and international key stakeholder positions (i.e., as external research examiners; keynote/plenary addressees; assessors for grant giving bodies; members of editorial boards and appointees to national/international bodies: Richardson, 2013). Gendering also occurred at the level of the organisation: with women being less likely to be members of appointment, promotion and policy-related boards and more likely to be on internal ‘housekeeping’ course related committees, reflecting the existence of underlying stereotypes (Ridgeway, 2011). The support of the premier funding agency, Science Foundation Ireland, for this project legitimated a focus on gender. Nevertheless, the focus remained largely on ‘fixing the women’. The final report to Atlantic Philanthropies (Daly & Healy, 2008) also focused mainly on success in this area. Thus, a number of impressive indicators of organisational change, including the fact that the staffing targets identified in the application were exceeded by 2007, were not seen as key achievements. It appeared that the leadership was more comfortable with owning success in ‘fixing the women’ than ‘fixing the organisation’. Over this stage as a consequence of the combination of increasing transparency and informal leadership, the proportion of women at professoriate level rose to 14 per cent (comparative national data is not available), despite the unstable organisational context and the lack of support by the state for a gender agenda. External advocacy structures (such as SFI and Atlantic Philanthropies) also played a part in legitimating the focus on gender. Stage 4: Complex contexts and unintended consequences (2010–2013) The gender profile of a university may reflect its disciplinary profile at full professorial level, since gendered horizontal segregation is highest in the humanities and the social sciences (28 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively, are women) and lowest in engineering and technology (8 per cent women), with medicine in an intermediate position (18 per cent women: EU, 2013). In an Irish context, science, technology and more recently engineering are perceived as the source of economic growth, with the ultimate role of universities being seen as contributing to that growth (O’Sullivan, 2005). With a small number of notable exceptions (such as Lynch et al., 2012; O’Connor, in press), the gendered implications of such a focus has been ignored. At the level of the state, during this period, gender continued to have little priority. Internationally, support for the gender issue was reflected in policy statements (EU, 2012; OECD, 2012), indicating a recognition that, in future, higher education could not be assumed to increase economic growth other than through its impact on women’s paid employment, with additional positive effects arising from greater gender equality. That report also referred to ‘[p]ersistent discriminatory social institutions and cultural norms’. In 2012, the HEA indicated that (after a gap of eight years) it was resuming collecting academic staff data by level and gender in the universities and that gender would be a topic for discussion between it and the universities (Meehan, 2012).



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At the level of the case study organisation, a commitment to gender continued to be endorsed by the president, and informal leadership continued to drive an agenda involving gendered change. In 2010, presidential support was given to a European Union Framework 7 five year (2012–2017) a cross-national project application: Female Empowerment in Science and Technology in Academia (FESTA). In it, the explicit assumption is that the under-representation of women in science and technology reflects organisational and institutional factors: its objective being to change the gendered academic structure and culture and to reframe gendered measures of excellence. In 2012, the project was funded, and with the inclusion of the director of human resources in the project team (also a member of the most senior decision-making group in the university), presidential support was clearly signalled. The continuance of transparency in appointment procedures, reflecting leadership by both human resources and the president, continued to have an effect. Nevertheless, in the course of several iterations, performance-related gender indices disappeared from the university strategic plan (2011–2015). A weakening of a commitment to gender was also reflected in the dissolution of the equal opportunities committee in 2012 at its own request. Thus, from a position in the early 90s when the university had two equal opportunity committees, by 2013, it had none. This development coincided with the steady increase in, but the largely de-gendering of, a variety of leadership programmes. Decisions about the allocation of professorial chairs in the case study university are ultimately made at the most senior executive decision-making committee in the university, chaired by the president. Although historical precedent plays a part, the perceived contribution of these chairs to the national interest, as defined by the state and interpreted by the president, is crucially important. In the case study university, a decision was made at presidential level that the university would respond to a state invitation to tender for a radical community-based medical school, based on an Australian model. For the state, this tender was an attempt to break the dominance of hospital-based medicine; for the university it was an opportunity to increase its national and international status. This decision had unintended gender consequences. Thus, the number of women at professorial level in education and health sciences more than doubled over a three-year period between 2009 and 2012, increasing that areas share of the total number of professorial posts from 20 per cent in 2009 to 33 per cent in 2012 (HR, 2013). By 2012, the proportion of all professorial posts in the predominantly male areas of science and engineering has fallen from 58 per cent in 2009 to just under 40 per cent in 2012. This culminated in the targeting of new funding from Atlantic Philanthropies at seven professorial chairs, all in the science and engineering area (and in areas where men were most likely to be the successful candidates). The process of filling these professorial chairs is still in train. Internal figures suggest that the proportion of women at professorial level has fallen to 27 per cent (HR, 2013). In the case study organisation, by 2012, women constituted 34 per cent of those at professorial level, almost twice the national average (Table 2). Although leadership at positional and informal level as well as improved procedures and transparency all contributed, the increase would have been 9 per cent lower had it not been for the structural realignment consequent on the development of the (community based) medical school (although two-thirds of those at professorial level in that area are men).

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Summary and conclusions A great deal of work has focussed on the barriers to women’s advancement in academia, particularly at the individual and the organisational levels. In this article, the focus is on success in a specific organisational context: one where the proportion of women at professoriate level increased from the joint lowest in Ireland (zero) in 1997 to the highest in Ireland in 2012 (HEA, 2012), substantially above the EU average (20 per cent: EU, 2012). Furthermore, this occurred in a wider institutional context that has been broadly unsupportive of gender equality and reflects essentialist gender stereotypes; a reliance on the family (and ultimately on women) for unpaid work and care and the absence of political or popular support for a strong national equity framework. In this context, a neoliberal perspective has increasingly found favour with the state and the wider society, with equality, in general, and gender equality, in particular, being increasingly derided by the state and with existing infrastructures in the area being steadily dismantled. The case study university, as a new university, was susceptible to ways of defining itself, which would re-position itself and offer a new basis for assessing other universities and inverting the existing prestige hierarchies. Gender was framed by internal agenda setters as constituting such a basis. Positional leadership was to varying degrees, supportive of such an agenda. Hence, the key factors in this transformation are seen as the situational context of a new university where the possibility of dramatically increasing the number of those at professoriate level existed. However, this context was not sufficient, as indicated by the very different pattern that emerged in a similar new university (Table 2). Positional leadership, underpinned by increased presidential power; informal leadership, whether in terms of reframing success, leveraging prestigious external funding, or through challenging organisational practices; improved procedures and transparency; and the development of prestigious disciplines where the appointment of women was structurally more likely, all contributed. The impact of these various factors is explored through four stages, drawing on both experiential and documentary evidence. Thus, although positional power and informal leadership can create a context that facilitates change (as in, e.g., the first stage: 1993– 1996), other factors, such as instability at the most senior level in the organisation, can limit action (as in stage 2). Although increased transparency and procedures (stage 3), can produce change, it is very much less than that arising from decisions about where professorial posts should be located: decisions which are affected by definitions of the national interest which typically favour areas where male faculty are most likely to be found (stage 4). Thus, although it is possible to identify analytically separate elements which facilitated change, it is difficult to ensure that, in another context, similar synergies might exist. This case study also indicates that gender is always contested and movements to improve gender balance are subject to reversals. Informal leadership of various kinds is crucial, whether in terms of publicly naming male privilege and challenging it in specific areas; reframing success or accessing external levers of various kinds which legitimate a gender agenda (e.g., Atlantic Philanthropies, SFI or the EU). Transparent procedures are important and the gender balance of faculty in areas targeted for expansion is crucial, as are synergies between these elements and the wider priorities of the state. These elements created the necessary momentum to increase the proportion of women at professoriate level in a relatively new university from zero to 34 per cent over a 15 year period. This case study thus illustrates the complexities involved in creating change and the importance of various kinds of leadership in bringing about such change.


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Acknowledgement I am particularly grateful to Dr. Clare O’Hagan for reviewing earlier drafts of this article.


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