Second-class citizens - Change of attitude is still required

There was a time in Ireland when inequality was endemic and women were treated as second-class citizens.

In 1970s Ireland a married woman could not collect child benefit (then children’s allowance), was effectively banned from jury service, was deemed to have the domicile of her husband, had no right to a share in the family home and could not even buy a pint in a pub. Many had to quit their jobs under the Marriage Bar.

That has now all changed for the better — or has it?

An unthinking but often repeated mantra of our times is that Irish women are now the equal of Irishmen in every respect. That is pious nonsense and you only have to examine the latest report from the Higher Education Authority to see why.

New data from the HEA reveals that women are hugely under-represented in senior academic positions across virtually all of the country’s third-level institutions.

Universities — supposedly the repository of forward thinking — are among the worst offenders, with men far outnumbering women in senior academic posts.

NUI Galway is the worst, with 79% of all senior posts held by men, while 71% of senior posts are held by men at UCD, the country’s largest university; 73% at UCC; 72% at NUI Maynooth; and 67% at Trinity College.

St Patrick’s teacher training college bucks the trend with a 50/50 split at its top level and the gap in Institutes of Technology is not quite as pronounced, but in only one, the Institute of Art and Design in Dún Laoghaire, do women hold more senior posts than men.

There are two questions to be addressed here. One is: Why? The other is: What should be done about it?

In the first instance, it is most likely to involve a myriad factors, ranging from institutional discrimination to the unequal gender division of child rearing and other caring responsibilities.

A recent Equality Tribunal ruling illustrates the former, finding that NUI Galway discriminated against a female academic when she applied for a senior post. As for family responsibilities, you don’t need an academic treatise to establish that women remain the prime carers.

So, what needs to be done?

Considering that we have had equality legislation in place since the mid 1970s, it is clear that it is not truly effective nor have attitudes changed within the corridors of power, despite the great work of the National Women’s Council of Ireland and the Commission on the Status of Women.

Perhaps it is time to look seriously at gender quotas, applying them in the first instance to political, academic and business institutions.

While they may at first appear counterintuitive, there is ample evidence internationally that they work.

A third question emerges: Does it matter?

Absolutely. If Ireland is truly to take its place among the nations of the earth, it can ill afford to leave half its citizens behind.