Athena SWAN was designed as an award to encourage the commitment of higher education institutions to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
Under the aegis of Advance HE – a British-based charity that works to improve higher education for staff, students and society around the world – Athena SWAN now includes all staff, all disciplines and all intersectional inequalities and is awarded at gold, silver and bronze levels. Six Irish universities have received Silver Institutional Athena SWAN awards.
Athena SWAN has been enthusiastically embraced both by the universities and by the Higher Educational Authority, which sees it as a key driver of gender equality. However, there is no hard evidence that it has had a demonstrable impact on the gender profile of the professoriate, or the gender pay gap in the UK, or the gender profile of presidents in Irish universities.
Is Athena SWAN likely to drive change in gender inequality in the future?
READ MORE
An analysis of the content of two of the successful Silver Athena SWAN applications and their Action Plans (2022/23-2026/7) showed a focus on superficial change – ie, genderwashing.
In these 180- to 220-page award-winning applications, there were almost no references to gender inequality; the universities ignored their own data; they failed to recognise the experience of such inequality or its systemic character; they did not accept responsibility for creating it, seeing women as “the problem”; they ignored big issues such as the precarious situations of early-career researchers and the absence of career pathways for the (predominantly female) professional/administrative staff; their action plans were unambitious and focused on individual solutions (such as training and mentoring).
This reflects a model which sees gender inequality as arising from women’s deficits and ignores any need for changes in university criteria, procedures, culture or structures.
There have been changes in the gender profile of senior positions in universities. From the foundation of Trinity College Dublin in 1592 up to 2020, there was no woman president of an Irish public university.
From 2020-2023, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, seven of the 12 university presidents (58 per cent) appointed to these 10-year positions were women (compared to an EU average of 26 per cent).
The rapidity of these changes challenged assumptions that women’s lack of confidence, political skills, caring responsibilities or life choices accounted for their under-representation in the previous 428 years. The proportion of women full professors – the highest academic position – has also changed, increasing from 19 per cent in 2013-2015 to 32 per cent (marginally above the EU level of 30 per cent).
[ Women seem to be their own worst enemies when it comes to closing gender pay gapOpens in new window ]
These changes came at the end of a 10-year period of almost annual state initiatives in the gender equality area, including threatened cuts of 10 per cent in core state funding to “encourage” change in the gender profile of senior positions in universities.
The most innovative of these initiatives was the Senior Academic Leadership Initiative (SALI). It envisaged the creation of 45 new and additional senior permanent academic posts over a three-year period (starting in 2019) in areas where women were underrepresented. This had an impact on women’s “chance” of a professorship. However, six years later, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science has not released funding for the remaining third of these promised posts.
The women who won SALI posts in the Technological Universities have not been appointed at professor level since, up to now, professor posts have not existed there.
The enthusiasm for Athena SWAN, despite the absence of hard evidence of its effectiveness, suggests that universities and the Higher Educational Authority are reluctant to tackle the root causes of gender inequality.
Three indicators show the limits of the changes that have occurred.
Firstly, five of the seven women presidents (six now, given the premature resignation of one of them) have backgrounds in STEM. Women are most under-represented at senior level in this area. Thus, although the door to college presidency is being metaphorically flung open, the access route is narrow, raising issues about sustainability.
Secondly, despite the increase in the proportion of women at full professor level, men in Irish higher educational institutions still have a roughly twice better “chance” of being in these positions than women (just under 9 per cent of all academic men are full professors, versus 4.6 per cent of all academic women).
[ Large gender gaps in senior levels of Irish academiaOpens in new window ]
Thirdly, roughly half of the staff reported being put down or condescended to because of their gender – with women being twice as likely as men to have those experiences (particularly women in Arts, Humanities, Social Science, Business and Law and in research). More extreme forms of sexual violence were experienced by students, with more than one third of the females who replied referring to non-consensual vaginal penetration - ie, rape.
The universities, the Higher Educational Authority, the Minister of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Advance HE can and should do better.
Genderwashing is simply not good enough.
- Prof Pat O’Connor is professor emeritus of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Limerick, and visiting full professor at the Geary Institute, University College Dublin. She is an international expert on gender equality in higher education
