Multi-Level State Interventions and Gender Equality in Higher Education Institutions: The Irish Case

Pat O’Connor and Gemma Irvine
Additional contact information
Pat O’Connor: Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, V94 T9PX Limerick, Ireland
Gemma Irvine: Office of the Vice-President for Equality and Diversity, Maynooth University, W23 F2H6 Kildare, Ireland

Administrative Sciences, 2020, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: Much of the work on gender equality in higher educational institutions (HEIs) has concentrated on the organizational level. The original contribution of this article lies in its focus on state policy developments and interventions. We focus on Ireland as a specific national context, highlighting multi-level state interventions and looking at their impact on HEIs. Using secondary data analysis (including documentary analysis) and focusing particularly on the period since 2014, state initiatives to tackle the problem of gender inequality from various angles are outlined. They include the introduction of Athena SWAN; the Expert Group Review; the Gender Equality Taskforce; the Senior Academic Leadership Initiative; research funding agency initiatives and those around sexual harassment. In evaluating their impact, we look at the gender pay gap, the gender profile of the professoriate and senior management as well as other indicators of cultural change in HEIs. The article concludes that the best possibility of leveraging change arises when it is driven at the state (macro); the HEI (meso) and the situational (micro) level simultaneously, by gender competent leaders willing to tackle the historically male dominated, masculinist criteria, procedures, processes and micropolitical practices that are “normalized” in HEIs.

Keywords: state; gender equality; higher educational institutions; intervention ns; multi-level; gender pay gap; gender parity; Irish; professoriate; Athena SWAN (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/10/4/98/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/10/4/98/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:10:y:2020:i:4:p:98-:d:454566

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().