NUI Galway accused of gender ‘spin’

NUI Galway has been accused of ‘deliberately misinforming’ staff in relation gender equality issues at the university.

Senior lecturer, Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, took the unusual step on Wednesday to email around 4,000 staff members over her concerns that NUIG was engaged in public relations ‘spin’ on gender equality issues.

Her critique, which raised eyebrows among staff and caused embarrassment to management, was sent in the same week the new task force on gender equality at NUIG held its first meeting on campus.

NUIG says it is committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all staff, irrespective of gender. The taskforce was given a broad remit by the university’s Governing Authority to consider the present gender mix among staff, including academic and support staff, and to advise the university what measures it should take to develop gender equality and over what timescale.

The first meeting of the taskforce took place Tuesday, the day before Ms Sheehy Skeffington issued an email to staff in which she confirmed that five female lecturers at the university will be submitting papers to the High Court over claims they were overlooked for promotion on grounds of gender.

Ms Sheehy Skeffington, who won a landmark Equality Tribunal discrimination case against NUIG last year, says she contacted staff in response to a recent document on gender equality that was circulated by management.

The document, she says, “deliberately misinforms concerning the case being taken by the five female lecturers who like me were shortlisted but not promoted to senior lecturer in 2009.”

She argues that the background time line in the document “is set out to imply they are only taking a case concerning the 2013/2014 round while the management know full well that the women’s principal intention is to contest the 2008/2009 round where the gender discrimination is at its worst.”

She adds: “The other piece of ‘spin’ in their gender equality document is the comparison of the percentage women promoted in 2009 with those in 2014 to show how NUIG have put things right, when all they have managed to do is return the percentage to what it had been prior to 2009.”

She says she accepts that, following her equality case, and the unwelcome publicity it has generated, NUIG, “now genuinely wants to be seen to be attempting to put right the gender discrimination” at the university.

“My problem with what the management are now doing, such as setting up the taskforce, is that I have seen it all before. I was on the Equality Committee set up by NUIG that made recommendations in 1990, and there have been recommendations made since, including in the reports commissioned in response to the 2008/20099 results. Despite all these recommendations we still have the lowest number of female academics in senior posts of any Irish university,” she says.

In a statement, NUIG said: “The university circulated an internal message to all staff earlier this week to update on progress in implementing its plans to achieve gender equality. The university is satisfied that the gender equality fact sheet issued by the university is accurate. The university noted the response from Micheline Sheehy Skeffington.”

The new taskforce that met on Tuesday has 16 members in total – eight external and eight internal – with a wide spectrum of expertise and different perspectives. Eleven of the 16 members are female, and a number of members are leading experts in the fields of equality and diversity.

“The taskforce will establish its own terms of reference and carry out its work independently of the university in an open and transparent manner,” according to NUIG.

It will report periodically to the Governing Authority, and will produce a report of its recommendations by no later than Spring 2016. Its next meeting is in May.