Trinity will play a vital role in hosting the 10th European Conference on gender equality in higher education with the Trinity Centre for Gender Equality and Leadership (TCGEL) helping to organise the programme.
Two weeks after the announcement of a gender equality taskforce for third-level institutions, Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor announced that the conference would be coming to Irish shores for the first time in 2018.
The conference, which is held roughly every two years, provides an international platform for gender equality practitioners, researchers and administrators to discuss the topic. Mitchell O’Connor said in a press statement that this conference is an “ideal opportunity” that will allow Ireland to “outline the advances we are making towards tackling gender inequality in our third level institutions”.
The conferences have resulted in the establishment of the European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education, which is an international forum for the exchange of knowledge on good practices and experiences. The network contains over 500 members from 30 countries.
Mitchell O’Connor’s taskforce is due to report back to the government in 2018 and she explained that the conference will enable them “to highlight the outcomes of both the work of the 2016 Gender review and the Task Force to both a national and international audience”.
The panel of five people has been tasked with reviewing the recruitment and promotion practices of third-level institutions and identifying areas of improvement after several high-profile gender discrimination cases were taken against NUI Galway. A Higher Education Authority (HEA) report from 2016 also demonstrated widespread male domination in top-level positions throughout higher education institutions.
