Over the past three years, in eight of Ireland’s biggest colleges, there has only been three female students’ union presidents.
An investigation by The University Times into the gender makeup of sabbatical teams over the last three years suggests that only one-sixth of sabbatical teams across these eight colleges have had a female majority. As the higher education sector begins to address gender inequality, with many students’ unions joining campaigns to promote women in leadership, most unions are far from reaching gender equality in the positions of their full-time elected officers.
Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) is the highest performing union when it comes to gender equality among sabbatical officers, with 47 per cent of officers in the last three years being female. With just 22.22 per cent of female officers in teams from the past three years, NUI Galway Students’ Union’s (NUIGSU) three-person sabbatical team is the most male dominated. This year’s NUIGSU executive committee, which includes both part-time and sabbatical officers, is made up of nine men and six women.
In an email statement to The University Times, the President of NUIGSU, Lorcán Ó’Maoileannaigh, said he believes “NUIG SU is inclusive” and that the union “strive[s] to be as representative of the diverse university demographic as possible”.
For the 2017/18 academic year, all eight students’ unions have male presidents. The percentage of women running for president is traditionally low. In Trinity alone, the last four years have seen only one female candidate, Lynn Ruane, run for president out of a staggering 13. Ruane is the only female TCDSU president since 2004.
In an email statement to The University Times, Jack Shelly, the President of University of Limerick Students’ Union (ULSU), said that gender equality is currently not an issue in the union: “At the moment I am happy with the situation in ULSU and feel it is an inclusive union.”
However, his counterparts in other students’ unions disagree. The President of Maynooth Students’ Union (MSU), Leon Diop, in an email statement to The University Times, said that “this issue is far from defeated”. He said that “over the years, men have occupied the most of these positions”.
Diop said that MSU has tried to address the issue of gender inequality by “encouraging women to attend women in leadership workshops that are run by the USI”, and he mentioned that the union is considering running a similar workshop of their own on campus.
This year, TCDSU is running a Diversity in Leadership workshop series focused on encouraging different groups of students to run for election, including women. Speaking to The University Times, the Education Officer of TCDSU, Alice MacPherson, who is running the workshop series, said: “I want to empower people to take charge of their own lives in all sorts of forms of leadership, whether that’s at work, in a society, in a sports club.” MacPherson highlighted the “fear of being judged on different things to what your male counterparts are going to be judged on” as one of the main barriers for women running for students’ union elections.
This year, there are two women out of a five-person sabbatical team.
In an email to The University Times, the President of University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU), Barry Murphy, said that students who are members of the predominantly female-led groups, such as UCD for Choice and Consent at UCD, are already being encouraged to run for positions in this year’s elections. UCD Empowerment Week, which will be held in February 2018, will “focus on recruiting and encouraging students of different gender identities” to run for executive positions. Lecture addresses will also be given, with a particular focus on faculties that rarely see students running for sabbatical positions.
In 2014, TCDSU announced its partnership with Women for Election, a non-partisan organisation that runs programmes empowering women to run for election. Through the INFORM programme, which is aimed at third-level institutions, Women for Election encouraged women to get involved with TCDSU and to run for sabbatical officer positions. UCDSU has also engaged with this programme and saw a higher number of women running for office in the union as a result. Since then, the campaign has had less of an impact on women running for president of TCDSU.
