Gender balance focus of forum

Irish universities will be put under the microscope at a major forum this autumn in order to examine how academics handle equity issues.

According to Dr Don Thornhill, chairman of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), who was speaking in Dublin yesterday, the forum is being set up to "consider the issues and strategies in relation to access and equity". Within six months of the forum's establishment, he said, the HEA will begin a statutory review of equality policies and practices in Irish universities. The results of this review will then be published, he promised.

The forum will "contribute to fleshing out the framework against which the (statutory) review of equality policies will be carried out", he said.

Thornhill was speaking at the launch of a HEA-commissioned report on international practices in this area of equity in higher education. The report, Access and Equity in Higher Education: An International Perspective on Issues and Strategies, found there is still "a formidable array of barriers" to be overcome.

Major concern is now focused on gender balance in university staff, says the report. "It is clear that women are generally less numerous than men in both established academic and career administrative positions," says the study, compiled and written by an international expert, Emeritus Professor Malcolm Skilbeck, with the assistance of another international consultant, Dr Helen O'Connell. In their survey of international equity trends and issues in higher education, their report stresses the need to bring the roles and responsibilities of various elements and agencies together.

"The challenge now is to both fully embrace the concept of equity and with determination to integrate it with the long-established traditions of excellence and merit and the more recent preoccupations with standards, quality, efficiency and relevance to social and economic needs," says Prof Skilbeck. The study maintains that several goals in the growing movement to advance equity have yet to be achieved. "There are still significant barriers facing various categories of students with a disability; some ethnic minorities are very poorly represented either as students or staff; financing arrangements often confer unequal benefits or impose hardships in inequitable ways; and higher education - universities in particular - still tends to advance those already more socially, culturally and economically favoured . . . ."

"Women, having succeeded in gaining access as students and progressing well, including employment in academic institutions, have not had the success they seek and expect in climbing the career ladder."