Most scientific research is carried out by academics in our third-level institutions. Allegations of discrimination against women in the promotion scheme for senior academic posts were recently made by some female academics at UCD.
It is true that women don't perform as well as men in the senior academic promotion stakes, but the way in which the statistics are usually presented makes the comparison appear worse that it actually is.
The impression also comes across that men find it easier to achieve promotion. This is not true. The proportion of men who perceive serious flaws in the academic promotion scheme is probably as large as the proportion of women who are unhappy.
When comparing promotion prospects for women with prospects for men, one must express, for each gender, the numbers in each academic
a percentage of the total number employed in that gender. Thus, if the university employs 80 male academics and 20 female academics, and if there are eight male professors, the women are doing equally well if they have two female professors.
On the other hand, if you simply say that 80 per cent of university professors are male, this makes it appear that the women are doing particularly badly in achieving promotion to that rank.
I have made calculations for UCC based on the 1997 staff statistics for permanent full-time and part-time academic staff. The statistics for the other universities will be similar. Overall, 80.5 per cent of the academic staff are male and 19.5 per cent are female.
Of the male academic staff, 12.5 per cent are professors, 8.9 per cent are associate professors, 17.6 per cent are senior lecturers, and 61.0 per cent are lecturers. Of the female staff, 3.9 per cent are professors, 1.9 per cent are associate professors, 15 per cent are senior lecturers, and 80 per cent are lecturers.
Women are significantly under-represented compared to men at the most senior level and somewhat over-represented at the most junior levels.
However, the contrast is not nearly so stark at the senior levels as it appears when the statistics are presented to say that 93 per cent of professors are male and 7 per cent are female. The appropriate comparison for men versus women at professorial level is 12.5 per cent versus 3.9 per cent.
Interestingly, women are not doing badly compared with men in their prospects of achieving the "career grade" of senior lecturer - 15 per cent of women and 17.6 per cent of men have achieved this grade at UCC.
The parameters used to evaluate suitability for academic promotion are scholarly research, quality of teaching, and contribution to university and community life. Scholarly research is the most important criterion for senior promotion. Each round of promotions is a competition in which the few applicants who grade the highest on the above parameters are appointed to the few vacancies that arise.
There are problems associated with accurately assessing each parameter and this can cause considerable dissatisfaction and resentment among candidates, male and female. Scholarly research is the most straightforward parameter to assess but even here serious difficulties can arise when comparing candidates. Research results are published as articles in professional, peer-reviewed journals.
But not all journals are seen to be equal and not all articles are equal. One article could be a short description of a technique that took three months' work to develop. Another article could be a long description of work that took three years to carry out and that made a big contribution to the field. Obviously the two papers are not of equal worth, but how many of the former is the latter worth? There is no infallible formula to do this calculation.
There is no agreed way to assess teaching quality. It is widely believed among academic staff that "assessment" of teaching quality amounts to little more than lip-service. Some lecturers put far more effort into teaching than do others and feel aggrieved when they suspect that this work has not won appropriate recognition in assessment for promotion.
So, gaining academic promotion is difficult for both men and women. But, on top of this, the figures show that women are less successful than men in winning promotion to the most senior ranks. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Even in the US, the home of equal opportunity, a 1996 survey showed that 77 per cent of men had senior academic science posts compared to 60 per cent of women.
The gap between males and females in the US is very small compared to the gap here. It was higher in the USA in the past and has slowly narrowed to the present level. This will undoubtedly happen here also.
Virginia Valian in her book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women? (MIT Press 1998) proposes that women still compete less successfully than men for senior positions. This could be countered by imaginative action. Valian describes a programme introduced at the John Hopkins University school of medicine, Baltimore, which monitors academic performance and actively advises all staff of the criteria that must be satisfied to achieve promotion. After five years of the programme the number of female associate professors jumped from four to 26.
It is sometimes proposed that quotas should be introduced to ensure that the numbers profile of females across the academic ranks would match the male profiles. This would be a big mistake. First of all, it would cast a shadow over a core value of the university, which is the even-handed promotion of excellence. Secondly, women would have to endure taunts from disappointed colleagues about token promotions.
William Reville is a senior lecturer in biochemistry at UCC