title: Mind the Ladder
title: An exploration into the lived experiences of women in senior leadership roles in higher education in Ireland
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Malone, Lindsay
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2024

description: Despite advances of the feminist movement, and wider structural
 legislative
 
 interventions, women remain under-represented at senior levels within
 academia and women continue to experience both direct and indirect forms
 of discrimination throughout their careers. The problem which this
 research sought to address is that there is no qualitative empirical data
 which looks at whether any change or movement towards gender equality has
 emerged as a result of the national gender action plan in higher education
 in Ireland. Thus, the aim of this research was to generate empirical
 evidence of the lived experience of women to ascertain if the current
 gender equality measures are affecting any tangible change for women in
 order to inform future policies and practices for gender equality in
 higher education in Ireland. The objective was to examine and understand
 the challenges they have encountered during their career. As these women
 have essentially ‘made it’ into the senior roles,
 
 it also examined the factors which enabled women to effectively use their
 agency to overcome the challenges to progress into those senior leadership
 roles. Employing an interpretivist phenomenological approach, this
 qualitative research engaged twenty women in semi-structured interviews. 
 
 
 Using a critical feminist approach, key themes emerged and were analysed
 using Fraser’s theory of social justice and McNay’s theory of agency. The
 findings revealed that though the number of women occupying senior roles
 has increased in Ireland since the gender equality movement in higher
 education began in 2015, it is evident that the structural and cultural
 challenges have not automatically changed with the increasing number of
 women. In fact, the gender equality movement in some respects has led to a
 feminised approach to equality, diversity and inclusion specific roles and
 an increased burden of work for women who are engaged in Athena SWAN
 initiatives across the sector. The gender equality movement in Ireland is
 a phrase I am using to summarise the suite of policy measures and
 initiatives that have been established in Ireland since 2015. The findings
 also revealed that women continue to experience both direct and indirect
 forms of discrimination throughout their careers. Despite this, the women
 in this research have managed to overcome these challenges and advance
 themselves into senior roles.
 
 
 This research has revealed the supportive factors which enabled them to do
 this
 
 which include their sense of individual and shared agency, their approach
 to
 
 leadership and the power of being mentored. The original gap that this
 research
 
 sought to fill which was that by simply counting how many women hold
 senior roles, we cannot understand if equality is being achieved. This
 research therefore makes a significant contribution to knowledge as it
 firstly provided empirical evidence of the lived experience of women to
 demonstrate that the current gender equality measures are affecting
 limited change for women. Next, other research on the topic of gender
 equality tends to focus on women at lower levels of the organisation,
 whereas this research focused on women in senior leadership roles and
 revealed what factors enabled them to progress into those roles. It also
 contributes to the on-going debate in this area across all sectors and
 recommends leadership development interventions that will make a
 difference for women in higher education in Ireland.