5. Changing the Gender Profile of the Professoriate: An Irish Case Study

This chapter analyses the success of a new university in increasing the proportion of women professors from zero in 1997 to 34% in 2012, considerably above the average for Irish (21%) and European Union (21%) universities. This focus is an important symbolic indicator in the context of the entrenched male-dominated character of universities. Drawing on documentary and experiential evidence, the chapter highlights the importance of formal leaders and informal gender champions and the synergies between them. In the context of informal gender champions it stresses the importance of ‘managing management’, leveraging prestigious external funding, ‘perverse alignments’, cross-institutional ties, ‘provocative misbehaviour’ as well as the support of formal leaders and chance in facilitating this increase. It concludes that change in the gender profile of the professoriate is possible but not inevitable.