Pat O'Connor- B.Soc Sc; M. Soc Sc, Ph.D
- Professor Emeritus at University of Limerick
Pat O'Connor
- B.Soc Sc; M. Soc Sc, Ph.D
- Professor Emeritus at University of Limerick
Visiting Full Professor, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
About
200
Publications
36,752
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2,432
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Introduction
Pat O’Connor has roughly 120 publications including 80 peer reviewed journal articles, 30 chapters and nine books. She was visiting prof at London, Aveiro, Linkoping, Deakin, Melbourne; and on the National Review on Gender Equality in Higher Education (2016). Her research interests revolve around organizational culture, leadership, management, excellence, micropolitics, masculinities, support and interventions in higher education. Her most recent book is A proper' woman? (Peter Lang 2024).
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 1992 - present
Publications
Publications (200)
Using the concept of stealth power and a critical realist perspective, this article identifies leadership practices that obscure the centralisation of power, drawing on data from interviews with 25 academic decision-makers in formal leadership positions in HERIs in Ireland, Italy and Turkey. Its key contribution is the innovative operationalisation...
This article is concerned with the source of men’s invisible advantage in the male dominated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is suggested that this advantage has been obscured by combining sponsorship and mentoring. The research asks: Are men or women most likely to be mentored? Is it possible to distingui...
Using a Feminist Institutional perspective, and drawing on a wide range of evidence in different institutions and countries, this article identifies the specific aspects of the structure and culture of male dominated higher educational organisations that perpetuate gender inequality. Gender inequality refers to the differential evaluation of women...
Insecurity and intense competition for permanent academic positions appear to be common experiences for early career researchers across the globe. With academic precarity now firmly on the international research and policy agenda, this article looks comparatively at postdoc precarity in three European countries: Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. It...
For the past 30 years, many researchers have highlighted the gendering of higher educational institutions. However, many organizations in the broadly defined Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) area in the EU have varying degrees of interest, or academic staff available, in the gender equality area with many being largely unawa...
This chapter argues that the concept of gendered academic citizenship provides a multi-dimensional and context-sensitive tool for analysing gendered and intersectional hierarchies in academic institutions. The framework not only covers the formal membership of academic institutions, but also refers to the relational and emotional aspects of lived c...
This book, written by an insider, explores experiences over a 46-year career in five academic organisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from a contractual research assistant to full professor and line manager (Dean). Highlighting success and failure, strength and fragility, it challenges ideas about what it is to be a ‘proper woman’. It describes...
This book draws on interdisciplinary social science and philosophical frameworks to offer new dimensions to debate about intellectual leadership and higher education.
The chapters are focused on provoking readers to think critically about intellectual leadership in precarious times. The contributors frame critical questions about the unevenness, am...
Since 2014, there have been a series of policy initiatives to increase the proportion of women in senior academic positions in higher educational institutions (HEIs) in Ireland (O’Connor and Irvine 2020). This focus has been criticised for excluding a focus on precarity (Meade et al., 2023; O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019). Since women now make up seven...
This article is concerned with the tenure track (TT) model, which has become increasingly used to extend the period of early career academics’ probation from one to five years across the EU. This article focuses on the TT in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), the oldest and most prestigious university in Ireland, one where gender equality has been embed...
We all recognize the benefits of mentorship, having someone to guide us through the complex world of academia and other sectors. Mentors provide advice and insights from their own careers and experiences. And outstanding mentorship is celebrated. Nature launched an award for this in 2005.
But less discussed are the benefits of sponsorship: a type...
Neoliberalism and new public management began to impact on the Irish higher educational system in the late 1990s and became embedded at different times and to varying degrees in particular Irish universities (Lynch et al, 2012; Lynch, 2015; Mercille and Murphy, 2017). With it came a focus on research, and particularly on research outputs generated...
In this chapter we exploe the issue of 'free speech' in universities, and in so doing raise some provocative questions which, we argue, undermine the key principles of higher education until that is, universities adopt the principles and practices of Total Inclusivity.
Gender equality is depicted by the United Nations (UN, 2021) as a fundamental human right. It has often been presented as treating everyone the same so as to ensure that they will have equal resources such as position, power, money, time and cultural value to shape their own lives and the world they live in. However, to create gender equality in so...
The model for the creation of knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) involves the near total career dependence by probationary citizens on senior academics. In this article such probationary citizens include those at the early career stage, mainly but not exclusively post-doctoral researchers (postdocs). Traditionally,...
Excellence is widely used in managerialist higher education institutions as a legitimating discourse for evaluative decisions in recruitment and promotion processes. It is depicted as unaffected by the social characteristics of those involved in making the evaluations, by their relationships with each other, or by the wider context, although this h...
‘A typology of STEM academics and researchers’ responses to managerialist performativity in higher education’. In C. S. Sarrico, M.J. Rosa and T. Carvalho.
Abstract: Attempts to transform the gendered structures and cultures of higher education institutions have had limited success. This article focuses on one Irish university (pseudonym University A)
where gender inequality was a major concern culminating in high-profile litigation. Using a feminist
institutional approach, it asks: (1) What changes a...
Attempts to transform the gendered structures and cultures of higher education institutions have had limited success. This article focuses on one Irish university (pseudonym University A) where gender inequality was a major concern culminating in high-profile litigation. Using a feminist institutional approach, it asks: (1) What changes and interve...
The brief for this document was to provide an overview of the general characteristics of the higher educational sector in the Republic of Ireland (referred to as Ireland) and Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom: referred to as NI); the key policy documents involving higher education institutions and the scale of the academic system in both...
'Gender Equality: A neglected or rhetorical dimension of rankings in Higher Education'.
Global rankings, which are essentially external benchmarks of higher education institutions, are seen as increasingly important and are proliferating in number and kind. They constitute a response to increased global competition in what is an international stude...
Gender-based violence and sexual harassment (GBVH) by and towards academics and students has been under-theorised at an organisational level in higher education institutions (HEIs).
The methodology involves a critical review of the literature on GBVH and organizational responses to it, locating it in the context of an analysis of organizational pow...
In their report on the Leaving Certificate results and the standardisation process undertaken, the State Examinations Commission (2021) note that research suggests that unconscious estimation bias in such contexts are generally in the direction of favouring female students. Further, they state “knowing that such unconscious bias might come into pla...
Parents' and teachers' beliefs and evaluations of young people are important. Using a feminist institutionalist perspective, and drawing on rich data from one in seven nine-year-old children in Ireland, this paper examines mothers' (who make up the overwhelming majority of primary care-givers) and teachers' perceptions of boys' and girls' mathemati...
Excellence is the legitimating discourse for the existence and perpetuation of gender inequality. This chapter uses a multi-method approach to problematise this legitimating construct of excellence in higher education institutions (HEIs). Through an analysis of policy documents in the UK HE sector and in one case study university in relation to rec...
"The volume is a must-read for anyone interested in fairness and justice around gender".
Professor Patricia Yancey Martin, Florida State University, USA
This book examines persistent gender inequality in higher education, and asks what is preventing change from occurring. The editors and contributors argue that organizational resistance to gender...
This chapter underlines the importance of institutional resistance and legitimating discourses in understanding why the pace of change in gender equality in higher education has been so slow. Institutional resistance has been reflected in denial of the legitimacy of the gender change agenda and resisting implementing criteria and procedures which f...
This chapter introduces the topic of gender equality and inequality in higher education, using feminist institutionalism as the underlying theoretical perspective. Drawing on a range of methodologies and focusing on key topical themes it identifies the discourses which have inhibited change, as well as what can be done to facilitate transformation....
ender equality is a whole-organization endeavor. Building on Agócs (Journal of Business Ethics, 1997, 16 (9), 917–931) concept of institutionalized resistance this article undertakes a feminist critique of policy and practice around internal promotions to the equivalent of Associate Professor level in one Irish university (called the Case Study Uni...
Positions of power in higher education institutions in Western society are overwhelmingly
held by men. Men make up the majority of those in senior leadership positions: whether as
Vice Chancellors/Rectors or as full professors, the general picture is one of organisations that
are dominated by men. Thus, men make up 78 per cent of the heads of highe...
Much of the work on gender equality in higher educational institutions (HEIs) has concentrated on the organizational level. The original contribution of this article lies in its focus on state policy developments and interventions. We focus on Ireland as a specific national context, highlighting multi-level state interventions and looking at their...
This paper is concerned with the underlying question of what shapes the assessment of children's mathematical ability: focusing particularly on parents' and teachers' perceptions of that ability in the context of children's attainment (measured using standardised mathematics tests). We suggest that such perceptions may reflect the impact of gender...
This book proposes the framework of gendered academic citizenship to capture the multidimensional and complex dynamics of power relations and everyday practices in the contemporary context of academic capitalism. The book proposes an innovative definition of academic citizenship as involving three key components: membership, recognition and belongi...
The final chapter summarizes the key findings of the book and the strengths of the Gendered Academic
Citizenship (GAC) perspective. The chapter argues that the GAC framework developed enables a broad-ranging
analysis of academic citizenship practices, encompassing both permanent and precarious positions, and the
multiple places in-between. With the...
Chapter 2 focuses on the concept of ‘academic excellence’ analysing its repercussions for academic citizenship.
It challenges assumptions about the universal and objective nature of excellence and highlights the importance
of informal power relations in the definition of ‘excellence’ as a meritocratic metric. Based on data from three
empirical stud...
Chapter 1 proposes the concept of Gendered Academic Citizenship as a suitable framework to capture the multidimensional and complex dynamics of power relations and everyday practices in the contemporary context of
academic capitalism. The Chapter starts with a brief review of the earlier contributions to the gendering of the
citizenship concept. Di...
This chapter is based on data gathered in FESTA project. FESTA was an implementation project financed by FP7 (2012–2017) aimed to make a change in the working environments of academics. One of the focus areas of the project involved a better understanding of the academics’ experiences with regard to the subject of “interaction between family and ca...
Higher educational organisations across the EU, and indeed globally, remain male dominated. The fact that men occupy 86 per cent of all positions of Rector/ President/Vice Chancellor and 76 per cent of all full professorial positions, illustrates the way in which these organisations are designed by men for men. Their deeply embedded structural and...
Excellence has become a ‘hoorah’ word which is widely used in higher education institutions to legitimate practices related to the recruitment/progression of staff. It can be seen as reflecting an
institutionalised belief that such evaluative processes are unaffected by the social characteristics of those who work in them or their relationships wit...
This piece for PublicPolicy.ie develops the points made in the Irish Times Opinion piece 18th March 2020 about men and women's 'chances' of a professorial position in Irish Universities. It additionally provides evidence that, at least in the UK, Athena SWAN, the 'white hope' of Irish HEIs, has not increased the proportion of women in senior academ...
Drawing on a feminist institutional perspective combined with nego-feminism, this article explores the ways in which women in a mining community in Zimbabwe experience and access power within a patriarchal social structure. Women vary in their ability to access power depending on their societal and personal characteristics, and in particular on the...
Using a Feminist Institutional perspective, this paper suggests that the explanation for the slow pace of change in the gender profile of the professoriate lies in the gender awareness of managerial leadership. In Irish universities, women now
constitute 51 per cent of the lecturers, but only 24 per cent of those at full
professorial level and have...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the enactment of a pragmatic inclusionary strategy and related tactics as a form of feminist activism in one university.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses analytic autoethnography.
Findings
It shows how it is possible for a feminist activist to create limited change in what is typically see...
Academic capitalism is an outcome of the interplay between neoliberalism, globalisation, markets and universities. Universities have embraced the commercialisation of knowledge, technology transfer and research funding as well as introducing performance and audit practices. Academic capitalism has become internalised as a regulatory mechanism by ac...
Universities present themselves as meritocratic organizations; however, there is evidence that
such claims are ‘rationalised myths’. This article is concerned with the perceived effect of
micropolitics on academic careers in two case study universities: a collegial Spanish and a man-
agerial Irish one. The data are drawn from 86 semi-structured int...
Global scholarship has documented gender discrepancies in power in higher education institutions (HEIs) for several decades. That research is now supported by wider gender equality movements such as those concerned with unequal pay and sexual harassment. Underlying these is the under-representation of women in senior management and full professoria...
Leadership is seen as crucially important (O’Connor, 2017). Women make up 51 per cent of the lecturer grade (the entry level for academic posts) but only 24 per cent of those at full professorial level: on average a one per cent increase per year since 2013 (HEA, 2018). Women now also make up at least 40 per cent of those in executive management in...
Despite the feminisation of universities in terms of their student intake [1,2], formal positions of academic leadership in higher education remain concentrated in male hands[…]
This article describes a typological framework with axes relating to career and (non-work) relationship commitment to show how a specific cohort of women enact femininity(ies) in the context of the institutionalised practices that define science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as a masculine domain. Based on the accounts of 25 women...
This book examines higher education institutions that exemplify gendered success whether in terms of the presence of women in senior positions or attempts to change a gendered organisational culture. It reflects a global perspective, drawing on case studies from eleven countries: Australia, Austria, Ireland, India, New Zealand , Portugal, South Afr...
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. Drawin...
Diversity in higher education and research organisations is conducive to research innovation and economic growth (EC 2012a; OECD 2012). Yet male dominated educational institutions have been remarkably resistant to change. Little attention has been paid to the identification of ‘best practice’ that is, universities which in their gender profile at s...
This online handbook aims to present a deeper understanding of resistance to structural change to gender equality in academic institutions and the ways of dealing with it.
It is concerned with forms, directions, and aspects of resistance coming from men and women as well as the organizations, and the ways resistance operates (FESTA, 2012). For th...
Supranational and cross-national research funding structures bring to the fore the differential importance of national location and gender in such decision-making fora. It shows how gender bias persists in an institutional context supportive of gender equality. The data is drawn from a case study of research funding (€3 million), in a Swedish led,...
Three higher level education and research institutes cross nationally researched decision making and communications processes to explore their gendered effects. Changes to create more gender equal organizations were recommended at structural, cultural and individual levels and 60 – 70 per cent of these recommendations have at least been partially i...
This article is concerned with the macro-cultural ideal or institutional myth of
excellence as defined and used in the evaluation of academic staff as part of an
institutional logic. Such logics ‘prescribe what constitutes legitimate behaviour
and provide taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and
what means are legitimate to a...
Supranational and cross-national research funding structures bring to the fore the differential
importance of national location and gender in such decision making fora. It shows how
gender bias persists in an institutional contexts supportive of gender equality. The data is
drawn from a case study of research funding (EUR 3m), in a Swedish led, Nor...
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: xxiv) suggested that it was possible that ‘elements of a gender-specific socialisation’ were still at work in a late modern society, with gender being sometimes referred to as a zombie category (ibid: 113 and 203). For Connell (2005:13): ‘One of the most important circumstances of young people’s lives is the gender or...
Despite over 60 years of research on leadership, few attempts have been made to ensure that the models of leadership are inclusive of women or other ‘outsiders’. This paper explores variation in the constructions of leadership at a time of institutional change in higher education. Drawing on a purposive sample, including those at presidential/recto...
Despite over 60 years of research on leadership, few attempts have been made to ensure that the models of leadership are inclusive of women or other ‘outsiders’. This paper explores variation in the constructions of leadership at a time of
institutional change in higher education. Drawing on a purposive sample, including those at presidential/recto...
We focus on gender stereotypes in West European university management by comparing two countries: Sweden and Ireland. In secular Sweden there are strong policies that are implemented
at all political levels supported by the public discourse; while in Ireland such measures are few
and the equality infrastructures and discourse have been weakened by...
This article is concerned with men and women's experience of elite positions and with the extent to which such positions are seen as places for women, so as to provide an insight into their commitment to continuing in them. Senior management in universities are elite positions in terms of income; those who occupy them are relatively powerful intern...
In the Irish context and internationally a good deal of attention has been paid to the
performance of masculinity among school students. However with a small number of
notable exceptions, relatively little attention has been paid to masculinities in academic
organisations. Drawing on a qualitative study in one university, this article proposes a
te...
Executive Summary
The purpose of this action-research project is to effect structural and cultural change in higher level education and research institutes, and particularly in their decision-making bodies and processes so as to create more transparent and inclusive decision-making processes, which will advance gender equality (FESTA, 2012).
The pa...
We focus on gender stereotypes in West European university management by comparing two
countries: Sweden and Ireland. In secular Sweden there are strong policies that are implemented
at all political levels supported by the public discourse; while in Ireland such measures are few
and the equality infrastructures and discourse have been weakened by...
This chapter is concerned with describing and critically evaluating the literature on the existence of and explanations for gender imbalances in higher education (HE) focusing particularly on girls’ increasing access to HE and women’s limited access to senior positions there. These topics reflect a fundamental paradox in HE across Western society,...
This paper identifies key elements facilitating/ inhibiting the reproduction of gendered inequality in the professoriate and senior management in higher education. Gender is seen as a social institution (Yancey Martin, 2004) and a multilevel phenomenon (Wharton, 2012; Risman, 2004). It is reflected in the societal allocation of power and resources;...
This book is a definitive examination of higher education: locating it in a wider neo-liberal context involving the state and the market, with a specific focus on recent higher policy and on the elite group of senior managers in universities. Written in a clear accessible style, it provides an in-depth analysis of university structures, cultures an...
Irish Society Series
This is an evaluation of a major research programme established in 2006, on the
initiative of Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), the Swedish Foundation for Humanities
and Social Sciences. The title of the Research Programme was Nordic Spaces:
Formation of States, Societies and Regions, Cultural Encounters, and Idea and
Identity Production in Northern...
.Since educational policy implicitly involves the definition of what constitutes valuable knowledge, as well as decisions about who will have access to that knowledge, and to what end, it is not surprising that the structure, current priorities and beliefs surrounding higher education reflect the balance of power between key stakeholders within a s...
Power is an extremely complex concept. Halford and Leonard (2001: 26) suggest that ‘the concept of “power” is rarely, if ever, made explicit in accounts of gender and organisation’. All of the respondents in this study are in senior management positions, so that they have, at some level, successfully accessed positional power. They include manager-...
In Ireland, with the exception of work by a small number of authors (such as Devine, Grummell, Hazelkorn laumus, Linehan, Lynch, O’Sullivan) relatively little research has been undertaken on higher education. This is surprising, given the recent dramatic increase in access to it. It is also surprising given the state’s perception of the importance...
In this chapter the focus is on exploring two different potential manifestations of ‘think manager–think male’: first, asking respondents to describe a typical president in their university and to identify the characteristics that are valued in senior management in their university; and second asking them about the perceived existence of male/femal...
This chapter is concerned with the wider institutional and societal context, since this is seen as essential for understanding the challenges facing higher education in the twenty- first century. Thus it will look at the nature of the university as an institution; the relationships between the university, the state and the market; it will explore i...
Power operates through taken- for- granted arrangements and the belief systems underpinning them. Despite the fact that an interest in organizational culture goes back to the 1980s, there is relatively little research that ‘specifically illustrates in what ways gender relations and organisational culture are connected’ (Wicks and Bradshaw, 2002: 3)...
This book is concerned with the changing context of higher education in Ireland and its implications as regards the gendered world of university senior management. Senior management in Irish universities typically includes manager- academics and other professional managers, at presidential, vice- presidential, executive director and dean levels. In...
In this chapter the focus is on these senior managers’ experiences of being in senior management. Thus first attention is focused on the perceived advantages/disadvantages of being in university senior management: and in particular, on the extent to which it is a source of meaning or pleasure; frustration or disappointment; and an assessment of its...
The collegial structure of universities, with their stress on election to management positions (the metaphor of the Gentleman’s Club) is being replaced by managerialism. Below the level of President, the apparent objectivity of managerialism conceals a personal and arbitrary power (reflected in the metaphor of the Medieval Court). Senior managers,...
Gender stereotypes are particularly relevant to ideas about senior management because of the well-recognised tension between leadership and gender roles. The senior managers thought that gendered management styles existed. In contrast to Sweden, where roughly half of those at the equivalent to the Presidential level are women, there has never been...
Questions
Questions (2)
We had an article accepted and published online in Critical Studies of Education in 2017, which was referred to on RESEARCHGATE. It has only now (2019) been allocated a volume, issue and page number. Is it possible to change the date on RESEARCHGATE? (It is the same article so cannot be added and there seems to be no edit function on a publication)
Prof Laura Cruz Castro, I have been reading your 2010 article in Research Policy and have been been struck by the fact that the odds of men getting tenure were twice that of women (p36) and that this held up whether the men were inbred or not. However in the 2013 article in PLos ONE, there is no significant gender difference in timing of promotion (p 16). Can you help me to understand why this difference exists?
Thank you
Prof Pat O'Connor
