Pat O'Connor

Friendships between women : a critical review

Womens friendships - an under-explored topic? do married women have friends? friendship - a refuge for single women? elderly women and their friends is there something special about friendship? towards the future.

Young People's Constructions of the Self Late Modern Elements and Gender Differences

This article looks at the ways in which young people reflexively construct their self within a rapidly changing society. Drawing on texts written by young people aged 14–17 years, it explores the existence of patterns identified by theorists of late modernity as regards relationships, fateful moments, a search for authenticity, life plans and life styles and looks at gender-differentiated trends in these areas drawing on a ‘weak cultural feminist tradition’ (Evans, 1995: 91).These texts are part of a sub-sample of approximately 34,000 texts written by young people in a school context in response to an invitation to ‘tell their life stories’ by writing a page ‘describing themselves and the Ireland they inhabit’.The article suggests that gender is a repressed but crucially important framework in the construction of young peoples sense of self, while also identifying areas where consumer society is eroding gender difference.

The Adult Mother/Daughter Relationship: A Uniquely and Universally Close Relationship?

Despite developments in the sociology of welfare and in feminism, the examination of young adult mother/daughter relationships has been relatively neglected. Such relationships are still popularly seen as ‘very close’, although studies such as Brannen and Collards (1982) have shown that they are not intimate. In this paper the content and quality of such mother/daughter relationships is examined using a small scale intensive study of sixty married or cohabiting women randomly selected from medical records in north London. Their relationships with their mothers were typically characterised by high levels of visual contact, felt attachment and identity enhancement. The majority of the women did not see their relationships with their mother as very close. Furthermore, even those who did see them in this way, did not have relationships characterised by high levels of practical help, dependency or intimacy. In arguing that mother/daughter relationships are neither universally nor uniquely close, such relationships are juxtaposed with relationships with sisters who were identified as very close. Finally it is argued that the continued popular perception of mother/daughter relationships as very close reflects current definitions of feminity; the idealization of the mother role and an equation between closeness and tending.

Similarities and differences in collegiality/managerialism in Irish and Australian Universities

In the collegial model the basis for appointment to senior management in the collegial model is nomination by a community of scholars, whereas it is by line management in the managerial one. This article focuses on the basis of appointments in universities and the gendering of such structures. Data are drawn from qualitative interviews with both men and women senior manager-academics at Dean level and above in Ireland and Australia (N = 44). In both countries the power of the President/Vice-Chancellor (VC) was very much as a Chief Executive Officer in the managerialist model, rather than the ‘primus inter pares’ of the collegial model. Moreover, Presidents/VCs controlled the appointments of Vice-Presidents/Deputy VCs and Deans and were seen as being able to affect the gender profile of senior management. However, in the Australian system (in contrast to the Irish one) there was no ambivalence about the VC actively rectifying gender inequalities in management. In a context where hybrid forms of management are emerging, this article questions the relevance of collegial/managerialist models in understanding the gendering of universities.

Excellence in university academic staff evaluation: a problematic reality?

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 achieve these goals’ as stated by Pache and Santos Insead. In the case study university, this logic is reflected in the identification of ostensibly objective, gender-neutral key performance indicators of excellence. Lamont suggests that evaluation is necessarily subjective. Drawing on 23 qualitative interviews with those involved in such evaluation, this article looks at variation in the definition of excellence and in the evaluative practices in decision-making fora. It raises questions about the implications of this for gender inequality and for the myth of excellence and ultimately for the legitimacy of the organisation.

Gender and Management in HEIs: Changing organisational and management structures

This paper reports on the second phase of a multi-country study examining cross cultural perspectives of gender and management in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It examines the broader labour market context and legislative frameworks for higher education in each country and then analyses the literature on women in university management. The paper presents the findings of research with male and female senior managers about their perceptions of women as HEI managers within changing organisational and management structures. It concludes that although HEI’s are now largely aware of barriers to women getting into and on in senior management, they have not addressed the organisational structures and cultures that perpetuate this inequity.

Women's Experience of Power within Marriage: An Inexplicable Phenomenon?:

Relatively little attention has been paid within mainstream sociology to the examination of marital power, although there is considerable disenchantment with measures of it based on replies to questions about who makes a range of decisions. Marxists and feminists have stressed the importance of economic dependence as an element in understanding power relationship within marriage, although there has been little empirical work to support/undermine their views. This paper draws on material from 60 in-depth interviews with predominantly white married women aged 20–42 years old whose oldest child was at most 15 years and who were randomly selected from general practice medical registers in North London. The paper looks at three aspects of their marital power position: first, their experience of powerfulness/powerlessness; second, their level and pattern of emotional dependence on their husband (in the context of Wallers and Hills (1951)‘principle of least interest’); and, third, their absolute and relative levels of structural power resources (such as education, occupation, etc.) It shows that although the overwhelming majority of the respondents were partially if not totally financially dependent on their husband, only roughly one third felt powerless within their marriage. The importance of relational and structural sources of power in influencing these feelings is explored, the paper arguing that such feelings are less influenced by the respondents’ own structural resources than by factors associated with the husbands economic position and his role within the family. Hence, paradoxically, although the respondents feel less powerless than they ‘should’ in terms of their level of economic dependence, the factors associated with variation in feelings of powerlessness highlight the constrained nature of their situation.

Is Senior Management in Irish universities Male-Dominated? What are the Implications?

Universities present themselves as gender-neutral meritocracies, concerned with the creation and transmission of scientific, objective knowledge. Yet such structures are overwhelmingly male-dominated (Husu 2001a). This article outlines the gender profile of those in senior management in Irish universities; secondly it explores the extent to which those in senior management see a gendered organisational culture or women themselves as ‘the problem’; and thirdly, locates these patterns within a wider organisational and societal context. The qualitative data is derived from a purposive sample of forty people in senior management (85 per cent response rate) from presidential to dean level, including academics and non-academics, men and women, and across a range of disciplines. It suggests that organisational culture is seen as homosocial, unemotional and conformist mainly but not exclusively by women; whereas men were more likely to focus on women as ‘the problem’. These trends reflect those in other studies (for example Currie and Thiele 2001; Deem 1999; Deem, Hillyard and Reed 2008). Drawing on Grummell, Lynch and Devines (2009) work, it suggests that homosociability is an important process in creating and maintaining these patterns. Furthermore, although university presidents are seen as having the power to affect the gender profile of senior management, there is ambivalence about them actually doing this. The extent to which other stakeholders seem likely to encourage this is also explored.

The experiences of senior positional leaders in Australian, Irish and Portuguese universities: universal or contingent?

This article is concerned with the extent to which the leadership of higher education is a universally positive or contingent experience. It draws on comparative data from semi-structured interviews with those in senior leadership positions in public universities in Australia, Ireland and Portugal, countries which are differently located on the collegial/managerial continuum. It looks at their perceptions of the advantages/disadvantages of these positions. Universal trends emerge, arising from difficulties created by the shortage of resources consequent on neo-liberalist pressures; from the non-viability of a managerialist discourse as a source of meaning; from the positive character of the university as a knowledge-generating organisation; and from the gendered satisfactions derived by men and women from occupying these senior leadership positions. Contingent trends include the tension between academic and managerial roles, which is strongest in the Portuguese collegial structures; while the negative impact on personal well-being is most apparent among the Australian respondents in the most managerialist structure. The paper concludes that assumptions that senior leadership positions are universally positive is not supported. It suggests that the attractiveness of these positions – contested in a collegial structure – may be further reduced in increasingly managerialist contexts, with the challenge of diversity, so important to innovation and economic growth, being particularly acute.

Resistance Amongst Faculty Women in Academe

The subject of this article is gender prejudice and the various ways in which women faculty members in various higher education and research organizations in Ireland resist it. Different types of resistance are presented as mini case studies set in a continuum ranging from the least organizationally transformative to the most transformative. It is hard to gauge the results of such resistance; at least it generates an ongoing awareness of the situation.