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56 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 57
‘M
icheline’s Three Conditions’
stands out for being a story
about winning a contest over
issues of equality. When it
comes to social change, such
stories are rare in Ireland. We are more
accustomed to tales of worthy defeat. This book
is important for oering analysis and strategy for
others to follow suit and advance change for
gender equality, and wider equalities.
This is no weighty tome to grace the radical
bookshelf. Despite the complex matters it
addresses, it is novelesque in its treatment of
place, its examination of character. It aords
attention to the emotions and the relationships
involved. It is fun to read.
This is a story of sustained injustice, bringing
the corruption of patriarchy out from the
shadows. It is a story of courage and challenge.
In this, it is not all about battles and high drama,
but more about the hard work and creative
endeavour over years to make victory possible. It
is a story of justice done and change achieved.
The institution involved is the University of
Galway and the institutional discrimination is that
against women found in its promotion processes.
The people driving this story are six women who
fought legal battles to challenge this
discrimination from 2009: first Micheline Sheehy
Skengton through the Equality Tribunal; then
Adrienne Gorman, Roisin Healy, Margaret
Hodgins, and Sylvie Lannegrand, through the
High Court; and finally Elizabeth Tilley through
the Labour Court. ‘Micheline’s Three Conditions’
grew from these legal battles to form the
cornerstone of the campaign for change that is at
the heart of this story.
The 2009 promotion process that sparked the
legal battle promoted sixteen men to the
position of senior lecturer and only one woman
(marked last among those promoted). This was
the result of a process without any evident
systematic comparison between candidates,
centre stage in the University of Galway’s culture,
systems and practices. Further, it was victory in
stimulating the Higher Education Authority to
advance gender equality across this level of
education.
A story about winning oers hope. This is not
hope as naïve belief that all will be well in the end
if we just keep our chins up. Rather, as Rebecca
Solnit would term it, it is about hope as an
invitation or a demand that we would act, rooted
in an understanding that we can make a
dierence, even in a context of great uncertainty.
Such hope is vital as belief in the possibility
achieving change wanes, and we mourn in the
face of multiple defeats. Such mourning leads to
disenchanted acceptance of a status quo of
significant inequalities.
There is analysis in this book of patriarchy in
full flow, of gender inequality and discrimination
Micheline Sheehy Skeffington (fourth from left) with Dr Mrgret Hodgins,
Dr Adrienne Gormn, Dr Elizbeth Tilley, Dr Sylvie Lnnegrnd nd Dr Roisin Heley
with inadequate consideration of the credentials
of women candidates, and where a number of the
promoted men did not even meet the minimum
requirements.
The systemic nature of this discrimination was
evident from data secured for such competitions
in the university over the period 2000-2009. 97
men applied, 50 were successful (51.5% success
rate). Only 35 women applied, despite there
being many more female junior lecturers than
male, and only 11 were successful (31.4%
success rate). Academia is uncovered as an
unfriendly place for women, with senior positions
dominated by men, and men far more likely to be
promoted by male-dominated Promotion Boards.
The book recounts a victory that secured
change for the six individuals discriminated
against. More, it was a victory that achieved
institutional change bringing gender equality
From 16 o 1 to
Three Condiions in NUIG
Niall Crowley reviews ‘Micheline’s Three Condiions: How
we fough gender inequliy Glwy’s universiy nd
won’ by Rose Foley nd Micheline Sheehy Skeffingon
The 2009 promotion process that sparked
the legal battle promoted sixteen men to the
position of senior lecturer and only one woman
(marked last among those promoted)
CULTURE & BOOKS
56 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 57
at full stretch. It exposes the weaving and
dodging, and the smokescreens thrown up to
avoid accountability for this, by those in positions
of responsibility.
There is analysis of the University of Galway as
an institution that had betrayed its founding
values. An institution that was no longer a
resource for society, but one that had been
reduced to a scramble for money, status and
resources. Values of collegiality and education
had been swapped for values of performance,
productivity, and income generation. This
usefully points to organisational culture as a key
focus in the struggle for equality, and the
imperative to achieve a priority for values of
dignity, inclusion and equality within institutions.
The change strategy recounted in this book
has the equality legislation and the role of
litigation at its heart. It arms the potential in our
equality legislation to challenge and rectify the
injustice experienced by the individual, and to
disrupt the institutional status quo that led to
such injustice.
In celebrating this eective use of litigation, we
must be concerned that the equality legislation
is not currently being used suciently. It is not
being prioritised as a lever for change. As such,
this book must be a call to arms to those who
experience discrimination just as it must be a call
to arms to those institutions established to
support them to litigate, in particular the Irish
Human Rights and Equality Commission.
Legal support is crucial. Discrimination is often
hidden in the systems and culture of an
organisation, and there is a challenge to expose
this, one well met by these litigants. There is a
legal complexity and there must be equality of
arms for the litigant. Personal and emotional
support is equally crucial, and such support is
evidenced powerfully in this book. The litigant
needs people to share the experience with to
sustain their courage and nerve through a
challenging process.
This book clarifies why people would pursue
litigation, challenging those who would point up
the perils of a litigious society. In equality cases
there is nothing casual or self-interested in such
litigants, and the book makes this clear. These
cases were taken in anger at injustice, in
expression of values of dignity and equality, and
in pursuit of a better working context for all
women.
The story evidences how discrimination
involves a devaluing of the person and, in this
context of university promotion, a negation of all
their achievements. Institutional discrimination
renders such denigration ocial and enables it,
in the experience of those discriminated against,
to be justified with patronising smugness. A
register of disbelief, devastation, being ‘fed-up’
and then becoming ‘hopping mad’ is recorded as
feeding the legal challenge they made. It is only
relief that is evident in victory.
Micheline Sheehy Skengton describes being
told that she had won her Equality Tribunal case:
‘There was part of me that never thought I would
win. I knew I was up against the university. I knew
what they had thrown at me at the Tribunal, trying
to rubbish the quality of my publications and such
like. I had some of my confidence taken away’.
That leads on to what could be described as a
restorative revelation: ‘there was an element of
me thinking, ‘Well goddamn, I deserve this’’.
The lack of self-interest in all this is captured in
Micheline’s decision to make her €70,000
Equality Tribunal award available to support her
colleagues to bring what would inevitably be a
more expensive case before the High Court.
While litigation is the centrepiece of the
strategy pursued, it is only part of a wider toolkit
required for change of the scale achieved.
Valuably, the book gives us detail of the campaign
that evolved around the litigation. So many
campaigns are focused on what we don’t want.
Here we find a campaign for what we DO want.
This was a campaign that not only knew what it
wanted, it GOT what it wanted.
At the heart of this ‘what we want’ were
Micheline’s Three Conditions, to:
»
promote the five women discriminated against
in the University’s 2009 round of promotions;
»
acknowledge the 2014 round of promotions
was flawed; and
» achieve gender balance in senior positions, by
promoting the same percentage of women
from each as the percentage of women working
at that level.
This was practical and doable, and ambitious.
It captures change sought at both the level of the
individual and the institution.
The campaign described shows that activism
must be about building power to eect change.
The campaign garnered power by mobilising
enough voices to make the demand for change.
This is far from the more usual and ineective
tactic of cosying up to power and seeking to make
a convincing case for change.
Power behind ‘Micheline’s Three Conditions’
was built through: marshalling supporters
through such tactics as petitions; building
coalitions across academia, the student body,
and trade unions; and engaging with political
parties to seek their support.
There is clarity that campaigning is also about
disruption, protest and publicity to amplify
protest. There is protest aplenty in the campaign,
with events being picketed, public speeches
made, and demonstrations. The media and social
media were engaged to give profile to and to
amplify the impact of such protest.
The campaign reflects the importance of
creativity in campaigning if it is to engage people
and make an impact. This campaign went well
beyond the dreary rituals that much campaigning
has degenerated into. This is evident in initiatives
such as Mr. Browne’s Boys T-Shirts; the Secret
Cartoonist exhibition; the ever-present yellow
banners and posters; the concert, and the
solidaritea event.
The current moment is one that demands
change for equality and for environmental
sustainability. This is an overhaul of the way we
live as a society, the way our institutions function,
and the way we interact with each other. In such
challenging times, we need the example oered
by this book. We need the sort of hope,
communicated in this book, to enable us to act in
contexts of uncertainty. We need its blueprints
for action to show the way to the scale of change
that is needed.
Niall Crowley is co-founder of Values Lab and was
CEO of the Equality Authority 1999-2009. He is
author of ‘Civil Society for Equality and
Environmental Sustainability: Reimagining a
Force for Change’, published by TASC and St.
Stephen’s Green Trust.
This book must be a call
to arms to those who
experience discrimination
just as it must be a call to
arms to those institutions
established to support them
to litigate, in particular the
Irish Human Rights and
Equality Commission
