The under-representation of women in the professoriate is a widely acknowledged, complex phenomenon (Fitzgerald, 2014; Fuller and Harford, 2016). Despite the advances women have made in terms of their participation rate as undergraduates, as well as the introduction of gender equity policies, the vast majority of professors in higher education institutions globally are men (European Commission, 2015). This endemic gender gap cannot be attributed to the absence of skills, abilities or aspirations of women, but rather to the multiple systemic barriers within the organisation and culture of HEIs that have impeded women’s progression into professoriate and senior leadership roles (Coleman, 2010; Fitzgerald, 2014; Grogan and Shakeshaft, 2011; Grummel, Devine and Lynch, 2009; O’Connor and Carvalho, 2014). Responding to the special call, Educational Reforms and Historiographical Change in Network 17, this paper examines the under-representation of women in the professoriate and how we can 'tease out historical explanations' in order to inform our understanding of this phenomenon.

The historiography of women’s access to the university sphere and particularly the history of women’s admission to the ranks of the professoriate has largely concentrated on the politics of women’s entry and the battle to secure access without distinction of sex (Dyhouse, 1995; Fitzgerald, 2009; Harford, 2008; Harford and Rush, 2010; Solomon, 1985; Theobald, 1996). A number of scholars have narrowed this lens to focus on women’s struggles to claim a presence in the university as academics, researchers and administrators (Mackinnon, 1997) as well as on their ‘uneven patterns of inclusion as relative outsiders in the academy’ (Fitzgerald, 2007: 239). Friedman (2000) has argued that in documenting the history of university education, there is a need to make women visible, as they have been largely ignored in this genre. She further contends that gender must be examined and understood in local, time-bound contexts and must ‘always play a part of historical sensibilities’ (Ibid: 22). There is a vacuum of research on the history and agency of the women professoriate internationally, those located at ‘the margins of the academy’ (Fitzgerald, 2007). Fitzgerald has commenced a research agenda in order to address this, focussing in particular on women professors in the Australian and New Zealand contexts (2007; 2009; 2014; 2015). This current research contributes to and expands this research agenda, adding a European dimension, by looking at the early women professors in the Irish context. Specifically, it examines the role of two women professors appointed to University College Dublin, Mary Hayden (1862–1942) and Agnes O’ Farrelly (1874–1951). It focuses on the ambivalent status of these women who were on the one hand insiders within the academy but on the other outsiders (Fitzgerald, 2007) working in a patriarchal, conservative environment. This insider status allowed them to pursue a feminist agenda within the newly formed university, their minority status ensuring they were appointed to a number of key leadership roles. However, their status as outsiders meant that they were marginalised to some extent, all appointed to lectureships in the Humanities, and confined to areas of university activity deemed appropriate for women. As role models for women students, they were complex and contradictory. Neither was married and both were the subject of public scrutiny because of the close relationships they enjoyed as single women with prominent nationalists and political activists, Padraig Pearse and Douglas Hyde. Both were hence ‘gender transgressors’ (Blount, 2000), living independent lives and exercising autonomy in their work as professors. Both thwarted the androcentric world of the university as well as challenging dominant attitudes regarding women’s role and place in Irish society, in particular in the areas of suffrage and women’s constitutional status. 

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