Sexist Graffiti

Mikel

Apologies then because I've taken you up wrong.

But I do think the position is superfluous, especially if a person is already being paid to increase electoral participation anyway.
And that SU doc includes the responsibility for 'women's issues'.
Imo there is no such thing, segregating these things only serves to give the impression that women are a distinct different group who must be treated differently, except for when they don't want to be treated differently.

I'd be interested to know the reasons why more women don't run for election.
In the 'real world' the usual lazy assumptions are trotted out re childcare and discrimination etc.
I find it interesting the situation is mirrored in 3rd level where those arguments wouldn't apply.

Maybe it's the nature of SU politics itself that is the deterrent.
The 'issues' that affect women are 99% the same as those that affect anyone else in college, teaching timetables, tutorials, exams, problems with lecturers etc.
Maybe the tendency for SU's to be dominated by ideological loons who aren't happy until there's a referendum on abortion or Nestle or some other overwhelming irrelevance to occupy them is what puts female students off.

gubbie

Dajaffa wrote:

Women make up well over 50% of the Union membership, but only 20% (on average) of sabbatical officers, and I think that that merits having a WO to try and rectify this.

Sorry but I hate that argument. It's the same thing that always comes up in careers. There's about 10-20% women every year in engineering and now there's a "Women in Engineering" grant to encourage more, but is there a "Men in nursing" grant? Should we turn away perfectly good candidates for a job because one needs the ratio to be even and give it to a lesser person because of their sex?

I think it's an inner thing, that women are more self conscious, less likely to put themselves out there. It's not something you can just turn off and a year of working with a womens officer and a year living with another has taught me that year-on-year, nothings changed, that they never really had the ability to change anything. But it's only for these sabbatical positions that women don't seem to want to run. If you look at all the big socities there're mostly run by men but if you look at the smaller socities its a more even divide. Maybe they think its less work and thus less pressure on their studies!

By miles, female students are the biggest under-represented group

I'd hardly call them "under-represented", especially not the "biggest". Of the exec officers this year, female-male ratio is split evenly at 5 men and 5 women (excuse me if I'm wrong, I'm just going by what is on the union website, omitting Fannon because I know he's not a PRO anymore). But by having a officer just for women, who they vote in what way is best for women but not having a man's officer who will vote just for men, that itself is putting the ball in the womens court... if that all makes sense. When I was on exec the ratio was 8:4 in favour of men. This was after a pretty sucessful year of a womens officer. And yet this year after a pretty disastorous womens officer the ratio is even? Its not something a womens officer has any power over.

**TAKING INTO ACCOUNT not, there are some exceptions, women do run for positions sometimes and I'm not sticking every women into one catagory

Stepherunie

Just to add some depth, looking at the NUS in the UK they have both a Women's Officer (with a different job role to ours) and a Black Students Officer.

So they have what we have and take it further with other typically under represented groups.

gubbie

Stepherunie wrote: »

Just to add some depth, looking at the NUS in the UK they have both a Women's Officer (with a different job role to ours) and a Black Students Officer.

So they have what we have and take it further with other typically under represented groups.

But women aren't under represented

dajaffa

Of the 20 people currently on exec, 5 of them are women.

It's not about saying x:y should be the ratio and we should have quotas to do this, it's recognising that the ratio is consistently not reflective of the Union membership and seeing what we can do to encourage people to run and make it more reflective of our membership.

gubbie

dajaffa wrote: »

Of the 20 people currently on exec, 5 of them are women.

I was only including the voting members ie those directly elected and those considered "exec officers"-the PRO's, women's officer, ILO, environmental, postgrad. I believe there 4 male PRO's and the ILO is male aswell. My point being that women are more likely to run for non sabbatical positions

dajaffa

gubbie wrote: »

I was only including the voting members ie those directly elected and those considered "exec officers"-the PRO's, women's officer, ILO, environmental, postgrad. I believe there 4 male PRO's and the ILO is male aswell. My point being that women are more likely to run for non sabbatical positions

All exec members are voting as per the new constitution.

The_Minister

Women make up the majority of SU members, so if women wanted to vote for women.....they would.

anonymous_joe

What percentage of the SU actually votes though...?

rainbow kirby

anonymous_joe wrote: »

What percentage of the SU actually votes though...?

An extremely small one.

anonymous_joe

Do they release like actual figures or any of that lark?

I'd assumed it was small enough alright.

Stepherunie

There's full figures of the number of ballots cast etc after every election on www.ucdsu.ie/elections

Currently the info for class rep elections is up.

I do believe the turn out is typically 4,000 - 6,000 for sabbaticals though I'm open to correction.

anonymous_joe

Out of what...? 24,000 isn't it?

Het-Field

Stepherunie wrote: »

There's full figures of the number of ballots cast etc after every election on www.ucdsu.ie/elections

Currently the info for class rep elections is up.

I do believe the turn out is typically 4,000 - 6,000 for sabbaticals though I'm open to correction.

Sometimes its much lower, and it doesnt even breach the 10% mark. This is the fact which has called into question the relevance of USI. UCDSU may be far away from the average student, but USI is something else.

In spite of this, the USI saw sense to abolish the Womens Rights Action Committee (WRAC)(Most ironic name ever). It is no longer seen a a pertinent issue, and is rather condemnation of the ability of women.

If a man was to run (I recall Dave Jones of the L&H was going to run in 2007) for the Women's Office, there would be outrage on behalf of the people who gravitate towards that position.

Women need to grab the bull by the horns, not be coaxed into running for the various elections. They have the choice to run, and if they dont, well its not my problem. Neither should it be the Union's

Stepherunie

I know that myself Het - I very nearly ran for education this year but it was a case of do that and risk ruining my degree as my dissertation was due at the same time. In the end I chose my degree and a masters instead of running.

That was a choice I made and I don't regret my decision.

Running for a sabbatical takes time and does affect your degree if you're in a weighted year, so maybe women just don't want to take the risk. Personally for me that was my main reason for not going for sabbat, I love research and my pride in my thesis meant I didn't want to take the hit the campaigning would have meant to it.

I was also coming into a jobs market that is moving downwards with a recruitment ban in place in my area of training. Doing education officer wouldn't have been any use to me in what I'd do as a radiographer and probably would have been more a hindrance than a help. Now maybe it says something that I'm in health sci and very few health sci people run for sabbatical positions, our degrees don't lend itself to running and a position in the Union doesn't exactly do you any favours in interviews (my cv has caused a few raised eyebrows in interviews I have done already) but I think it runs a lot deeper than the whole issue of a womens officer and whether or not we have them.

gubbie

anonymous_joe wrote: »

What percentage of the SU actually votes though...?

These figures quoted above are for the sabbatical elections, ie a completely different set of elections. For womens officer, it's only around 2,000 out of 22,000, so about 9%.

The reason I never ran for a position that would involve taking a year out was purely because of the effect it would have on my studies. And what use would it ever do an engineer!

There's less women in the government. Maybe that's more important

anonymous_joe

Stepherunie wrote: »

I know that myself Het - I very nearly ran for education this year but it was a case of do that and risk ruining my degree as my dissertation was due at the same time. In the end I chose my degree and a masters instead of running.

That was a choice I made and I don't regret my decision.

Running for a sabbatical takes time and does affect your degree if you're in a weighted year, so maybe women just don't want to take the risk. Personally for me that was my main reason for not going for sabbat, I love research and my pride in my thesis meant I didn't want to take the hit the campaigning would have meant to it.

I was also coming into a jobs market that is moving downwards with a recruitment ban in place in my area of training. Doing education officer wouldn't have been any use to me in what I'd do as a radiographer and probably would have been more a hindrance than a help. Now maybe it says something that I'm in health sci and very few health sci people run for sabbatical positions, our degrees don't lend itself to running and a position in the Union doesn't exactly do you any favours in interviews (my cv has caused a few raised eyebrows in interviews I have done already) but I think it runs a lot deeper than the whole issue of a womens officer and whether or not we have them.

It's a huge risk to run for office irregardless of gender.

gubbie wrote: »

These figures quoted above are for the sabbatical elections, ie a completely different set of elections. For womens officer, it's only around 2,000 out of 22,000, so about 9%.

The reason I never ran for a position that would involve taking a year out was purely because of the effect it would have on my studies. And what use would it ever do an engineer!

There's less women in the government. Maybe that's more important

It's a fairly sad indictment of UCD that only 9% of students feel compelled to vote. Then again very few students are aware of the existence of these offices until the posters go up in First Year. I remember the threads here way back when I was a first year along the lines of 'Lol, wait til the kiddies get in and see Belfield tomorrow.'

I've no idea why less women run for office (of any sort.) To be honest, I'd much rather that the issue didn't matter, and merit alone was what counted. Sadly I think that due to the fact that there aren't always massive numbers of female officers, many problems that lads wouldn't think of are completely ignored. This in itself would be an argument for the need for a Woman's Officer, but it's a pity that it would ever be needed.

bosco101

I know a bunch of lads from AG who used to leg it around at night writing 'SEXIST' in lip stick on the posters for the craic. So funny hearing people complain about it over the next few days.

Xhristy

This post has been deleted.

El Siglo

What's wrong with being sexy?

The_Minister

This brought me back; I am sending it back.