This year’s lecture is titled ‘Beyond a focus on gender gaps: why we need more egalitarian labour markets to achieve gender equality’, with guest speaker Professor Jill Rubery. 

We do hope you can join us.  

This in-person event will take place in the Conference Hub at Riddel Hall. Please note this ticket is for reception and lecture only.

About the Speaker

Jill Rubery is a renowned expert in comparative employment systems, with a focus on gender and labor market regulation. She is the Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School, where she has worked since 1989. A fellow of the British Academy, Rubery has extensively researched labor market policies, gender equality, and employment systems globally.

Information on the Lecture

Progress on gender equality is often measured by trends in gender gaps: as long as the gap on average with men is closing all must be well. Yet for many reasons this approach may provide a distorted picture.

Some gaps close as men lose out rather than women gain, while equality should be mainly about levelling up not down. Also, closure through more women moving up the occupational ladder may disguise what is happening for women left behind where conditions may even be deteriorating. Many work in sectors that are vital for society, so the focus should perhaps shift to improving these job conditions, not only on reducing women’s concentration in these jobs.

This talk examines the challenges women face in the labour market and finds that the form they take differs according to the type of job they are in. Policies to support all women in their still excessive care responsibilities, such as more affordable childcare, are still very much needed. But we also need to target policies at the different problems encountered by occupational-type and sectors and take action to ensure that, in the pursuit of gender equality, working-class women are not forgotten and left behind. 

About the Lecture Series 

In June 2019, former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, formally launched the Queen’s Business School Annual Mary McAleese Diversity Lecture Series during an event at the University. The new lecture series is part of Queen’s Business School’s mission to promote greater equality and diversity in the workplace, particularly with regards to ensuring equality of opportunity and respect for diversity across the University and the wider community. 

About Mary McAleese 

Mary McAleese, who is a Professor of Children, Law and Religion at the University of Glasgow, discussed female empowerment, same sex marriage, misogyny and homophobia, during the course of the event. 

A barrister by profession, she graduated from the School of Law at Queen’s in 1973 and was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1974. She was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin the following year and later took up the position of Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at Queen’s in 1987. Professor McAleese became the University’s first female Pro-Vice-Chancellor in 1994. 

Mary McAleese, was elected the 8th President of Ireland in November 1997, succeeding Mary Robinson. She is the second female president of Ireland, the first president from Northern Ireland and served as for two terms until November 2011.