Tuesday 26th February 2013 - Still no female Student Union President

Clearly it is up to students how they run the Union. But associated with the University can make observations about what goes on there.

A walk around the campus shows that the elections are curently taking place for the eight sabbatical officers who will run the Union through the academic session 2013-14.  Eight positions are up for grabs.

I have been Pro-Vice-Chancellor for a long time, and these elections will bring in the eleventh set of officers I have worked with.  In my last blog post I drew attention to a gender issue in University Challenge teams.  In terms of the Union elections it is interesting to observe that the gender of next year's President is alerady known - male.  There are only two candidates and both are male.  This means that, including 2013-14, I will not yet have worked with a female president.  All the other posts (bar one) have moved from time to time between male and female occupants. At one time the Welfare post was a preserve of women, but that mould was broken some years ago (and there is a male incumbent this year).  The Finance post (now called 'Development') used to be associated with men, but once again we have now a track record of women in that role (as this year).  Amongst Presidents there have been no women - but there have been two international students (one a postgraduate), and one (this year's) from a BME background.  But all have been male.

I have talked with the current President about the lack of female Presidents. He has pointed out that across the sector as a whole there are currently a remarkable number of BME Presidents, and he attributes that to an 'Obama' effect bringing new confidence to ethnic minority students.  I hope we don't have to await the possible election of President Hillary Clinton befroe we see a flush of femal Union Presidents across British universities.

But I did point out that all the non-President posts bar one had been occupied by both males and females.  The exception has been, perhaps inevitably, the women's officer role - which has always been occupied by a woman.

It is not my place to suggest a change to the Union constitution.  But were I to do so I would suggest creating a specific post to represent postgraduate students.  And I would also suggest transforming the Women's Officer post into one with responsibility for eqality and diversity issues affecting all students.  It may be that politically ambitious women in the Union see that role as the one for them rather than the Presidency.  Such a transformation might mean a male being elected to the equalities post - and free up women to stand for President.  And that would stand on its head the possibility of recurrence of something that happened for several years in the mid 2000s - for several years male Presidents developed close personal relationships with the female Women's Officers.