Building on the huge success of the Aurora leadership development initiative for women in Ireland, Advance HE has developed a contextualised Senior Women’s Leadership Development Programme for Ireland. The programme aims to provide a safe space for women, developing the knowledge, skills and network necessary to succeed in senior leadership roles.
Barbara Bassa is programme director and lead for women’s leadership development at Advance HE. In this video, she explains why the Senior Women’s Leadership Development Programme is needed in higher education and how it is specifically designed for the unique context and challenges of being a woman in a senior leadership role in the higher education sector in Ireland.
Barbara says, “We've been working with colleagues in the Irish higher education sector for many years to deepen our knowledge of the context and to design this Senior Women’s Leadership Development Programme, in the way that it responds to the demand of the Irish sector.
“We know the Higher Education Authority Act 2022 brought a lot of changes to HE institutions’ governance and finance in Ireland and those changes have particular impact on leadership and what leaders do and the demands on their role.
“We will be working with experts in those fields to help our participants on the programme to think through what those changes mean for them practically as leaders.”
Impact
“Through running programmes such as Athena Swan and Aurora, and also through our conversations with colleagues in Ireland, we are able to identify a real need for more leadership development for women in the Irish HE sector" says Barbara.
“Feedback is telling us that a more in-depth programme is required, especially for those women who are thinking about progressing to executive roles. So the Senior Women’s Leadership Development Programme will definitely fill that gap. “
Women-only space
Barbara says, “Our aim is that both Aurora and Senior Women’s Leadership Development Programme complement each other and provide a holistic leadership offering for women in Ireland.
“Women only spaces are an incredibly nourishing and safe environment for women for their learning and development, but they're also very powerful places of transformation where participants can come and talk quite openly about the barriers that they face when trying to progress into higher roles within their institutions.”
Watch the video in full below