Equality Continued »


section: a women’s committee may be an environment where, particularly a newcomer, or perhaps a longstanding member of a representative organisation, may feel at home and flourish. For this reason alone it may have merit.


The case against a women’s committee The necessity for a woman’s committee in a professional representative organisation has been questioned27


. The possibility that


a women’s committee encourages gender stereotyping is one problematic area. Pillay28


about women’s roles are deep-seated. Gender stereotyping has been clearly identified in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as something that impedes the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. Negative stereotypes hinder people’s


ability to fulfil their potential by limiting choices and opportunities. They are at the root of overt and covert, direct and indirect, and recurrent gender discrimination, which adversely affects the de jure and de facto substantive equality that should be guaranteed to women in representative organisations. Stereotypically, males are expected


to act agentically with aggression and competitiveness, whereas females are expected to act communally with interpersonal sensitivity29


. Babcock, Bowles and Lai30 believe that women are negatively


evaluated by followers when they engage in assertive behaviour, whereas men are not. The formation of a women’s committee may, in some people’s minds, reinforce this negative stereotypical expectation of women members. Some bodies consider it important


that dent i s t s should not be identified primarily by gender. For example, typically the registers of dentists, maintained by the competent authorities of EU states, do not explicitly identify the gender of their registrants. Many believe that female dentists should be part of


“Recent research suggests that dentist gender is not an issue for patients when it comes down to it”


emphasises that gender stereotypes Not sure about this pic...


the mainstream in the representative organisation and should not be marginalised into a ‘Women’s Committee’. Otherwise, individual dentists may be “channelled into gender-specific portfolios, creating glass walls”3ı


. Recent


research suggests that dentist gender is not an issue for patients when it comes down to the treatment process32


.


Correspondingly, the formation of a women’s committee in a DRO might not be an issue.


Prevalence of gender- based committees Up to now, the prevalence of gender based committees in DROs has received little attention. This paper reports on a survey of the national DROs in the EU. The purpose of the survey is to establish the prevalence of gender-based committees in these organisations.


Methods A web-based survey, utilising SurveyMonkey, of the main national DROs of the EU was carried out during December 20ı5 and January 20ı6. Twenty eight organisations, corresponding to the 28 member states of the EU, were surveyed. The DROs and their email addresses were as described in the EU Manual of European Dental Practice. An email was sent to each DRO containing a link to the survey. The survey was composed of five questions. The survey was confidential; no individual DRO was identifiable in the results.


Results In the web-based survey of EU national


DROs, completed surveys were returned by ı4 national organisations representing a 50 per cent response rate.


Qı. Does your organisation have a unit or units (e.g. a Committee, Subcommittee or Interest Group) with a membership based on gender? Examples might be a Women’s Committee or a Men’s Committee. Twelve organisations (86 per cent)


answered no and two (ı4 per cent) answered yes. If the answer to Qı was yes, they were


directed to continue to Q2 and Q3. If the answer was no they were asked to skip to Q4.


Q2. Does the unit (or units) have similar powers within your organisation as other units, whose membership is not based on gender, such as, for example, general practi- tioner committee or specialist committee? The term powers might include voting rights, funding, size etc. Answered: two Skipped: ı2 One organisation answered no and one


answered yes.


Q3. Is membership of this unit (or these units) confined to one gender i.e. member- ship must be all males or all females? Answered: two Skipped: ı2 Two organisations answered no. No organisation answered yes.


Q4. Does your organisation have plans to introduce a gender-based unit in 20ı6?


Continued » Ireland’s Dental magazine 27


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