SDG 5 : Gender Equality

Women remain underrepresented in entrepreneurship and senior leadership, making opportunities to explore these pathways during university particularly valuable. 

In 2025, University of Limerick's Kemmy Business School (KBS) and Technology Office delivered CreateHER, a six-week entrepreneurial leadership programme for 35 female undergraduate students. 

Students from Business, Production Management, Science and Immersive Software Engineering took part. Across the six weeks, they explored entrepreneurial thinking, teamwork, turning ideas into action and leadership for personal and career development. 

The programme also included dedicated training on building professional networks and working with uncertainty. 

Each week, female entrepreneurs and senior leaders joined the programme to share practical advice and perspectives from their own careers. 

By bringing students from different disciplines together, CreateHER provided a dedicated space for female undergraduates to explore entrepreneurship and leadership and to learn directly from women already working in these areas.

Ireland has introduced reforms intended to improve the experience of victim-survivors within sexual offence trials, but there is limited empirical evidence about whether those reforms are working as intended for the people they are designed to support. 

In October 2025, Professor Susan Leahy of University of Limerick's School of Law was awarded Research Ireland COALESCE funding, in association with Cuan, the Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Agency, for the two-year project Lived Realities: Victim-Survivors' Experiences of Irish Sexual Offence Trials. 

Professor Leahy and postdoctoral researcher Dr Rong Bao will interview survivors of sexual violence who have experience of the Irish trial process to examine whether recent law and policy reforms are working as intended and delivering justice for survivors. 

Described by the research team as the largest study of its kind in Ireland, the project aims to build an evidence base of survivors’ experiences and draw on those findings and international best practice to develop recommendations for law and policy reform.

Preventing and responding to sexual misconduct and gender-based violence involves clear policies, education and access to support. In 2025, University of Limerick (UL) combined these elements through RespectfUL Campus and related sexual health and wellbeing initiatives.

Launched on 5 March by the Human Rights–Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Office and Human Resources, RespectfUL Campus supported the launch of four policies covering Sexual Violence and Harassment, Dignity and Respect, Sexual Health and Wellbeing, and Domestic Violence.

During 2025, 2,142 students participated in consent training and 421 in Bystander Intervention Training. Staff support included a new cross-institutional e-learning resource on responding to sensitive disclosures and EmilyTest training on responding to gender-based violence disclosures and assessing risk.

Specialist care was extended through a monthly Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) Follow-Up Outpatients Clinic at UL’s Health Centre. Beginning on 28 January, it delivered 12 sessions for 26 patients from the Midwest who faced barriers, particularly travel, to attending appointments in Cork and Galway.

UL also participated in the November 16 Days of Action Against Gender-Based Violence campaign, with support-service stands, a coercive-control workshop, an exhibition challenging victim blaming and a candlelight vigil.

Gendered barriers in higher education careers are not always visible to those in senior leadership positions. A cross-institutional reverse mentoring pilot took a different approach by pairing male senior leaders with female staff, giving senior leaders an opportunity to hear directly about barriers experienced by female colleagues. 

University of Limerick (UL) participated in the Higher Education Authority -funded project led by University College Cork, alongside the University of Galway and Munster Technological University. 

The pilot began in 2024 and concluded in January 2025. The pilot aimed to develop mentoring capacity among early-career staff and give senior leaders greater insight into gendered career barriers. 

Following the pilot, the project was extended through a subsequent funding call to develop an online reverse mentoring support platform, with UL continuing as a partner.

Women living and working in rural communities can encounter barriers shaped by both gender and place, including limited infrastructure and transport, restricted local opportunities and working environments traditionally designed around men. SEMILLA, or Seeds of Equality, brings these lived experiences into education through virtual exchange, intercultural collaboration and community engagement.

At University of Limerick (UL), students took part in international virtual exchanges with students from the University of Valencia, educational workshops and interviews with rural women entrepreneurs and professionals. The wider project connects participants across Ireland, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and the United States.

The interviews gave students direct insight into different experiences of rural women's working lives. Amelia, a jewellery entrepreneur from rural Limerick, described the challenges created by limited transport and retail infrastructure. Claire discussed working in agriculture, a traditionally male-dominated sector where machinery and working environments are not always designed with women in mind. Edel reflected on combining career and community commitments while overcoming gender-related workplace barriers.

Laura, an environmental scientist and horticultural entrepreneur, described developing a family food-growing initiative into a rural business supplying local communities, cafés and restaurants. She also highlighted the importance of women supporting women through entrepreneurial networks and of children seeing female role models in leadership, agriculture and business.

SEMILLA has also generated research and educational outputs. Work by UL students Emma Kerins and Caolan Dignam was published in the 2025 Spanish academic volume Mujeres, educación y ruralidad, building on earlier collaborative work involving Irish and Spanish students. A further collective volume arising from the project has been agreed with academic publisher Tirant lo Blanch.

University of Limerick welcomed 700 female secondary-school students to the University Concert Hall on 3 December 2025 for the Inspire Women in Engineering event. 

Organised by Explore Engineering, the event brought together students in third, fourth and fifth year to hear from five women working across engineering sectors. The panel shared their experiences of software development, industrial processes, research and apprenticeships, introducing students to different routes into engineering. 

Panellists included Professor Donna O’Shea, Chair in Digital Engineering at UL; Christina Connolly of Aughinish Alumina; Raissa Pululu of Jaguar Land Rover Ireland; and Leah Murphy and Mary Barron of Murphy Group. Minister of State Kieran O’Donnell TD opened the event. 

Explore Engineering is a consortium of more than 50 companies in the Mid-West, supported by education and training providers including UL, Technological University of the Shannon, and Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board. 

Supporting women to advance in academic careers is a central part of UL’s work on gender equality. Athena Swan is a framework that helps universities in impactful and sustainable gender equality work and to build capacity for evidence-based equality work. This includes gender inequalities, including in career development and progression. 

In 2025, four UL academic units achieved Athena Swan Silver awards: Computer Science & Information Systems and Lero, and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, in April; Biological Sciences and the School of Engineering in November. This continues the progress UL has made over the last decade in achieving and retaining Athena Swan awards in its academic units.  

The University also recorded an increase in women’s representation at Professor grade. Women held 39% of these positions in December 2025, compared with 37% a year earlier. This grade is classified by the Higher Education Authority as Associate Professor. Women’s representation at Full Professor level remained at 33%. 

Practical career support included the Preparing for Academic Advancement project which includes staff across Irish higher education institutions. The programme combined one-to-one coaching with senior academic mentorship. UL’s 2025 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report presents feedback from a survey of the programme’s final cohort: 30% of respondents reported promotion and 19% reported positive career progression since participating