Athena SWAN have rewarded the University’s aspirations to improve fairness and equality for women, with our first departmental awards and the successful renewal of our university Bronze award.
Each award is a mark of recognition that an academic unit or faculty demonstrates a solid foundation for eliminating gender bias and is now developing an inclusive culture. The prime focus is on women’s careers in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine) disciplines.
In November 2012, a Self-Assessment Team chaired by Professor Iain Cameron submitted an application to renew the University’s Bronze award, with the explicit aim of preparing the ground for a Silver award by 2015. Concurrently, several academic units and the Faculty of Medicine applied for their own Bronze awards. A dedicated Diversity team helped to support individual bids with statistics and wider knowledge and insight gained from previous applications. We have been delighted to learn of successful outcomes for:
The Faculties of Engineering and the Environment, and of Health Sciences, will shortly be making their own submissions for the next round of awards.
A key part of each submission is an action plan setting out steps that the individual Self-Assessment Teams will be taking over the next three years, to ensure that best practice truly becomes part of our culture.
Since the University’s previous award in 2009, many research councils and other organisations have stipulated that an Athena SWAN award – often at Silver level – will be a condition for future funding. So as well as the support for female students and academics, gaining and retaining these awards will have real financial significance.
We hope these successes will encourage other academic units to now consider applying for Athena SWAN or similar awards. For more information, please contact [email protected].