Event: Using Athena SWAN to create an inclusive work and study environment

Central to the Athena SWAN approach to addressing gender inequality in UK universities are two facts:

  1. Vice-Chancellors love/need prizes!
  2. Evidence is essential to convince rational people when changes need to be made.

Therefore Athena SWAN offers a series of prizes, based on submissions that acknowledge and attempt to rectify gender inequality. The submissions are data-centred. This is absolutely critical – only evidence can convince, only evidence can direct the Action Plan. Without these data, policies and procedures can be changed (or may have been in place for ages) without understanding the gender implications. The Action Plan targets (set by the data analysis) must be evidence-based as well as SMART – realistic and potentially achievable. Comparative data are tremendously important – there might be only 10% females on the staff of a unit, but if the UK comparison is 2%, then that’s great! Practices that we take for granted, such as female representatives on interview panels, are an outrageous novelty elsewhere! We must have support from leadership – each leader must all the time have gender equality and fairness in mind as a parallel goal to bringing in more money, research achievements, etc. Everybody needs to understand why we doing this – reducing gender inequalities benefits everyone.

Title Date Time Location
Using Athena SWAN   to create an inclusive work and study environment Monday 8th June   2015 14:00 – 15:00 Talbot Campus

To book your place on this workshop, please email Organisational Development

Speaker’s Biography

Christine Maggs started as Dean of Science and Technology at Bournemouth University after five years as Head of School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast. At QUB she led the School’s successful 2009 submission for a Silver SWAN Athena award, and was closely involved in the successful Gold award application. Her research interests include the systematics and ecology of seaweeds, and the conservation and exploitation of marine resources. She was appointed as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2013 and in 2014 received the Award of Excellence of the Phycological Society of America.

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