School of Applied Sciences leads the way in Athena SWAN awards

School of Applied Sciences leads the way in Athena SWAN awards

THE hard work and commitment demonstrated by the School of Applied Sciences at the University of Huddersfield to promote gender equality and tackle disparity has led them to be conferred with the University’s first departmental Silver Athena SWAN award.

The Athena SWAN Charter was originally established in 2005 by the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) – now part of Advance HE – to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) in higher education and research.

Ten years on, the Charter expanded to include the arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL), and now recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women.

Promoting gender equality

To achieve Silver accreditation, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee for the School of Applied Sciences, chaired by Enterprise and Equality Manager Dr Gemma Sweeney, had to expand upon the challenges raised when they were awarded the Bronze Athena SWAN award in 2015.

“Since receiving the Bronze award we have introduced a variety of measures to promote gender equality within the School,” said Dr Sweeney, who is also Chair of the School’s Athena SWAN Working Group.

In a highly-detailed report, they measured how successful the changes were, evaluated the extent of their impact and if they could be improved.

One area Dr Sweeney and the team focused on was the career progression of the School’s professional support staff and how they could be supported.

“All of our technicians used to be on similar grades without clear progression routes,” said Dr Sweeney, “it was made clear to us that this should change after we collated the results of the staff surveys.” 

The EDI Committee responded with a complete reshape of the organisation chart to include different career levels for the technicians with a similar task conducted for the administrative staff.  The School’s academic staff received a revised work allocation model to ensure that everyone had similar amounts of teaching, administration and research, as much as possible and within limits. 

Sharing best practice

Dr Sweeney said the EDI Committee is now looking forward to sharing best practice and gender equality approaches with the University’s schools and departments who are also drawing up their own Athena SWAN submission.

“As more schools achieve their own Bronze Athena SWAN award, this will pave the way for the University to apply for a coveted institutional Silver award, of which so far, only a handful of universities have been able to achieve and no one, as yet, has ever achieved gold,” she said.