Athena SWAN Silver Award
The Department’s Athena SWAN Silver Award was awarded in 2015 by the national Equality Challenge Unit in recognition of our ongoing commitment to gender equality within higher education.
We have made much progress on our Athena SWAN journey which started in 2008 with our first Bronze award:
- We have moved from having no female professors to having 9 (15%), compared to 9% across the Russell Group
- Female undergraduate-starters have increased from 34% to 46% since 2013 reflecting changes to our UG admissions processes, together with outreach activities targeting female students
- 88% of women report they have a reasonable work/life balance and 91% would recommend working in the Department to friends in our most recent staff survey.
We recognise that we still have much work to do and our Athena SWAN action plan focuses on achieving gender balance in student attainment and progression, achieving gender targets in recruitment and progression for academic and research staff, targeted improvements to strengthen support for the employee life cycle for all staff, and embedding and deepening cultural change throughout the Department to positively impact everyone who works and studies with us.
For more information on our Athena SWAN work contact: Janice French, Head of Administration.
