The Athena Swan Charter is a national initiative that recognises a commitment to tackling gender inequality in higher education and research.
To achieve an award, Schools must demonstrate how they are furthering gender equity. Some of the work ABCE has been doing includes awareness-raising events, supporting colleagues returning from extended parental/adoption leave and having an active involvement in the Inclusive Engineering Excellence Hub to support their diverse population of students.
Professor Ksenia Chmutina, ABCE’s Director of EDI and Lead of the Athena Swan submission said: “We are really proud to be awarded Athena Swan Bronze as this recognises our commitment towards making STEM more equitable. Our Self-Assessment Team has worked tirelessly for the past couple of years to understand the challenges and opportunities that we have in our School in terms of gender equity, and we are really excited to be implementing our Action Plan for the next five years focusing on and improving both staff and students’ wellbeing, retention, gender equity awareness raising, the effectiveness of our EDI policies and practices as well as tackling a lack of women in senior positions in the School.”
Malcolm Cook, Dean of ABCE added: “I am delighted to be celebrating this award with my colleagues. The School is dedicated to supporting an equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment – to create better futures, together.
“People and our principles of equity, diversity and inclusion lie at the heart of all we do and I regularly share these with our colleagues, stakeholders and visitors. This award not only confirms our commitment to these principles but gives a framework for the continual development of ideas and support for each other. It is a privilege to lead this School and I am immensely grateful to the team of colleagues whose efforts have led to this award.”
This was the first submission for an Athena Swan Bronze award for Loughborough University London. Over the last few years more gender diversity has been brought into the senior leadership team, career progression for female academics and members of professional staff has been improved and an EDI committee has been established. EDI became prominent in implementing school-specific EDI policies, such as the recent refinement of the support that carers receive when returning to work.
Professor Tony Edwards, Dean of Loughborough University London commented: “In terms of priority areas for gender equality, we will continue the excellent work that has already been addressing gender inequality and address some specific issues: maximising the scope for internally promoting and externally recruiting female professorial staff over the next five years; increasing support for line managers to enable them to better assist female early career researchers with their progression/promotion and whole-life balance; increasing the support for female carers to manage their workloads and maintain a healthy whole life balance; and increasing consultations with postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students to identify EDI issues and improve gender equality.”
Dr Anna Grosman, Reader in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Athena Swan Lead for Loughborough University London added: “It is important to take collective action to address gender inequalities in the higher education sector and we are delighted to be taking a step closer to that with this recognition from Athena Swan.”