On 14 May, I joined a virtual Advance HE networking meeting on enhancing practice to support achievements in the Athena SWAN Charter.
In what used to be my normal life, I had to work around school pick up times during the week. Getting to full day conferences was tricky, so I’m actually finding I can attend a lot more of the virtual variety than I can face-to-face events. As I am rapidly becoming a serious consumer of Zoom meetings, I’m always interested to see how organisations manage these.
I thought that Advance HE’s approach worked well – they fielded a few speakers via live video feed, kept a staff member on hand to curate the Q&A and we could use the chat box to raise questions or post links. In between speakers, we were allocated to small discussion ‘rooms’ with 5 or 6 others to discuss any challenges we wanted to raise with colleagues. Joining a video chat with 5 strangers made my anxiety levels climb rather rapidly, but it’s probably no worse than facing a room full of delegates during a ‘networking’ coffee. After some initial awkwardness about who was going to speak first, the discussions did start to flow and I felt like I’d made some new virtual friends by the end.
Job sharing in academia
The first two speakers described their experiences of working in (different) job share partnerships. Emma Watton is a Programme Director at Lancaster University and had very positive experiences to report. She felt that the role worked seamlessly across the two of them. She said there is a risk that colleagues can see a job share as more of a job ‘shirk’ but there were no issues with productivity for her, in fact quite the reverse. They have published their experiences in Flynn, Patricia M., Haynes, Kathryn and Kilgour, Maureen A., (eds.) Overcoming challenges to gender equality in the workplace: leadership and innovation. Greenleaf Publishing, Saltaire, UK, pp. 67-77. To find new flexible working opportunities, she recommended contacting DuoMe. Ginibee is another talent sharing platform you could try out.
Dr Claire Senner, Cambridge University reported on her time as part of a job share post doc role at Babraham Institute. Still a rarity as a job share model, she was lucky enough to partner with a researcher whose expertise as a bioinformation dovetailed with her own wet lab skills. She is very grateful for the opportunity that the job share gave her to continue with science while taking time out for family. She is struggling to move past the sense that part time research is still seen as evidence of a lack of commitment. Will the academic community ever stop seeing a career in research as a ‘calling’ that has to rule our lives rather than complement them, I wonder?
Reverse mentoring and culture change
Prof Jon Rowe from the University of Birmingham introduced their reverse mentoring programme, where a staff member from an under-represented group (in this scenario, the mentor) is partnered with a senior manager (the mentee). Reverse mentoring is an opportunity for a senior manager to learn about different kinds of backgrounds and routes through academia that diverge from their own. At Birmingham, the aim of the programme is to raise awareness and drive cultural change. It also provides a chance for often ignored voices to be heard and can evolve into sponsorship for the mentor. Initially, Jon encountered reservations from some leaders about the scheme but he finds that the more you talk about doing something, especially with people other than your direct supporters, the more acceptable it becomes as a concept. Then you swiftly implement when the time is right! He had the following tips if you are tempted to set up your own scheme.
Tips on reverse mentoring:
- Use staff networks to find mentors
- Provide pre-training – remind managers to stay quiet, as they may be used to taking the lead in most discussions!
- Do some pre-screening to identify what the manager needs to learn and what the mentor can provide e.g. experience of returning from maternity leave
- Match people carefully – sometimes the pairings may not ‘click’
- Embed the scheme into senior management training programmes
Jon is also a veteran of many Athena SWAN panels and has probably read more than his fair share of applications. Here were his top ten reasons why a department might not achieve a Bronze award:
Ten reasons why a department might not get Bronze Athena SWAN:
- Ownership by leaders lacking
- Ownership by department lacking
- Ongoing life of the Self Assessment Team – who follows up on the actions post submission?
- Presentation of data – what is the obvious thing that people will see in your data? Make sure you address the ‘elephant in the room’
- Dealing with issues – have these been addressed effectively?
- Not having evidence – don’t submit too soon, wait until you have the evidence
- Weak/vague actions – especially the terms ‘review’ and ‘monitor’. These will not change anything!
- Hiding behind institutional policies
- Using small numbers as an excuse
- Forgetting the purpose of application – the point is to show how you are addressing gender inequality, not describe your Faculty Model in detail.
On top of those, he has also seen some themes in unsuccessful Silver applications.
Reasons not to get a Silver Athena SWAN:
- Speculative applications without a solid action plan from institutes not yet at Bronze award level
- Solid action plan but no demonstrable results
The main thing to remember is that Athena SWAN is about evidenced change. You are not going to succeed by just being good at equality and diversity!
Equality and diversity (EDI) at Reading University
The keynote speaker was Prof Parveen Yaqoob, the first female Deputy Vice Chancellor at Reading. As a British Asian, she spoke powerfully about growing up in the UK when racial abuse was sadly common and open. For her, if your childhood experience is to stay below the radar to avoid violence or abuse, later you may not feel very comfortable with the visibility that senior roles can bring.
She outlined some of the achievements at Reading, which received an Athena SWAN Silver Award in 2020. They are working towards a minimum of 40% of either gender as professors and have closed their Gender Pay Gap from 11% to 9% (compared to a national average of 18%). For the last two years, Reading has featured in the Stonewall Top 100 employers and they have an active network for disabled staff who they are consulting about accessible remote working.
Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown in March, they were planning a series of roadshows to encourage a collaborative approach to equality and diversity, and to bring home that it is everyone’s responsibility. At Reading, EDI activities are captured under a ‘citizenship’ criteria when applying for promotions.
Goals of equality and diversity roadshows
• Understand the diversity goals and how it impacts on your role
• Participate in surveys openly and honestly
• Engage as a mentor, champion or ally or join a network
• Become culturally competent
• Become a spokesperson for diversity issues that are not yours
• Welcome ideas that are different from your own and support your team members
• Communicate and educate
• Commit to continuous improvement
For Parveen, the challenge is to move beyond just complying with legislation and to start to normalise discussions about race and ethnicity. Reading sees charter marks as audit and improvement tools to help create SMART action plans. Parveen advises us to think about what is going to change as a result of any new initiative. What will be different after doing the activity? It’s important to focus on impact and how it will change your institute for the better.
Essentially, achieving impact is the secret to Athena SWAN success!
KatieGee 