果冻影院

果冻影院鈥檚 50:50 gender equality group, which Geraint Rees and I co-chair, is taking stock of how ready we are to renew our application for a university-wide Athena SWAN Silver award. We鈥檝e got until November next year.听

Surprise, surprise, the application form has changed. There are new questions on important topics such as professional services careers that we need to address if we are to maintain our silver status.听

The stakes are high. If we lost our university award, no new departments would be able to apply nor existing departments able to renew their award, including those who need a silver Athena SWAN award to get NIHR research funding. This would be the case until we got our university award back again. So this matters for financial as well as for fairness reasons.

At 果冻影院, we don鈥檛 only think about gender equality when we鈥檙e renewing our Athena SWAN applications or on International Women鈥檚 Day.听

In an era of Everyday Sexism and threats to hard won battles for equality such as the 1973 Roe vs Wade case in the US, we can鈥檛 take even the progress we鈥檝e made in recent years for granted. I want a level playing field. But I want even more badly for the field not to become less level again.

Not a zero sum

I don鈥檛 see gender as more important than other aspects of diversity. As I used to argue when I was at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, progress on diversity is not a zero sum.听

Moving forward on one equality 鈥榮trand鈥� 鈥� gender, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, age, religious belief or non-belief, or across different strands, known as 鈥榠ntersectionality鈥� 鈥� also contributes to the broader goal of making our society more tolerant in the best sense of that word.听

Speaking out against sexual harassment or intolerance of any kind benefits everyone. It develops a shared sense of what鈥檚 OK and what鈥檚 not OK. It helps everyone work out where to draw the line.听

Not easy, and that鈥檚 why the chaired by the Provost this week is so significant.

I use three lessons from earlier in my career as a guide. The first two come from my EHRC days. First: 鈥榥othing about us without us鈥� 鈥� the Disability Rights Commission鈥檚 mantra. It means, ask, don鈥檛 tell, someone from a particular group what they might want or need.听

Nothing infuriated me more when I was a young working mother than being told, 鈥淥h, that鈥檚 not a job for you.鈥� (Actually, a recent blog by University of Cambridge Professor Athene Donald flagged an even more irritating line, 鈥淵our time will come!鈥�)

The second lesson is that only a few human rights are absolute, like the right not to be tortured. Most are qualified, like the right to respect for private and family life. My rights are qualified by your rights.听

And finally the third guiding principle, which I learned in South Africa, is 鈥榰buntu鈥� 鈥� a Nguni word Desmond Tutu defined as meaning, 鈥淢y humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.鈥� We have to define ourselves and our identities in relationship to others.

Making progress

That spirit of flexibility is why I鈥檓 personally keener on 60:40 goals than 50:50 ones. I don鈥檛 mind being in the 40% of women in a group 鈥� even if being in the 60% would be more comfortable.听

But I expect men not to mind if they are in the 40% either, and not to make a fuss about feeling 鈥榦verrun by women鈥�. The nice thing about 60:40 is that it is a gender neutral goal. 听

So how close is 果冻影院 to that? Making progress, but not evenly. 57% of applicants to 果冻影院, and 59% of those appointed, are women. At the top, the leadership group has improved from 20% women in 2015 to 25.6% in 2017 鈥� that鈥檚 10 extra women in senior roles.听

The proportion of women in grades 9 and 10 has been rising steadily for the past four years, from 31% in 2012 to 35.7% in October 2016.听

But it doesn鈥檛 look so good from the standpoint of a female postdoc. We still have a significant pipeline issue: 50% of our postdocs are women, but only 25% of our professors are (although this compares favourably with the Russell Group).听

How have we made progress? Through a concerted series of actions, some small, some bigger, all expressing senior commitment to making a difference.听

Many are focused on the 鈥榞ateway鈥� moments, where the pipeline of women often starts to tail off. Here are some of the things that seem to be working:

• open and transparent processes for advertising and selecting heads of departments and senior roles 鈥� but we need to implement and monitor these consistently
• discouraging single sex panels (expert or interviewing)
• instructing executive search firms to provide gender and ethnically diverse long lists
• local mentoring schemes, many initiated by Athena SWAN self-assessment teams
• the Future Leaders programme
• the Provost鈥檚 scheme for Women in Leadership
• the Parents and Carers Together (PACT) network
• job shadowing and coaching
• the best paternity policy in the sector (but not enough 果冻影院 dads and partners know about it)
• the 果冻影院U Zero Tolerance to Sexual Harassment campaign.

And more that we can and are planning to do:

• our anti-harassment event, 鈥楩ull Stop鈥�, and related training on 鈥淲here do you draw the line?鈥�
• advertising more jobs as potentially flexible, part time or job share
• showcasing examples of senior job share arrangements
• more use of the 鈥榯ie breaker鈥� clause in the 2010 Equality Act
• promoting examples of men at 果冻影院 taking Shared Parental Leave.

If you鈥檙e a man reading this, thank you. If women hold up half the sky, men hold up the other half. And please don鈥檛 feel threatened. This is about talent and fairness and positive action, not positive discrimination.

For more information about the Athena SWAN process contact equalities@ucl.ac.uk.

听