Gender equality in the Department

Our Department is proud to hold an Athena Swan Bronze award. The Athena Swan Charter is a global initiative which aims to support and transform gender equality within higher education and research, with awards that are given to institutions that recognise their commitment to advancing women’s careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine.

Athena Swan Charter

Help institutions achieve their gender equality objectives
Assist institutions to meet equality legislation requirements
Use a targeted self-assessment framework to help applicants identify areas for positive action
Support the promotion of inclusive working practices.

Our equality commitment

In 2020 we gained the bronze award from Athena Swan recognising our hard work to support and transform gender equality within our department.

Two students laughing together whilst walking through Manor Park campus

Key principles

The Athena Swan Charter is based on ten key principles.

Our submission (PDF)

By being part of Athena Swan, we are committing to a progressive Charter; adopting these principles within our policies, practice, action plans and culture.

Steps to success

We outlined a number of actions we planned to take in our submission to help us achieve gender equality.

Building awareness

Produce a newsletter to provide visibility and awareness of Athena Swan actions to staff and students

Enrolment rates

Improve the number of applications from women by 4% and enrolment rates by 2%

Promoting our women

Build on advertising of our female staff and student careers, activities and achievements

Equal opportunity

Make the ratio of appointments to applications for both men and women candidates the same by 2023/24

PhD applicants

Increase our female applications, especially from our own undergraduates, to gain more female PhD students

Promotion prospects

Maximise women’s success in promotions to at least as high as men

Celebrating women in our department

Professor Anne Skeldon tells us about research on mathematical models for sleep, light and the body clock, and predicting the effect of moving school start times and of permanent daylight saving.