Feedback on our Bronze Award
1. Athena SWAN could be better integrated with the overall university strategy.
This should follow as departments become involved. It was noted however that the
university strategy seems disconnected from many aspects of the university. The
Athena SWAN activities are linked into formal structures via E&D.
It was suggested that Silver awards should be what departments are aiming at and
everyone was encouraged to look at it and see how much progress could be made
by 28th April.
2. Good: holistic approach to policies and procedures and effectively thinking about
equality and diversity as a whole. The panel noted that all policies were in place,
disseminated well and that training is incorporated.
3. Surprised that an equal pay review had not been carried out recently.
4. Staff survey, PULSE: results.
5. In some areas data were rather thin and commentary lacked insight, for example
promotion rates have only been given for 1 year and the data clearly show an issue
for promotion of women in SET: 5 women had been recommended for promotion
with 1 success, compared to 14 men recommended and 12 successes. Why?
We need more data over a longer period of time.
6. Disappointed with your data on committee representation and felt it was woolly to
say that women should be encouraged to apply for vacancies. In particular the panel
wanted to know how committee members were chosen, whether those making the
appointments had training in equality and diversity, and whether women chaired any
of the committees.
7. Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence and the Warwick Leadership
Programme: monitor the numbers of women from SET departments winning awards
and taking part in the programme.
8. Monitor take-up of mentoring and one-to-one by women in SET departments take
up these.
9. Action plan: fairly comprehensive and ambitious plan, but woolly in many places
with no prioritisation of your actions or indication of how success will be measured.
The panel suggests that you should consider revising your plan at an early stage to
take account of these comments.
HR people
Lora Morris HR Services Manager;
Anne O’Rourke (Systems Team);
Esther Zaccarelli (our Systems Manager);
Mary Cox (Academic Processes Coordinator).
Data: are the requirements the same as we submitted before?
Promotion and probation data for SET departments: last 4 years are available for
manual access. What format do we want?
Comments:
AP 23: not sure that this is possible – student and staff systems are very different
and separate so data is always produced separately from the two different sources…
AP 24: data on fixed term contracts are already available; what is actually needed?
AP 25: flexible working – we do not hold statistics on the up-take of flexible working
centrally. It is something we have considered from time to time but very often
working flexibly does not have any impact on a member of staff’s contractual
arrangements and we do not need to know about it, - and therefore don’t record it….
It would be very useful to have complete clarity on what the group will need.
Action: AR and SB to meet with Esther and Lora