UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Athena SWAN Action Plan Group
Minutes of the Meetings held on 10th / 17th December 2010
Present (10th):
Sandra Beaufoy (Chemistry/Physics), Julia Brettschneider
(Statistics), Sue Burrows (Physics), Georgina Copeland
(Mathematics), Wendy Coy (HR), Ann Davis (WMS), Miriam
Gifford (Life Sciences), Vanessa Goodship (WMG); Alison
Rodger (Chair of Group), Molly Rogers (Psychology), Martin
Lees (Physics), James Smith (RSS)
Present (17th):
Sandra Beaufoy (Chemistry/Physics), Sara Kalvala (Comp Sci),
Naila Rabbani (WMS), Alison Rodger (Chair), Christine Smith
(LDC), James Smith (RSS),
Minutes
1. AR emphasised that the key goal is to make the University a fairer place for
everyone to work despite the Athena SWAN emphasis on retention of women
in SET.
2. WC raised the issue of data collection on other issues e.g. disability, so that
anything developed by this group should be able to be translated across.
3. Feedback from Athena Swan: see notes attached.
4. It was agreed that departmental representatives completing Athena
submission forms by the April 28th deadline, establish a support group with
regular meetings. MR will coordinate this group. Ideally membership will be
composed of an academic and an administrator. Life Sciences is still in too
much flux for them to apply for April.
5. To investigate how many women are on the promotions committee? How do
members get appointed?
Action: AR to investigate this.
6. Promotions: we need trend analyses not one year statistics.
7. Progression at Post doc level: There are two issues (i) ‘are women promoted
more slowly’ and (ii) ‘are women preferentially leaving academic’. For
postdocs breadth of training by moving versus promotion in the same place
was also discussed
8. Athena Action plan: Focus at this stage on the 1 year timescale issues. WC
has put in motion aspects of the university process. Someone from ASAPG to
attend Single equality action plan meetings.
9. Work load models: find out which departments have them?
10. WC suggested we grouped the actions into categories and identify whether it
is a central task or a departmental one (or both). ASAPG members meet with
heads of department to discuss departmental items.
ACTION: SB to work on differentiating between university and departmental
issues
11. The trend of percentage of women from UG applications to professorial level
needs to be plotted. Is the aim to have this flat? In some disciplines there will
be a need to be working to increase the beginning of the pipeline too.
12. University should commission research into what should be the appropriate
trend?
ACTION: VG will look into getting applying for Roberts funding to perform this
research.
13. Pastoral duties: women in general bear a load out of proportion to their
number, often informally.
14. Negotiation, influence, personal effectiveness focus group rather than women
only leadership programme, for which there wasn’t much demand. Who
should be involved? A meeting should be established in either late Spring or
early Summer. Any action should feed into the Warwick Leadership
Programme for 2011.
Note: At the PhD level the Women in Science Leadership Programme has
been very effective. So it may be that younger women want to be separate.
15. Bullying and Harassment: There are no details of the formal procedure and
role of the dignity contact is not clear in the information provided on the web.
It was questioned: Are there enough dignity contacts? Are too many of them
women? Such roles should be formally recognised by the University. At the
moment it is not recognised.
ACTION: SB to discuss dignity contact issue with HR.
16. Action Plan 2: Promotion criteria:
(i)
When data are being used, e.g. citation data we need to make
departments transparent about data collection and allow people to
check what is being held on them. Name changes are a bigger
problem for women.
(ii)
Departmental committees: could include external members to ensure
women are represented?
(iii)
(iv)
Should we set up a structure to help women prepare their promotion
documentation so their submissions actually reflect competence. Can
we establish a group across the sciences of senior women to help
women prepare promotions applications, including draft Head of
Department supporting letters.
Encourage departments to have a process of inviting people to apply
for promotion now or in the future with a suggested timescale – make it
a transparent process.
17. Action point 8: It was agreed mentoring might be better implemented for
specific things e.g. promotion.
18. Annual Review Training – E&D issues are now in place.
19. Data: SB has made HR aware of data needs.
Date of Next Meeting to be arranged