Athena SWAN 10th Anniversary Workshop
Athena SWAN workshop - Professional and support
staff
For institution level applications, this includes any staff not included in the definition of academic
staff who are employed by the institution (thereby excluding contractors). For departmental level
applications, this includes such staff working in the department. This may include administrators
and technical support staff.
Inclusion in the application
The 2nd and 3rd principles of the post-May 2015 Athena SWAN Charter are:
“We commit to advancing gender equality in academia, in particular addressing the loss of
women across the career pipeline and the absence of women from senior academic,
professional and support roles.”
“We commit to addressing unequal gender representation across academic disciplines and
professional and support functions. In this we recognise disciplinary differences…”
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For institutional level applications, information on professional and support staff needs
to be included in the Flexible working and managing career breaks and the Organisation
and culture sub-sections. At silver level, baseline data is requested by faculty, grade, job
type, contract type and turnover rate in the Picture of the institution section, and
throughout the section on Supporting and advancing women’s careers.
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For departmental level applications, baseline data on professional and support staff
needs to be included in the Picture of the department section and information included
in the Flexible working and managing career breaks and the Organisation and culture
sub-sections. At silver level, information is requested throughout the section on
Supporting and advancing women’s careers.
The following points are to help you to start thinking about areas for consideration. This is
not an exhaustive list of what should or should not be included in the application, but
rather ideas for discussion. You may wish to pick only one or two points to discuss in
detail, rather than attempting to address them all. You should consider what challenges
your institution faces.
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How will your institution/department consult and gather qualitative data to gain insight
into P&S staff’s experience of processes such as promotion, training and how it feels to
work within the department/institution?
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How will your institution/department gather quantitative data on the recruitment
process/where can you currently find this data within the institution/department? Is
thought given to equality when defining the criteria for P&S posts?
Athena SWAN 10th Anniversary Workshop
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How is promotion data gathered and recorded for P&S staff? Promotion data could be
broken down by gender/ethnicity to identify any trends and any gaps that require
addressing
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How are P&S staff supported to achieve promotion? What support schemes are
available to help staff with career progression?
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How are P&S staff kept informed of training and mentoring opportunities? Does your
institution/department provide these with a focus on career progression?
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How are professional and support staff represented on committees? Again, this data
could be broken down by gender/ethnicity to identify any trends
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Do P&S staff receive the same level of induction as academic staff?
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Flexible working policies in place in the institution/department; how many P&S staff
have benefitted from flexible working or work flexibly? Do P&S staff have a restricted
level of access to flexible working as academic staff? What about maternity, parental
and adoption leave?
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Do P&S staff receive an annual appraisal, and what is the focus of this appraisal?
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Some P&S staff, such as technicians, feel that the work that they often do, for example
marking work and teaching, is under-recognised. What could your
department/institution put in place to help address this?
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Are P&S staff ‘visible’ in your institution/department?