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Original poster

New Athena Swan gender charter mark launched today

34 replies

BettyFilous · 30/06/2021 17:15

For those of you not in the university sector this scheme started out to address the low numbers of women staying the course from undergraduate study through to senior academic roles in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Over the last few years, the scheme has been extended to include the arts and humanities disciplines. Some public research funding bodies require a department or institution to have an Athena Swan award to be eligible to apply for funding, so it matters if a department or individual researcher in a department wants to apply for research funding.

It has been going through a major review since 2018 to reduce administrative burden and increase the transparency of its decision making. The new scheme was launched today. To be allowed to apply under the new scheme, the institution or department has to commit to the scheme principles: www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan-charter/transformation/Updated-Athena-Swan-Charter-Principles

Principle 5 says:
Fostering collective understanding that individuals have the right to determine their own gender identity, and tackling the specific issues faced by trans and non-binary people because of their identity.

Gender identity is woven through the principles and the scheme guidance. In light of Maya’s ruling and the Reindorf report, is Advance HE (the body that run the scheme) on shaky ground in requiring adherence to gender ideology to apply to this scheme? It doesn’t look like they’ve considered recent developments at all.

OP posts:
drwitch · 01/07/2021 07:31

@Lockdownennui

One of the arguments I make against encouraging everyone to put their pronouns on emails / Teams names, etc., is that because this increases the unconscious bias and stereotype threat women face, it is going against the AS principals that we have signed up to. If AS shifts from a sex focus to a gender focus, maybe this argument is no longer applicable (I.e., maybe it is no longer about levelling the field for women) …
It's not it's all about minority genders
GCAcademic · 01/07/2021 07:28

It's definitely mission creep. And obeisance to an ideology that employees are perfectly within their legal rights not to believe in, which is widely rejected by the general population, and which conflicts with women's rights should not be a condition of funding.

BobbinThreadbare123 · 01/07/2021 07:23

I refused to engage with Athena Swan when I was doing my postgrad; it seemed box ticking then and that's quite a long time ago now. They also did the "girls, can you do all the admin for this" schtick. It hasn't increased the percentage of women in my old department or any similar ones from my university, so what has it been doing? In the intervening ~15 years since I first encountered it, the mission has crept as well. My subject area is quite TWAW and has a lot of transwomen in it.

GCAcademic · 01/07/2021 07:17

@drwitch

There's the running joke that women don't get promoted because they are all busy spending time on their departmental AS submissions.
I refused to do it. I pointed out to my then HoD that asking a woman to take on the significant administrative burden of AS to (apparently, but not really) deal with a problem that was caused by an institutional and sector-wide culture of rewarding male academics for prioritising themselves and their research was not as progressive as he seemed to think it was. To be fair to him, he immediately got it and apologised profusely. That was before I found out that AS thinks that women can have a penis.

I resent that a university should feel the need to seek the rubber-stamping of an external body (regardless of if it's Athena SWAN or Stonewall or any other), and even worse, that funding bodies should make the right even to apply contingent on such an external rubber stamp: I believe that the latter could actually disadvantage women who are at institutions that have a poor record of treatment of women, since these women would also be prevented from applying for the grants, if I understand correctly. (My discipline's main funding body doesn't do this.)

I completely agree with this.

Lockdownennui · 01/07/2021 07:09

One of the arguments I make against encouraging everyone to put their pronouns on emails / Teams names, etc., is that because this increases the unconscious bias and stereotype threat women face, it is going against the AS principals that we have signed up to. If AS shifts from a sex focus to a gender focus, maybe this argument is no longer applicable (I.e., maybe it is no longer about levelling the field for women) …

drwitch · 01/07/2021 06:55

But the new charter seems to be an even further shift. In 2015 the move was to include other aspects of inequality, now gender Id seems to push everything out. The threat to academic freedom (particularly in subjects dealing with female disadvantage ) is immense

drwitch · 01/07/2021 06:51

There's the running joke that women don't get promoted because they are all busy spending time on their departmental AS submissions.

Trivium4all · 01/07/2021 00:10

Ah. I'm trying to make sense of what that means, in practical terms. Would be keen to hear from other university members with AS experience. On the surface, there's not much to object to: anyone can believe what they like about themselves, and of course if there are issues arising from such beliefs, then these need to be addressed. This Principle does not mandate anything about how this needs to happen and what the results should be, which is good.

In a way, it's also hard to see this as mission drift, since AS has drifted away from its initial STEM focus and its initial women's focus long ago. In my university, at least, AS committees have often been a catch-all for all sorts of equality and diversity issues, and the conflation of "gender" and "sex" is also long established.

I had hoped that with the increasing prevalence of equality and diversity initiatives that are dedicated to all sorts of causes, e.g. anti-racism, etc., then perhaps AS might return to its roots a bit, but perhaps that ship has sailed.

I also have to say I'm not keen on the whole AS exercise in general. I resent that a university should feel the need to seek the rubber-stamping of an external body (regardless of if it's Athena SWAN or Stonewall or any other), and even worse, that funding bodies should make the right even to apply contingent on such an external rubber stamp: I believe that the latter could actually disadvantage women who are at institutions that have a poor record of treatment of women, since these women would also be prevented from applying for the grants, if I understand correctly. (My discipline's main funding body doesn't do this.)

I'd really like to hear other academics' thoughts on this.

EndoplasmicReticulum · 30/06/2021 17:25

"this scheme started out to address the low numbers of women staying the course from undergraduate study through to senior academic roles in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines"

Did they identify some of the reasons why this might be?
Sex, or gender?