New Athena Swan gender charter mark launched today

[BettyFilous]

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.

"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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

@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

So there is a direct example in the guidance about men in nursing for example

The most anti-women, anti-working mothers, old boys’ network sexist on every level workplace that I ever worked was an Athena Swan place. Where men using the women’s toilets and showers was also fine. I couldn’t hack it and left. My earning power has never recovered even to the same level and I still get the rage thinking about it. That absolutely fucking useless award can go fuck itself from a height.

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.

Aaaaargh!!!!!!

Your personal sense of your own gender identity is completely and utterly irrelevant to how you are treated by others. All that matters is what they perceive.

Somebody perceived as female cannot escape sexism by identifying as non-binary, but may suffer less prejudice than somebody who does not identify as trans but is more gender non-conforming.

Pregnancy, periods, endometriosis, menopause etc happen regardless of identity.

This ideology is all about an individualist demand for affirmation and has nothing whatsoever to do with protection of rights - of women or trans people who are all viewed as part of an amorphous blob of the 'marginalised/oppressed' with no distinguishing features.

but may suffer less prejudice than somebody a woman

Is this a bit like Stonewall? Set up with the best of intentions to tackle a specific issue. Very successful in gaining acceptance as THE body to turn to on this issue. Money rolls in from organisations who want to be able to say 'Look, we've solved that problem, we've got a badge to prove it and we got it by filling in a lot of forms and forcing our staff to go on training courses!' Everything gets very corporate.

On the ground, though, nothing much changes in the bodies paying for their badges, and the body issuing the badges now has staff who want to keep their jobs, so have no incentive whatsoever to say 'Job done, now we can wind up and move on'. So they look for ways to widen the scope of the badge-issuing and keep expanding.

FFS. But unsurprising. Universities are fast becoming the wokest places on the planet.

But principle 5 as written, I can sort of get behind, as long as AS still centres women and the problems we face in our academic careers. I can cope with bringing other people along with, I cannot cope with replacing women’s rights and needs with others’. Academia is still a (white middle class) old boys’ club, in the senior positions, although at PDRA level I worried for my male team members as opportunities for speaking slots dried up.

I thought Principle 5 might be buried in a larger document, but there are only 8 principles.

It doesn't mention sex once. Just a reference to 'gendered' impact of caring responsibilities and career breaks in point 7 as though you can somehow escape the impact of being the the sex that has to deal with the consequences of pregnancy by claiming your right to determine your own gender identity.

Oh God! I hate ‘gendered impact of caring responsibility’ - there is no such thing, it comes down to sex.

I think part of the issue is that we use ‘gender’ in place of sex because many (immature) grown adults titter at the word ‘sex’. And then when ‘gender identity’ comes along it confuses people.

It would be good to get some stats from before the scheme was introduced to the present day as to whether more women got those senior positions, and whether being in the scheme or not has had any impact at all.

Athena Swan's supposed definition of 'gender identity' (in the 'ECU Gender Charter' ) is vacuously circular: 'gender identity' , it says, 'is a person’s internal perception of their identity' . (www.ecu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Gender-Equality-1.pdf)

This document remains online.

Athena Swan's policies in this area, thus, remain based on empty definition. As an organisation, Athena Swan either does not understand, or does not care about, the intellectual vacuity of its policies as written. Either way this is a somewhat horrifying state of affairs given the intended place of this body within academia.

As currently explicitly constituted, Athena Swan are a waste of everyone's time. Leave them be and do not engage with them unless and until they change. Explain to your colleagues, your employers and Athena Swan themselves.

Is this a bit like Stonewall? Set up with the best of intentions to tackle a specific issue. Very successful in gaining acceptance as THE body to turn to on this issue. Money rolls in from organisations who want to be able to say 'Look, we've solved that problem, we've got a badge to prove it and we got it by filling in a lot of forms and forcing our staff to go on training courses!' Everything gets very corporate.

On the ground, though, nothing much changes in the bodies paying for their badges, and the body issuing the badges now has staff who want to keep their jobs, so have no incentive whatsoever to say 'Job done, now we can wind up and move on'. So they look for ways to widen the scope of the badge-issuing and keep expanding.

Yes, that's what I was thinking.

I'll out myself here as an Athena SWAN lead for a significant section of my university. We currently have the first sticker, and aren't due for renewal/getting the next sticker (I see it as a sticker chart) for a wee while, so our focus has been on addressing exisiting policies, and creating an environment in which women can talk freely about issues that affect them, and working to address those issues. So in that sense, I hope we're doing something positive and necessary. But as I said earlier, the sticker-chart part of the whole thing bothers me: I think it's not right in principle, and I think the applications are a massive pile of work that keeps people from their research (our AS committee is about 50/50 men and women, so at least the pain is spread more equally!). I'm now unsure if maybe I should stay on board and try to do useful stuff until just before the next application crunch kicks in, and then bail...

Is this a bit like Stonewall? Set up with the best of intentions to tackle a specific issue.

I'm not even sure it was set up with the best of intentions, tbh (unlike Stonewall), but they operate in the same way now - as a reputational protection racket.

I did the AS training years ago and christ on a bike, what a bag of shite it was. No understanding of academia other than as a means to access high level management roles - an assumption that everyone is happy to ditch the interesting bits of the job in order to become VCs, and trainers totally uncomprehending when told that the reason a lot of people get into a research and teaching job is because they like research and teaching and they don't actually want to give those up. No understanding, actually, of the specific challenges and pressures of academic administration. No understanding that academics and full-time administrators have different types of jobs, different challenges, and almost certainly different career ambitions. 'Inspirational' speakers whose closest contact with academia was having been an undergrad 25 years ago. Whole days (about 5, I think) of vacuous corporate motivational bollocks that cost participating universities an absolute fucking fortune. And then you have to go back to your university and make positive noises about it because they've paid all that money for you to do it and you don't want to sound ungrateful or uncooperative. So the whole thing keeps going, sustained by cash and bad faith, sucking in more universities and wasting more women's time.

My university have spent fuck knows how much time and effort engaging with AS for years now, and I've seen no difference at all to the reality of women's inequality there. I really feel for colleagues who have had to spend so much time on it - for what? No senior academic management people I know as friends think it's actually useful, but they have to be seen to be supporting it.

Just like the modern iteration of Stonewall, it seems to be run by a bunch of grifters who realised that you can extract large amounts of cash from institutions by saying, in effect "that's a nice reputation you've got there, be a shame if anything happened to it".

@Bollockstothat, that's what I assumed. Too much to hope, I suppose, that in these straitened times for higher education, somebody somewhere will break ranks and say we can't afford this now. Cost benefit analysis etc.

Oh look ...

FFS.