Athena SWAN has gone full gender woo

[DazzlePaintedBattlePants]

So the Athena SWAN charter, which was set up (IIRC) to promote women (the cunty kind) in HE, is now all about gender identity inequalities:

www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/transformed-uk-athena-swan-charter#key-enhancements

Enhancements for everyone except women, it would seem. How the bloody hell do we fight against that?

To be clear, these changes mean less focus on helping women? Because if you spread the focus that’s what you get. So it’s a backward move for women. Worth being very clear about saying this, separate from any criticism or otherwise of gender woo.

I suspect they've missed the boat here. Companies and institutions are dropping like flies out of Stonewall's scheme, so it's unlikely many will find this an appealing alternative.

The tide is turning and they've left their move too late.

I think they're pretty peripheral and they've got their timing very badly wrong. Lots of organisations are beginning to come to their senses and throw off Stonewall. They will now have to be one of those organisations like Fawcett, Chwarae Teg etc that will need to be obliterated and replaced with a new, properly feminist organisation at some point in the future.

Well, it was always a grift (give us a stack of cash and we'll give you a shiny badge), so not surprising it's cosying up to another one - grift calls to grift everywhere.

Fuck Athena SWAN. We need an Athena PHOENIX rising up from the ashes of yet another disastrous ideological collaboration with the egregious Stonewall - an Athena PHOENIX that is actually for human females.

The problem with regard to Athena Swan is that some funding bodies require a commitment in order to win grants etc. While funding bodies are committed genderists, then this will be seen as a good thing, and institutions wishing to apply for grant funding will have to keep playing the Athena swan game.

Have a read of the principles the department has to sign up to. Clearly written before Maya’s appeal was heard. It would be hard for any individual with a gender critical perspective to sign up to the articles of faith. The scheme has morphed into something completely different to what it was set up to achieve. It is now pointless virtue signalling BS.

Yes to Athena Phoenix!!

@ChattyLion

Yes to Athena Phoenix!!

I think it could be a slogan for a general Forstater-aware resurgence movement for initiatives that promote the talents, skills, and rights to equal education and career progression of adult human females.

Athena SWAN was great when it started (10+ yrs ago) and my dept was v keen. but in recent years has become a massive burden & feels like a box ticking exercise, not something that matters. So this will probably still be a case of ticking some boxes & then ignoring it.

I absolutely love your idea Spindle and its ethos as you’ve expressed it.
-Phoenix headed introductory letter to the HR team copied to senior management would be a vehicle to remind them that since the Forstater case, GC views are protected, whether institutions join Phoenix or not. They’d have to take it seriously because both legal problem and solution are in there.
-Staffroom posters inviting staff to recommend to their employers that they run the Phoenix scheme (as an alternative alongside Athena Swan if they want to) would get some important conversations going amongst staff, while not stopping anyone who wants the Swan version from continuing on with that.
-Funders also could be written to (if this is correct which I assume!) that requiring any programme with inherent gender woo as an entry point for funding applicants at institutions, would be non-compliant with Forstater and therefore highly legally dubious.
-point to Phoenix as an example for funders of an alternative benchmark for institutions with clear Adult Human Female woman-friendly criteria benchmarking.

Spindle this is such a fantastic idea- at worst a great route in to reversing corporate/regulatory capture in academia and research, and at best a genuine gamechanger for women in academia for years to come. What an awesome rad fem project! It could be massive!
As always thanks to Maya for her case because this gives the legal teeth to start to reverse capture.

Should be hyphenated: 'trans-formed.'

Thanks, @ChattyLion - when we win the lottery, eh? Although, even as an idea without funding it works as a debating point. And a website, posters and badges cost very little.

I would totally dig for Phoenix! It’s a great idea!

Good on you, @DazzlePaintedBattlePants.

I think like #ManFriday and #LiteralViolets, it's a concept that actions can get behind. Even as a hashtag or tee-shirt #AthenaPhoenix makes a point.

Love Athena phoenix!

I've been on an Athena committee for several years now and each meeting starts with "we don't want this to be a tick box exercise" before then discussing all the things we are tick boxing. Athena also had so little buy in from the department that the lead had to ditch it being about women and talk about 'all careers' instead. Yet we still got awarded silver, largely because our survey results showed no feelings of gender inequality, even though the sample was largely male (because the department is largely male). It's a bit of a joke!