Equality leaders warn against ‘diluting’ Athena SWAN revamp

Senior academics have warned that the proposed response to an independent review of higher education’s main gender equality charter will “dilute or delay” urgently needed reforms.

Members of the UK Network of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Academic Leads (NEDIAL) warn in a letter seen by Times Higher Education that they are “concerned that failure to grasp the opportunities presented by the review recommendations will continue to erode the confidence of the sector in the Athena SWAN process”.

The report of the independent review of Athena SWAN, published in March, recommended that applications for the charter mark should be streamlined to reduce the burden on university staff and called for more transparent and consistent decision-making.

A sector-wide survey that was published alongside the review found that only 26 per cent of respondents who had worked on an application for an award described it as having been a positive experience. Only 15 per cent of respondents expressed confidence in the consistency of the assessment process.

UK sector organisation Advance HE, which runs Athena SWAN, has accepted many of the recommendations made by the review, which was led by Julia Buckingham, vice-chancellor of Brunel University London.

However, NEDIAL highlights in the letter to Advance HE that the review recommended that assessment panel members should have significant experience of equality and diversity issues, and that the panels should operate like grant awarding committees, allowing revision and resubmission of applications.

Advance HE’s response promises only to “develop the current panel processes…within the wider portfolio of Advance HE peer review services”, for example, fellowships and Race Equality Charter applications.

NEDIAL also highlights that the review called for “bronze” Advance HE awards to be an entry-level quality mark because the “current low level of success” in submissions was “extremely dispiriting” for applicants.

While Advance HE agrees that award criteria need adjusting, it says that it will “first work with members and stakeholders to revise the Athena SWAN principles and once agreed, these definitions will be used to support the articulation of award-level criteria”.

The NEDIAL letter says members “were concerned to see that some elements of the Advance HE response appeared to dilute or delay implementation of the recommendations made”.

“We fear that in its current form, the Athena SWAN award can too often be counterproductive and can absorb time which is then taken away from proactively addressing critical actions required to improve gender equality,” the NEDIAL letter says.

Sarah Sharples, pro vice-chancellor for equality, diversity and inclusion and people at the University of Nottingham and a signatory to the letter, told THE that the proposed changes to Athena SWAN were “quite urgent” and that she was “worried that the response from Advance HE implied that there needed to be further consultation”.

“We don’t need more consultations; we need change,” Professor Sharples said. “The review panel has done a tremendous amount of work already – it would be a missed opportunity not to take it.”

Since its launch in the UK in 2005, Athena SWAN has grown, and now 160-plus members worldwide hold more than 800 awards between them, at “bronze”, “silver” and “gold” levels.

Chief executive Alison Johns said that Advance HE does “fully intend to take forward the recommendations of the steering group” but that some had cost implications that needed careful consideration.

“We are also clear from our members and those who will need to implement these changes that they wish to be involved in the detailed implementation,” she said. “There is no intention to either dilute or delay the implementation of the recommendations.”

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com