Eighteen months ago the reason for gender equality in UK universities got a great addition. Medical schools seeking biomedical research grants worth millions of pounds don’t need to bother applying unless they’d proven credentials in supporting women’s career progression, the manager medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies made clear. For the primary time, the pursuit of equality was explicitly associated with major funding streams.
Institutions could only expect to be shortlisted for the National Institute for Health Research cash, Davies said, in the event that they had a silver award from Athena Swan – a scheme founded in 2005 that awards bronze, silver and gold charter marks in accordance with universities’ work tackling the under-representation of girls in science. Since then applications for the awards have increased significantly.
But Athena Swan (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) remains the sole nationwide initiative aiming to enhance women’s representation on the highest levels of academia. It’s currently focused solely at the sciences, and there’s no such scheme for black and minority ethnic (BME) academics.
Given the findings of a brand new report by the University and faculty Union, that could come as a surprise. Figures released by the better Education Statistics Agency last week reveal that numbers of ladies and BME professors in our universities remain woefully low: only 1 in five professors are women (20.5%), however they make up almost half (47.3%) of the non-professorial academic workforce. Just one in 13 (7.7%) of professors are from BME backgrounds; BME academics fill 13.2% of alternative posts. The figures, for 2011-12, show only marginal increases at the previous year.
Using Freedom of data requests, UCU looked into the applications process. In line with data from 21 institutions with among the biggest gaps between representation at professor and other levels, it found that white applicants were 3 times likely to secure a professorial role than BME ones. The knowledge on women told a distinct story: they really had a more robust success rate than men, but weren’t going for the roles within the first place. Over four times as many men as women applied for professorial posts.
Why don’t women apply for these positions Many ladies feel the chance is just not there when they have children. “I don’t know if i may ever rack up enough papers to become a professor now,” says Frances (not her real name), a senior lecturer in biosciences at a post-1992 university, who has three children. “I’ve spent too a few years changing nappies. I work part-time and feature had two nine-month maternity breaks. My department was very supportive of my work to maintain my research alive, but there are still only such a lot of hours within the day. Most of my colleagues would probably perform a little of it at weekends or within the evenings. But i can not do this.”
There is a well-recognized story, too, of girls worrying that they do not have the mandatory credentials to use for jobs. “Women are inclined to undervalue what they’ll do,” says Jenny Daisley, chief executive of the Springboard Consultancy, which runs development programmes for girls at various levels in 40 universities.
What to make of the low success rate of BME academics They made up 26.2% of applicants for professorial positions on the institutions studied, 18.6% of these shortlisted, and just 10.5% of these appointed. That gave them successful rate of seven%, against 21.1% for white applicants.
Some might argue that they have to be applying for positions they don’t seem to be qualified for. But that seems unlikely at this type of high level, says Heidi Mirza, emeritus professor of equalities studies in education on the Institute of Education. She became one of the most UK’s first black female professors within the 1990s. “It must be a discriminatory process,” Mirza says. “Higher education is ready peer review and has a fundamentally nepotistic way of operating. It’s about networking and folk supporting people they know who’re like themselves, who they feel will mirror their very own areas of interest. BME people often don’t fit into that.
“Universities within the UK are still greatly white, male institutions of privilege and self-reproduction.”
Alison (not her real name), a respected senior academic, believes her exclusion from crucial informal networks is what has allowed white colleagues to drag prior to her through the years. “It has taken me such a lot longer than my white peers to get to where i’m now,” she says. “You need to generate a large number of grant income from external funders, but to be able to try this you should be invited directly to research teams, and that i feel i have not had the identical opportunities to be a part of that as my white colleagues have.
“People let you know to visit conferences, join professional networks. But oftentimes to get to the following stage of turning into a professor it’s more about informal networks – such things as being invited to the dinner parties and other social gatherings. i believe that BME people just do not get those invitations – maybe because we’re still seen as outsiders. Therefore, you have not got that level of support that white colleagues have. You actually ought to fight for yourself.”
It seems incredible that universities, of all places, full of the brightest and best, haven’t cracked this problem. UCU wants institutions to introduce transparent professorial grading structures, in addition to setting concrete targets for improvement, with specific time frames, and make sure progress is monitored on the highest levels. Too some of the stated equality schemes at institutions with above-average “representation gaps” lack measurable objectives, the report says.
Simonetta Manfredi, joint director of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research at Oxford Brookes, believes the executive medical officer’s announcement provides a clue to 1 way forward. “The instant you link gender equality issues to funding, all universities will do it,” she says. She’s encouraged that the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), which goes on equality and variety for employees and scholars, is piloting an Athena Swan-inspired scheme for ladies in arts, humanities and social sciences, with the University of Reading.
Last week, Research Councils UK said it expected institutions that receive its funding to offer evidence of the ways equality and variety were managed; it stopped wanting demanding formal accreditation, but warned that it’d consider such measures if there has been no improvement.
On the BME side, the european is targeting unconscious bias, says head of policy Gary Loke – getting people to recognise it exists after which institute training to counter it. UCL and Leeds Metropolitan was piloting such schemes, and the unit has commissioned an educational literature review at the subject to be published this year, to get people “to take it seriously”. “We all know that to steer academics to think of this stuff they should have empirical evidence,” Loke says.
Karen Jochelson, director of economy and employment on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, says institutions which have identified that a selected group seriously isn’t applying for jobs should consider positive action to widen the pool, similar to the mentoring, networking or training schemes already in place at some places. “In sectors that work through personal networks, if people do not have the networks they will not necessarily understand what’s needed at that next level,” she says.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has one of the crucial highest rates of girls in professorial roles, with 28 (33%) of its 85 posts held by women (in October 2012). It has a raft of policies in place that encourage women to construct their careers on the school, from working from home and term-time contracts to transparent criteria for promotion. There need to be no less than one woman on boards making academic appointments, and half the present senior leadership team is female.
“i feel there is a snowball effect,” says Laura Rodrigues, the school’s equality and variety lead, and a professor of infectious disease epidemiology. “The more the junior female staff and scholars see female scientists directing courses, leading seminars, being in positions of responsibility, the simpler it really is for them to determine themselves in those positions. Being a senior scientist is not any longer seen as a privilege reserved for white men.” The very fact the gender balance is healthier among professors promoted from throughout the school than appointed from outside suggests their policies are paying off.
For Jochelson, UCU’s report shows “some very real problems”. If institutions are thinking about improving their record, step one is collecting and analysing the information, she says.
But the standard of knowledge provided according to UCU’s FOI requests varied hugely, in line with the researchers, with an important variety of 35 institutions originally contacted unable to supply the info because they didn’t collate or retain it. The ethnicity of greater than a 3rd of professorial applicants, or even 9.1% of these actually appointed, was unknown.
Jochelson was surprised by the gaps within the data, saying they suggested some institutions is probably not complying with the general public sector equality duty (PSED), under which English universities are required by law to publish information regarding their employees and objectives for areas needing improvement. “It was quite shocking,” says the report’s author, Jane Thompson. “plenty of institutions said providing that information was voluntary, so it wasn’t their fault if people didn’t provide it. That’s a cop-out.”
But the coalition is reviewing the PSED as portion of its “red tape challenge” to minimize bureaucracy, and that worries UCU’s general secretary, Sally Hunt. “It’s becoming much more difficult to believe that institutions left to their very own devices might be committed to creating the required changes,” she says.
Alison still desires to become a professor. “i feel it is vital that folks see a black woman achieving that,” she says. “But it’s totally difficult, isolating and wearing. i did not expect it to be like this: in the event you start you observed in the event you do everything you’re purported to do, your talent would be recognised and you may progress. It isn’t like that.”
