Download the full Athena Swan submissions for each of the departments mentioned below for more details on these initiatives, and more.

Self-assessment

• DSAT members regularly attend Faculty Women in Engineering Network meetings and the Chair is academic liaison for the Student Women in Engineering Society, attending meetings of the Senior Women’s academic network to gain insight into the issues of concern at key transitional stages in the progression of female students and women’s careers across the university (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Following a survey, a Departmental Self-assessment Team open forum was held where members of the Department were able to comment further on the application, which allowed us to capture any culture issues not identified in the surveys and recommend further initiatives (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• The Head of Department is actively involved in the DSAT and in 2017/18 attended 70% of DSAT meetings (Chemistry).
• Due to the small numbers of professional and support staff of different types (e.g. administrative or technical) focus groups were used as an alternative to gain insight into their working environment (Mechanical Engineering).

Student recruitment

• The overall increase in applications from female students is achieved principally through escalated outreach to primary and secondary schools and raising the visibility of females on UCAS/Applicant Visitor Days, and through widening participation and summer schools. (Architecture & Civil Engineering)
• We will introduce a system whereby current female UG students contact female applicants with offers to emphasise the positive aspects of studying at Bath and answer any queries. (Architecture & Civil Engineering)
• We will increase the visibility of female staff/student role models in the UG prospectus, on the website and during ‘virtual open days’ (Chemistry).
• We redesigned the prospectus and the website so that there are equal numbers of case studies from male and female students. Evidence suggests these measures are making an impact, in 2018/19 our first year is 50% female for the first time (Chemistry).
• We standardised the text used to advertise PhD positions to ensure it is not gender biased (Chemistry).
• We will increase the number of females working in the Admissions Team, emphasise the societal benefits and impact of engineering in our course information and at UCAS/OPEN Days, encourage female applicants to visit at similar times and provide more information regarding the support available and networking opportunities for women in engineering at Bath (Mechanical Engineering).

Degree outcomes

• We ceased marking architectural ‘crits’ (reviews) as this appeared to be a form of assessment that disadvantaged females and we introduced anonymous marking of coursework across all programmes in 2015/16 (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We appointed 100% women external examiners for the BArch and 50% women for the MArch programmes. In the final year Review Panels the gender balance was 50/50 which is well above the approximately 23% female architects within the UK profession as a whole (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We have also achieved a gender balance well above the national average for design studio tutors and all Review Panels (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Female design studio tutors increased from 20.8% in 2014/15 to 30.6% in 2016/17. Female critics on Review Panels in 2016/17 show an increase to 50% for 1st Year; 35% in 2nd Year; 48% in 3rd Year, 40% in 4th year; 42% in 5th year and 44% in 6th year (Architecture & Civil Engineering).

Student progression

• We will hold focus groups with MArch, BEng and MEng student cohorts to determine why more female graduates are not considering further study or careers in academia (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We will publicise role model case studies of PGRs with families studying for a PhD, improve the gender balance of speakers at seminars and events, and increase the visibility of female role models (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We will work with the Alumni office to access Graduate Outcome data to analyse student destinations 15 months after graduating (Biology).
• Progression data needs to be collected centrally. We will liaise with careers and alumni offices to improve data collection (Biology).

Staff Recruitment

• Embed the practice of including a female contact on all job adverts (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Set up a search committee to identify female talent for any academic staff vacancy (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Shortlists are lengthened where possible to avoid all male shortlists. Although occasionally inevitable, the Department only allows an all-male shortlist if a search strategy that includes a gender focus has been utilised (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Have mixed gender shortlisting and interview panels for all academic appointments with at least one female member on each (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We updated Department adverts for vacancies to explicitly state: ‘We are working to improve the present gender balance within the Department, and particularly welcome applications from women, who are currently under-represented in academic posts’ (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• To increase the number of external female job applicants, we identified outstanding male and female candidates and invited applications for open positions. The impact of these actions has been profound. Recruitment of a female professor and the movement of two female research fellows to permanent lectureship contracts means that we have increased the number of female staff at lecturer and above from 16% in 2013/14 to 29% in 2016/17 (Chemistry).
• We will introduce a seminar series for external PDRAs to introduce talented researchers (50% female) to the department. We will then be able to invite applications from them when positions are available (Chemistry).
• We will strengthen awareness of unconscious bias by asking interview panel members to watch a short video on unconscious bias from the Royal Society before interviews take place (Chemistry).
• We will create case studies of staff who have been promoted based on teaching and management excellence and disseminate via the department wiki (Chemistry).
• All prospective new starters will be introduced to our AURORA role models who have had negotiation training and can support them in this transition step to negotiate their start-up packages.
• More consideration is required to balance the workload of women who sit on the interview and shortlisting panels given the small number of female staff.

Induction

• Adding in one additional meeting at 6 months (each year) with HoD for all staff on probation was introduced, giving them regular access to the HoD that allows the opportunity to discuss issues and give support more frequently and directly (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We recently established a New Starter Focus Group (NSFG), to which all new starters are automatically enrolled for the first two years upon joining the Department. The NSFG proved to be an efficient system for collecting feedback on our induction programme and the Department Administrators were able to update specific information instantly (Biology).

Appraisal/SDPR

• After a staff consultation we introduced a non-line manager review for Researchers, so that they can discuss career aspirations without potential conflict of interests. This increased the uptake of SDPRs amongst Research-only staff in the last year, with 40% of the women and 50% of the men completing reviews (Biology).
• We introduced a ‘Departmental SDPR Companion Form’ to ensure that training needs and career development have been considered (Pharmacy).

As part of our silver application we were asked to identified key achievements since gaining our Bronze award. Here, we highlight the new processes we introduced within psychology to support women’s careers, and the positive effect this has had. For example, as well as developing our SDPR and mentoring processes, we also set up an internal career development group that reads and provides constructive feedback on all promotion applications. Our core data not only shows that promotion success rates have improved, but that we can show an improving gender balance at all academic levels, including Reader/Professor.

Edmund Keogh, Psychology

Career Progression

• When early-career academics are preparing for interviews (eg. for external jobs or funding schemes) it is common for mock panels to be organised; one such staff member reported this to be the “single most useful thing” they had done since their PhD (Mathematical Sciences).
• Discussions in the PG student focus group revealed a lack of understanding of processes for dealing with any difficulties in the supervisory relationship, and only 39% of PG survey respondents agreed with the statement: "I know who to talk to if I experience or observe any unacceptable behaviour." To address this, we will develop and disseminate a “what to do if…” flowchart for staff and PG students (Mathematical Sciences).
• Senior staff email signatures are required to remind readers that responses are not expected outside of normal working hours (Mathematical Sciences).

Promotion

• The Department has a policy in which significantly more funding for travel is made available to ECRs and Lecturers than to more senior academics, thereby encouraging junior colleagues, in particular, to rapidly find their feet in terms of developing research collaborations and undertaking exploratory visits (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• The HoD established an open door policy where staff (academic, research and professional) can discuss their careers and any barriers they have had to overcome and the support available to assist staff (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• All staff are required to submit a promotion plan for discussion at their SDPR. This allows for more positive constructive discussions around promotion and the criteria and proactively identifies gaps and the support required to gain promotion quickly and efficiently (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We have set up a HR-Chemistry working group to develop a new appraisal process that is relevant to career development of research and teaching related staff (Chemistry).
• The department has a PDRA/PGR Away Day with a strong focus on career development (Chemistry).
• We recently increased the number of teaching opportunities to help PDRAs build experience before applying for academic positions (Chemistry).
• The PGR Network set up an annual chemistry careers day (Chemistry).
• The HoD meets with staff members who were unsuccessful in applying for promotion and works with them to create a personal action plan to support their career development. This gives them a focussed plan to resubmit (Biology).
• We have placed exemplar CVs from staff successfully promoted onto the Departmental wiki (Pharmacy).
• We will hold a workshop to update academic staff on changes to promotion criteria and to highlight the possibility of career progression via teaching and administration routes (Pharmacy).
• The Department Promotions Committee (DPC) was created to better identify and support promotion candidates. The committee is chaired by the Deputy HoD and meets quarterly. Members of the committee reach out to eligible staff to encourage them to apply, assign mentors and internal reviewers, and provide feedback to improve cases (Mathematical Sciences).

Student support

• Female students have the opportunity for further support through WESBath, a society affiliated to the Women’s Engineering Society (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• A mentoring scheme for new doctoral students offers peer support from a student who has passed their confirmation (Architecture & Civil Engineering).

Parental leave

• We will be creating a maternity/paternity mentor scheme (MPMS), to follow up the status of the returning-to-work parent (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Department policy was updated to introduce a semester-long sabbatical from teaching after returning from maternity leave to allow staff to focus on research (Chemistry).
• We appointed a Research Parental Leave Officer (RPLO) to help staff manage their research and mitigate the “motherhood penalty” incurred whilst on leave (Biology).
• We shall petition the University Alumni office to raise dedicated funds to support women returning to work after maternity leave (Biology).
• We introduced a checklist of items for line managers to ensure that all issues are discussed with an individual before maternity leave, including directing staff to the HR website for keeping in touch days, flexible working and childcare (Pharmacy).
• Since 2016/17 all major departmental seminars and department meetings are recorded and made available to staff online (Mathematical Sciences).

Culture

• DSAT introduced an annual training session on positive workplace behaviour. This ran for the first time in 2018 and was attended by 100% of PGR and 50% of staff (Chemistry).
• We addressed the Department culture and drew up our own “Professional Code of Conduct”, which enshrines honesty, fairness, respect and responsible behaviour at social events on and off-site or at conferences (Biology).
• We have worked with HR and external advisors to create a code of professionalism and wellbeing/belonging in the Department and will assess the effectiveness in future staff surveys (Biology).
• We will hold a workshop within the Department for staff to familiarise themselves with the University’s new WAMS user guide and assess what aspects of the new WLAM can be improved (Biology).
• We plan to hold a departmental seminar to discuss managing high workloads and, if successful, to retain this as an annual event (Mechanical Engineering).

The entire Athena Swan process has been an excellent way to better understand how to make the Department of Social and Policy Sciences a more inclusive and welcoming space for research culture to thrive. It was an honour to work on our Bronze Award Application and see it through to completion.

John Troyer, Social and Policy Sciences

Professional Services career transition points

• There is a three-year apprenticeship scheme; gender balance is one of the key recruitment considerations. Since 2013 seven (28% F) technical and four (50% F) administrative apprentices have been recruited; the evidence suggests that the apprenticeship scheme is an effective vehicle for addressing gender balance as relatively few female engineering technicians are available in the general employment pool (Mechanical Engineering).
• HoD conducted focus groups with the technical and administrative staff separately to assess their perceptions of the current processes in place for career development (Mechanical Engineering).

Equality, diversity and inclusion

• We arranged a presentation at an all Staff Meeting on Disability Advice, Reasonable Adjustments and Inclusive Practice, on Equality impact policy and practice, and assessment of the potential impact on protected groups, raising awareness of the issues to all staff members. We will continue to make this a regular presentation (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• Our first step in introducing intersectionality within our data was through an Inter-Engineering LGBT+ Department event, held on the 8th of May 2017. The event was advertised to our undergraduates, PGT, PGR and all staff (Mechanical Engineering).

Role models

• The Department actively encourages all members to participate in seminars and workshops, both internal and external and we have an action to increase female speakers to 30% (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We have redesigned our promotional material highlighting female role models (Architecture & Civil Engineering).
• We will introduce annual monitoring of the department website and all promotional material for gender balance (Chemistry).
• We aim to generate a library of stock photos of female staff for faulty generated publicity material (Chemistry).

Outreach

• In 2018 we appointed a female outreach coordinator. Part of her remit is to address the under-representation of females in the undergraduate degree course through a special focus on widening participation (Pharmacy).
• Prior to 2015 outreach data were not routinely collected; going forward we will implement a robust data-collection system and evaluate and monitor positive changes in attitude (Mechanical Engineering).