Abstract
BackgroundWhile in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, higher education and research institutions are widely engaged with the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science to advance gender equality, empirical research on this process and its impact is rare. This study combined two data sets (free- text comments from a survey and qualitative interviews) to explore the range of experiences and perceptions of participation in Athena SWAN in medical science departments of a research-intensive university in Oxford, United Kingdom.MethodsThe study is based on the secondary analysis of data from two projects: 59 respondents to an anonymous online survey (42 women, 17 men) provided relevant free-text comments and, separately, 37 women participated in face-to-face narrative interviews. Free-text survey comments and narrative interviews were analysed thematically using constant comparison.ResultsBoth women and men said that participation in Athena SWAN had brought about important structural and cultural changes, including increased support for women’s careers, greater appreciation of caring responsibilities, and efforts to challenge discrimination and bias. Many said that these positive changes would not have happened without linkage of Athena SWAN to government research funding, while others thought there were unintended consequences. Concerns about the programme design and implementation included a perception that Athena SWAN has limited ability to address longstanding and entrenched power and pay imbalances, persisting lack of work-life balance in academic medicine, questions about the sustainability of positive changes, belief that achieving the award could become an end in itself, resentment about perceived positive discrimination, and perceptions that further structural and cultural changes were needed in the university and wider society.ConclusionsThe findings from this study suggest that Athena SWAN has a positive impact in advancing gender equality, but there may be limits to how much it can improve gender equality without wider institutional and societal changes. To address the fundamental causes of gender inequality would require cultural change and welfare state policies incentivising men to increase their participation in unpaid work in the family, which is beyond the scope of higher education and research policy.
Highlights
While in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, higher education and research institutions are widely engaged with the Athena Scientific Women’s Academic Network (SWAN) Charter for Women in Science to advance gender equality, empirical research on this process and its impact is rare
According to the Equality Challenge Unit, which manages the Athena SWAN Charter, “the proportion of Athena SWAN applications that have been from medical and medical-related departments has increased from 7.7% to 29.7% since Sally Davies’ announcement in 2011; that is a significant increase of almost 400%, which is unparalleled by the relatively stable proportion of applications from other STEMM fields encompassed such as engineering” (Gilligan RE, Personal communication)
This study found that the linkage to National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) research funding was viewed contentiously, respondents suggested that women had benefited from Athena SWAN more than men, and that research staff and students had experienced less positive impact than tenured academic staff
Summary
While in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, higher education and research institutions are widely engaged with the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science to advance gender equality, empirical research on this process and its impact is rare. In the United Kingdom, the Athena Project and the Scientific Women’s Academic Network (SWAN) were set up in the early 2000s and subsequently evolved into the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science [10]. It has become a common and increasingly influential means to advance gender equality and has been explicitly linked to public research funding. In July 2011, Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, announced that applicants could not expect to be eligible for National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre funding “where the academic partner (generally the Medical School/Faculty of Medicine) has not achieved at least the Silver Award of the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science” [11]. In May 2015, the Athena SWAN Charter broadened its scope to include arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law, professional and support staff, transgender staff and students, and men, where appropriate [12]
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