Trinity today received the bronze Athena SWAN award for fostering equality for women in education and research in the STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) disciplines.
The Provost, Patrick Prendergast, said in a press release: “Inclusivity, equality and diversity are core values for Trinity College Dublin”. He added that the “inclusive College community in which women and men participate at all levels” is the reason for “Trinity’s excellence”.
This is the first year that Irish universities have participated in the project, which originally began in the UK by promoting and awarding higher education institutions’ efforts to improve equality and diversity. The organisation behind the awards is called Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) and is a registered charity, funded through the UK higher education funding bodies. Eight Irish institutions took part in the Athena competition this year in what was the UK organisation’s first initiative in the Republic.
Trinity and the University of Limerick were the only two Irish universities to be awarded, both earning bronze awards. In addition, three of Trinity’s schools – the School of Chemistry, the School of Physics and the School of Natural Sciences – won department-level awards. The awards were presented today at a ceremony in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and were given by Ann O’Dea, CEO of Silicon Republic and founder of the Women Invent campaign, which also aims to promote the role of women in the STEM fields.
It was first announced in July 2015 that Trinity had won the award.
Professor Eileen Drew, Director of the Women in Science & Engineering Research (WiSER) Centre, called these awards “a major milestone for Trinity College” that placed it in the same circle as prestigious British universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, York, Edinburgh, UCL and Queen’s University Belfast.
Last month Louise Richardson, incoming Vice Chancellor of Oxford, criticised Trinity’s proportion of female academics in senior professorship roles, calling it a “staggeringly low number”. Currently, only 14 per cent of full professors in Trinity are female.
As of May 2015, the ECU’s Athena SWAN Charter has expanded to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law. The areas that the ECU’s awards aim to encourage are training and awareness sessions to eradicate gender bias in decision processes, improve arrangements for maternity-leave, as well as for carers, increase opportunities for leave to allow academic staff to pursue research horizons, and provide leadership training for women academics and administrators.
