Five Schools in Trinity have been awarded bronze Athena SWAN awards in the latest round of results that were announced yesterday.
The Athena SWAN awards recognise the commitment of institutions, schools and departments to improving gender equality in their respective organisations. The School of Social Work and Social Policy, the School of Physics, the School of Genetics and Microbiology and the School of Psychology and the School of Law have each been awarded bronze awards.
Speaking to The University Times, Associate Vice-Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Prof Clodagh Brook, said: “We got five bronze awards in this round, which is a 100% success rate.”
“We got every award we put in for – the schools worked very hard. We’re absolutely delighted with that”, she added. “It’s an uphill road to go towards silver in April 2022, but it actually feels achievable now that we’ve got this.”
“We have seven awards in Trinity – we need to have thirteen and we need to get our first silver school award, so we’re going to be working with the schools that really want to go forward.”
“We have new processes in place and new people in place to support that as well so we’re really hopeful that that’ll work out really well”, Brook said.
The strategic plan states that Trinity is aiming for 40 per cent female chair professors by 2025. In February, Brook told The University Times that Trinity had approximately 26 per cent female chair professors.
According to Brook, this figure has increased to 31 per cent.
Speaking about the increase, Brook said: “The data that just was published about a week ago says that we have 31 per cent professors. It’s still a long way away but we have the SALI [Senior Academic Leadership Initiative] chairs.”
“What’s pretty amazing is the university actually put in for a round of promotion during the Summer during the pandemic. Not all universities, a lot of them in the UK didn’t do professorial, senior promotions but Trinity did and that’ll give us the chance to increase it a bit.”
“I was just talking to the equality officer today and she reminded me that back in 2015 we had 17 per cent of those professors and now we have 31. So it’s a really fast move forward. So we’ve a load of work to do and we have a work plan that’s very busy for the year to take us forward.”
“We’re really starting to think towards applying for that Silver award in 2022 and the various things that need to be done to get there”, Brook concluded.
In a press statement, Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris said: “Our higher education institutions must be leaders in gender equality. They must demonstrate to Government and to students their commitment to fairness, equality, dignity and respect.”
“The Athena SWAN framework offers institutions an opportunity to show progress and to demonstrate leadership. I am delighted to see the success rate this year and hope we can build on this as we move forward.”
“Since I have taken office, I have made it clear this Department will be one of inclusion and I want our higher education institutions to be a leader in this area”, Harris concluded.
Under the terms of Athena SWAN – adopted by universities in 2015 in order to promote better gender equality practices – Trinity is required to have achieved a silver medal by 2023 in order to hold onto funding streams from the Irish Research Council, Health Research Board and Science Foundation Ireland. The bodies have a combined annual budget of €230 million.
