Getting started

All Athena Swan applications must be based on a thorough self-assessment of your department’s current position in relation to gender equality and the progress that you have made since a previous award, where applicable. The Self-Assessment Team (SAT) is responsible for reviewing quantitative and qualitative data to support the self-assessment and also acts as a ‘steering group’ for the Athena Swan application process, including identifying priority areas for action and reviewing drafts of the application and action plan.

The SAT should meet regularly – at least once per term, and more frequently (eg. monthly) in the year before submission of your application.

The SAT should be representative of your department as far as possible, in terms of gender balance, with different levels of seniority and different staff and student groups represented, to ensure that a variety of perspectives are taken into account. As a minimum, SAT members usually include:

• Academic lead for Athena Swan/EDI
• Professional/support staff lead for Athena Swan/EDI – this could be an Athena Swan or EDI Officer, an HR Manager or a departmental administrator
• Head of Administration and Finance or equivalent
• Head of Department
• A representative of academic staff
• A representative of research staff
• A representative of professional and support staff
• At least one student representative – undergraduate, Masters and/or DPhil student (depending on whether your department offers degree programmes at all levels)
• Divisional Athena Swan/EDI co-ordinator

How you select members for the SAT will depend on the circumstances and practices in your own department. Some members will sit on the SAT by virtue of their role in the department (eg. EDI Officer or HAF) or because they already have a role as a staff or student representative on a relevant departmental committee. However, it is recommended that at least some SAT members are selected via an open call for expressions of interest. You may wish to ask people to write a short statement about why they are interested in the role and any relevant experience they have, to help you make a selection if there are more expressions of interest than available places.

It is useful to be clear about how long members will serve on the SAT. This varies between departments and roles, but between 1 and 3 years is usual.

Increasingly, departments have an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee or equivalent, which also functions as a self-assessment team for Athena Swan. You may wish to form a separate SAT in the run-up to an application or make use of sub-groups or working groups to focus on particular themes related to the application.

Departments take a wide range of approaches to resourcing administrative support for their Athena Swan application and subsequent work to deliver on commitments, including:

• An existing part-time member of staff working extra hours to coordinate the application process.
• A short-term, part-time post to provide support.
• A dedicated officer (normally part-time) who is also responsible for coordinating implementation of the action plan and providing support for other EDI work.
• Smaller departments may wish to pool resources – talk to your divisional EDI co-ordinator about this.

The transformed Athena Swan Charter includes a new expectation that departments will have formal processes for recognition and reward of EDI work.

The University’s Athena Swan Working Group has made the following recommendations. 

• A member of academic staff leading Athena Swan work in a department – for example chairing a self-assessment team and contributing significantly to writing the application – should receive remission from other duties and/or financial remuneration commensurate with other positions of responsibility in the department, such as being Director of Graduate Studies.
• A member of professional/support staff leading/coordinating Athena Swan work in a department – for example project managing the application process and contributing significantly to writing the application – should have these responsibilities appropriately reflected in their job description, and potentially have ‘ring-fenced’ time allocated to these responsibilities, particularly in the run-up to making an application.
• Other ‘lesser’ responsibilities (e.g. being a member of a departmental self-assessment team) should be recognised or rewarded in some concrete way (for example via Awards for Excellence or the Recognition Scheme, ROD, research allowances or additional training budget), and/or processes should be in place to ensure that such service is distributed equitably across that group of staff or students alongside other departmental duties undertaken (such as being a member of a health & safety committee/library committee, or participating in outreach).