Equality and inclusion

Athena SWAN in the School of Healthcare

The School of Healthcare has been a member of the Athena SWAN Charter since 2012 and we are committed its key principles to improve gender equality.  As a research intensive organisation and one of the few large programmes of nursing in a Russell Group University, we face two major gender challenges which underpin our strategy. First, we recruit small numbers of men to undergraduate health programmes, a national problem and one in which School staff are leading on national solutions. Second, we have a leaky pipeline in terms of female academic career development from junior grades to more senior roles.

We are seeing evidence of the impact of our strategy, particularly in terms of the leaky pipeline. Since our last application we have invested significantly in staff, funded 7 staff through doctoral studies (6 women: 1 man), increased the number of females in academic (teaching and research) roles from 26 to 35, and have more women successfully applying for promotion.