Dr. Patricia Mulcahy:

There has been a huge emphasis on STEM in recent years, supported nationally by the equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, agenda. We are very excited and enthused by that agenda but it was not the start of efforts in this area. There are a lot of initiatives by our colleagues in the STEM area, including female lecturers, academic staff and others, to promote increased participation in STEM. However, the EDI initiative will help greatly in that effort. The HEA has established a centre of excellence for EDI. All institutions either already have obtained or are in the processing of obtaining Athena SWAN accreditation and will seek to move over time from bronze to silver to gold.

To bring it down a level, my institution was successful some two years ago in getting an institutional Athena SWAN accreditation which laid out a very ambitious gender equality action plan, published on our website, containing more than 60 actions. Importantly, the next step is to drill into departments. We have prioritised four departments, including two in engineering, one in computing and one in humanities. They are all doing their own detailed action plans and looking to achieve the bronze accreditation. It is not so much the badge that is important but more what it signifies. We would expect the three STEM departments to have those applications in, with lots of new initiatives, and the institution is supporting that. This is happening across the institutions; I am offering my institution as one example. Interestingly, the fourth department, humanities, is the one with the flip difficulty, namely, the lack of participation by males in humanities and social studies. There is a large benefit in seeking to redress that imbalance as well. It is a very active programme, we are committing a lot of resources to it and I think it will make a difference in time.