Faculty achieves Athena SWAN silver award

14 Sep 2018

Schools receive recognition for ongoing commitment to the advancement of equality

Advance HE has announced that FBMH’s three Schools have won the Athena SWAN silver award, which recognises our ongoing commitment to the advancement of equality by addressing unequal gender representation and removing the obstacles faced by women.

The Athena SWAN award is not only a prerequisite for all National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funding, but is also a key part of our wider Social Responsibility agenda to empower and support our colleagues.

Our Athena SWAN applications are co-ordinated by Dr Hema Radhakrishnan, Associate Dean for Social Responsibility, and this year the process wasn’t entirely straightforward. Hema explains:

“Athena SWAN normally calls for at least five years of evidence to support how organisations have made progress in the areas of equality, diversity and inclusion. However, due to the 2016 Faculty restructure, we were unable to provide this for our three ‘new’ Schools.

“We therefore negotiated with the then Equality Challenge Unit (now part of Advance HE) to put measures in place which would take the restructure in to account. As a result, the Equality Challenge Unit introduced a new ‘interim’ Athena SWAN application for departments that have recently undergone restructure. We were one of the first to complete these newly introduced interim award applications. The Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Teams in all three Schools worked tirelessly towards achieving the silver award.”

Professor Peter Clayton, Interim Dean said: “I’d like to thank and congratulate everyone involved in the Athena SWAN application process, with a special mention to the School Self-Assessment Teams who are instrumental in driving the equality and diversity agenda across the Faculty.”