UCD awarded Athena Swan Bronze Institution
University College Dublin was awarded the the Athena SWAN Bronze Institutional Award on 15th March 2017. The Athena SWAN Award was established to promote the advancement of women’s careers in higher education and research. Receiving this Award is a a welcome recognition of UCD’s commitment to our community to enhance gender equality in the university and is a significant milestone for UCD.
UCD’s Athena SWAN submission, including the Gender Equality Action Plan, can be accessed here: Athena Swan Submission
Diversity is highlighted in the university’s strategic plan as one of the core values of UCD, and one of our strategic objectives is the attraction and retention of an excellent and diverse cohort of students, faculty and staff. The Athena SWAN Gender Equality Action Plan will be central to our ability to deliver on this objective.
We have already put in place a number of actions including:
- The appointment of a Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
- The establishment of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group reporting to the University Management Team
- A new HR strategy and faculty development processes integrating gender equality
- The development of an Equality Impact Assessment Tool, which will enable and require all policy developers to ensure that UCD policies are inclusive and promote equality and diversity
- The introduction of a social levy, to distribute the costs of leave
Further detailed steps are identified in the Gender Equality Action Plan, including
- Gender balance targets for committee membership
- Broad roll-out of unconscious bias training
- Introduction of meeting hours
- Gender targets for promotions, based on the cascade model
- Mainstreaming gender equality across all university processes, including data collection.