January 2023.

Meet the department of Sociology Athena Swan Self-Assessment Team (SAT) - led by Professor Nickie Charles and Dr Maria do Mar Pereira - winners of the Team Award for Excellence in Gender Equality, and hear about the work they’re doing and how food has played an important part in their achievements.

What has been the biggest challenge in Gender Equality for 2022?

One big challenge is trying to get beyond the more obvious associations that people make with “gender equality work” in order to be able to produce change in areas that are less easy to see, but no less important. For example, many people associate gender equality interventions with increasing the numbers of women, but such interventions need to go beyond measuring easily quantifiable variables or focusing exclusively on women. During 2022, for example, we did a lot of work on how emotional labour is distributed in academia, something that is very difficult to measure. We’re also starting an innovative project supporting men students to change cultures of masculinity, as well as strengthening our ongoing work with non-binary students. It’s important to go beyond counting women, and try to do gender equality work in more expansive, creative, critical and intersectional ways.

It’s important to go beyond counting women, and try to do gender equality work in more expansive, creative, critical and intersectional ways.

Can you give an overview of your work outside of Warwick?

Most Athena Swan work tends to be focused on diagnosing and changing gender equality issues within one’s own department or institution. That work is very important to us – there’s much we can improve within our environment! – but we wanted to go further than that and use our Athena Swan work also to help promote change beyond Warwick Sociology. We’ve done this in many ways. We’ve organised several national and international events bringing together academics, students, administrators and practitioners across 60+ universities, to exchange best practice and provide mutual support. Colleagues within our team have also produced reports and articles about Athena Swan which have made significant contributions to the national and international debate about equality certification systems in academia. Next year, we hope to do work with local schools, engaging with young people on issues of gender equality.

How will you continue this work for 2023?

In 2023, we will be focusing on two initiatives that we are piloting for the first time. One is a peer discussion group for men undergraduate students, which we hope will offer a supportive space for them to come together and discuss challenging aspects of their everyday experiences which they don’t usually get to talk about elsewhere. The other is the Sociology Care Collective, a staff group which we have set up to organise social events, provide peer support, and strengthen the sense of community among staff in the department. We hope that creating this Collective and giving it resources and workload recognition will improve the way we support, acknowledge and celebrate the generous work that so many staff in Sociology already do to help each other and make the department a positive working environment.

From the start, we’ve treated Athena Swan as a collaborative, rather than competitive, exercise, and we have tried to support other departments applying for Athena Swan awards.

What has been your proudest moment so far in your Gender Equality work?

We are very proud that some of the work we have done in Sociology has helped colleagues in other Warwick departments advance their own gender equality work. From the start, we’ve treated Athena Swan as a collaborative, rather than competitive, exercise, and we have tried to support other departments applying for Athena Swan awards, drawing on our recognised expertise in gender. One key action we took was to share with others the templates we had created for departmental culture surveys, a type of survey which has to be carried out by any unit seeking an Athena Swan award. Our survey templates have now been used by over 10 Warwick departments, spanning all 3 Faculties. If you’d like to take a look at these survey templates and use them in your department, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

What kept you motivated while doing this work?

We believe food is key to bringing people together and generating new ideas, so our joint thinking and writing has been fuelled over the years by lots of delicious pizza and cake. We are looking forward to eating together again very soon to celebrate receiving our brand new Silver Athena Swan award!