Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) project

About the project

In 2021 Queen Mary University of London was awarded grant to take part in the Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) pilot project created by the Indian Government, Department for Science and Technology (DST) and British Council in partnership with Advance HE.

The project's aim is to develop and introduce the first gender equality frameworks within India’s academic domain, with a specific focus on:

addressing gender inequality in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine) and,
promoting gender sensitisation.

“GATI aims to nudge institutions of higher education and research towards supporting diversity, inclusion and the full spectrum of talent for their own success and progression. In particular, it aspires to create an enabling environment for equal participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics (STEMM) disciplines at all levels, addressing deep-rooted problems.”

[objective - GATI handbook and self-assessment framework and guidance, DST 2021]

Our role

Queen Mary's role is one of mentorship, providing support and guidance to our Indian partners GATI leads and self-assessment teams. At Queen Mary, this has been delivered through the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team and the internal GATI project group (internal) through one-to-one sessions, workshops and the sharing of resources.

Our GATI project group (internal) were key in the shaping and delivery of workshops (October 2021-April 2022) and provided perspectives from across The University.

Members

Name	Role
Eleanor McDavis GATI Project Lead	Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager
Mursheda Begum Project Administrator	Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) Project Administrator
Sheila Gupta	Vice-Principal (People, Culture and Inclusion)
Simon Gwynne	HR Information and Data Analytics Manager
Peter Hobson	Head of School \| Professor Of Physics (S&E)
Fadi Safieddine	Accreditation Manager/Senior Lecturer (HSS)
Laura Simpson	FMD EDI and Athena Swan Manager
Mangala Patel	Professor of Dental Biomaterials \| former Chair of Institute of Dentistry Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team leading three successful applications (two Bronze in 2013 & 2015 and one Silver in 2018)

[British council, Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI): Partnership Concept Note, Annex 3, 1-7]

GATI partner institutions and their role

Figure 1. Geographical locations of our partner institutions.

Our partner have two main roles:

1) Adopt the 10 GATI Charter principles in policies, strategic plans, and organizational culture. These are:

We acknowledge that the role of higher education and research institutions is to serve a broad
diversity of students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders providing equal opportunity to all.
We realize that diversity enhances excellence and academia cannot reach its full potential
unless it can create systems to value, nurture and benefit from the talents of all in the
community.
We acknowledge that people of all genders are equally capable of making valuable
contributions and promoting excellence in all areas of human enterprise.
We recognize, in particular, the importance of advancing gender equity in Science,
Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics (STEMM) areas.
We are deeply concerned that discouraging experiences, implicit and explicit bias inhibit the
full participation of women in science at all stages and acknowledge the need for effective
implementation of policy on sexual harassment for creating an enabling environment.
We are deeply concerned about the high rate of loss of women across the career pipeline,
their underrepresentation in the profession – in particular, in leadership roles.
We recognize that all individuals have identities shaped by different factors at different
stages of their career and that institutional support structures are required for facilitating
work and enhancing professional contribution of all, in particular of women.
We acknowledge that advancing gender equality requires strong leadership, participative
action and sustained effort to bring in systemic and cultural changes through well deliberated
policy initiatives at all levels of the organization.
We commit to creating a safe and nurturing environment for women and developing action
plans for removing the barriers to their progression in particular, at major points of career
development including the transition from higher studies into a sustainable academic career
and advancement to the top positions thereafter.
We believe that mainstreaming, assimilating and sustaining positive impact policies and
actions for gender advancement will bring transformative changes in the overarching climate
and socio-cultural ethos leading the institution towards distinctive excellence.

2) Undertake Self-Assessment and Accreditation process based on the GATI Gender Equity Indicator Framework which:

- outlines criteria and metric for self-evaluating gender statistics, policies, processes, procedures, and practices, gender climate and organizational culture,
- encourage implementation plans for action plans and sustenance of project.

Project journey

List of project activities in chronological order.
Date	Activities
2021	QMUL awarded GATI grant	1:1 sessions, resources and advice shared throughout
Oct 2021	Workshop 1: Orientation
Jan 2022	Microsoft Team space established for GATI partners
Feb 2022	Workshop 2: Self-assessment process
Feb 2022	Workshop 3: Data collection and analysis
Mar 2022	Workshop 4: Action planning for success
Mar 2022	Collaboration on International Women’s Day blog
Apr 2022	Feedback survey
Jun-Jul	GATI self-assessment application drafts
Sep 2022	Joint UK Higher Education Institution activity: A week of workshops on lessons learned and good practice
Sep 2022	GATI partner visits to QMUL
Oct/Nov 2022	SMD x GATI workshop (TBC)
Nov 2022	QMUL visit to India (TBD)
Nov 2022-Dec	Project Review
Nov 2022-Dec	Final report

Impact of the project

Six workshops delivered, and attendance rates ranged from 18-27.
Delivered a week of workshops on lessons learned and good practice with other London Russell Group universities across Indian and Brazilian academic institutions.
11 project update/one-to-one meetings conducted and/or planned.
We shared a survey with our Indian partner institutions in April 2022 (see Project journey) to provide feedback on their GATI project journey. We asked about the short and (anticipated) long-term impacts of the project for our partner's institutions. These are outlined below.

Indian partner's short term impact of GATI project sourced from feedback form.