Ideas and Inspiration
Our departments have created and implemented various measures, initiatives, policies and more to progress gender equality throughout Queen Mary. Below you can see examples of best practice from our departments.
School of Business and Management
- Reducing the undergraduate Male BAME awarding gap and increasing women and BAME staff at Grade 8.
- Flying Start programme, which addresses underrepresentation of women in accountancy and finance, was spotlighted as a model of good practice. This includes partnerships with schools, student bursaries, paid placements, and job fast-tracking upon degree completion. The Flying start programme involves students going on paid placements and being fast-tracked into a job at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) on successful completion of their degrees
- launched a new outreach programme to attract more female applicants, led by female faculty.
- Increasing the diversity of job applicants by wording of the School’s adverts might alienate some candidates, text was re-written to attract staff from underrepresented groups and to offer flexible working.
- Reduce the unconscious bias found in nominations for seminar speakers
- The Advisory Board was re-constituted, with 50% split between genders and BAME/White board members. Add BAME members to the Advisory Board
- Increase graduate opportunities for Bangladeshi female students.
School of Economics and Finance
- Timetabling has the flexibility to help students with caring responsibilities. Following feedback in the 2022 NSS Survey, they modified their class system to enable student swaps.
- ‘Who Wants to Be an Economist?’, an initiative targeting BAME and female students that aimed to increase diversity in economics. In this scheme, UG students worked as mentors for pupils in local schools to inspire them to apply for an Economics degree.
- a workload model for academic staff, whereby any administrative role, including EDI and Athena Swan-related work, is accounted for as part of their workload.
- Female guest speakers to promote role models for our students.
- Hosting Women in Finance panel events. The School’s Economics Masters Apprenticeship Programme (EMAP) has an objective to support the career progression of individuals from groups underrepresented within the economics and analytical professions, specifically women, and BAME. Applicants that do not meet entrance requirements can undertake a pre-sessional course and test to recognise workplace experience, while still ensuring they meet the demands of the course. This enables a diverse pipeline of talent to access the course.
School of Mathematical Sciences
- To facilitate re-establishing of research momentum, academic staff returning from a period of long absence as maternity leave, paternity leave, other parental leave, or sick leave are eligible for reduced (or no) admin load, reduced (or no) teaching load for an agreed period (up to 12 months) and an agreed amount of School support for visiting collaborators.
- Staff with caring responsibilities can submit a request for Flexible Teaching. Such requests include an availability for teaching of at least 35 hours per week (or a pro-rata for part-time staff), during the hours of 9:00-18:00, Monday-Friday.
- The School has an annual EDI budget of £2000. Part of this budget is reserved for a childcare conference fund (up to £150 per person, per year). These small awards are available to PhD students, research, 17 academic and professional services staff to help support the extra childcare costs when attending conferences and trainings.
- The School takes a pro-active approach to improving gender balance in research seminars. At the beginning of each academic year, the EDI Lead writes to Research Group Heads and seminar organisers to emphasise the importance of a diverse and gender-balanced list of invited speakers
- All staff are regularly updated on all known funding opportunities, including ones for women only.
- mock interviews are arranged for all grant/fellowship applicants facing an interview as part of the selection process.
- Women are represented in all committees in line with the gender balance in the School
- the Outreach team of the School has organised a “Girls in Maths” day dedicated to A-level Mathematics students. The event, which includes two taster lectures, a transitioning to university talk and a career talk.
- Taking into account the intersectionality of gender with other protected characteristics and to ensure an effective action plan, the School has created the following EDI subgroups:
- Gender balance, LGTBQ+, ethnic minorities, disabilities, early career researchers and first-generation scholars.
- Every subgroup has two co-chairs (an academic or PhD student and a PS member) and report back to the EDI Lead.
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