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 Biological and Chemical Sciences
- Gender balance in decision making committees
- Clear shortlisting criteria, diverse interview panels (at least one women is part of the recruitment panel since 2016)
- Introduced orientation and training for all staff new to teaching and/or assessment at QMUL
- Support for new Teaching and Research staff. T&R staff in the School are:
- given lighter teaching loads (30% in year 1, 60% in year 2, 100% in year 3).
- given start-up-money, including the establishment of specialised facilities for their research
- given a PhD studentship to start their research group.
- Parental leave: Policy on maternity, sick, and shared parental leave for T&R staff
- Post Doctoral Research Assistants are also supported on parental leave with regard to their research but arrangements vary depending on the funding organisation.
- Wherever possible, teaching is scheduled to fit flexible working hours for staff with caring responsibilities.
- Support and fund external training programmes for career advancement for women (including Professional and Support staff), e.g. Aurora Women in Leadership programme, ‘Women into Leadership’, ‘High Potential Leaders Programme’ (HPLP) and ‘Pathways to Promotion’.
- Establisment of a social committee (WG Culture) with the aim of generating more opportunities for networking and socialising.
- Guidelines on supporting women going through the menopause. These are being developed for use across Queen Mary.
School of Engineering and Materials Science
- A mentoring scheme for postdocs was launched in 2014.
- A part time working guarantee for academic staff was introduced by which a member of staff who decides to work part-time can come back to her/his previous maximum FTE at any time.
- Substantial support for staff returning from maternity leave or long-term illness is provided. The nature of the support is tailored to the individual’s needs.
- A professorial advisory group who mentors and advises academic staff on career progression was formed.
- Improved first year tutorial support to ease the transition from school to university and raise the career aspirations of students was introduced.
- Staff meetings and the school forum now include all staff. The meetings are held in core hours and on alternating days to allow all staff to attend most of them.
- SEMS Core Hours are defined as 10.00 -16.00. All meetings are advised to be arranged within the Core Hours.
School of Maths
- All research seminars to take place only between 10am and 4pm from 2019/20 onwards (currently only 50% of seminars do).
- Interview and Fair selection training for all PhD interview panel members (not previously compulsory).
- Actively approaching all women who were eligible for promotion to encourage them to apply. 3 of 12 applications were from women this year, and at least 1 woman applied and is likely to be promoted because of this action. (Our academic staff m:f ratio is 59:9).
- Pilot scheme running for flexible teaching for staff with caring responsibilities – staff can indicate preferences and constraints to be taken into account for timetabling of lectures and tutorials.
- Providing more networking opportunities for women including regular Women’s lunches as well as our Women in Maths day.
- Encouraged uptake of mentoring for women including the Springboard and Aurora programmes
School of Physics and Astronomy
Excellent recruitment practice including:
- embedded positive-action statements in job adverts
- checking job descriptions to avoid gender-specific language.
Universities Human Resources
