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In 2020, we successfully renewed our Athena SWAN Bronze Award – an award the Department has held since 2008.
The Athena SWAN Charter recognises commitment to advancing women's careers in science, and was established by the Equality Challenge Unit to recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. The Charter has since been expanded to cover additional disciplines and addresses gender equality more broadly. The Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering currently holds an Athena Swan Bronze Award in recognition of our commitment to supporting and advancing the careers of women in STEM.
The Department's Athena SWAN Self Assessment Committee (SAT) is currently working on its four-year action plan. The action plan is based around four key Priority Areas:
- Strengthen the capacities and communication channels of the Athena Swan SAT
- Adress the recruitment and retention of our female postgraduate research students
- Address key career transition points for academic and research staff
- Change organisational culture and facilitate outreach
You can view the full action plan on the Department's Staff Intranet.
The reason for the launch of our Female Futures initiative, and why this field needs organisations like Athena SWAN, is a stark under-representation of women in physics and engineering. A report by the Institute of Physics in 2018 found that only 1.9% of girls study A level Physics compared to 6.5% of boys, despite the fact that girls perform just as well as boys in the subject at GCSE.
In addition to Female Futures, our department therefore has a dedicated Athena SWAN committee, chaired by Dr Charlotte Hagen. As Charlotte explains:
We strive for an equal representation on women and men in our subject area. We already regularly achieve a 50/50 gender balance on our courses, and our staff and students are 100% committed to promoting Physics and Engineering to female school students and early-career women who might not otherwise have considered these subjects as a career option. As a department, we're working very hard to spread the word — to girls and boys alike — about this exciting field of research and the many career routes a degree in Medical Physics or Biomedical Engineering can lead to."
The Athena SWAN Committee meets every month to ensure that our departmental culture, processes and career support mechanisms take into account the particular needs of staff and students, both male and female, with childcare or other caring responsibilities.
