Athena Swan

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Guiding Breakthrough Research at University of Galway

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Athena SWAN Charter

Advance HE’s Athena SWAN Charter is a framework used worldwide to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research. It was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in higher education and research and the Charter is now being used across the globe to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women. This Charter is used by universities to improve the working environment for all staff and students.

In 2023, the Department of Computer Science was awarded the Athena SWAN Bronze Award by Advance HE in a joint submission with the Data Science Institute. This award recognises the progress and ambition of the department in achieving gender equality.

Athena SWAN in the Department of Computer Science

Our predecessor Discipline of IT was part of a 2017 AS application by the previous College of Engineering & Informatics. While it was unsuccessful, it has informed SCS’s strategy and operational planning. The new School of Engineering earned a Silver award in 2022.

Informed by AS principles, SCS has set priorities in the past 2 years to:

increase the proportion of female academics we recruit;

increase our number of female undergraduate students;

actively support the career development and progression of female academics and researchers.

We are already taking steps to address these and we have initiated measures to encourage more female applicants for academic posts.

We are keen to improve our ratio of female students, as intelligence and ability are evenly distributed, but opportunities are not. We have identified multiple actions and are even planning a new degree programme that would be more interesting to female students.

A key objective is the recruitment of female senior academics, we are committed to addressing this through:

Encouraging female academics to consider applying for promotion, and supporting them through mentoring and workload planning

Developing new opportunities for women in computer science, such as through the SALI scheme

We are fully committed to implementing the full Action Plan, which we believe is ambitious but necessary for our goal of a diversified staff profile and a respectful, inclusive workplace.