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HEFCE commissioned the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) to report back on the range of equality and diversity practice undertaken across the higher education sector. Of 120 submissions received, ECU chose 68 projects from 36 institutions to include in this report.

The report highlights nine themes common to the most innovative and successful policies and practices: collaboration, communication, data, leadership, networks, research, resource, scale and strategy. It further reports that the majority of submissions were not targeted at specific equality characteristics, and there were noticeably very few submissions on age, gender identity, religion and belief, and sexual orientation.

In concluding, the ECU makes six recommendations including repeating this call for evidence, that any future calls be targeted to specific characteristics, and that institutions place greater emphasis on qualitative and quantitative evaluations of their best practice submissions.  

To accompany ECU’s work, HEFCE has created a searchable web resource which holds the successful documents as submitted by the individual institutions, as well as contacts and other related web material.

The recommendations are the result of a taskforce set up by Universities UK last year to examine these issues. The taskforce consisted of university leaders, student representatives and academic experts. The group considered harassment in all its forms but focused particularly on issues of sexual violence and harassment.

The taskforce looked also at the guidance available to universities on managing situations where a student's behaviour may constitute a criminal offence. The Taskforce concluded that the existing guidance dating back to 1994 (known as the Zellick guidelines) required review. This review has been carried out and new guidelines are published alongside today’s report.

The taskforce also received evidence relating to staff-to-student sexual harassment. This issue needs to be addressed, along with on-line harassment and hate crimes on the grounds of race. Universities UK will consult with universities, students and interested groups to assess what more can be done in these areas and what further action is necessary.

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK and chair of the taskforce, said: “The university sector has been clear that there is no place for sexual violence, harassment or hate crime on a university campus, nor anywhere else. 
“The impact of any such incident on a student is so potentially serious that universities must be ready to respond effectively and proactively engage in prevention initiatives.
 
“The evidence showed that while many universities have already taken positive steps to address these issues, university responses are not always as joined-up as they could be. There is more work that can be done to share effective practice across the sector.

“The taskforce agreed that there are several steps that universities can take to promote and reinforce positive behaviour among students.

“It is clear that these issues are not isolated to universities and reflect behaviours in society generally, including in schools and local communities. UK universities, however, have a significant role to play, and are in a position to lead the way in preventing and responding to violence against women, harassment and hate crime, beyond the boundaries of the university campus.”

The taskforce report recommends that:

• Universities, working with students’ unions, should take an institution-wide approach to tackling violence against women, harassment and hate crime and carry out a regular impact assessment of their approach

• Universities should embed a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence, harassment and hate crime, highlighting up-front the behaviours that are expected from all students, as well as ensuring staff understand the importance of fostering a zero-tolerance culture

• Universities should develop a clear and accessible response procedure and centralised reporting system for dealing with incidents of violence, harassment or hate crime, working with relevant external agencies where appropriate

• Existing guidance available to universities on managing situations where a student's disciplinary offence may constitute a criminal offence should be reviewed. Such guidance can be critical in assisting universities to manage cases and provide appropriate support to students. This review has been carried out and new guidelines are published alongside today’s report

• Universities develop and maintain partnership working as a fundamental component of preventing and responding to violence against women, harassment and hate crime. Partners – including the police, community leaders and specialist services – can be vital in supporting students, ensuring staff are well-trained and assessing the nature and scale of the issues affecting students at a given time

• Universities UK should hold an annual national conference for the next three years to facilitate the sharing of good practice on matters related to the work of the taskforce

• Universities UK should work with relevant bodies such as the NUS, JISC and Reclaim the Internet to assess what further support may be needed to tackle the growing prevalence of online harassment and hate crime

   

In German medicine, there is a gap between the increasing number of female medical students and the backlog of women at different turning points of their career. In hospitals, which can be regarded as ‘gendered organizations’, female doctors are confronted with structural discrimination, which is interpreted as gendering processes. In a qualitative, longitudinal study with twenty female physicians who were interviewed three times over the course of 5 years, discriminatory processes were shown on two levels. First, female physicians were categorized as females, and their gender role rather than their professional role as a physician was emphasized. Second, if they were (expectant) mothers, they became even more stereotyped as a female. This stereotyping occurred by reinforcing the conflict between the role of a mother and the role of a professional. It is shown how the women themselves, organizational peculiarities of hospitals, job conditions, and behaviours of male staff members may all contribute to maintaining vertical gender inequality in medicine.

The Government Office for Science1, supported by organisations such as Innovate UK2, the Research Councils3, the Royal Academy of Engineering4, the IET5 and campaigns such as WISE6 and WiSET7 have, for many years, been inspiring girls and women to study and build careers in the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Statistical surveys from these bodies8 highlight the impact of their work within the education sector with the number of females attaining STEM vocational qualifications increasing from 8% in 2011 to 24% in 2013. The same surveys also highlight the gender demographic transition to the workplace with women making up only 13% of the STEM workforce and women accounting for only 5.5% of engineering professionals.

Diversity statistics regarding the number of women studying STEM subjects in the education sector, up to and including degree level, are quite comprehensive because gender data is readily available regarding the number of women studying these subjects (‘inputs’) and those receiving qualifications (‘outputs’). When looking at industry however the statistical research in this field primarily relies on ‘inputs’, such as the number of women employed in a given industry. Very little data is available on the ‘outputs’ of work undertaken by women within STEM industries.

For this reason, a recurring question that has been asked of the IPO over the past few years – by Government colleagues, journalists and diversity and equality groups amongst others – relates to patent statistics about female inventors. Patents are well known as a measurable ‘output’ of STEM industries and being able to determine the level of invention of female inventors is highly desirable. It is a legal requirement of the Patents Act 1977 that each inventor is named on the patent application. Disclosing an inventor’s gender, or any other protected (diversity) characteristics, is obviously not a legal requirement. This means that it has not been possible to provide statistical information about the gender of inventors named on patent applications.

However, recent gender inference work by several academic researchers has changed this. It is now possible, with a high degree of confidence, to infer the gender of inventors and therefore provide some statistical analysis about the patenting activity of female inventors.

This report outlines the approach undertaken by the Informatics Team at the IPO and provides a preliminary study looking at the type of patent analysis that can be undertaken using inferred gender data.