Gender Equality Plan
Our aims, actions and achievements towards gender equality at LSBULSBU has a longstanding commitment to advancing gender equality through our annual Gender Pay Gap reports and actions, the evidence-based gender equality evaluation and actions set out in our five-year Athena SWAN Bronze Award institutional submission and action plan, as well as our five-year Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy.
Our key gender equality activities and achievements to date include:
Promoting gender balance in leadership, through supporting both academic and professional services staff to attendleadership development programmes including the Aurora Programme (for female staff), Diversifying Leadership (for BAME staff), Stonewall (for LGBT+ staff) and Calibre (for disabled staff). 87% of our attendees to these programmes over the past three years have been women, with 52% achieving promotion after a year. While 44% of our Grade 11+ roles are held by women, 67% of our University Executive team is female.
Improving gender equality in recruitment and career progression, with an Inclusive Recruitment action plan making good progress (as outlined in our EDI Strategy and EDI Annual Report) and our targeted academic promotions workshops resulting in significant improvements in our Academic Pipeline (below). Over the past three years our interventions and support have steadily increased the percentage of women in the professoriate, meaning women now hold of 53% of Professor roles (compared to 41% in 2022) to match their overall academic representation. Black, Asian and other minority ethnic (BAME) women continue to be an area targeted for support in progression.
Reducing gender pay gaps, reporting annually on gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, and seeing mean (middle earner) and median (overall average) pay gap reductions, including for gender where our 2024 median gender pay gap has reduced from 10.21% in 2022 to 7.26%, below the national median of 14.3%, and the Higher Education sector median of 8.5%, and the maintenance of a mean of 7.18%, below the national mean of 11.3% and the HE mean of 13%.
In 2024, we also commissioned an Equal Pay Audit to whether LSBU has any unexplained pay gaps (between gender, ethnicity and disability classifications). The audit calculated ‘adjusted pay gaps’, taking into account objective reasons for individual differences in pay (such as job level, performance rating, London/remote job location, and length of tenure). The audit found an overall adjusted pay gap of 0.6% between pay for men and for women, and particular intersectional gaps for women from Black, Asian and ‘Other’ ethnic minority backgrounds (between 1.4% - 3.3%) which we continue to address through targeted plans and monitoring.
We have also put in place a number of key initiatives:
Supporting work-life balance through our hybrid working, flexible working, leave and pay enhancements around maternity, paternity and adoption leave policies, as well as more holistic support for health and wellbeing including our Reasonable Adjustments Policy, Menopause Policy and Trans and Gender Identity Guidance. We also champion community building at LSBU through our calendar of EDI activities and events, in partnership with our five Staff Networks who provide peer support, visibility, and voice around gender (GenderNet), disability (DNet), ethnicity (EquiNet), sexual orientation (SoNet), and caring responsibilities (Parents and Carers).
Addressing bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and other gender-based violence, through our Staff Bullying, Harassment and Sexual Harassment Policy, trained Dignity at Work Advisers and comprehensive Report and Support platform. This sits alongside our Student Bullying, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Policy and Staff Domestic Abuse Policy to outline LSBU’s expectations for staff, provide definitions and examples of unacceptable conduct, give guidance on how to address unacceptable conduct and raise awareness of the various sources of support available.
Integrating gender into research and teaching, through our Research and Innovation Strategy that has an ambition to champion inclusivity, diversity and sustainability, and a mission to build better, safer & inclusive communities, producing nationally and globally recognised research with local, national and global impact, that has tackled injustice, domestic and gang violence, reduced gender inequalities in sports participation, and improved the lives of people with special needs. Our research and innovation is supported by our dedicated Research & Innovation Services team and the LSBU Doctoral College, and more widely by our peer-led Inclusive Researcher Group and Inclusive Practice Group.
LSBU also meets the requirements of the Horizon Europe Gender Equality Plan through:
- Publication of our gender equality plan, endorsed by senior leaders across LSBU, and setting out specific goals and measures of success for gender equality for the period 2020 to 2025.
- Dedicated gender equality resourcing through an Athena Swan Manager in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team who oversees and implements gender equality work; local Athena Swan Leads and Self-Assessment Teams in academic schools; and an institutional Self-Assessment Team.
- Data collection and monitoring on sex and gender to evaluate and improve internal processes, such as recruitment, promotion, admissions, and awards, reported on annually in our EDI Annual Report and Pay Gap Report and discussed at our EDI Steering Group, Athena Swan SAT, and Race Equality Charter SAT meetings.
- Training (both online and in person) led by the Learning and Organisational Development and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion teams to raise awareness of inequality and bias and to address disadvantage in induction, recruitment, promotion, management and overall workplace behaviours.
- Specific development programmes, such as Aurora and Diversifying Leadership and the Global Majority Mentoring Programme, to support the progression of women, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and other minoritised groups.