Gender pay gap report 2021 Actions to address the gender pay gap

We continue to strengthen our activities to address gender imbalance and eliminate the gender pay gap. A commitment to ensuring progress in this area is laid out in the University’s Strategy 2018-2023, and in its key enabler, the People Strategy.

Gender Pay Gap Working Group

As we emerge from the pandemic, a revitalised Gender Pay Gap Working Group will initially work with our Planning Office to model the data and identify a variety of direct interventions that will help close the residual and overall pay gap. This will consider the polarisation of the male population and the clustering of women at the mid-range to ascertain where the most impact can be made to reduce the pay gap. This will be undertaken in parallel with ensuring that we continue to run events to support the progression of women, such as demystifying promotions and regrading events for both applicants and managers, monitoring applications for gender balance and publishing outcomes. In addition, we are currently undertaking a review of our pay points and starting salary to take account of, where possible, the impact of the voluntary living wage.

A further action of the group will be to review the impact of programmes such as the Elizabeth Garett Mentoring Programme/ Aurora to ascertain if we can monitor the trajectory of staff, as a result of participating in these initiatives.

We remain resolutely committed to improving our understanding of other pay gaps, and to understand the impact of intersectionality when addressing the gender pay gap. In 2020, we published St Andrews’ ethnicity pay gap for the first time. The aim over the next period is to look at the actions that can be taken to reduce under/over representation in the upper and lower quartiles.

Equality, diversity and inclusion staff appointments

In March 2019, the University’s first Assistant Vice Principal (AVP) for Diversity was appointed. This senior-level role is a visible and high profile demonstration of the University’s determination to place equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the heart of the St Andrews experience. AVP Diversity has since demitted office, and the University is currently in the process of appointing a Vice-Principal People and Diversity in recognition of the importance we place on this role in supporting and driving forward the EDI agenda.

Our VP People and Diversity will work closely with the other dedicated EDI appointments, who have continued to work across the University to broaden engagement with the EDI agenda. This has included supporting bystander training, and holding the St Andrews’ first ever Inclusion Week, in collaboration with 5 other HEIs, an event open to colleagues in all HEIs and other sectors. In addition, we are seeking to attain an institutional Race Equality Charter award. To work towards this, we have appointed an academic Race Equality Charter institutional Chair to oversee the application process and work stream. These roles build on the existing EDI staff complement, which include the Head of EDI, two Awards Advisers and an EDI Assistant.

Athena Swan

We continue to engage fully with Athena Swan: the University’s Bronze institutional award was renewed in May 2018; all Academic Schools have received an Athena Swan award. 17 of our Academic Schools have received the Bronze Athena Swan award and 2 schools have received Silver. In April 2021 the School of Biology received a Gold Athena Swan award, a level held by less than 3% of departmental award holders in UK and Ireland HEIs. This award is recognition of the hard work the School has been doing for many years to champion gender equality, address other inequalities, and foster an inclusive environment for all staff and students. Through a wide variety of actions, including building leadership experience, the School has achieved gender parity across management roles and in staff recruitment. It has also seen substantial increases in grant income and successful promotion applications for female academic staff. The School has established an annual ‘away day’ for Professional Services and Support (PSS) staff, future plans for which include dedicated sessions on career development and recognition of the skills and contributions of PSS staff to the School.

Additionally, our School of Physics and Astronomy continues to hold the Juno Champion status (the highest level) from the Institute of Physics. We are seeking to attain an institutional Silver Athena Swan award in the academic year 2023-2024. To work towards this, we have appointed a senior academic Athena Swan institutional Chair to oversee the application process and work stream.

Since the last Athena Swan submission, we have taken a series of actions to enhance gender equality. These include:

  • restricting single-sex recruitment shortlists for academic posts
  • developing and implementing Academic Review and Development Scheme (ARDS) guidance for Heads of School
  • enhancing recruitment processes to promote the proportion of women joining the University, especially in senior academic roles (all recruitment panel members are required to complete the ‘Unconscious Bias’ online training module); and developing recommendations to improve recruitment information available to potential applicants
  • established an EDI representatives’ network for staff working in Units to mirror the network in Academic Schools
  • revision of the promotions procedure to give a clear pathway for staff in education-focused roles. Three staff in these roles have since been promoted to Professor.
  • The University is reviewing the Head of School and Deputy Head of School roles and considering the supports that are put in place

Academic promotions

We continue to develop our promotion criteria to recognise excellence. The promotions exercise resumed in 2021, after being paused in in 2020 due to the pandemic, following an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA). To help increase awareness and transparency around the academic promotion process, ‘demystifying promotion sessions’ are held on an annual basis. These have been well attended and provide potential applicants with: an overview of the process, how applications are marked, what the panel is looking for and an overview of success rates. Since 2017, female applications have increased by 50%, with a success rate of 73% versus 64% for male applicants. The restarting of promotions will hopefully have a positive impact on the gender pay gap across many areas and grades.

Professorial and Senior Salary Review

In 2022, we will resume our biennial Professorial and Senior Salary Review process, which will provide a further opportunity to review and rebalance the gender pay gap at Grade 9.

Mentoring and development schemes for women

The Elizabeth Garret Mentoring Programme, which was launched in November 2017, continues to support the development of senior academic women in, or aspiring to, leading academic research, teaching, and leadership roles. To date, the scheme has supported 88 mentees.

In the academic years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, the University has sponsored a further 52 professional and academic women to take part in the Advance HE Leadership Foundation in Higher Education (LFHE) Aurora programme. This is an external women-only leadership development programme, designed to take positive action to address the under-representation of women in leadership positions in the higher education (HE) sector.

Support for carers

We continue to hold the Carer Positive Employer Award at ‘Exemplary’ level (the highest level), which was renewed in June 2021. We launched a Staff Parents and Carers Network in March 2019 to support the working lives of staff who have parental and caring responsibilities. This provides a networking forum to share knowledge and experiences and raises awareness of the needs of working parents and carers through events and initiatives. In the context of Covid-19, in March 2020, a virtual network was launched to support staff working remotely.

Hybrid working

We have developed an interim hybrid working guide to support staff transitioning back into the workplace post pandemic, but accepting and realising that for many, the ability to flex working hours and days is an essential part of their lives and the University will continue to provide and enhance this flexibility.

Recruitment and promotion

We are embarking on a review of our recruitment strategy to ensure that it is inclusive and relevant following the pandemic, and clearly articulates the benefits of employment by St Andrews. We continue to ensure that in relation to recruitment the following is in place:

  • all adverts encourage applications from women and other underrepresented groups
  • disallowing single-sex shortlists for advertised academic posts
  • require mandatory unconscious bias and diversity training for recruitment and promotion board members
  • ensuring panels are representative and that all posts have both female and male contacts.

In order to further diversify the pool of staff sitting on appointment committees, we now invite all staff to express an interest in this role and offer training in preparation for it.