Tag: gender

International Mens Day

International Men’s day is November 19th.

As you know the  broad objectives for all International Men’s Day are applied equally to men and boys irrespective of their age, ability, social background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious belief and relationship status, and each year they add an additional theme. This year’s theme is: “Making a difference for men and boys.”

  • To promote positive male role models; not just movie stars and sportsmen but everyday, men who are living decent, honest lives.
  • To celebrate men’s positive contributions to society, community, family, marriage, child care, and to the environment.
  • To focus on men’s health and wellbeing; social, emotional, physical and spiritual.
  • To highlight discrimination against men; in areas of social services, social attitudes and expectations, and law.
  • To improve gender relations and promote gender equality.
  • To create a safer, better world; where people can live free from harm and grow to reach their full potential[125]

Some of the things we do in ISG to make a difference for men and boys.

We showcase the exciting work our male student interns do.

We run regular Fathers Network events

  • ISG Directors Tony, Alistair and Kevin have all attended our Fathers Network events to highlight the importance of understanding the workplace issues which face working dads.  The sessions help to normalise experiences by sharing experiences and telling stories about fatherhood with other dads. They are valued as a chance to meet other fathers with the university and learning from how others deal with policies and flexibility. Some comments from our staff on the value of these sessions include: ‘Understanding updated policy on parental leave.’ ‘Hearing experiences from other working fathers’. ‘Raise awareness of issues facing fathers – as peer support’.’ Significant difference as it raises awareness of “invisible” issues’. ‘Anything that helps encourage dads to be involved and ask for help is worth it.’Strengthen families & hence benefit society is worthwhile.’

We run personal development programmes specifically for men

  • This year develop a full day session:Men at Work: Expectations, experiences, and the workplace. We are partnering with Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) to host an interactive full-day workshop for male colleagues. This workshop will delve into the often tricky and sometimes complicated area of identity in the workplace with a focus on your experiences.  Aspects such as society, career stereotypes, diversity and cultural norms in workplaces create a set of unspoken ‘rules’ that shape expectations of actions and behaviours. This workshop will explore how these expectations manifest themselves in ISG, the advantages and disadvantages this offers, and what (if any) steps we can take as a result.

We promote mental health

  • Stewart is now bidding for funding for the third! edition of his mindfulness colouring book.
  • The Healthy Working Lives  group in ISG promote well-being.
  • Lothian Health Services Archive’s UNESCO-recognised collections on the history of HIV prevention, treatment and care in Edinburgh reflect a widespread and co-ordinated response from a range of individuals and groups to an unprecedented crisis which reached its height in the late 1980s.
  • We share openly available learning resources  about LGBT+  men and Healthcare

We promote gender equality, diversity and inclusion

  • Ewan runs regular wikipedia editathons which focus on celebrating  hidden voices and changing the way stories are told.
  • The Playfair steps programme runs staff development and engagement sessions which take an intersectional approach to workplace diversity.
  • Kevin ‘s detailed and caring approach to developing processes has transformed the scale and quality of our student employment programmes, such that they are now award winning.
  • Gavin our CIO has set equality and diversity targets for the whole of ISG and regularly calls out teams or areas which are being slow to change.

We support  and encourage shared parental leave

We celebrate the contributions of men from history to modern thinking about community, family, marriage, child care, and to the environment.

  • Charles Lyell’s thinking can shape the way we approach the climate change crisis.

 

genderED

Because I’ll be in Madrid I’ll miss the genderED 2nd anniversary showcase.

Dominique and Ewan will be there showcasing their work.

This event brings together educators and researchers working on gender and sexuality studies from across the University of Edinburgh. We are delighted to celebrate the second anniversary of genderED, the University’s interdisciplinary hub for gender and sexuality studies. This reception will include an interactive showcase of research, teaching and institutional initiatives, inviting attendees to learn about gender and sexuality studies work across a wide range of disciplines. genderED’s work and directories span the whole University, and the showcase will give a snapshot of exciting and varied ongoing work.
Dominique will be speaking about the gender equality work we do in ISG in The PlayFair Steps
Ewan will be speaking about the gender equality work we do in ISG in Wikimedia

‘tech-out’, the technology version of a ‘teach-out’

Rosie the Editor

Some of us are on strike. (I may have mentioned this before). Academic colleagues are holding ‘teach outs’. What kind of activity would be the learning technology version of a ‘teach out’?  I’m thinking  ‘making OER ‘and ‘wikimedia editathons’.

I’ve asked a guru and been told that a ‘teach-out’ takes place outside the walls, has an informal curriculum, is activist focused and free!

Open education and OER is all about ‘beyond walls’, it is about sharing, releasing openly, deliberately, resources which can be re-used by others for free. There are whole conferences about how this is informal, disruptive, beyond the curriculum and underpinned by activism for social change in HE. There are even Declarations about it.  Wikimedia is the largest online  open educational resources platform in the world.  Wikimedia is an activist organisation whose members  support and campaign for changes in copyright, access, freedoms and disruption of traditional knowledge publishing models. There is also a well known issue with gender bias in the content.

I’ve looked up some UCU guidance. They say:

“Good reasons to do teach-outs include:

  • They show students that their teachers aren’t just putting their feet up. We care about students’ education and are willing to educate unpaid — just not to do the kind of educating we’re normally paid for.
  • We only go on strike when bad things are happening, but promoting the teach-out allows us to focus conversations on a positive activity. Attending allows students (and anyone else!) to show support for the strike.
  • The teach-outs also give members a communal, productive activity to do on strike days that builds ideas, capacity, and community — and reminds us what higher education is really all about.
  • Not all members are willing or able to be involved in picketing, but are happy to participate in teach-outs, broadening the possibilities for activism on a strike day.

Organising teach-outs is very easy! Almost everyone in UCU organises conferences, open days, meetings and talks professionally. Moreover, it’s in the nature of teach-outs that they’re ad hoc, a bit improvised, even carnivalesque. So basically, it’s about doing what we’re good at, yet no-one minds if it goes wrong “

This is exactly the kind of thing we encourage through our OER activities and wikimedia editathon events.  It is #openeducationweek as well as #internationalwomensday and #ussstrikes. The best thing you can do is join a ‘tech-out’. You don’t have to cross a picketline, Wikipedia is definitely outside our walls, but conveniently adjacent, and differently owned, like a local pub or community hall.  You can learn how to do OER from our handy guides. You can join our wikimedia editathon remotely with our helpful videos.

If you want a communal, productive activity to do on strike days that builds ideas, capacity and community, and reminds us what higher education is really all about, Comrades, join me in Open Education.

 

PlayFair Steps for equality action

By claireknights [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Playfair Steps, Edinburgh. By claireknights [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Information Services has more than 600 staff. Earlier this year more than 300 of them replied to a gender equality survey. The results of this survey are providing a starting place for the IS senior management to promote equality in the workplace and implement proactive plans for change.  We are recruiting an intern to help us. This internship coincides with an exciting time for Information Services as we make plans to move to a new building and find new ways of working.

Opportunity and strategic alignment

Following our gender equality survey, within the context of the University’s commitment to Athena Swan, and in line with a broader approach to change management in IS, we have an opportunity now to make some innovative moves to address equality and diversity issues for our staff.

Key messages

One of the key messages arising from our staff survey was that ‘equality involves everyone’. This indicates that our success will depend on ensuring that our plans target all groups and include a range of positive actions, in addition to those specifically designed for women.

Proposal

Alongside the work we must do in HR and with directors and managers around policies and process, we will establish an innovative programme of staff workplace activities * and L&D opportunities focused on a general concept of ‘fair play’ called ‘The PlayFair Steps’**.

Next Steps

  • To begin making our planned equality action areas into a SMART plan for 3 years.
  • To recruit (using CIO innovation funds) a Phd intern to work with us for the first year to monitor progress against targets in these change areas.
  • To establish a staff group to lead, shape and bring new ideas.

Proposed Equality Actions Areas for next 3years

Communications

  • Deliver a communications plan to advertise, update and raise awareness of relevant university HR policies where they exist.
  • Deliver a communications plan of concerted positive comms around ADR, L&D, mentoring, professional networks for career development.
  • Dispel myths of inequality of access to opportunity by making visible stats which reflect the real uptake of staff development, training, conference attendance and rewards and recognition payments across ISG.
  • Offer staff development sessions on ‘how to get promoted’.
  • Review how ‘good citizen’ activities contribute to promotion criteria, reward and recognition.
  • Do follow up surveys (from the University) on race, faith and disability.

Recruitment

  • Ensure fair and transparent recruitment, promotion and policy-making processes.
  • Ensure everyone involved in recruitment (JD, panels etc) has been on diversity and bias training. Showcase and share examples of JDs with gender-neutral language and positive action.
  • More visible positive action to recruit to under-represented groups/areas including use of social media to advertise opportunities using appropriate hashtags and fora. e.g #womenintech.

Work –life balance

  • Enhancement of family-friendly policies and improved communication of these.
  • Ensure colleagues have an equal chance of a healthy work-life balance by not holding meetings outside core hours.
  • Encourage work/social activities which are family friendly.
  • Ensure colleagues have an equal chance of a healthy work-life balance by reducing management email sent outside core hours except re tier1 service incidents.
  • Designate a separate (bookable) quiet room with a nice view for prayer, meditation, escape from sensory overload, breastfeeding and expressing.

Supporting gender equality more broadly

  • Offer visible equality role models of both genders by ensuring that invited speakers, presentations, vendor presentations reflect a gender mix.
  • Offer visible equality role models of both genders by working with conference organisers to reduce the number of single sex panels at conferences or events.
  • Ensure that we have diversity in our decision-making groups.
  • Provide opportunities for career development and networking through visible support/involvement/hosting of organisation events e.g Ada Lovelace Day.
  • Offer visible equality role models by naming computer systems, servers, rooms etc after relevant famous women.
  • Display more art by diverse (and women) artists.
  • Ensure that systems which hold personal data offer a choice of gender neutral honorifics e.g Mx
  • Build systems and applications which pass the Bechdel test for software.
  • Promote to staff and students digital initiatives for gender equality in tech areas e.g coding and gaming.
  • Engage with research in emerging areas around gender and the internet to inform the development of services to support staff and students’ safety online

 

* Similar to our ‘healthy working lives’ initiatives.

** As well as including the word ‘fair’ and ‘play’, the Playfair Steps are a well-known set of steps in Edinburgh which take you easily from the old (town) to the new (town) . Additionally, the engineer William Playfair invented infographics- bar charts and pie charts -and much of our gender equality business is done using these.

phd internship placements

photo-5
Picture taken by me in the street. No rights reserved by me.

If you are doing a Phd at University of Edinburgh and you need a job, please feel free to apply to these two splendid vacancies. Work based learning guaranteed. Applications by 31 August.

Digital Skills for Research Intern (Employ.ed for PhDs)

The work of this internship will be to review research skills frameworks, map digital skills to the research life cycle, identify existing training resources locally and in other universities, identify good practice for researcher training programmes, highlight any differences in digital skills needs in specific discipline areas and make recommendations to Information Services senior management to shape their plans going forward.

Equality, Gender and Change PhD Intern (Employ.ed for PhDs)
Information Services has more than 600 staff. Earlier this year more than 300 of them replied to a gender equality survey. The results of this survey are providing a starting place for the IS senior management to promote equality in the workplace and implement proactive plans for change. This internship coincides with an exciting time for Information Services as we make plans to move to a new building and find new ways of working.