{"id":2924,"date":"2020-09-03T16:08:11","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T16:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/?p=2924"},"modified":"2020-09-04T08:58:51","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T08:58:51","slug":"equality-in-university-it-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/2020\/09\/03\/equality-in-university-it-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"to gather data about equality in university IT teams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Front Cover Issue 9 – Image of woman with household items: iron, thread etc. Usage terms: \u00a9 Estate of Roger Perry Creative Commons Non-Commercial Licence – See more at: http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/spare-rib\/articles\/design-and-spare-rib#sthash.LtV84Eu5.dpuf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In February 2018 an attempt was made from within UCISA to gather data about gender equality in university IT teams and to understand what focus there was on gender equality. An email survey of 20 questions gained 126 responses from 53 institutions.<\/p>\n

The results are not formally published but have been presented at UCISA events in 2018 and influenced the decision to have a focus on gender equality at the UCISA leadership conference in 2019. \u00a0While recognising the limitations and unscientific nature of the email survey study it serves to highlight the need for further research and practice to support equality and diversity in IT departments in higher education in the UK.\u00a0\u00a0 Many of the respondents indicated that they did not think that their institution had in place policies to support gender equality and that in their workplace they could see that gender diversity was not widespread across teams, with project management and helpdesk teams having more women than other areas.<\/p>\n

In the UCISA study the majority of respondents were concerned about gender equality and diversity in the IT profession – 80% indicated \u2018definitely\u2019 or \u2018probably yes\u2019 they were concerned, 11% were \u2018not concerned\u2019. 48% of respondents said their institution<\/em> did not have any gender equality policies in place, and 57% reported that their IT departments<\/em> did not have specific policies in place to support gender equality. (Fraser-Krauss & Priestley, 2018 unpublished?)<\/p>\n

In their 2018 book \u2018 Professional and Support Staff in Higher Education\u2019 the authors note the absence of input from any digital, HR or IT professionals and suggest that there is more work to be done in integrating the contribution of these groups to leadership and scholarship:<\/p>\n

\u201cwe (as contributors, colleagues, and more broadly as institutions) must take some deliberate steps to promote greater inclusion amongst authors contributing to research regarding professional and support staff, especially those who do not currently see themselves as part of the scholarly conversation. Professional and support staff within higher education are diverse, their roles multifaceted, and their contribution and experiences under-examined.\u201d<\/em>(Bossu et al., 2018b, p. 460)<\/p>\n

The UCISA survey, however informal,\u00a0 further informed the need for further, ongoing work to understand the experiences and perceptions of staff in university IT departments in relation to equality and diversity practice.<\/p>\n

Here’s some data from University of Edinburgh IT Services Dept which we can add to the endeavour. EDI ISGReport Summary Report 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February 2018 an attempt was made from within UCISA to gather data about gender equality in university IT teams and to understand what focus there was on gender equality. An email survey of 20 questions gained 126 responses from 53 institutions. The results are not formally published but have been presented at UCISA events …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[143,124],"class_list":["post-2924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eople-place-work","tag-data","tag-equality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2924"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2929,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions\/2929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}