Middlesex University - Addressing the Gender Pay Gap
Middlesex aims to advance Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and we have an ambitious gender action plan underpinning this over the next three years. The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2021, which assess universities against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has also recognised our commitment, ranking us #12 out of 776 institutions for SDG5 Gender Equality.
Examples of work undertaken during 2021/22 included:
- Recognising an imbalance in representation, we have successfully embedded and launched a new initiative which positions positive action statements across all job posts and on the careers section of our website, to encourage applications from more female and gender non-conforming individuals in masculinised areas. Extending the initiative to the wider community of minority groups, the statements also positively affirm our commitment to actively seeking Black, Asian and minority ethnic applicants
- We are working to embed visibility and understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the induction process and make completion of EDI training a condition of probation, as well as embedding more training and development on other protected characteristics
- The EDI team are working with Staff Development in Human Resources (HR) Services to ensure that EDI is factored into the staff engagement survey to launch in the new academic year
- We send welcome communications to new starters showcasing the support available and opportunities to engage across our range of Staff EDI Networks and the wider complement of EDI focused support and initiatives at Middlesex, as well as signposting to relevant key information
- We have revised the criteria for promotion and progression to better recognise the contributions that staff make to the University
- We are working on the introduction of a new Education pathway for academic staff, which recognises leadership and academic citizenship
- To help colleagues self-identify in ways which feel representative of who they are, we have now developed ability in our HR Systems to allow individuals, should they so wish, to self-declare their preferred pronouns. We continue to work towards being able to also update pronouns across the central address book and on Microsoft Teams, which, unfortunately, due to technical restraints, is not currently possible
- Staff can also self-declare disability, faith, preferred gender description, and sexual orientation
- We have now embedded and published our Gender Equality Plan, which sits alongside our Athena Swan submission and plan and helps support applications from research and knowledge exchange colleagues when applying for Horizon Europe funding
- Supporting staff through external women-only leadership development programmes, including the Aurora Women’s Leadership Programme, which has been active since 2013
- Race Equality Charter work aiming to submit in July 2023
- Publishing a Carer’s Policy for staff.
As part of this work, the University is looking to further address in the gender pay gap in 2022/2023 through a number of initiatives and firmly believes that working on realistic, deliverable measures will help us to build stronger relationships internally and continue to make the University attractive to the best talent. We will use our Bronze Award Athena Swan Charter Action Plan to help us address any gender equality issues including:
- Reviewing our career pathways and approach to career development to ensure that we identify any unconscious barriers to the progression of female staff
- Embedding our new academic promotions process
- Further work to embed equality impact assessments.
Our data
View metric for current and previous years:
