Feedback on draft SAGE Athena SWAN Silver Departmental Award Handbook

Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) has been developing the Silver Departmental Award for the Athena Swan pilot program and released the draft handbook for comment in early 2019.

AAMRI welcomes this next phase of the Athena SWAN awards being developed for Australia.

In AAMRI’s submission, we recommended specific adjustments to the descriptive language and structure of the application form in the draft handbook to be more inclusive of the activities and workforce profiles of non-university research organisations such as medical research institutes.

In this submission, AAMRI made recommendations for the SAGE Athena SWAN program more broadly including:

  • implementing a fair and equitable model of participation that is demonstrated through the fee structure, guidelines, application and assessment process for SAGE Athena SWAN Accreditation.
  • developing a new membership fee structure which takes into account the range of sizes and workforce profiles of all eligible research organisations.
  • providing clear guidance on eligibility and expectations for medical research institutes (and other non-university research organisations) to apply for and fulfil Departmental Awards before advancing to the next accreditation level.