SDG 5 - Gender Equality

SDG 5 - Gender Equality - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

University The University is committed to equality and diversity in all of its activities. Analysis of the results arising from our Gender Pay Gap reports are key to our continuing efforts to ensure equity and equality in our processes and procedures.

In line with the gender pay gap reporting regulations, the University publishes its report and action plan annually. In 2019, the mean gender hourly pay gap for the University was 10.6% and the median was 4.6%. These figures compare favourably with the most recently published Higher Education sector mean among post-92 Universities of 13% and median of 14.7%. The University has seen a positive impact and year on year improvements as a result of the interventions introduced to close the gender pay gap.

In response to our Gender Pay Gap report, the University has pledged to sponsor academic and professional colleagues on the Aurora Leadership Development programme to support the progression of female colleagues into leadership. In addition, the University has set up an internal Aurora community of practice, chaired by our Aurora Champion, the Human Resources Director. The community of practice supports initiatives such as celebrating International Women’s Day which provides a platform for engaging with female staff, students and pupils in our local link secondary schools.

The University has a range of policies in place, to ensure we actively encourage gender equality, including:

Family Friendly policies (Maternity, Paternity, Shared Parental Leave). Flexible Working Policy. Recruitment and Selection Policy. Transgender policy.

The University monitors the rate at which the employee returns to the workplace after a period of maternity leave and this currently stands at a 100% return rate.

The University has changed its recruitment and selection process and launched a new recruitment system called HireServe. The system enables the HR Directorate to anonymise CVs during the application process to eliminate bias during the shortlisting process. The HR Directorate monitors the recruitment and selection process in relation to equality and diversity at all stages of the application process, including short listing, interviewing and appointment. All applicants are asked to complete an equality and diversity monitoring form which at application stage is anonymous, and reports are compiled by the HR Directorate on a monthly basis and shared with the Senior Management Team. Data is also presented to the Equality and Diversity Committee on an annual basis.

The ratio of female:male employees has increased from 57:43 in 2018/19 to 61:39 in 2019/20.

Bucks Students’ Union Each year, Bucks Students’ Union looks to elect eight Executive Officers to provide a more accurate insight to the student experience. These eight roles are completed on a voluntary basis and are responsible for representing the voices of their respective groups. Each of these groups are students who have their own unique challenges alongside those that are common across the student movement. In order to deal better with these issues, the Students’ Union needs to see them from the students’ perspective.

Four of the roles are self-defining which include the Executive Officer for Women Students, and the Executive Officer for LGBT+ Students.

Work by the officers to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls across our campuses include:

A campaign targeted at promoting self-love amongst our student body titled ‘I Am Enough’ which turned Valentine’s Day, a day to love others, into a day to love yourself. It was deemed a good opportunity to encourage students to take a look in the mirror, and pick something out they loved about themselves. Following this, a video was released as well as a social media campaign centred on #IAmEnough.

School of Art, Design & Performance projects centred on gender equality: –Woman in a Box: a project which highlights the lack of art by females being shown in public gallery spaces.

Tolerantpole: a project which explores the attitude and level of intolerance of the LGBTQ community in Poland.