Diversity taskforce starts work

BY MATHIEU ISIDRO (SKAO)

Last year, fulfilling a charge set by the Director-General, the SKAO’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG) produced a set of 23 recommendations to strengthen the organisation’s commitments to EDI in line with its values and founding treaty. The recommendations looked at areas such as accessibility, culture, development, inclusion and recruitment (see our article in Contact 8).

Those recommendations were endorsed by the SKAO’s Executive Leadership Team (ELT) in December, and a small taskforce consisting of members of the EDIWG, ELT and HR was set up in January of this year to develop an Implementation Plan setting out priorities for immediate action and longer-term milestones.

The EDI Taskforce has been meeting regularly since and gathering draft actions in a number of areas, and is expected to complete its work in the coming weeks. This plan will help the SKAO further develop a diverse working culture and assist ongoing efforts to recruit and retain the most talented and diverse staff possible. It will also emphasise gender equity and opportunity, in line with the SKAO’s commitment to become an employer of choice for women in STEM.

Gender diversity at the SKAO

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, on 8 March, we also put together historical data on gender diversity at the SKAO for the first time. You can see a positive trend overall, with women representing 25% of staff employed in Science, Engineering and Technical roles, and 58% in businessenabling functions, with an overall representation of women amounting to 38% of all staff as of September 2021. While the trend is positive, we, like other similar organisations, are facing hiring challenges when it comes to diversity, and we are determined to keep improving on these numbers.

Percentage of women at SKAO by work category. In Science, Engineering and Technical roles in blue, in business-enabling in magenta, in green overall.

Credit: SKAO