Equilibrium Steering Group member, ALICE MONCASTER, has alerted us to the fact that within academia, the UK research councils have also identified gender inequality as a key issue.

STEM departments (including Engineering and Construction and in many cases Architecture) are encouraged to sign up to the Athena Swan charter, and most are taking this very seriously; please see:

 http://www-womeninengineering.eng.cam.ac.uk/Athenaswan 

for the work we are doing at Cambridge Engineering Department towards our Silver Award application.

This is important not just for women working in academia but for the ‘pipeline’ into the construction industry – the current attrition rate of students who take construction-related degrees but decide it isn’t for them and go to work in a different field, is currently far higher for women than for men. I really hope that the work we are doing with Athena Swan will encourage more women to stay in the technical fields they have chosen.