Athena Swan in the College

The College of Life Sciences is committed to providing a good working environment for its staff and students. We are proud to hold a Gold Athena Swan award, received in January 2026, and prior to this, a Silver award, in April 2020.

This national award is in recognition of the actions over many years across the Schools and Departments of our College, the impact they have had, and our work to support others to succeed in progressing gender equality.

This positive action in the form of good practice that arises from implementation of the Athena Swan ethos is of benefit to everyone in higher education, irrespective of gender.

Our College level award replaces previous individual school and department awards; 5 Silver and 2 Bronze at the time of our College Silver application.

Key Highlights

Through our Gold Athena Swan self-assessment process, we are able to demonstrate:

• longitudinal impact - a ten-year positive impact on retaining and progressing women in the academic pipeline, including at professor, from 18% to 30% female
• an intersectional approach - improved understanding of and steps to address intersectional barriers to progression, with positive impact on minority ethnic female pipelines in the last 5 years
• adoption of our successful initiatives by others - for example, our Mirror College Leadership Team, Mentor-Mentor matching, Professional Services Forum, and inclusive curriculum toolkits.
• influencing policy change at the University of Leicester and local NHS Trusts
• acting as mentors and critical friends including via the University of Leicester Athena Swan network, national networks and conferences.

Our future work focuses on:

• supporting clinical academic career progression across all disciplines
• further improvements to staff and student recruitment and progression
• ensuring fair and transparent workload distribution to encourage staff development and work-life balance
• destigmatising gender-related health and gender-identity for staff and students 

We are happy to share our application and action plan, please contact the CLS EDI team for further information.

Learn more about Athena Swan at Leicester.

About the Athena Swan Charter

The Athena Swan Charter recognises advancements in gender equality: representation, progression and success for all. The Charter was established in June 2005, to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. The Charter was expanded in May 2015 to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law, and in professional and support roles, and for transgender staff and students.

The importance of Athena Swan

The Charter examines the progression of students into academia, the journey through career milestones and how gender may affect these areas, and the working environment for all staff. We know that women are under-represented in science - the more senior the role, the greater the deficit. In some disciplines there is significant under-representation of women at all levels. Disciplines with under-representation run the risk of missing talented people it would otherwise gain and retain, and disciplines dominated by one gender are likely to have an unbalanced approach.

Find out more about Athena Swan on a national level.