Dr Jennifer Catto: EDI at Exeter University

Posted by Nina Raoult

6 March 2024

Jennifer began by introducing herself and how she become the Director of EDI at the University Mathematics Department, within which she dedicates 20% of her working hours. She travelled across the world from Australia to secure her first permanent position as an academic in 2017, which she began when her baby was 5 months old after taking the 3 months fully paid maternity leave from her previous post that she was entitled to. She then temporarily reduced her hours to 60% for 9 months, then worked 80% until February 2022.

During the talk, Jennifer discussed the ‘leaky pipeline’, a common term used to refer to a lack of females at senior levels. She provided shocking recent statistics in her department that, although the gender divide at post-doctorate level was 50%, this reduced to 15% in teaching and researching and < 10% at professorship level. A memorable statistic is that in her department, there has “never been a full-time permanent member of staff go on maternity leave”. Inevitably this shocked the Women in Climate network. With the increase in women in the department this is changing (and there is now someone on this type of leave).

Mapping out the EDI charter for how the department meets the Silver Athena Swan award takes up most of her role, and it was enjoyable to discuss and compare proposed new policies at the University with the Met Office. Some of these policies included a single gender shortlist policy, core hours policy, mentoring for new starters and support groups for ethnic minority and harassment. Proposed policies for the future include better support for returners (i.e. from maternity leave), and outreach in schools.

It was useful to discuss and compare the different approaches to gender inequality in academia and within the Met Office, I hope it has opened up future collaboration opportunities. We thank Jennifer for taking the time to raise awareness of the issues still present today amongst our network.