Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Jeremy Sanders was presiding, with the Registrary’s Deputy, the Junior Proctor, a Deputy Proctor, and two other persons present.

The following Reports were discussed:

Report of the General Board, dated 4 June 2014, on Senior Academic Promotions ( Reporter, 6351, 2013–14, p. 621).

Mr D. J. Goode, Faculty of Divinity and Wolfson College:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as I was reading this Report, I could not help but notice that in this year’s senior academic promotions exercise there were no women at all from the School of the Physical Sciences.

I do not mean that no women from that School were promoted; I mean that no women from that School were even put forward for consideration for promotion – from a large School, comprising the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, the Institute of Astronomy, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Earth Sciences, the Department of Geography, the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the Department of Physics, and the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics,1 not one woman was put forward for promotion.

Being naturally inquisitive, I looked at previous years’ statistical summaries of outcomes by sub-committee, back to the academical year of 2010–11 when we began to break down the summary by gender, and found that this is not the only exercise in which this has happened: in 2011–12, the School of Technology put forward no women for promotion.2

Even after allowing for the fact that this University employs proportionally far fewer women in academic posts than the rest of the Russell Group – only 27 per cent of academic posts in this University are held by women, compared with the Russell Group average of 36 per cent, and when looking at STEMM Faculties and Departments, this falls to a lamentable 19 per cent3 – I am sure I cannot be alone in finding it shameful that an entire School can fail to put forward even one woman for promotion.

I therefore feel it necessary to ask, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, has the General Board of the Faculties:

(1)an explanation for why no women from the School of the Physical Sciences were put forward this year for consideration for promotion; and

(2)a viable plan to ensure it does not happen again?

Report of the General Board, dated 4 June 2014, on the establishment of two Professorships in the School of Clinical Medicine (Reporter, 6351, 2013–14, p. 625).

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the General Board, dated 4 June 2014, on the establishment of a Readership in Statistics in Biomedicine (Reporter, 6351, 2013–14, p. 625).

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the Council, dated 25 June 2014, on the demolition of certain buildings within the University estate (Reporter, 6353, 2013–14, p. 650).

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the General Board, dated 23 June 2014, on the provisions for certain visiting Professorships (Reporter, 6353, 2013–14, p. 650).

No remarks were made on this Report.