Queen's University Belfast: School of Biological Sciences

The School displays the Athena SWAN logo on their website and all promotional material. From discussions with appointees, it is reported that this is an important early indicator of the School’s culture and supportive approach to female staff. Since 2012, most females were recruited from overseas and were not familiar with Athena Swan. The School therefore added more text describing our commitment to the Charter and its aims on all recruitment material and on our new website. The School also increased the visibility of women on all promotional material. These actions contributed to an increase in females applying for posts. For example, the proportion of women applying for permanent academic posts has increased and the percentage of females recruited is increasing. Furthermore, success rates of female applicants is slightly higher than that of male applicants for both research and permanent academic posts.