Strengthening Parental Leave for Gender Equality

Institution and Department: University of Exeter 
Author: Dorcas Cowan; Rae Preston; Sandip Samra; Charlotte Woollam  

Overview 

This case study outlines the University of Exeter’s continued efforts to improve the experience of staff with caring responsibilities and challenge gendered norms through review and enhancement of the support provision available. This included significant policy changes, securing leadership buy-in, and adopting a flexible, whole-University approach to achieve culture change and develop sector-leading best practice. 

About your organisation 

The University of Exeter is a research-intensive Russell Group university based in Southwest England, across two campuses in Exeter (Streatham and St. Luke’s) and two in Cornwall (Penryn and Truro), with over 37,000 students and 6,300 staff.  

Our staff gender profile is 56% female and 44% male. We have participated in the Athena Swan Charter since 2010, achieving a Bronze Award in 2012 and a Silver Award in 2018. Our renewed Silver Award was conferred in April 2024.  

Purpose of the initiative 

In 2018, we sought to improve and enhance our parental leave offering with the aim of achieving best practice in the sector. Since first engaging with the Athena Swan Charter in 2010, we had already achieved significant culture change with regards to flexibility and recognition of the impact of caring responsibilities in the workplace, so the purpose of our review was to continue to build on this work and better support parents, guardians and carers.  

We also recognised the benefits this work would have in advancing gender equality more broadly at the university, as caring responsibilities disproportionately impact women in the workplace and this was a factor influencing our gender pay gap (16.6% in 2017, median excluding ad hoc/claims workers).  

Description of the initiative

In December 2014, we matched our Shared Parental Pay and Adoption Pay offering to our Maternity Pay, and extended paternity pay from one, to two full weeks. As a result, uptake subsequently increased across most pathways.  

As part of our Athena Swan self-assessment in 2017, analysis of responses to our exit questionnaire indicated increased satisfaction with our family-friendly policies (75% satisfaction in 2017 compared to 61% in 2015). However, sector research highlighted that our offer could be improved further. In response to this, we launched a Working Parents Survey in January 2018, seeking recommendations for enhancements to our parental leave entitlements. 

We asked staff about what they wanted to change, e.g. more time off, more money, what was most important. Survey outcomes provided evidence for a business case for the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Group (VCEG) to approve the following actions in March 2018: 

• Introducing day one rights for parental leave (an initiative aimed at supporting early career researchers as they move around more frequently);
• Increasing maternity/adoption/shared parental pay from 8 weeks full, 16 weeks half pay (plus Statutory Maternity Pay) to 26 weeks full-pay;
• Increased paternity leave to six weeks full-pay and renamed it ‘Paternity/Partner Leave’ to be explicitly inclusive of LGBTQ+ families;
• Establishing a framework for managers managing maternity and carer leave, highlighting our New and Expectant Mothers Standards (launched May 2014);
• Introducing a fertility policy that allows for the female member of staff to receive five days on full pay and two days on full pay for her partner;
• Establishing a Working Parents Senior Champion;
• Including childcare expenses for conferences in the expenses policy;
• Reducing the number of outputs for promotion and probation for academic staff;
• Commit to undertaking a benchmarking survey every 3 years. 

The aim of our framework for managers was to create a handbook resource for line managers who may have felt anxious or ill equipped regarding their role and obligations to staff during pregnancy, maternity leave and return to work.  It aims to ensure that managers are not only covering the required aspects but also following best practice.  

Following a lull in activity, we also relaunched our Parents and Carers Networks across all campuses in 2018 to coincide with implementation of the above actions. Alongside support from our Working Parents Senior Champion, the networks played a significant role in communicating and bringing the new policy changes and guidance to life. 

‘The Parents and Carers relaunch was an incredibly positive experience. The team running it were engaged and passionate about the network, which in turn created a great buzz in the room. The speaker was knowledgeable and hugely supportive.’ 

– Attendee from the Exeter network relaunch event 

Rationale 

In 2018, sector research published by Professor Vera Troeger at Warwick University found that ‘universities with the best maternity leave policies were better able to retain qualified women who went on to become professors and receive higher pay’. Despite our internal survey demonstrating high level of satisfaction with our family-friendly provisions, Exeter did not compare favourably with other institutions included in this research. We therefore reached out to Warwick University to test the research evidence base and carried out our own benchmarking survey for comparison, with the aim of identifying how we could achieve best practice in the sector.  

Results 

In 2016/17, 37% of parental leave was taken by men (45% of staff were male). The introduction of six weeks full pay paternity/partner leave in 2018 resulted in a 6% increase in the proportion of males taking parental leave. Since 2020, on average 43% of parental leave has been taken by males annually, proportional to our staff profile. Most men (62%) take the full six weeks, however 21% took three weeks or less.  

The proportion of female professors at Exeter has increased from 16.7% in 2011/12 to 34.0% in 2022/23. A significant year-on-year increase (5%) was seen in 2017/18, which coincides with changes made as a result of our Working Parents Survey and increased visibility of family-friendly initiatives. 

Our Gender Pay Gap has reduced from 16.6% (median, excluding ad hoc/claims workers) in 2017 to 8.5% (median, excluding ad hoc/claims workers) in May 2023. 

Our recent colleague experience survey (2023) has found that staff report high satisfaction with the amount of flexibility they have in their work schedules, with no gendered differences in responses and average satisfaction scores. Comments indicate that this is largely attributable to: 

• ‘Progressive’ family-friendly leave options
• New hybrid-working policies
• Line manager support and encouragement  

Considering intersectionality, women from Black, Asian and Mixed ethnic backgrounds report the highest levels of satisfaction with flexibility in their work schedules.  

Proportions of maternity leave takers by job family indicate no bias between academic and professional services staff uptake, which was present prior to 2018.   

Key barriers and facilitators 

Barriers 

Prior to the changes introduced in 2018, delivering our parental leave provision incurred a large administrative burden due to the split of full and half-pay elements. In addition, there was low uptake of paternity leave among male academics due to a largely autonomous and flexible working environment. This contributed to a culture low visibility of caring responsibilities which reinforced prevailing gendered norms. 

Resourcing during the pandemic was a challenge as our HR Policy and Reward team had to prioritise time-critical and urgent business related to the pandemic. As a result, our benchmarking survey was delayed until 2023.  

The lockdown periods during the pandemic also significantly impacted our planned Parents and Carers Network events. As an alternative, we held regular online coffee breaks for the networks once a month and circulated regulated updates and guidance to provide additional support for parents, carers and guardians in response to school and childcare closures.  These were positively received and our Homeworking Guide remains live and updated online. 

The pandemic also prompted us to extend our paid emergency leave provision to 5 days. This has been maintained and is now a permanent policy. 

Facilitators 

The key facilitators in the successful delivery of our initiative were our refreshed EDI governance structure, which features members of what was formerly known as the Vice-Chancellors Group (now University Executive Board) as chairs of our respective Equality Groups: Disability; Faith and Worldview; Gender, Race and Sexual Orientation. This provides a direct route through which to discuss and escalate issues and secure approval for new initiatives. This was further strengthened by the addition of our Working Parents Senior Champion, who was also an executive member. 

Active engagement with and feedback from our Parents and Carers Networks was also essential to influencing and informing our decision-making process. 

As well as acting as a barrier, the pandemic also acted as a facilitator in terms of increasing the visibility of family life and caring responsibilities. It also demonstrated the previously unconsidered benefits and advantages of flexible and remote working. 

The future?

Our Athena Swan self-assessment in 2023 found that most maternity leave takers (54%) since 2020 have taken 40–52 weeks. 8% have returned to work after less than 14 weeks. Earlier returns to work may be influenced by new flexible working policies, however 74% of this group are in Grades F and above, compared to 60% in these grades taking maternity leave overall. This may be attributed to increased uptake of Shared Parental Leave, however further investigation is planned to ensure there are no factors influencing individual decisions to return to work earlier than full entitlement.  

Anecdotally, we have also identified the following actions moving forwards: 

• Refresher training for HR advisors and senior partners to ensure consistency and promote a people-focused approach. We have moved most of our other parental leave to our shared service centre to manage. However, the complexity of the shared parental scheme; the relatively low numbers of staff taking it up; time pressures and recent turnover of our operational team has made it challenging for our advisors to support staff with their decisions. We would like to improve their confidence with training.   
• Enhancing support for managers in terms of their pastoral role. We would like to evaluate how managers have used the handbook to support their staff and identify how we can make improvements going forwards. We would also like to collect feedback from managers on their own good practice and experiences to make continual improvements.  

We have also noted that the cost-of-living crisis may be impacting maternity return rates. We would like to investigate this further and explore the potential to remove clawback for lower grades.  

Advice for other members

The following things were key to us being able to offer a suite of policies that met the needs of staff: 

• Looking at our provision as a whole
• Engaging with and asking staff what would help them
• Gaining senior buy-in and having a Champion to advocate for those with caring responsibilities in senior decision-making meetings
• Maintaining the benefits of the flexibility necessitated by the pandemic 

Web links

The University of Exeter’s gender equality action plan 2024-28 is available online.  

@uniofexeter 

Advance HE shares a range of practice and approaches to charters awards. Case studies/example applications illustrate one approach to race/gender equality work but there are a variety of successful approaches and we recommend charter members consider their local evidence-base and context when deciding how to advance equality in their setting.