School of Infection & Immunity

Introduction to Equality and Diversity

Hi everyone. Welcome to this educational resource about Equality and Diversity. This educational resource has been developed at the University of Glasgow at the School of Life Sciences. It hasbeen supported by Athena Swan and funded by the Welcome Trust. The resource has been developed by three staff members, Dr Nicola Veitch, Dr Stewart White and Dr Victoria Paterson, who are all co-chairs of Athena Swan. Furthermore, by the group of six student interns, Sonya, Declan, Lara, Jack, Holly and myself, Annamaria. In this video Sonya is going to introduce you to the basic concepts linked to Equality and Diversity.

These are the Level 1 sessions in Equality and Diversity in the School of Life Sciences. These sessions are being supported by AS and funded by the Welcome trust. They were designed by a team of 6 interns and 3 staff members from the University. I’m Sonya and will be giving this introduction along with two other interns Declan and Annamaria.

So, what is Equality and diversity? ‘Equality and Diversity’ is a term used in the UK to define and promote equality and diversity as human rights and as defining values of society. Equality is about ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity and is treated fairly. Diversity refers to being diverse, i.e. different, and that all of us our unique individuals. Promoting equality and diversity as human right and as values of society, ensures no one is discriminated against because of the characteristics that makes them different from others.

The University of Glasgow’s Equality statement reads as following:
The University of Glasgow is committed to promoting equality in all its activities and aims to provide a work, learning, research and teaching environment free from discrimination and unfair treatment.
In turn, University of Glasgow’s professional value is:
Embracing diversity and difference and treating colleagues, students, visitors and others with respect.

Part of ‘Equality and Diversity’ is captured by the Athena SWAN charter, which was established in 2005. The goal of Athena SWAN is to encourage and celebrate gender equality in higher education and research institutions, by promoting representation, progression, and success for all. Since it established, Athena SWAN has expanded its remit to all protected characteristics defined by the Equality Act 2010.

So, what is the Equality Act 2010? The Equality Act forms the basis of anti-discrimination law in the UK. It legally protects individuals from discrimination in the workplace and wider society. This means it is illegal to discriminate against someone based on characteristics that are described as ‘protected’.

These are the nine protected characteristics that fall under the Equality Act:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity

This means it is illegal to discriminate against someone based on these nine characteristics.

Equality and Diversity in Academia

Hi everyone. Welcome to this educational resource about Equality and Diversity. This educational resource has been developed at the University of Glasgow at the School of Life Sciences. It has been supported by Athena Swan and funded by the Welcome Trust. The resource has been developed by three staff members, Dr Nicola Veitch, Dr Stewart White and Dr Victoria Paterson, who are all co-chairs of Athena Swan. Furthermore, by the group of six student interns, Sonya, Declan, Lara, Jack, Holly and myself, Annamaria. In this video Jack is going to introduce you to Equality and Diversity related issues in academic environments.

This is the level two course in equality and diversity in the school of life sciences. This course has been supported by Athena SWAN and funded by the Wellcome trust and was designed by a team of six interns and three staff members at the university. I'm going to be giving this introduction along with two of the other interns Lara and Holly and I'm going to start-off by defining what we mean by diversity and equality.

First off is diversity and this is sometimes hard to define because it exists at different levels. At the individual level, everyone is diverse because of their own unique set of skills, experiences and a combination of characteristics. By characteristics I mean things like sex, age, religion, disability status and many other factors. Groups and workplaces can also be diverse but only if there's a mix of different characteristics within the people in their workplace so a mix of different people who can bring different perspectives and different ideas to a group.

Diversity also exists within characteristics, so people who are the same sex or the same religion or with the same disability status don't all think the same, act the same or believe the same things. Everyone is individual because of their combination of different experiences and skills and characteristics. Most importantly diversity is not about categorising people, it's about appreciating the individual.

Equality is different, it's about ensuring people are given opportunities based on their skills and abilities. A lot of people face challenges in reaching their career goals because of characteristics like sex, race, religion, orientation etc. and the barriers that are put in place, which prevent some people from getting to reach their career goals. This can happen because of history in the workplace - where the workplace has been designed to work for mainly one group of people but also it's because of our own biases, whether they're unconscious or conscious, which prevent promotion of certain people or prevent us from making job adverts that appeal to everyone or preventing people
from being hired.

Many sectors haven't yet achieved true equality in their staffing and the higher education sector is one of many examples. In the UK if we look at male and female staff and students, we can start to see the imbalance. At undergraduate level students are 57 per cent female and 43 per cent male. Whilst this isn't great that it's not 50/50 there's a lot of factors that go into play here and I'm using this as a baseline showing the undergraduate cohort as being mostly female.

When you look into the academic staff levels the balance swings to being mostly male - 54 per cent are male and 46 per cent are female again this is close-ish to 50/50 but we'd rather it was in fact a reasonably equal proportion.

The big problem that you see is when you reach professor level and you see that three quarters of professors are male and only 27 per cent of professors are female. This is sometimes called "the leaky pipeline of women in academia" - where from undergraduate level right up to the top level of academic careers the proportion of women drops. I appreciate that not everyone will identify as male and female but I'm just using these as they are the statistics that are available.

When we look at race in undergraduate and staff in UK universities there's also a problem. At undergraduate level it's 76 per cent white, which is actually slightly lower than the UK proportion, 12 per cent Asian, 8 per cent Black and 4 per cent mixed race in the student body proportions. This is probably influenced by the fact that this includes international students, which would naturally make for an increase in diversity in race.

However, as soon as we go into academic jobs and when we look at the proportions of black people and mixed-race people, the proportion of black people has dropped by a quarter the proportion of mixed-race people has dropped by half and Asian people have dropped by one percent. In fact, the proportion of white people is 85 % in all academic jobs which is higher than the average UK proportion of around 82 per cent to 84 per cent. At professor the change is even greater, 91 per cent of professors are white which would make it roughly 7 per cent higher than the UK proportion, less than 0.7 per cent [of professors] are black - which is 140 black professors in the entire UK.

Then finally if we look at disability at undergraduate level, 15 per cent of students would state they have a disability as defined by the equalities act (2010) - this is close to the UK-wide proportion of 18 per cent and seems to be relatively representative given that the people in UK universities are generally younger and more disabilities develop as you get older. However, when you look into staff, only 4 per cent of academic staff declare themselves as having a disability whereas 96 per cent said they don't have any disability and a professor level this is similar. What this might indicate is that disabled people are either not finishing undergraduate courses, which means perhaps they're not finding it easy to achieve enough to get through undergraduate courses or they're just not entering academic staffing or a second possibility is that people aren't comfortable with disclosing disability at staff level. Either way all three examples illustrate the fact that higher education has yet to achieve a proportional equality in a lot of these different factors (characteristics). It's hard to find statistics on other characteristics, so it's just these three examples that are being used to illustrate this.

So why is actually important to have diversity and equality in life sciences? The first reason and perhaps the most intuitive is the fact that it's just simply unfair to be denied an opportunity because of things like your gender identity or your maternity status or your age. It just doesn't seem fair that things that aren't relevant to the actual job you're doing should define whether or not you should get a job or a promotion.

Also, if you give opportunities based on skills and not characteristics it means that you've got the best chance of the best person for the job getting that job and therefore that job being done at its best.

Finally, when we think about science careers whether in academia or outside of academia, we need a lot of analytical thinking and we need new ideas. A diverse working group can improve those ideas because it brings in different perspectives and experiences.

Discrimination

Hi Everyone. Welcome to this educational resource about Equality and Diversity. This educational resource has been developed at the University of Glasgow at the School of Life Sciences. It has been supported by Athena Swan and funded by the Welcome Trust. The resource has been developed by three staff members, Dr Nicola Veitch, Dr Stewart White and Dr Victoria Paterson, who are all co-chairs of Athena Swan. Furthermore, by the group of six student interns, Sonya, Declan, Lara, Jack, Holly and myself, Annamaria. In this video Declan is going to give you an introduction about the different types of discrimination.

So, what does it mean to discriminate against someone?

There are four main types of discrimination:

1. Direct discrimination
2. Indirect discrimination
3. Harassment
4. Victimisation

Direct discrimination

Direct discrimination occurs where someone is treated less favourably than others because of:

• a protected characteristic they possess – this is ordinary direct discrimination
• a protected characteristic of someone they are associated with, such as a friend, family member or colleague – this is direct discrimination by association
• a protected characteristic they are thought to have, regardless of whether this perception by others is actually correct or not – this is direct discrimination by perception.

Direct discrimination in all its three forms could involve a decision not to employ someone, to dismiss them, withhold promotion or training, offer poorer terms and conditions or deny contractual benefits because of a protected characteristic.

Indirect discrimination

This type of discrimination is usually less obvious than direct discrimination and is normally unintended. In law, it is where a ‘provision, criterion or practice’ involves all these four things:

1. The ‘provision, criterion or practice’ is applied equally to a group of employees/job applicants, only some of whom share a certain protected characteristic
2. It has (or will have) the effect of putting those who share the protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared to others without the characteristic in the group
3. It puts, or would put, an employee/job applicant at that disadvantage
4. The employer is unable to objectively justify it - what the law calls showing it to be ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.

Harassment

Harassment is defined as ‘unwanted conduct’ and must be related to a relevant protected characteristic or be ‘of a sexual nature. It must also have the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

Generally, harassment:

• includes bullying, nicknames, threats, jokes, ‘banter’, gossip, intrusive or inappropriate questions and comments, excluding an employee (for example - ignoring them or not inviting them to meetings), insults or unwanted physical contact
• can be verbal, written or physical
• is based on the victim’s perception of the unwanted behaviour rather than that of the harasser, and whether it is reasonable for the victim to feel that way
• can also apply to an employee who is harassed because they are perceived to have a protected characteristic, regardless of whether this perception by others is actually correct or not
• can also apply to an employee who is harassed because they are associated with someone with a protected characteristic or witnessed harassment
• can also apply to an employee who witnesses harassment because of a protected characteristic and that has a negative impact on their dignity at work or working environment, irrespective of whether they share the protected characteristic of the employee who is being harassed.

Victimisation

Victimisation is when an employee suffers what the law terms a ‘detriment’ - something that causes disadvantage, damage, harm or loss because of:

• making an allegation of discrimination
• supporting a complaint of discrimination
• giving evidence relating to a complaint about discrimination
• raising a grievance concerning equality or discrimination
• doing anything else for the purposes of (or in connection with) the Equality Act 2010, such as bringing an employment tribunal claim of discrimination.

Protected Characteristics

Hi everyone. Welcome to this educational resource about Equality and Diversity. This educational resource has been developed at the University of Glasgow at the School of Life Sciences. It has been supported by Athena Swan and funded by the Welcome Trust. The resource has beendeveloped by three staff members, Dr Nicola Veitch, Dr Stewart White and Dr Victoria Paterson, who are all co-chairs of Athena Swan. Furthermore, by the group of six student interns, Sonya, Declan, Lara, Jack, Holly and myself, Annamaria. In this video Holly is going to give you an introduction about the nine protected characteristics that are embedded into the Equality Act 2010.

How does the law address equality and what are your rights and protections in the workplace from discrimination as you enter a career in life science? Employers of all sizes in all sectors have to comply with equality legislation to make the workplace a fair environment. Under the equality act (2010) everyone is protected from discrimination harassment or victimization based on any one of their protected characteristics in the workplace and beyond. There are nine protected characteristics covered under the equality act. These are age, disability, gender reassignment, civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. Let's have a look first at the three main types of unlawful behaviour under the act.

Direct discrimination is when someone is treated less favourably than others because of either: a protected characteristic that they themselves possess and this is known as ordinary direct discrimination; a protected characteristic of someone that they're associated with, this is direct discrimination by association; or a protected characteristic that they are thought to have and this is direct discrimination by perception.

In all its three forms direct discrimination could involve a decision not to employ someone, to dismiss them, withhold promotion or training, offer poorer terms and conditions or deny contractual benefits because of their potential characteristic.

Indirect discrimination is usually less obvious and normally unintended. In law it is where a provision, criterion or practice involves all of the following: firstly, it applies to everyone in a group of employees or job applicants, only some of whom share a certain protected characteristic; it has or will have the effect of putting those who share the protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared to others without the characteristic in the group and then puts them at that disadvantage; and lastly the employer is unable to objectively justify it and this is what the law calls showing it to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

The equality act doesn't actually define what a provision criterion or practice is however it's most likely to include an employer's policies procedures requirements rules and arrangements even if informal and whether written down or not. Examples might include recruitment selection criteria, contractual benefits or any other workplace practice.

Harassment is defined as unwanted conduct and must be related to a relevant protected characteristic or be of a sexual nature. Harassment has the effect of violating a person's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment - this can include bullying, nicknames, jokes, banter, gossip, insults and/or unwanted physical contact. It can be verbal, written or physical. It's important to note that harassment is based on the victim's perception of the unwanted behaviour rather than that of the harasser. This means that by saying comments were just banter is no defence.

Victimisation is when an employee suffers what the law calls a 'detriment' and this is something that causes disadvantage, damage, harm or loss because the employee has made an allegation of discrimination, they've supported a complaint of discrimination, or they've given evidence relating to a complaint about discrimination, or they've raised a grievance concerning equality or discrimination and anything else done for the purpose of or in connection with the equality act such as bringing an employment tribunal claim of discrimination. Victimisation may also occur because an employee is suspected of doing any one of these things or it's believed they're going to do so. A detriment could be the employee being lame build a trouble-maker being left out and ignored being denied training or promotion or being made redundant because they've supported a discrimination claim.

Every single one of us have what is known as protective characteristics these are aspects of our identities including our sex, age and race that the equality act makes it unlawful for others to discriminate against. There are nine protected characteristics under the equality act 2010. The definitions of each characteristic can be found in the Moodle glossary and we would recommend that you go and look at them so let's take each and turn and highlight any specific points about each of the protected characters.

First is age, and we should note that ordinary direct discrimination based on age is actually one of the rare cases where discrimination may be justified by law. The easiest example to think of with this is the national minimum wage so this is where two people may be doing the same job both on minimum wage but are paid differently because one is older and one is younger. A person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on that person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

This includes illnesses such as cancer and progressive conditions like multiple sclerosis. It's unlawful to treat a disabled person unfavourably because of something connected with a disability: for example, a tendency to make spelling mistakes due to dyslexia. Employers are accountable for making reasonable adjustments these are changes and adaptations to the physical or working environment, that removes or minimizes the impact of the employee's impairment in the workplace.

Gender-reassignment refers to the process of transitioning from one gender to another. Previously people reassigned in their gender had to be under medical supervision to be covered but this is no longer the case. It's discriminatory to treat transgender people less favourably than others for being absent from work because they are about to undergo are undergoing or have undergone gender reassignment than they would be treated for being absent just because they were ill or injured. Both same sex and opposite sex couples can have their relationship legally recognized by marriage or civil partnership. Civil partners must not be treated less favourably than married couples and we should note that single people and couples not in relationships legally recognised are not protected. As well as direct discrimination by perception or association, harassment because of this characteristic is not covered by the equality act.

Pregnancy is a condition of being pregnant or expecting a baby, maternity refers to a period after birth and it's linked to maternity leave in the employment context. Protection against maternity discrimination is for 26 weeks after giving birth and this includes treating a woman unfavourably because she's breastfeeding. We should note that for pregnancy and maternity the protection is against unfavourable treatment as opposed to less favourable with the other characteristics so this means that an employee or job advocate must not be disadvantaged because of her pregnancy or maternity without the need to compare to how someone else is treated.

The equality act protects employees from discrimination harassment and victimisation because of the protected characteristic of race. Race often includes different elements that often merge including colour, ethnic origin, national origin and nationality. Religion refers to any religion including a lack of religion and similarly belief refers to any religious or philosophical belief and includes a lack of belief. Generally, a belief should affect your life choices or the way you live for it to be included in the definition.

Sex is assigned to someone on the basis of their primary sex characteristics and reproductive functions sometimes we can find that the terms sex and gender are interchanged to mean male or female but we'll note that this is not the correct definitions and again have a look in the Moodle glossary if you're unsure. In UK, law sex is understood as being binary with a person's legal sex being determined by what is recorded on their birth certificate If you're treated unfairly because you're a man or a woman this is sex discrimination. It applies equally to men and women of any age, so it includes girls and boys.

Sexual orientation refers to whether a person's sexual attraction is towards their own sex the opposite sex or both sexes. The equality act protects employees from discrimination harassment and victimisation based on the fact they're bisexual, heterosexual or lesbian/gay.

It's important to remember that although the equality act breaks down individual protected characteristics as individual factors real people are multifaceted and may have different issues based on their whole selves and their intersecting identities. For example, a gay white Christian woman will have a different experience and face different barriers throughout her life than a gay black atheist man, although both of them identify as gay and may experience homophobia. This idea can be captured by the term intersectionality - the cumulative complex manner in which the
effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap or intersect. To break that down, it essentially means that discrimination doesn't exist in a bubble, different kinds of prejudice can be amplified in different ways when put together. This is something we should consider when we are thinking about barriers - unique people have unique experiences.

We should also use caution when we're describing barriers the quality act protects everyone based on their protected characteristics; however, we should note that the protected characteristics are not the problem the structures and systems of power against them are. For example, women still experience gender related issues such as the gender pay gap and sexual harassment - being female is not a barrier in your career, patriarchy is a barrier and similarly being black is not a barrier - white supremacy and racism that persists in our society is the barrier.

Dr Izzy Jayasinghe | Video Transcript

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Dr Izzy Jayasinghe. I’m 38. I am a UKRI future leader fellow. I am a group leader in the University of Sheffield. By research, I am a microscopist and a cell biologist, so I develop new types of microscopy to visualise cells at the very molecular level and understand how they work.

Have you faced any barriers in relation to your protected characteristics?

My protected characteristics are that I’m a woman. I am a trans woman of colour of Asian ethnicity and I am a lesbian. So in terms of issues that I have faced, they range from casual types of bigotry to more systematic biases ingrained into the systems. So more causal forms, more understated forms include being undervalued, being overworked and being questioned or undermined for my skills and expertise. And structural forms of bigotry include being denied access or being limited in terms of access to peer groups, safe spaces, being overlooked for promotions, collaborations, being overlooked or denied funding, especially repeatedly, and also being overlooked for jobs. And also, I have experienced types of racism in a range from casual racist comments, for example when someone asks me where I’m from and I say I’m from New Zealand then the follow up question tends to be: “No, where are you actually from?” So that type of casual belittling, I suppose. Ranging from that to transphobia - things like misgendering, that is using incorrect pronouns to address me, deadnaming and gatekeeping. Particularly, gatekeeping in terms of being excluded from networks and being stifled in terms of career progression.

How did this impact you?

These types of negative experiences impacted me in a number of was: mentally, it was damaging so I experienced things like loneliness, anxiety and depression throughout my post-doctoral career stages. There were times where I was diagnosed with depression and treated for it. It slowed my career progression, clearly at times and it led to unnecessary exhaustion and loss of productivity. It seeded self-doubt and eroded my self confidence at times and ultimately also led me to changing my career disciplines. So I have gone from being a cardiovascular researcher to more of a cell biologist and biophysicist because I found that initial discipline that I trained in was not particularly supportive to me. And generally, more socially, things like being excluded from social groups, difficulty in forming friendships or collaborations and those are all forms bigotry or issues I that have faced because of who I am.

How do you cope with or overcome these barriers?

For dealing with issues like that I first of all made sure that I look after my mental health and I develop mindfulness about what is going on at a given time and in relation to how I feel. Exercise is definitely a big part of that mental health strategy. Keeping my boundaries clear, not just physical boundaries but emotional and mental boundaries. I am also outspoken so if someone crosses a boundary, I tend to call them out. I also have at times reminded people of what the law says in terms of my rights and my protections. I have also got a lot of allies and mentors who have supported me and without them that would have been really difficult to progress into an independent career in research and life sciences. I have made sure that I have invested in my skills so I am always looking to grow my skills and better myself so I keep up to date and my work stays current and I stay competitive as much as possible. I have also constantly made plans about to stay ahead and stay competitive. And when I make a plan, I trust the plan and I back myself to achieve it so once I’ve made the plan, I tend not to change it too much.

Do you have any specific sources of support?

My main mechanism of support is my partner who is a really constant source of comfort and a good sounding board for me and she’s always been there. Some of my supervisors and mentors have been instrumental for me getting there, getting here. They have helped me in terms of references and encouraging me to do better and go for opportunities. Colleagues in equality and diversity and inclusion groups have been a real network of support and that’s because those spaces tend to be places where you can speak more frankly and share your lived experiences and be made sure that you are heard. And finally, students and junior colleagues definitely give me a lot of inspiration and hope especially going forward. Particularly the students, the undergraduate students, and their generation tend to be more progressive, inclusive and kind compared to the generation that I grew up in and the generations before me. And I think that progressive nature of the younger generations have really helped me.