Informatics' Equality and Diversity Blog

June 22, 2017

On film for International Women in Engineering Day

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Encouraging STEM subjects,Equality,Events,Sex (protected characteristic),Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 4:59 pm

Informatics women in academia - the opening imageThe School is marking International Women in Engineering Day, Friday 23 June, by launching a series of short films and written case studies, featuring some of our staff and postgraduate students.

This follows our Girls in Tech series featuring students, published in March as part of our work to support women in Informatics, under the banner of our Athena SWAN Silver Award activities.

Individual films (around 2 minutes long) will be published on Facebook and Twitter. Links to the films and written case studies can also be found on our website at:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/about/work-with-us/equality-diversity/women-in-computing

June 1, 2017

Women in Red Wikipedia project

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Encouraging STEM subjects,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 3:17 pm

As part of the university’s commitment to Athena SWAN, the University’s Information Services team is running an informal, monthly Wikipedia drop-in / edit-a-thon to address the systemic bias on Wikipedia, where only 16.97% of biographies are about notable women.

The Wikipedia editing will focus on creating and improving the quality of articles about notable women on Wikipedia using source texts such as (but not limited to) The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (working through surnames A-Z over the course of the next few months ahead) to turn red-linked articles that don’t yet exist into blue clickable ones that do.

So this is a chance to create or improve Wikipedia pages about prominent women in computer science.

Knowledge of Wikipedia editing is beneficial but if you have not edited before you can go along at the beginning of the session for a quick crash course.

Further details can be found on the Women in Red page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Women_in_Red

Ewan McAndrew. Tel: 07719 330076, Email: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk

March 7, 2017

Support Girls In Tech

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Encouraging STEM subjects,Girls in STEM,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 10:56 am

Wednesday 8 March 2017 is International Women’s Day. Please help us to celebrate by sharing links to our new short film, Girls in Tech, published today, 7 March and our British and overseas students’ stories (in various languages) which will follow tomorrow, 8 March. See our School news story.

Watch out for our posts:

March 1, 2017

Athena SWAN Silver Award celebration

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Awards,Committee news,Girls in STEM,Uncategorized,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 11:21 am

Some representatives of the Informatics E&D Committee at the School's Athena SWAN Silver Award celebration, 24 February 2017Representatives of the Equality and Diversity Committee (pictured), were joined by Stephanie Millar, Equality Challenge Unit, staff and students, Friday 24 February, to celebrate our Athena SWAN Silver Award.

See the related School news story.

Attendees also had the opportunity to preview our forthcoming video, Girls in Tech and the first of our student case study films, due to be launched on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017.

January 25, 2017

BCS gender equality discussion list

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Sex (protected characteristic),Uncategorized,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 10:05 am

BCS Women in Computing has a new JISCMAIL address for those who wish to discuss gender equality, especially Athena SWAN, within Computer Science. The list is CYGNETS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK and the home page is http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CYGNETS

The aim is to use the list to raise issues around diversity in Computing, to look for resources, to share problems (and hopefully solutions), and so on.

Subscribers can join the list by sending an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk
Subject: Subscribe
Message: SUBSCRIBE CYGNETS Firstname Lastname

January 12, 2017

Resources on our website

Filed under: Age (protected characteristic),Athena SWAN,bias and unconscious bias,Disability (protected characteristic) and health,Equality legislation,Gender reassignment (protected characteristic),General,Marriage and civil partnership (protected characteristic),Pregnancy and maternity (protected characteristic),Race (protected characteristic),Sex (protected characteristic),Sexual orientation (protected characteristic),Uncategorized — hwalker2 @ 2:58 pm

Last year, the School developed a new section of its website, called Work with us which includes current staff vacancies, Equality and Diversity information (not least details of our Athena SWAN Silver Award) and links to University work-related policies.

The Equality and Diversity section includes a useful list of resources around:

  • challenging preconceptions
  • women in science and technology
  • equality legislation
  • ‘protected characteristics’ – age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex (gender) and sexual orientation.

Why not have a browse?

Theme: Rubric.