IP5 - Inclusion Really Does Matter: Improving Attitudes towards Gender Equality Initiatives in EPS Academic Departments

Although gender equality initiatives such as Athena SWAN and Juno exist in EPS academic fields, progress towards gender equality has been slow. One reason may be that these initiatives are met by some academics with indifference or even negative attitudes. Our vision is that if we are to sustainably improve the diversity climate in EPS academic departments, we need to understand how to design gender equality initiatives that are positively received by EPS academics. The goal of our interdisciplinary project is twofold. First, we seek to conduct rigorous empirical research to understand the factors that make gender equality initiatives more or less effective. Second, using this empirical evidence, we plan to design, test, and widely share training tools for Athena SWAN committees and EPS academics. These training tools will be designed to improve attitudes towards gender equality initiatives and will be high tech resources such as Virtual Reality toolkits, apps, and multimedia resources.