Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Since signing the Athena Swan Charter in 2008, the University has made significant progress in the area of gender equality, and we are pleased to have achieved silver Athena Swan status.
At the heart of our work is the Eleanor Glanville Institute - the University’s strategic lead for EDI. The Institute is a unique ‘hybrid’ department where academics and professional services staff work together, forging researcher-practitioner collaborations to underpin our inclusive practices by research, develop new robust interventions informed by research, and evaluate our impact and progress towards achieving our ambitions. Some of the significant research projects addressing issues of gender are showcased below.
Research Spotlight
The Seeing Change project, led by Tom Martin, Senior Lecturer in the Lincoln School of Design, worked with Amazigh Women in Aoufous, Morocco. The project used participatory photography to explore how these women experience the desertification of their land, with emphasis placed on the far reaching consequences of climate change on their daily lives.
Work by Associate Professor of Criminology, Dr Baris Cayli Messina, demonstrates that digital space has provided an important platform for women by enabling them to defy religious and patriarchal values while rendering their demands more visible in the public sphere. By analysing the stories of 3,349 murdered women, consulting 57 activist-published materials, studying 37 protest-focused videos, and using digital ethnography, he has explored Turkish women's struggles against femicide.
Dr Messina's work highlights the essential role of new media technologies in empowering vulnerable groups through the generation of new forms of knowledge, the formation of collective memory, and the elimination of injustice in opposition to the ruling authorities. It also contributes to our knowledge of the sociology of epistemic injustice by demonstrating how digital space plays a limited but critical role in the efforts of activists living under authoritarian regimes to defend their fundamental rights to survive and prevent femicide, which has a devastating impact on the lives of millions of women.
Professor Hanya Pielichaty dedicates her teaching and scholarship to the areas of sport and gender, facilitating an inclusive approach to education. She is a National Teaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of Advance HE. As Director of Student Inclusion with the Eleanor Glanville Institute, Professor Pielichaty ensures her passion for equity and diversity is embedded in student-centred activity and research.
Nuffield-funded research on patterns of labour by Professor Ruth Gaunt and colleagues at the University of Lincoln is applying a social psychological approach to the study of gender and families. It aims to identify the complex mechanisms that inhibit or facilitate greater gender equality in the home.
The research provides valuable insight into measures that can support fathers’ caring responsibilities and create more balanced, fulfilling lives for both men and women. Increasing fathers’ involvement in childcare and gender equality in the home has the potential to contribute to the longer-term aim to reduce women’s disproportionate share of household tasks, eliminating the resulting gaps in career progression, labour market segregation, and the gender pay gap.
In 2021, the University initiated the Women's Safety Group to tackle safety for women and girls on our campuses and in the city. This collaboration between academics, professional services staff, students, and Lincolnshire police identifies areas where students may not feel as safe. For example, new lighting has improved the feeling of safety on campus, and morning-after spiking testing has been made available.
Professor of Gender, Violence, and Work, Sundari Anitha, has studied the problem of violence against women and girls in diverse contexts and in the UK, the United States, and India. She also researches prevention, protection, and criminal justice responses to this problem; the politics of intersectionality and the connections between violence within homes and outside (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and migration); domestic violence and abuse, including particular manifestations such as dowry-related abuse, forced marriage; and transnational forms of violence such as abandonment of wives and domestic servitude.
Professor Anitha's work also explores sexual violence, including everyday forms of sexual harassment in online and offline spaces, and gender-based violence in university communities. Watch Professor Anitha's inaugural lecture, Women Striking Back: Struggles and Strategies Against Violence and Exploitation.
We recognise that equality is not just a concern for today, but an ongoing project. That is why we have developed a number of programmes that can help students gain the knowledge and expertise needed to address the inequalities that are so prevalent in societies and communities across the world.
SciVal reports 31 and 25 outputs from our institution for years 2022 and 2023 respectively.
Example outputs include:
Ayuk. B.E. et al. (2022) Provision of injectable contraceptives by community health workers in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of safety, acceptability and effectiveness. Human resources for Health 20 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9446834/
Sundari, A. (2023) Citizenisation in the aftermath of domestic violence: the role of family, community and social networks Families, Relationships and Societies 12 324-391
https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/frs/12/3/article-p374.xml
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.