EDI Conversation 6: Dr Kyela Leakey discusses the Athena Swan Charter

Dr Kyela Leakey, School Lead for Athena Swan, discusses why the Athena Swan Charter matters.

(Recording duration: 22 minutes 35 seconds)

LC: Hello. You’re listening to EDI conversations from the University of Dundee’s School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law. I’m Louise Campbell, School Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and today I’m joined by Dr Kyela Leakey, who is our Athena Swan submission lead. Welcome, Kyela. Can we start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your disciplinary or academic interests?

KL: So I was born and raised in Kenya, so I’m a dual citizen of Kenya and the United Kingdom. I was called to the Bar in 2005 – the bar of England and Wales. So I’m a barrister, but I don’t practise. I decided to pursue my research interests instead of practising at the Bar. I’ve lived in Scotland since 2012 and I’ve enjoyed very much enjoyed learning about my Scottish roots, of which I have quite deep Scottish roots. So that’s been a lovely accent to my experience here.

In terms of my research interests, I’m really interested in judges and in judicial governance. I’m interested in judicial independence, judicial accountability and particularly judicial integrity. I’ve done a lot of work on judicial integrity and anti-corruption in the court systems, particularly in Africa but also, more recently in Europe. The most recent project I did was on specialised anti-corruption courts in Europe and at the moment I’m working on a paper on the jurisdiction of specialised anti-corruption courts so quite focused but it has taken me to very interesting places geographically and intellectually so I do enjoy that very much.

LC: And I suppose there’s quite a natural overlap then into the next question, which is why is a quality diversity or inclusion important to you in your disciplinary area?

KL: I’m very gratified to see that it’s become so much a part of the life of higher education governance. In Law, particularly, it is an issue, has been an issue for a long time and if you think that, you know, women were graduating from Law in 1908, but not being able to practise. And it wasn’t until 1919 that a woman Law graduate could actually become a lawyer. So there’s been a lot of barriers in Law to women, and I think it’s really important in our discipline, in particular, that we pay attention to that and we have in Dundee Christian Bissett was the first woman [Law] academic in Scotland so we can celebrate her life and her work and the and the Law School did in fact have a celebration of her work. So that’s quite inspirational for me but also I hope for our students.

In Scotland, the Law Society, who recently did a survey in 2023 and found that 61% of its members felt that there was an issue with women reaching senior positions. Now that’s in the legal practise in the legal profession, but I think we would find very similar sentiments in higher education and it’s that problem with reaching the senior positions and having that voice and influencing the you know the way things are delivered and the way things progress, which I think is really important and I think in higher education we have to be able to demonstrate that we can, we can do it too and that shows our students the kind of working environment that they might want to aspire to and that they should be, you know experiencing when they leave University. So I think it’s really important for us in higher education to prioritise this and to make sure that we are delivering for ourselves as academics, but also for our students.

LC: Today we’re focusing on the Athena Swan Charter, which is something that has had a number of years of history attached to it and we’re hoping you can tell us a wee bit about it, but also to understand why it’s important within the scope of our wider work and maybe something about why it came about in the first place, some social or historical context, if you could share something around that with us?

KL: Yes. So Athena Swan was established in 2005 and the primary goal of it then was to advance the career of women in STEM. So it was, it was a particular problem then where? I mean it’s that that kind of usual perception that arts and humanities and social sciences had more women and sciences had far less. And so in 2005, the Charter was established specifically for STEM sciences and it’s about careers. So Athena Swan is focusing on the careers and the career progression. So 2005 it was very much focused on STEM and then in 2015 it expanded to recognise Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Law was recognised that there was in fact an issue there too and it wasn’t solely in the STEM professions. And it also expanded, I think importantly, to consider professional and support roles. Up until 2015 the focus was very much on academics and didn’t take account of the experiences of professional and support staff and also in 2015 it expanded beyond academics and professional and support staff to students. The consideration of gender was expanded to include trans staff as well. So it started very much focusing on women and by 2015 had expanded to trans staff and also had expanded the scope of the individuals included in its assessment.

By 2021, there was a they did a kind of a review, if you like, and expanded the definition of gender more even further more broadly, so that it’s not just about women, it’s not just trans staff. It’s broad. Today they’ve also expanded their charter principles, if you like. So we’re looking quite broadly at staff, students and their career progression and in particular, we’re looking at representation. So the representation of women in the working environment, their career progression, which of course is important if you’re trying to achieve, you know, a greater parity in senior roles. Also looking at career milestones and how those career milestones are addressed and dealt with in terms of supporting gender equality and the overall working environment and I think all of these elements together in theory, ought to promote gender equality, and we ought to see this shift towards, I think in particular more women and trans staff and so on in more senior positions that in in any case is the goal.

LC: What do you think this means for us in within our School, which takes in Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, and you mentioned those as disciplines that are quite significant in this kind of gender divided space?

KL: So I think for us it’s important because we have, so we have varied disciplines with the five Divisions quite different. If we looking at the gender parity in each division is quite different. We want to try and find a way to bring all that together to in the School so that we are supporting, encouraging gender equality across the School. And to do that, we have to look at each Division and ensure that we’re addressing the concerns of each Division, but I think for us, for higher education more generally in Scotland, there is still an issue around career progression and around senior women and so on in in senior positions. So it will continue to be important for us and for others until we’ve kind of achieved a better gender balance.

LC: And presumably we’re also thinking that this has an impact on how we reflect on student experiences and the modelling that we’re doing for them in terms of parity and equality in society.

KL: Yes, very much so.

LC: Talk to us about what attracted you to the role of School Lead for developing our Athena Swan submission.

KL: Well, I have always been very fortunate to have very strong female role models in my life, and I’m grateful for that but nevertheless, still, you know, observed, experienced micro or greater discrimination throughout my life, as I suspect most women probably have. So for me, I think it’s important to engage with that and important to contribute somehow. If you feel that an issue is important and you want something to be done about it to somehow engage with it now, you can’t do that in this way for everything. And the reason that I volunteered to take on this role is because I was involved in the Athena Swan self-assessment team in the School of Law at the University of Glasgow when I was a Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and that was around about the time that the Charter had expanded to encompass our disciplines and I started just as a member of the self-assessment team. I was the lead on the culture survey for the School and I eventually was asked to chair the self-assessment team. Unfortunately, I left Glasgow shortly after that for health reasons. So I’m really picking up where I left off in a way and continuing that work because I do think it’s important, but also because I really enjoy it and I really enjoy having the opportunity to meet colleagues and one of the things I’ve particularly enjoyed about being in Dundee and being in the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law is that cross disciplinary engagement and I’ve just found it so interesting meeting colleagues from other disciplines and working with colleagues from other disciplines and that sense of a shared purpose. I like to encourage but also to be part of. So I just really enjoy it and I hope that we can, you know, do something good with it and that some of the work that we do now will you know last in in the school and have a lasting effect.

LC: What actions have you been able to take forward since you’ve come into the role?

KL: Getting to know people and setting up the self-assessment team was the first
goal and I think we did that actually fairly quickly and quite effectively. We’ve got an excellent self-assessment team now. So a lot of what we’ve done so far is to put together the building blocks of the self-assessment team and to find out how we can work and what we need to be able to do that work. And so we’re really now getting down to the proper work of doing the analysis and gathering the information. I think it’s important for people to know that the process for submitting an application to Athena Swan Charter is one of reflection and self-assessment. So what we’re doing is a self-assessment team is we are taking a view, we are gathering information about where we stand as a School in terms of gender equality. What have we achieved? What have we not achieved? What can we do better? That is, it is a self-assessment. So at the moment we are now focusing on that kind of analytical part and we are also because we are submitting an application in, well, we now have a deadline of 2026, March 2026. We were granted an extension. So that’s just the work of the self-assessment team but of course we want that work to continue and we want it to go beyond the certificate as it were. One of the things we’re now starting to do is to think about what do we want gender equality to look like and how do we want to drive that work? Do we want to a working group? Do we want a committee? How do we want to build that into the working of the School? So that’s what we’re starting to think about now, to look at proposals for that.

LC: Do you have a sense that aside from the integrity of the work itself and the value of the work itself, there is a wider purpose in participating in Athena Swan and having the Charter? What does it mean for us as a school and what does it mean for the university? Why is it important on that kind of outward looking level?

KL: I think, well, many are sceptical of the Charter and often it’s seen as a box sticking exercise, and it’s seen as something you just have to get through, so that as a university, the university can say we meet these standards. We’re committed to these standards. I completely disagree with that. I think if that’s the way it’s treated, it will never work. I mean, you do have to do certain things to submit your application. That’s just a given but in that process in that self-assessment process you do, you take a deeper look at the culture of your School and you take a deeper look at what has been done and what hasn’t been done, and crucially, what can be done. And it’s the nature of universities where you’ve got a School and the University and the School cannot do everything. The School has to work with the University to achieve certain objectives and that’s where the challenging part comes in. So if we are being awarded, you know, a bronze award, for example, for the school, we have to know how we can actually meet those standards ourselves separately from the University, but also with the central University. And that’s a big challenge. But I think that the Charter and the Charter process is important for embedding values into the work of the School and the University. It’s important to the University because they can say, you know, we’ve done this, we’ve got this award and we can demonstrate that we’re committed to these principles. But the text of the principles is not really the thing that matters. It’s the day-to-day practise of, you know, embedding those principles. So for me, that’s what’s important. The Charter is a way of doing it rather than, you know, the end result. And that’s why it’s also important for us to think about what comes after our submission.

LC: Almost a way of us being accountable to ourselves but just using the Charter as a means to do that.

KL: Yes, a framework if you like.

LC: Thinking about colleagues in different parts of our School, and there are many complex sort of requirements on their time, how would you like people to get involved with Athena Swan activities? Clearly there are people who have some prescribed roles around this through the self-assessment team, but it is important for everyone to get involved, isn’t it?

KL: Yes, very important and it’s so it’s very important that the submission itself is not just driven by one person, is not completed by a small group of people, but is actually encompassing, you know, colleagues from across the school. So that we do actually understand the lived experience of people in our school. So as I said, the self-assessment team is excellent. We have 22 members who have been working really hard and will continue to do so and we work very well together. So that’s going well. The challenge, as you say, is to get others involved. It’s important for people to feel that they can come to us and talk to us, and I know that you have your culture cafes, which I hope people are engaging with, and that’s an opportunity to talk about gender equality matters as well. But anyone can come to me and raise an issue. What I can do with that is take it to the self-assessment team and we can think about how we can incorporate that into our work and it might simply be a matter of raising an issue that was not previously known about or acknowledged. It might be a matter of seeing that we’ve got a theme that we’ve really got to focus on because we’ve had a lot of people coming to us about the same thing. So there’ll be different ways that we can engage with it and we can’t promise immediate change, but we can certainly make sure that people’s voices are heard in the work that we’re doing in the self-assessment team. Because as I say for me, it’s important it goes beyond the award. So whilst we might, you know, get to a point where we have enough information to submit to Advance HE it’s more important to me that we really understand the issues for our colleagues and we can build on that over the next four or five years before the next submission so that we can see a real progress. So I will speak with, my self-assessment team colleagues and you know and I’m sure that all or most of them would be happy for people to know who they are and who they can contact, so people can come to me, they can e-mail me, they can, you know, just come and find me, I’m in Scrimgeour Building, and just try to engage. So that’s one way. So really just, you know, issues generated from colleagues spontaneously, if you like. The other way is we will do a survey and we’re designing that survey at the moment and we specifically don’t want to do just a few questions that we have to do for the submission. We’re looking quite closely. We’re kind of treating this almost as a research project. We’ve got people who have expertise in conducting surveys, who are doing this. That’s these are the people that are focused on the survey work. So we will produce a survey hopefully that gets to the heart of some of the issues for colleagues, and So what I would say is please, please, please complete the survey because that is your voice and that is where we’ll hear your voice and where we’ll be able to do something with it.

LC: I have a few final questions for you. Just to help people get to know you a little bit more. Sweet short, sweet answers are absolutely fine. Who or what inspires you?

KL: So many people. So many people. It’s really tough. So I grew up in Kenya and there were lots of amazing people that I met there and leaders and so on. You know, I used to for a long time I, you know, would have answered Nelson Mandela – probably a lot of people would have too. And I’ve also, I think if we’d speaking academically, I’ve had some wonderful teachers as well, and I would say in answer to this question, basically, concerning what we’re talking about now, I would say my PhD supervisors. I was very, very fortunate with my PhD supervisors, Professor Kate Malleson and Professor Andrew Luswell at Queen Mary University. They were extremely professional and encouraging and when I think about how I want to be as a professional academic, I take a lot from them. They were kind of role models for me in terms of academic professionalism. They were certainly committed to equality and diversity. And so I could have given you many different answers to that but I think in this context they’re the two people I would say have really academically inspired me and encouraged me.

LC: What’s your favourite place to be?

KL: My favourite place to be? Well, I do miss Kenya when I’m in Scotland so I’ve been trying to find somewhere in Scotland. My favourite place to be at home is with my husband and my cat, very warm and snug, but I need the outdoors. I really do. I love being outdoors and not so long ago we went to Moidart which I had never been to before, and that could be my new favourite place to be.

LC: Thank you. I think many people will be saying amen to that one.
And last question, what keeps you going when you need something to keep you going?

KL: Well, I do think of being outdoors, you know, planning my next outdoor experience helps. And the other thing, so I’ve had a lot of reasons to, you know, feel challenged about keeping going. And what I always say to myself is just do one thing that helps or counts. So if making a cup of tea is what’s going to get you through to the next stage, good. If writing a paragraph of something counts towards doing some work. Excellent. Then go and do something else. So yeah, thinking about, you know, my time off actually really keeps me going. I knit a lot as well and that that helps too. The focus of knitting it’s very soothing. So thinking about that but also remembering just to do one thing towards whatever your goal or task might be because you can’t do everything all at once and just remembering that from time to time.

LC: Very sage advice. Thank you, Kyela. It’s been lovely speaking with you today. Thank you for making time for this. And if anybody wants to know anything else about Athena Swan, as you mentioned, they can contact you.

KL: Thank you very much for having me.