Dear All,
This is how we are doing the gender consultation.
We are arranging a number of consultation meetings. When we have
finished we will have conducted 10 meetings. These cover different
times and different campuses. Staff could come to any meeting as they
were all open meetings. So far we have done 8 and attendance has varied
from greatly from 3 to 55. Some meetings were held starting at 8 a.m. to
include cleaners, caretakers and other early morning workers. University
wide emails were send inviting and reminding people. The VC also sent an
email encouraging people to attend, Deans and Heads of Depts were asked
to do the same. Where staff do not have access to emails or at least
rarely use UW email (e.g. cleaners) their managers were asked to inform
them and encourage them to come.
The meetings
The meetings were conducted by myself, with a male a and female
Associate Dean from the campus in question. We thought it important to
have a man up front as the consultation must include men and I have
stressed this throughout. The legislation also covers transsexual
people and as our LGBT groups are a way of consulting transsexuals I
have simply referred to LGBT groups.
One Associate Dean did a general welcome, the other did a brief
introduction to the legislation and how this consultation fitted in. I
dealt with the information collecting which included an introduction to
the attached briefing sheet and how I wanted the information recorded.
(One of the sheets to be filled in per group.) Prior to the meeting I
had discussed with various people including Deans and some other members
of staff what they thought the issues were for this university and the
list on the briefing sheet includes the main ones. (Though in the
consultation, issues of research/ teaching balance having a gender bias
also came through strongly)
In the meetings staff were divided into groups of about 4-6 and
discussed the questions and recorded information. We circulated,
answered questions and helped in some cases where people were not used
to conveying written information. Most of the small groups were either
all men or all women though this could vary where people came as a
group of work colleagues and you might then get a mixed group. There was
one LGBT group.
I am working through the Students Union to set up consultation with
students. The information collecting methodology will be roughly though
the briefing sheet will be adapted. We will offer a small payment to
students giving up their time.
At the end of the information collection I will start the challenging
job of using the information on the sheets as the basis for our gender
equality scheme.
If using or adapting any of our ideas please would you acknowledge the
University of Wolverhampton.
All the best,
Berry
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