In 2003 the University of Cambridge appointed two half-time recruitment
officers in the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative to
improve the rates of applications by women and appointments of women to
lecturer positions in science, engineering and technology subjects at the
University of Cambridge. Given the evidence that women’s progress in
academia is affected by unconscious bias, for example, the CUWAG Report
on the Numbers and Status of Women in the University of Cambridge (Forty
Years On), (1988 ), Valian. (1998) Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke (1999), the
recruitment officers developed a half-day workshop targeted at Heads of
Department and those responsible for recruitment and selection to
complement the existing training on fair recruitment, which concentrated on
compliance with legislation.
Much of the material was adapted from the successful STRIDE programme at
the University of Michigan described by LaVaque-Manty and Stewart (2008)1.
The workshops were entitled ‘Responding to Merit: Performing to Potential’
and the publicity material emphasized the importance of enabling all staff to
contribute to their full potential regardless of their background. The workshops
concentrated on the recruitment, retention of women in the academic SET
disciplines but the principles apply to other disciplines as well as other staff
groups and to black and minority ethnic staff. Each workshop2 started with a
brief look at the statistics for academic and research staff at the University of
Cambridge, including a breakdown for each participant’s own Department.
Including the statistics for the participants’ own departments helped stimulate
discussion of the situation of women in the University.
Following that the participants worked in small groups to explore how the
wording of advertisements might affect members of different groups and how
further particulars could be improved, for example, by alerting potential
applicants to the University’s family-friendly policies.
1 The University of Michigan’s presentation is available as PowerPoint and PDF at
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/advance/stride (accessed 28 August 2008)
2 An overview of the workshop is available at
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/equality/wiseti/events/workshops.pdf (accessed 28
August 2008)