The AUDE Report ‘Well the assumption is…: Conversations with women leaders in estates and facilities’ (December 2024)
Our EDI Group, led by former AUDE Chair Stephen Wells of the University of East Anglia, commissioned Martin Higgs our Communications and Campaigns Manager, to write about the experiences of women in estates. An open brief, to be steered by conversations and real-life experiences. The result is the new publication ‘Well the assumption is…: Conversations with women leaders in estates and facilities’.
You can download the report now.
The conversations that led to this publication were with a group of women members of this association. As we look around the sector, and at any AUDE event, we can see quite clearly that the gender balance is not equal. We know from our own daily experience that other professional services in HE, from finance to HR, have a more equal balance. The conversations with our members that fed into this report tried to uncover barriers to progress that women experience as they move towards more senior roles. That means the report looks at themes from ‘casual sexism’ (wording that significantly underplays the seriousness of what some women still experience) to the invisibility of the career path, the effects of maternity and menopause, and more. And that means we are talking about a sometimes toxic mix of issues that women confront throughout their working lives, and men don’t need to think about at all. Or at least, not until specifically asked to do so, perhaps under an ‘allyship’ heading – and that is what we are asking of our male members. Our participants were keen to acknowledge the sometimes fantastic support of male managers, mentors and role models, but the picture is mixed, and in some cases, downright unpleasant, sexist and misogynistic.
The report is published as one aspect of our work on EDI. We are absolutely open about this: the association is late to the party; our EDI group (and indeed this report) is male-led, which some might be uncomfortable about; we might well have considered ethnicity as a bigger barrier to careers in estates, and examined that issue first. We are far from perfect (and that description certainly includes our data position – our straightforward understanding of basic demographic information about the association’s membership) but we take on the tasks we can, and advocate where we can, using the resources (including the volunteering time from our members) that we have access to. The issue of gender imbalance at senior levels in estates in HE was the picture that was clearest to our EDI group from looking at the data we have on our members, so it is here that we have first directed our efforts.
Jane Harrison-White (AUDE Executive Director)
UHR (Universities Human Resources)
Syd Cottle, AUDE Chair
Not everyone will notice the same details in this report. Perhaps what will strike you is the issue around gender pay gaps, where at the current rate of progress, women born before 1983 will not see pay parity during their working lives. Perhaps you’ll be frustrated, or delighted, to hear AUDE say things it has not said before. Perhaps you’ll be shocked by what women find themselves dealing with that you’d not previously considered. Jane's inbox is open to everything you might want to tell us on this issue or on this report, just as it is year-round. You’ll have views on what AUDE should do next, and we’re listening.
The last word goes to AUDE Chair Syd Cottle, who pinpoints the task for us all having read and thought about this report. It is to connect the ‘decency ask’ when looking at EDI, by which we mean the sheer necessity to treat others well whenever we can, to the business ask – the practical needs of our university employers, our staff and our students. As Syd puts it: “In a work context this report is about making sure that the top talent can make its way to an influential position in the workplace. There is a task for every AUDE director to ensure we are open-minded about who that top talent might be. Blind recruitment. A presumption in favour of senior roles being job shares to bring in valuable additional viewpoints. Wholehearted support of family-friendly policies of the kind that build loyalty and trust at a time of retention and recruitment challenges. What might an imaginative conversation with HR colleagues lead to? The sheer scale of the financial challenge we all currently face tells me we have to be open to investigating every single lever at our disposal in pushing to achieve our goals with less. Leaving over-qualified candidates on the sidelines because of gender, in this day and age? It simply cannot make sense. We aren’t only waving the flag for decency here. Business imperatives sit alongside AUDE’s EDI push.”
