It is a year since Vice-Chancellor Dowton launched Macquarie University’s first Workplace Gender Equity Strategy. This week our University community comes together for a program of events and activities designed to shine a spotlight on our progress towards gender equity at Macquarie, and to reflect on the work still to be done to create an equitable culture for all.

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Dear colleagues,

Our University’s strong commitment to a culture of diversity and inclusion was underlined with the launch of our Workplace Gender Equity Strategy on International Women’s Day last year.

The strategy sets out an ambitious two-year action plan for Macquarie to create sustainable change towards an equitable culture for all genders. It focuses our work across six priority commitments – building an inclusive culture; holding leaders accountable; improving representation of women in senior academic roles and STEMM; achieving better gender balance in leadership; making flexibility the norm; and closing the gender pay gap.

We have achieved significant progress against each of these commitments over this past year, and there has been an outstanding level of engagement from across the University community. Our Executive Group recently spoke about their priorities and plans for progressing gender equity within their portfolios and I encourage everyone to view the video available from today on our website (see below). You can also learn more about the Workplace Gender Equity Strategy and our progress here.

While our challenges on gender equity are not unique to Macquarie, our approach to change is. We have shifted away from traditional approaches that have proved ineffective in progressing equality. Instead, we are focussed on deep understanding of the specific gender equity issues here at Macquarie and addressing systemic inequities within our policies, practices and culture. Our collective efforts are firmly focussed on ‘fixing the system’ so that we can embed real and sustainable change right across the University.

International Women’s Day this year comes at a time of unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality and justice.  It is timely that we celebrate with a whole week of related events and activities, and I encourage everyone to get involved in Gender Equity Week as a way to reaffirm our commitment to a culture where every person is valued, respected and supported.

I am grateful to all those who have contributed to progressing gender equity over the past year and I look forward to sharing further results of this strategy as we continue this important work.

Sincerely,

S. Bruce Dowton

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Don’t forget to register for the gender equity events happening all this week! 

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