TY  - EJOU
AU  - Armstrong, A. John
AU  - Sullivan, S. Alice
TI  - Has DEI Increased the Representation of Women in Higher Education? A Time-Series Replication Analysis of the Impact of the UK Athena Swan Scheme
T2  - Journal of Controversial Ideas

PY  - 2026
VL  - 6
IS  - 2
SN  - 2694-5991

AB  - Athena Swan is an award scheme designed to recognise higher education institutions’ (HEIs’) commitment to advancing ‘gender equality’. This paper uses time-series analysis to conduct a replication analysis of the relationship between Athena Swan status and both the proportion of women in senior roles and change in the proportion of women in senior roles. A previous study, using essentially the same data set, found that ‘Athena SWAN members showed greater and faster growth in female representations’. We apply time-series analysis methods to show that effects found in this previous study can be explained by two factors: (1) changes in the set of institutions that hold Athena Swan awards; and (2) the fact that it is more challenging to improve levels of female representation when they are closer to 50%. Once we controlled for these factors, we did not find any impact of Athena Swan awards on changes in the number of women in senior positions over the time-period studied. We conducted a power analysis which places bounds on the maximum size of effects which we would be unable to detect. In addition, we find that institutions with a low proportion of women in senior positions are more likely to be members of Athena Swan and are more likely to hold an award.
KW  - Athena Swan
KW  - higher education
KW  - women
KW  - gender
KW  - replication analysis
KW  - DEI
DO  - 10.63466/jci06020019