The University of Exeter Business School has received an Athena SWAN Silver Award, placing it among a select group of business schools in the UK recognised for sustained excellence in advancing gender equality. The award acknowledges the institution’s measurable progress in creating fair opportunities for women among both staff and students, and it marks a significant step up from the Bronze Award the school held since 2021.
For prospective students, academics, and professionals evaluating business schools in the UK, this recognition offers a concrete signal about institutional culture. Gender equality is not simply a matter of policy statements; it shapes who teaches, who leads, whose research is funded, and whose careers advance. This article examines what the Athena SWAN Silver Award represents, how the University of Exeter Business School earned it, and why it matters for anyone choosing where to study or work.
A Milestone for Gender Equality in UK Business Education
Business schools have historically mirrored the gender imbalances found in the corporate world they serve. Women remain underrepresented in senior academic positions, in economics departments, and in executive education classrooms across many institutions. Awards such as Athena SWAN exist precisely because progress requires deliberate, structured effort rather than good intentions alone.
The Silver Award achieved by the University of Exeter Business School reflects several years of targeted work. It demonstrates that the school has moved beyond foundational commitments and can show evidence of impact: more women progressing into leadership roles, improved support structures, and a culture that staff themselves helped shape. Professor Steve Wood, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the school, described the award as a testament to the hard work of the entire Business School community and its commitment to being fair and inclusive.
For students weighing their options, this kind of external validation matters. It indicates that the environment they are entering has been independently assessed against rigorous national standards, not just marketed internally.
Want to understand how equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded across the institution? Explore the University of Exeter’s dedicated EDI pages to review its accreditations and ongoing initiatives in detail.
Understanding the Athena SWAN Charter and Its Award Levels
The Athena SWAN Charter is managed by Advance HE, an organisation that supports leadership and development across higher education globally. Established in 2005, the charter was originally created to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine, commonly known as STEMM fields.
Its scope has widened considerably. In 2015, the charter expanded to cover arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law departments, as well as professional and support staff roles. This broader remit acknowledges that gender inequality is not confined to laboratories; it persists in boardrooms, seminar rooms, and administrative offices alike. Today, institutions around the world use the framework to assess their own practices and set out action plans for improvement.
Bronze, Silver and Gold: What Each Level Represents
Athena SWAN awards operate on a tiered system, and understanding the difference between the levels helps put the University of Exeter Business School’s achievement in context.
- Bronze recognises that an institution or department has a solid foundation: it has identified gender equality challenges, collected relevant data, and developed a credible plan to address them.
- Silver requires evidence that those plans have been implemented and are producing results. Institutions must demonstrate measurable progress in areas such as recruitment, promotion, career development, and organisational culture.
- Gold, the highest tier, is reserved for departments and institutions that can show sustained, significant advancement in gender equality and serve as beacons of best practice for the wider sector.
Moving from Bronze to Silver within a few years, as the Business School has done, signals that its action plan was not merely aspirational. Few business schools in the UK currently hold a Silver Award, which makes this recognition particularly notable within the discipline.
How the University of Exeter Business School Achieved Silver
Awards of this kind are never the product of a single initiative. The University of Exeter Business School’s successful submission rested on a combination of structural interventions and cultural leadership developed over many years. Two elements stand out.
Targeted Support for Promotion and Career Progression
One of the most persistent barriers to gender equality in academia is the uneven rate at which men and women secure promotion, particularly into senior lectureships, professorships, and leadership roles. The Business School introduced targeted interventions designed to encourage and enable staff to secure promotion. These typically include mentoring schemes, clear guidance on promotion criteria, dedicated development time, and transparent monitoring of progression data by gender.
By treating promotion support as a shared institutional responsibility rather than an individual burden, the school addressed one of the root causes of career inequality. This approach reflects what Professor Emma Jeanes, who led the Athena SWAN submission, described as a culture built deliberately over many years, with a range of measures introduced to promote gender equality and support staff.
Leading the Way as the UK’s First Women in Economics Champion
Economics remains one of the most gender-imbalanced disciplines in higher education, both in the UK and internationally. Women make up a minority of economics students at many universities and an even smaller share of economics professors. The University of Exeter Business School became the first UK Champion of WEN, the Women in Economics Network, a distinction that committed the school to actively widening participation among women in the field.
Being the first institution in the country to take on this role involved outreach to prospective students, curriculum considerations, visible role models, and support for women studying and teaching economics. For applicants considering an economics degree, this leadership position offers reassurance that the school treats the gender gap in the discipline as a priority it actively owns.
If your aim is to study or work in an environment where these values are put into practice, learn more about the University of Exeter Business School’s equality, diversity and inclusion work and the programmes it offers across business and economics.
What This Means for Prospective Students
Students often evaluate business schools on rankings, employability statistics, and course content. Institutional culture deserves equal attention, and Athena SWAN status provides an evidence-based way to assess it. Here is what the Silver Award suggests for different groups of applicants.
- Women applying to business or economics programmes can expect an environment where female academic role models are present and growing in number, and where the institution has committed publicly to removing barriers to progression.
- All students benefit from studying in a community assessed for fairness, since inclusive cultures are consistently linked to better collaboration, broader perspectives in seminar discussion, and stronger learning outcomes.
- Postgraduate researchers and doctoral candidates should note that Athena SWAN Silver signals a department where research careers are supported equitably, an important consideration when choosing a supervisor and institution for several years of study.
When comparing universities, prospective students can reasonably ask admissions teams about a department’s Athena SWAN status and what concrete initiatives sit behind it. The answer reveals a great deal about institutional priorities.
Have you considered how a university’s equality credentials should factor into your application decisions? Share your perspective in the comments below and help other applicants think it through.
Implications for Staff, Researchers and Academic Professionals
For academics and professional services staff, the award carries practical significance. Institutions holding Athena SWAN awards are increasingly expected to demonstrate them when bidding for research funding, particularly from bodies such as UK Research and Innovation, which considers equality credentials in some funding decisions. Working in an award-holding department therefore has direct professional advantages.
Beyond funding, the award signals a working environment where flexible arrangements, promotion transparency, and cultural accountability are established rather than contested. The University of Exeter Business School’s stated commitment to embedding these values in everything it does suggests that inclusion is treated as an operational standard, not a peripheral project.
Academics evaluating job opportunities can use Athena SWAN status as a screening tool, and current staff can hold their institutions accountable to the action plans submitted with each award. In this way, the charter functions as both a badge of achievement and a mechanism of ongoing scrutiny.
The Wider Movement for Gender Equality Across UK Higher Education
The University of Exeter Business School’s achievement sits within a much larger sector-wide effort. Hundreds of UK institutions and departments now hold Athena SWAN memberships at various levels, and the framework has been adopted or adapted in countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. The expansion of the charter beyond STEMM in 2015 was a turning point: it acknowledged that disciplines such as business, economics, law, and the humanities needed the same structured scrutiny that sciences had undergone.
Progress remains uneven. Women are still underrepresented at professorial level across most UK disciplines, and pay gaps persist sector-wide. This is precisely why the distinction between award levels matters. Silver recognition indicates that an institution has moved from planning to demonstrating outcomes, which is the stage where many organisations stall. The Business School’s progression from Bronze in 2021 to Silver today shows what sustained institutional focus can accomplish within a defined period.
Lessons for Institutions Pursuing Athena SWAN Recognition
Other departments aiming to strengthen their gender equality credentials can draw practical lessons from this case.
- Build culture deliberately over time. Professor Jeanes emphasised that the award reflects years of cultural work, not a short-term campaign. Award panels look for continuity and depth, not last-minute initiatives.
- Use data to target interventions. Effective programmes identify precisely where women’s progression stalls, whether at promotion, recruitment, or retention, and direct resources accordingly.
- Engage the whole community. Leadership commitment matters, but successful submissions involve staff at every level in identifying problems and designing solutions.
- Take visible external roles. Becoming the UK’s first Women in Economics Champion gave the Business School an external mandate and public accountability, which reinforced internal momentum.
Choosing a Business School That Values Inclusion
For anyone applying to business or economics programmes in the UK, the University of Exeter Business School’s Athena SWAN Silver Award is worth factoring into the decision. Combined with the University of Exeter’s position among leading UK universities, the award points to an institution where academic quality and inclusive practice are pursued together.
Applicants should still do their own due diligence: review programme curricula, speak with current students, and ask specific questions about support structures. But external accreditations like Athena SWAN provide an independent reference point that marketing materials cannot replicate.
Considering postgraduate study in business or economics? Explore the University of Exeter Business School’s programme portfolio and discover whether its award-winning community is the right fit for your goals.
Have questions about gender equality initiatives in higher education, or experiences of your own to share? Write to us or join the discussion below, and explore our related articles on UK universities and academic careers for further reading.
The Athena SWAN Silver Award earned by the University of Exeter Business School is both a recognition of past effort and a commitment to continued progress. As more UK business schools adopt the charter’s standards, students and staff alike stand to benefit from a sector that measures fairness as rigorously as it measures research output. Institutional culture is built through exactly this kind of sustained, evidence-led work, and Exeter’s Business School has set a clear example of what that looks like in practice.
