Parallel Session 1: Equality and Diversity Communications
Tuesday 10 April 10:15 - 12:00
The Roslin Institute is committed to ensuring that equality and diversity are foremost in everything we do and holds a gold Athena SWAN award in recognition of these efforts. We have an Equality and Diversity Committee and unconscious bias training is mandatory for all staff.
In our internal newsletter, we promoted our inclusive bathrooms as well as “Mental health week” where a LGBT member of staff gave a presentation.
Our digital campaigns on social media include #onthisday posts on the work of historical women in science, related to the work done at the institute, which generated high engagement. For Ada Lovelace Day, the first computer programmer, we produced a news story and social media posts about the work of a number of our female computer scientists. For International Women’s day, we produced a video with participation of both male and female members of staff.
Given the high suicide rates among men, for International Men’s Day we contributed to the campaign “Male role models” by posting pictures and quotes from our male scientists engaging their children with science.
On our Open Day, children coloured a book featuring a number of female group leaders and descriptions of their work and visitors could see on a map that our scientists come from all over the world.
At the Easter Bush Science Outreach Centre, scientists from all countries and genders engage with pupils from some of the most deprived schools in the region. This year, a girl who visited the Centre with her classmates sent us a letter saying: “I learned that you did not have to be a boy to be a scientist. I really enjoyed it.”
These are small steps. Much more can be done to tackle these and other biases, but we hope to start making a difference.
