UN SDG 5: Gender Equality

Overview

It has been more than 14 years since Lincoln began its gender equality journey, with the signing of the Athena Swan Charter in 2008. Since then, the University's work towards gender equality has been gaining momentum.

At the heart of our work is the Eleanor Glanville Institute ─ the University’s strategic lead for EDI. The Institute is a unique ‘hybrid’ department where academics and professional services staff work together, forging researcher-practitioner collaborations to underpin our inclusive practices by research, to develop new robust interventions informed by research, and to evaluate our impact and progress towards achieving our ambitions.

Addressing the Problem of Violence Against Women and Girls

The University of Lincoln's Professor of Gender, Violence and Work, Professor Sundari Anitha studies the problem of violence against women and girls in diverse contexts and in  the UK, the United States, and India. She also researches prevention, protection, and criminal justice responses to this problem; the politics of intersectionality and the connections between violence within homes and outside (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and migration); domestic violence and abuse, including particular manifestations such as dowry-related abuse, forced marriage, and transnational forms of violence such as abandonment of wives and domestic servitude.

Professor Anitha's work also explores sexual violence, including everyday forms of sexual harassment in online and offline spaces, and gender-based violence in university communities. Watch Professor Anitha's inaugural lecture, Women Striking Back: Struggles and Strategies Against Violence and Exploitation.

Seeing Change

The Seeing Change project, led by Tom Martin, Senior Lecturer in the Lincoln School of Design, worked with Amazigh Women in Aoufous, Morrocco. The project used participatory photography to explore how these women live and experience the desertification of their land, with the emphasis placed on the far reaching consequences of climate change on their daily lives.

Seeing Change was the winner of the Emerald Publishing Real Impact Interdisciplinary Research Fund, which funds innovative projects that promote action towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, through collaboration of disciplines, methodology and research in order to deliver real-world impact.

The Impact of Digital Media

Work by Associate Professor of Criminology, Dr Baris Cayli Messina, demonstrates that digital space has provided an important platform for women by enabling them to defy religious and patriarchal values while rendering their demands more visible in the public sphere. By analysing the stories of 3,349 murdered women, consulting 57 activist-published materials, studying 37 protest-focused videos, and using digital ethnography, he has explored Turkish women's struggles against femicide. 

Dr Messina's work highlights the essential role of new media technologies in empowering vulnerable groups through the generation of new forms of knowledge, the formation of collective memory, and the elimination of injustice in opposition to the ruling authorities. It also contributes to our knowledge of the sociology of epistemic injustice by demonstrating how digital space plays a limited but critical role in the efforts of activists living under authoritarian regimes to defend their fundamental rights to survive and prevent femicide, which has a devastating impact on the lives of millions of women.

Gender and Families

Nuffield-funded research on patterns of labour by Professor Ruth Gaunt and colleagues at the University of Lincoln is applying a social psychological approach to the study of gender and families. It aims to identify the complex mechanisms that inhibit or facilitate greater gender equality in the home.

In a recent series of papers, the team explored the role of parents’ social psychological characteristics (identities, ideologies, and ambivalent sexism) in the division of work and childcare, comparing couples who maintain a traditional division of roles with couples who reverse roles so that the father is the main caregiver. This research provides valuable insight into measures that can support fathers’ caring responsibilities and create more balanced, fulfilling lives for both men and women. Increasing fathers’ involvement in childcare and gender equality in the home has the potential to contribute to the longer-term aim to reduce women’s disproportionate share of household tasks, eliminating the resulting gaps in career progression, labour market segregation and the gender pay gap.

Sport and Gender

Professor Hanya Pielichaty dedicates her teaching and scholarship to the areas of sport and gender, facilitating an inclusive approach to education. She is a National Teaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of Advance HE. As Director of Student Inclusion with the Eleanor Glanville Institute, Professor Pielichaty ensures her passion for equity and diversity is embedded in student-centred activity and research. In 2021, she founded the Critical Pedagogies in Sport international network, a space for academics to understand and challenge constraining power structures in sports-based higher education.