In Conversation with Jane Harrington

Irene Barranco Garcia, Secretary of the Women's Network, puts questions from our members to the Vice Chancellor, Professor Jane Harrington. Topics ranged from the impact of Covid and the highs and lows of her first year in post through to the Gender and BAME Pay Gaps and support for women at the university.

Covid and the various lockdowns have affected all of us differently. How was 2020 for you?

How was 2020 for me? Well, it was a very dramatically different year from what I was expecting. As you all know, I had just started the job at University of Greenwich and in my head, it was going to be a year that would be busy anyway, because I'd be moving my family up to London and I would be changing my job and changing where I lived. However, I have to say, I don't think I'd ever expected a pandemic to happen in the first hundred days after I'd started.

For me, it really shifted everything in that sense. But I think what it did was it enabled me to get to know people almost better than I'd have been able to without it, which sounds slightly bizarre. And it has also really enabled me to see actually how the university works together and the ethos around pulling together. And that's been really quite marked in mind.

What it meant was that I could actually talk to and meet people on Teams and very quickly got to know lots of different groups of staff across the whole university, and I didn't have to travel to places, so there were some advantages.

Now, on a personal level, I experienced living on my own for the first time in 30 years because when lockdown started, I was in London and my family were in Bristol. I found that really tough, I'll be honest. I think people either had the problem that they were coping with their families or in my case, I had the problem I was separating from them. And neither, of course, had been very easy. This later lockdown has been easier because my family are with me. And we're living in London now. So, this has been easier in that sense.

But I but I have to say, probably like everybody, I found the dark nights and short days of this latest lockdown really quite difficult. Knowing that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel is really great.

The theme for IWD this year is #ChooseToChallenge. What are you choosing to challenge?

I've got two. The first one is University related, in that I would choose for us to challenge ourselves and each other to be more ambitious. That I'd like us to be more active in prioritising inclusivity in everything that we do. So for me it's about the challenge is how can we really take things to another level?

On a personal level, I'm challenging myself to really push to take action on the serious issues that we need to take action on.

One for me which relates to International Women's Day is that I really want to see this year some real action on addressing the gender pay gap.

29% of VCs in the UK are women. What challenges did you face to reach VC level and what sacrifices have you had to make?

I think we should also be quite aware around that percentage that it has gone down over the last few years and it's come up slightly again, but it is never got above the late 20s. So we need to keep our eye on that one.

In terms of challenges. I, sadly like all of you, have encountered sexism throughout my career. If I think some examples, one would be when I was early in my career as researcher and I became pregnant. Someone came up to me in the corridor and said: ‘Oh, well done, fantastic. But I thought you were an ambitious person?’. And I had to point out to them that many men had children and that didn't seem to stop their ambition.

Times, also, when I got promoted, sometimes people implied, or even said to my face, that they thought the organisation was looking for a woman. So by implication, that's why I got the role. That's been regular. And in fact, if you assume that when you're in a senior role you don’t get it, I'd say that's not true. Even as Deputy Vice Chancellor, somebody actually said to me, ‘Well, the VC needed more women, didn't he? So I suppose you were going to get that role.’ Even in senior positions, you encounter that a lot.

Also, at times I have being discouraged from applying for posts. On one occasion I was told I “Lacked gravitas.” And I did have to say to them, “Well, what is gravitas? Let's define it.”

And it's quite interesting, that sort of perception around women that still exists. And I spent so many years probably, like a lot of other the women with a voice on my shoulders telling me I'm not good enough. You know, someone will catch you out. Someone will tap you on the shoulder and say, you can't do this. And it took me many, many years to overcome that.

I also had to juggle a child and a partner who was unable to work, and a full-time job for many years. That was quite challenging.

I was the first woman in my last institution to become a PVC Exec Dean. And I did enter a team of all white males except for myself. And I think what struck me the first time I entered that team was the language that they use, which was quite militaristic at times about “battling through” and “upward marching”, etc. And I was quite determined to change that. By the time that I left, I was really proud, actually, that the PVCs who worked for me were very representative of the student body, and I think that was really important.

And then in terms of sacrifices, I'd say that there have been some at times. I'm very aware that I've been very consumed by my work and my family, but not much else. I have always tried to look after, despite those challenges, my own physical and mental health, because I think that's really important. I have tried to do that. But without a doubt, there's been many challenges along the way.

Navigating the workplace as a women can be challenging. How have you bounced back from setbacks?

Like everybody, my career has not always gone in a straightforward, smooth trajectory.  I'll give you a specific example, but what I would say is that where things have not gone right or they haven't worked out as I would have liked, I've learnt much more from things where they gone wrong, or have been difficult than I have when things have been smooth and just gone in one direction.

So one example I can give you where I had to prove myself, one of my big setbacks was when I applied to be the Pro Vice Chancellor Executive Dean at my previous institution and I didn't get the job. In fact, no one got the job, which I found even more humiliating if I am honest. And then I had to really decide what I wanted to do and whether I wanted that job.

What I did was to get a coach and worked it through. When I reflected back on the process I realised I had gone into that interview feeling really under confident. In my head I knew I could do the job, but I actually had projected without a doubt someone who was uncertain. And in many ways, the main thing I did was to build up my own personal confidence and really think through why I wanted that role, what difference I would make. Looking back, I wouldn't have given myself the job the first-time round.

And I think it's important to reflect that to yourself because actually then you can come through it and out the other side. I did get the job the second time around, I should add. And I did learn a lot from that experience and I've learnt a lot from every setback I've ever had.

And I think one thing I would say that I have learnt is to be myself, to be authentic, and also to remember that every time I have a doubt about something to remind myself that you've been given the job, so you can do it.

I had a fantastic colleague, who told me that he looked in the mirror every day when he was coming into work and reminded himself about how good he was feeling. He said he brushed himself down and reminded himself. I always thought that's quite interesting, just to give yourself some self-reinforcement.

What are the successes so far that you would like to celebrate?

I am proud of so many things about Greenwich. Throughout the year, it will sound quite strange, but actually I felt really lucky to be here. I felt that the challenges that we have faced, have made me really appreciate how fantastic so many of the staff of Greenwich actually are. People have really pulled together and coalesced around the problems and just got on with it in a way that would have been hard to imagine before it happened.

One thing personally I was really proud about was that I've met every single group of staff, apart from one that I was due to meet on the day we had to move off campus. But in my first hundred days I had met everybody, which I was really proud to do, and I'm proud to continue doing a lot of that.

I am personally really proud of the people who worked really hard to support students. And that is with the blended approach to teaching, but it's also all the support that wraps around that. It is the staff in ILS who is providing the digital support, it's the staff in the Library who are still providing academic skills and supporting students throughout and it is staff in Student Academic Services who are still providing counselling and crucial advice.

I think it's that ethos that has been a huge success, which is about putting students at the heart of what we're doing.

Also, there have been fantastic things with staff going back to the NHS, staff who volunteered, staff who donated PPE and the fact we've provided nearly a million pounds of financial support for students. I'm really pleased that we've started to celebrate some of our successes and I think that's something we can really build on. I think that's really important.

I suppose on a personal note, the strategy and refreshing the strategy and the fact that we will have it signed off by the end of April, feels like a really fantastic achievement to have managed to do during this period. For me, that's really important because it's something that I'm very passionate about, to enable us to come out of the pandemic and really challenge ourselves as we go forward.

Finally, I'm really pleased that we've launched the start of the Stonewall accreditation, we're just about to launch the start of the Athena Swan accreditation, and we are also going to start the process of getting the Race Equality Charter Mark. Although I don't think accreditations in themselves are what's important, it's the process, the actions you have to take to get them that start to change the culture. So I'm really proud we’ve started to do that.

As you have outlined in your recent strategy meetings, there is a firm commitment to eradicate the Gender Pay Gap. How are you planning to do this and what progress has been achieved so far?

Just for some background. I sat on Bristol Women's Commission that looked at how to eliminate the gender pay gap across every institution in Bristol. This is hugely challenging, and I wouldn't want to underestimate that for a second,

Our gender pay gap stats, that will be published very shortly, are showing an improvement from last year but in my view, not enough and not quick enough. Currently, what the team are doing is drilling into this because it's really important that we understand where the particular groups of staff that we need to focus on are at.

By putting it absolutely at the forefront in the strategy we'll be held accountable by the governing body and then in turn I can hold the senior team accountable for the work that they're doing. So it does give it a real emphasis.

The thing that is most important is the action plan that we develop from that and I can't do that on my own. I'd be very naïve if I thought I could. I certainly would like to come to the Women's Network and get some ideas from you on what we could focus on first and what would be the things that could make the biggest difference.

We have started some work, as you know. We will begin with Athena Swan charter. By doing that, we can focus on some very specific actions. And we are still signed up to Aurora. And that's really important. I mean, despite COVID we are still committed to that.

What I'm particularly keen on doing is not having hundreds and hundreds of strategies but having very few, and underneath them some very explicit actions so that we can measure ourselves. And if those actions don't work, we can be really honest about that and use it as an iterative process and have a different action that does.

For me we can only close the gender pay gap by engaging with each other and developing action plans together.

In recognition of the impact of intersectionality on BAME women, what is the likelihood of ethnicity being included in the Pay Gap reporting?

There's a number of things there, one is what we are required to publish. So clearly what we are asked to publish at the moment is around the gender pay gap. And that is what we will publish. In the background, I have asked our HR team to also look at our ethnicity pay gap. And then within that is the important issue around intersectionality.

Now, as you probably know, we have two HDI advisers who work with me, Myrtle Emmanuel and Jas Seehra-Pearce, and they're really keen that we look at the issue around intersectionality. They're also working with the HR team to look at that data and analyse it. What we will be publishing into the public domain will be the gender pay gap, but within the university I would like to get to a point where we are able to publish the gender pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap, and also then be able to drill down and look at issues around intersectionality as well.

I would like to get to a point where we are able to publish the gender pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap, and also then be able to drill down and look at issues around intersectionality as well.

How is the University adapting our assessment process to evaluate staff performance – recognising for example, that with academics, some may have been able to publish a lot, while others couldn’t.

It would be very interesting to look at the evidence around that because the evidence is suggesting that people are publishing more across the board than they were before COVID. So it will be interesting to look at what that comes out like.

I think there's two things around that. One is where we are internally evaluating ourselves, there is obviously what we can do to be much more flexible looking at this and recognising individual circumstances. And certainly one of the concerns is when it's left to management discretion, that doesn't always happen. I'm certainly very keen that for the next round that we do actually give people a very clear briefing about expectations to adjust the context given the last year.

Where it's more difficult is around external organisations, for instance REF, and that's not completely in our control. There are adjustments for equality, but they tend to be around maternity leave and specifics. But certainly some of the work we can do around this is lobbying. So we can lobby Research England to do more, for example.

The other thing related to this question. I'm very keen to do it, looking at the recruitment, and our promotional criteria and what we are asking for when we're hiring senior leaders.

Is what we're asking for by default, excluding some people who would be absolutely ideal for the job? We need to have a look at that because I suspect some of that needs addressing as well.

Will the University put in place support for women needing adjustments for the menopause, treating this phase of life as importantly as others (i.e. pregnancy)?

As the question is rightly alluding to, menopause is still a massive taboo in society and the workplace. I joined the session that Maureen Montague was running on menopause which I thought was really enlightening, and it was it was great to hear her experiences.

Raising awareness is really, really important. It’s really important that the awareness is not only raised with with women, but with men as well. We need to do more of that. I gather you are running some more sessions on Menopause during the university's mental health day which is great. I would be very keen to explore with everybody is training for line managers and training around flexible approaches, how they can apply to staff depending on their individual situations.

I'd also be very keen to talk to the Women's Network about other types of support that we could put in place that would make a big difference.

Where I was previously, we had up to three days a year where you could take what we referred to as a “mental health day”, which was a day where actually you didn't have a medical note, you weren't sick in that physical sense, but you needed some time out. Not everyone took it up by any means and nobody abused it, but it did work quite well. I'm just wondering whether there's something there that we could use in this area (the menopause) as well. It would be good to have more of a conversation.

Is the University doing enough to support people with childcare or caring responsibilities during Covid?

There's absolutely, as you rightly say, very clear evidence that it's been disproportionate impact on women and particularly difficult for lone parents as well.

As a university, we did recognise that there would be issues there. And that we did ask line managers to be understanding that some members of their staff might feel under considerable pressure. What I don't know is whether everybody has applied that in the same way. My guess is it hasn't been as consistent as I perhaps would have hoped it would be if I'm really honest.

For me going forward, it's what do we do coming out? Because it comes back to one of your earlier questions, which was about why some people haven't been able to publish. I suspect that's also, to a large extent linked to this.

For me, it's about really understanding the context that people have been under when we're looking at promotion opportunities, when we're looking at next steps, because we need to be to take some of that into account. I wouldn't want to pretend it's easy. I don't think it is, it's been very, very tricky in that sense.

If we don't go into another lockdown again, what would be useful is to have a conversation about what else could we have done to actually support people around that?

We also of course, have students who have caring responsibilities and the last year has been very difficult for them. With this in mind we're opening up the summer fund for students, and that would be to provide financial support for those who can't work in summer due to childcare responsibilities. That's really important to do as well.

What is the importance for the University to achieve an Athena Swan accreditation?

I rather naively assumed we would have the Athena Swan accreditation when I arrived. I have to be honest, I was quite shocked when I discovered we didn't. It was just something I assumed that any university that was engaged in research would have.

For me it is really important to get the accreditation, because it does a number of things.

One it's symbolic. It shows a symbolic and absolute commitment to gender equality and allows us really to celebrate what we're doing, because actually that's part of what you're doing in your submission. You're actually demonstrating what you are doing.

For women, it's important that they can step back and look at what we are doing and look at what they're part of.

It forces you to be very systematic in how you want to address issues. It forces you to have a really clear action plan. It forces you to really think about areas that you really want to dig into and change. Having been involved in Athena Swan where I was previously, what I do know is if you don't actually demonstrate change in that journey, you do not get re-accredited. It's not something that you can just do and then forget about, its an accreditation that you then have to show continuous progression, and that's really important.

Where I was previously, once we'd got the university wide accreditation we then started getting one for each of the different subjects. That proved really challenging, because what we discovered, of course, was that whilst we might be all going along broadly on the same lines, there was disparity and some areas managed to get it much more easily than others. And in fact, we had two areas that did fail to get their accreditation, but in both cases that actually made them step up what they were doing. So that ultimately wasn't a bad thing.

So for me, it's about being able to demonstrate that we're encouraging and recognising commitment to really advancing the careers of women.