Home Sustainable Development Goals SDG 5: Gender Equality Goal 5: Operations

Goal 5: Operations

The University’s operational activities play a key role in our approach to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Here’s a wider showcase of our work addressing Goal 5.

UK-Kenya Partnership: Advancing Intersectional Gender Equality
A UK–Kenya partnership led by The University of Manchester, in collaboration with the Centre for Innovative Leadership and Governance, is advancing intersectional gender equality through international collaboration. Bringing together researchers, practitioners and community organisations, the initiative addresses inequalities shaped by gender, disability and socio economic factors. The partnership has co created and delivered the Women’s Strategic Leadership Programme, reaching more than 1,000 people and supporting 24 senior women leaders across five Kenyan institutions and the University of Manchester, while strengthening inclusive leadership and global knowledge exchange.
Female sanitation

We’ve worked with our Students’ Union and current Women’s Officer to initiate and fund a new scheme providing free period products for our students, helping to combat period poverty and ensure sanitation for all.

Gender equality policies

Our Equality and Diversity Policy prevents discrimination based on gender and/or sex.

Our Dignity at Work and Study Policy covers harassment and discrimination against women.

Our Report and Support system addresses alleged cases of bullying, sexual harassment or discrimination.

Gender pay gap

Our Gender Pay Gap report measures differences between the average (mean and median) earnings of men and women who work at our university.

The median gender pay gap (GPG) is 11.8%, while the mean is 17.2%, which is caused by the under-representation of women in senior roles.

We therefore aim to increase the number of women who are senior lecturers, readers and professors (currently 32%) until they are representative of the pool of women at lecturer level (currently 47%).

Inclusive work schemes

We recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work, which can often fall disproportionately on women.

We therefore strive to provide a range of policies and schemes that promote shared caring and domestic responsibilities.

These include our Parental Leave policies, provision of our two subsidised campus nurseries, and our new policy to trial hybrid working, which will support greater inclusion and flexibility for our staff.

See our policies, processes and practices on SDG 5