Happy International Women’s Day!  Today is all about celebrating diverse, inspirational, opinionated, talented and all-round amazing women- as well as hopefully encouraging people to get involved in the Feminist movement (in whatever way that may be).

I thought it would be appropriate to write a post on why Dundee, and UoD, is a great place to be as a woman or anyone who appreciates the importance of equality.

1.  The University of Dundee, as a whole, has been a holder of the Athena SWAN Bronze Award since 2014.  More about Athena SWAN can be found here, but basically the award aims to encourage the progression of women in academia, particularly in STEMM subjects where historically women have been under-represented.
2. The University also, currently, holds 5 Departmental Awards.  These are within Computing, Engineering, Physics and Mathematics, the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, the School of Life Sciences, and the College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing & Midwifery.
3. The School of Humanities also hopes to submit an application for the Athena SWAN Bronze Award later this year, recognising that issues of gender inequality within senior positions are not limited to STEMM subject areas.
4. The percentage of female professors within UoD is at 19% which, although seems low, is actually the highest percentage in Scotland.
5. On campus there are very active Feminist and LGBT+ Societies, encouraging equality, representation and education.  You can find their Facebook pages here and here, respectively.
6. The Uni is host to 18,000 students from 145 countries, and 3,000 staff from 72 countries- really putting the ‘International’ into International Women’s Day.  This means that the UoD is a highly diverse, multicultural environment where we can all learn from each other! Different perspectives and cultures are all represented within our wee city.
7. This week is Dundee Women’s Festival! All of the events can be found here with this year’s theme being Her- Story and Heritage.  There’s loads going on, ranging from Indian banquets, photography exhibitions and film screenings, to creative writing workshops and artists’ talks!
8. This evening you can march for women’s rights down in the city square!  More details here.

I hope you all are feeling inspired!  If there’s anything I’ve missed out or events that you’d like me to become aware of, please let me know!