%0 Journal Article
%A Armstrong, John Armstrong
%A Sullivan, Alice Sullivan
%D 2026
%J Journal of Controversial Ideas

%@ 2694-5991

%V 6
%N 2
%P 19

%T Has DEI Increased the Representation of Women in Higher Education? A Time-Series Replication Analysis of the Impact of the UK Athena Swan Scheme
%M doi:10.63466/jci06020019
%U https://jci.jams.pub/article/6/2/326
%X Athena Swan is an award scheme designed to recognise higher education institutions’ (HEIs’) commitment to advancing ‘gender equality’. This paper uses time-series analysis to conduct a replication analysis of the relationship between Athena Swan status and both the proportion of women in senior roles and change in the proportion of women in senior roles. A previous study, using essentially the same data set, found that ‘Athena SWAN members showed greater and faster growth in female representations’. We apply time-series analysis methods to show that effects found in this previous study can be explained by two factors: (1) changes in the set of institutions that hold Athena Swan awards; and (2) the fact that it is more challenging to improve levels of female representation when they are closer to 50%. Once we controlled for these factors, we did not find any impact of Athena Swan awards on changes in the number of women in senior positions over the time-period studied. We conducted a power analysis which places bounds on the maximum size of effects which we would be unable to detect. In addition, we find that institutions with a low proportion of women in senior positions are more likely to be members of Athena Swan and are more likely to hold an award.