Equality Monitoring

Swansea University believes in equality of opportunity and aims to provide a working and learning environment that is free from unfair discrimination, which enables staff and students to fulfil their personal potential.

Equality monitoring data has been requested from staff and students across the UK for many years, for four protected characteristics; Age, Disability, Race and Sex (previous known as Gender).

The Equality Act 2010 introduced five new additional protected characteristics; Gender Reassignment, Marriage and Civil Partnership (staff only), Pregnancy and Maternity, Religion and Belief, and Sexual Orientation. It is a legal requirement, as part of the Public Sector Equality Duty in Wales, for the University to monitor against all protected characteristics, and this is reflected in the Strategic Equality Plan 2024-2028 / Cynllun Cydraddoldeb Strategol 2024-2028.

All information provided through equality monitoring is treated with the strictest confidence and is only ever published, in reports for example, in an anonymous format. 

Why is monitoring important?

Equality monitoring is very important, for several reasons:

• through annual reporting, it allows us to note trends and changes over time
• it helps to inform policies and procedures
• it shows the breakdown of students at the University, and helps to ensure that everybody is well represented, for example; in Committee membership

Although it may not seem that this information is relevant to your employment or studies, it helps the University improve various initiatives, communication methods, projects and more.

What's it got to do with you?