Efforts to advance inclusive gender equality in research and innovation are often framed through policies, targets and institutional frameworks. Yet the reality inside research environments is shaped just as strongly by culture, leadership and everyday decision-making. Across universities and research institutes, progress depends not only on formal commitments, but on how equality is interpreted, prioritised and enacted in practice.
In this conversation for INSPIRE, Professor Emeritus of Structural Biology at Imperial College London and Senior Strategic Adviser at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI), Stephen Curry reflects on the cultural and structural shifts needed to support inclusive gender equality. Drawing on his experience as the first Associate Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Imperial College London, he discusses how long-term cultural change intersects with practical institutional action.
Culture Change Within a Wider Social Context
Debates about gender equality in research frequently centre on institutional reform. Curry begins by stepping back, placing the issue within a wider social landscape and stressing that research organisations do not operate in isolation from the attitudes that shape the societies around them.
Q: Looking ahead 10–20 years, what major cultural or structural changes are necessary to achieve inclusive gender equality in research and innovation?
SC: “That’s a big ask. As progressive institutions, we should expect universities and other research performing organisations to be in the vanguard of efforts to challenge the status quo, but it would be foolish to assume that they can act alone or are insulated from currents of thought that permeate society. There is still so much to do to wash away centuries of prejudice against women. The attitudes and behaviours revealed in the emails between Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful male associates show that, for all the progress on gender equality over the past few decades, misogyny remains deeply embedded in our society. The work to challenge gender stereotypes has to start right at the beginning – in nurseries and kindergartens – and then extend all the way through the education system.
There also needs to be a particular effort to deal with verbal and physical sexual harassment across all segments of our society – in every workplace and religious, community or cultural organisation – where worldviews that demean and objectify women still find ready acceptance in too many men’s minds. More men need to step up to challenge the behaviour of their male friends and colleagues.”
Leadership and Institutional Accountability
Questions about long-term change quickly lead to the institutional systems that govern careers, from recruitment processes to definitions of merit and the culture of research environments themselves. These are the points at which institutional values are put into action, the pathways that shape advancement, recognition and belonging across the research career pipeline.
Q: What long-term strategies do you believe are most effective for addressing entrenched biases across the research career pipeline?
SC: “The first thing that institutions need to do is to realise that they have to be strategic about addressing biases. They need to put gender equality very explicitly into the institutional strategy and take responsibility for thinking about how this issue is impacted by management decisions at all levels within the organisation. This is not a task to be delegated to a committee with little power or influence. It has to be led from the top and percolate down to everyone with managerial responsibility in the organisation.
Of course, a strategy will soon be perceived as empty if it is not accompanied by action. Institutions should therefore work to create a realistic action plan to address equality challenges systemically (and systematically), one with clear targets and lines of accountability for delivery. Progress against the action plan should be reviewed and reported regularly. This is a non-trivial exercise, one that requires dialogue and negotiation across the institution if it is to work well. The UK’s Athena Swan scheme provides a template that institutions can learn from and adapt to their own needs. It’s not perfect – all such schemes tend towards bureaucracy – but relatively recent reforms have increased its agility.”
Q: In your view, what institutional structures are missing or underutilised that could enable fairer recruitment and career progression pathways?
SC: “There are many but let me just focus on the ones that spring immediately to mind. First, deal effectively with sexual misconduct. This is a genuinely difficult thing to achieve because incidents often involve only the perpetrator and the victim; ascertaining the truth of any claims in such circumstances will always be hard. Institutions need to be transparent with staff about the difficulties involved, but practical ways forward are available. These include communicating as openly as possible that measures have been taken to ensure that perpetrators face consequences for unacceptable behaviour, so as to build confidence in the reporting and disciplinary processes. It is also important to be clear that disciplinary measures will be proportionate to the offence; if victims feel that any transgression might lead to someone being fired, they may be reluctant to make a claim.
Second, we need to restructure parental leave so that fathers are incentivised to share the burden of childcare more equally with mothers. This requires action at a national level, not just at research institutions, because of the multiplicity of employers involved.
Third, I would favour the co-creation with staff of institutional or departmental values statements which can then be used to frame recruitment interviews around how the candidate will add value to the department – across all its important activities. This culture shift can be re-enforced by making interviews non-adversarial and using independent gender equality observers (ideally senior staff) to ensure that all candidates are treated fairly.”
Questions about institutional systems quickly lead to a deeper issue: how success itself is defined within research careers. The language of excellence and merit sits at the heart of hiring, promotion and funding decisions, yet it is often treated as neutral rather than critically examined.
Q: How should institutions rethink or redefine concepts such as “excellence” and “merit” to make them more inclusive?
SC: “It’s not really a matter of rethinking or redefining but of doing some hard thinking about definitions in the first place! Far too many institutions talk about excellence without ever defining what they mean. My own thinking on this has been greatly influenced by a paper from Marieke van den Brink and Yvonne Benschop which asked a range of scholars what they meant by the term excellence and showed that many of the presumptions behind their thinking were strongly gendered. In other words, what many people associated with excellence are attributes that are more commonly associated with men than with women (e.g. being ‘outstanding’ or a ‘strong manager’ or having the freedom to work ‘in excess of full time hours’). It is one of the insidious ways in which gender inequality creeps into the research ecosystem.
If it were up to me, I would banish the use of the word excellence. This is emphatically not about abandoning the quest for people to do their very best work. I would talk instead about the qualities (plural) of research and researchers. This would create space to recognise the many different ways that good work can be done and provide a more level playing field for consideration of the true merits of male and female scholars.”
Q: If you could redesign one aspect of institutional culture to foster justice and inclusion, what would it be and why?
SC: “I would limit size of departments and research teams, and house them in a single building which is itself designed to facilitate interactions between all staff. This should help to foster a strong sense of being part of a community with a collective mission and shared values. The very best researchers will always feel the heat of competition in their research endeavours but are likely to perform better if they see themselves as belonging to a larger, fairer enterprise they can be proud of.”
Rethinking Organisational Culture and Community
Having outlined the structural and cultural dimensions of change, the conversation moves to lived experience and practical action. The focus narrows to what institutions are actually doing on the ground, what has proven effective in practice, and what could help sustain momentum as efforts toward inclusive gender equality continue to evolve across research environments.
Q: From your own experience, can you share one concrete action or practice that you or your team have implemented to reduce bias or promote gender equality in research and innovation?
SC: “There are many different initiatives that could be suggested here. The important thing to realise is that as many of them as possible should be put in place. Tackling gender inequality requires sustained action across the institution. But one measure that is very practical and effective (and linked to the recruitment processes discussed above) is to use departmental staff networks to identify the most promising up-and-coming women working in the fields the department wants to hire into and then getting the Head of Department to write to invite them to apply. This is an effective counterweight to the tendency of men to push themselves forward, for jobs and promotion, while women are often more deliberative about matching their talents to job requirements. It does not mean that different standards are applied to men and women at interview but does help to ensure a larger pool of qualified female applicants.”
Q: Can you point to a specific institution or country that you think has taken effective action on gender equality in research and innovation, and briefly explain what they have done well?
Sc: “I can only really speak for Imperial College London where I worked for most of my career and held the position of Associate Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for six years from 2017 to 2023. In my experience, what is critical for effective action – not just on gender equality, but across the EDI spectrum – is visible, credible and sustained support within the university leadership, starting from the very top. This makes it easier to harness the very real and very widespread ground level support there is for creating a working environment that is fair to all. Imperial is by no means perfect and still faces many challenges on achieving gender equality, particularly at more senior researcher levels. But I have seen tangible progress over the last several years as a result of the university formulating action plans to address equality issues and committing the resources needed to ensure their delivery.
Reflecting back on my experience as Associate Provost, I realised that one of the most important things that I did was to spend time just talking to people about EDI issues. Although talking is often perceived as a substitute for action, I found it immensely valuable to be open to dialogue. This is perhaps especially true for talking with people who daily felt the impacts of inequality and discrimination, and with those less enamoured of EDI policies who were concerned by the tensions that can arise between the drive for equality and the need to preserve freedom of expression and academic enquiry in a university setting. I took my inspiration from the surgeon, health policy adviser and writer Atul Gawande who wrote a wonderful article in the New Yorker on how you change people’s minds: “We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still how the world’s standards change.”
As the interview concludes, Curry returns to the pace of cultural change, emphasising that progress in gender equality is gradual and sustained through continued engagement rather than singular interventions.
SC: “We are talking about culture change, which is always slow. There will always be more to do, but to maintain the momentum for change we should acknowledge and celebrate all steps forward, even if we don’t travel as far or as fast as we might like. I would also strive to get more men involved – there are plenty who are willing. And in the European context, I would suggest that we give gender equality plans real bite by linking progress to access to research funding.”
