Gender Equality Plan

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG, Kew) is committed to ensuring and promoting gender equality, and seeks to identify and mitigate any imbalances.

We align with the Horizon Europe Gender Equality Plan (GEP) mandatory requirements as follows:

Commitment

Kew Science has formally committed to the Athena SWAN principles and has achieved a Research Institute Bronze award. The action plan submitted as part of RBG Kew Science’s application sets out our commitment to gender equality with clear goals, related objectives and action points. 

In addition, RBG Kew has a People and Culture strategy which sets out a vision for diversity and inclusion as one of its six strategic priorities, as well as an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy that reaffirms Kew’s commitment to becoming an organisation where there is not only equality of opportunity, but one that truly embraces diversity and creates an inclusive environment within which people may thrive.

Staff have access to a number of networks within Kew, one of which is the Gender@Kew network which aims to give a forum for discussion to those interested in or affected by issues related to gender balance.

Resource

Kew has a dedicated Head of EDI as well as an EDI committee dedicated to providing trustee-led scrutiny and challenge to all our EDI-related work.   

A self-assessment team was put together as part of the development of the Athena Swan action plan and they will continue to meet to monitor delivery of the Actions outline within the plan.

Data collection and monitoring

RBG Kew monitors equality and diversity through its Diversity Dashboard to allow review of progress made and measure the success or failure of future activities. 

RBG Kew reports annually on gender pay gap information; here is the 2022 report. 

Training and capacity building

Training at Kew is led by the Learning and Development team and staff also have access to training on the Civil Service Learning portal.  Staff have access to training on unconscious bias and Kew has previously held active bystander training.

There are also training courses on offer to support staff at different levels of responsibility (for example, managers and senior leaders), as well as to support specific events such as recruitment, development and appraisals.

Members of the Executive Board receive inclusive leadership training and there is a plan to provide this training to managers across the organisation.

Our staff networks also help to support and promote diversity and inclusion.