Somewhere in a university shared drive, there is probably an Athena Swan action plan that took months to produce, drew on years of data, involved hours of unpaid or under-recognised labour, and identified inequalities that everyone agreed mattered.
The uncomfortable question is not whether that action plan was perfect. It is what happened next.
Before we broaden inclusion, what happened to the evidence we already collected?
Did the recommendations lead to meaningful change? Were workloads redistributed? Did promotion pathways become fairer? Were inequalities reduced? Or did the action plan join countless other well-intentioned documents that generated evidence, secured approval, and then quietly lost momentum?
New approach, same problem
As universities move from targeted equality frameworks towards broader models such as Advance HE’s Inclusive Institutions Framework, the sector risks drawing the wrong lesson from the last two decades. The IIF is now live, with Advance HE sharing early learning from its pathfinder institutions and inviting a further cohort to join in September 2026.
That question is harder to avoid as the sector moves on. The shift towards institution-wide approaches is understandable. Many colleagues are weary of compliance-heavy processes, duplicated reporting requirements and equality work that can feel disconnected from everyday decision-making. The language is changing too. Universities increasingly talk about belonging, culture, wellbeing and institutional experience rather than equality, diversity and inclusion alone.
There is much to welcome in this evolution. Inequality is rarely experienced in neat categories. Students and staff do not live their lives through separate institutional workstreams. A more holistic approach could move inclusion away from specialist committees and into the fabric of institutional life.
Broader does not automatically mean stronger
Part of the appeal of newer frameworks rests on dissatisfaction with what came before, particularly Athena Swan. That dissatisfaction has merit. Athena Swan could be bureaucratic, labour-intensive and uneven in its effects. At its best, it prompted honest reflection, data-led action and meaningful cultural change. At its worst, it became a technical exercise in submission-writing, carried by small groups of committed colleagues doing disproportionate institutional housework.
Yet even at its most frustrating, Athena Swan did something important. It created visibility. It required institutions to gather evidence, interrogate data, identify inequalities and commit publicly to addressing them. It was far from perfect, but it made it harder to pretend there was no problem.
So, if inequalities persist after more than two decades of equality frameworks, should we conclude that those frameworks were too narrow? Or should we ask whether institutions were willing and able to act on what they revealed?
The distinction matters
Evidence alone does not redistribute workload. Action plans do not challenge power. Institutional self-assessment does not automatically lead to institutional action. A framework can identify a problem; it cannot make an institution care enough, or resource itself well enough, to solve it.
This matters even more in the current financial climate. Recent Universities UK survey data reported that 79 per cent of universities had pursued voluntary redundancies over the last three years and nearly 80 per cent had implemented hiring freezes or recruitment pauses. It also identified cuts to student bursaries, scholarships and academic research activity. Inclusion infrastructure is therefore being reshaped within a wider thinning-out of institutional capacity.
At the same time, EDI is not simply being quietly deprioritised. It is also facing active resistance. Recent UK reporting found that more than a third of HR leaders had faced opposition to EDI initiatives in the past year. In that context, the shift to softer or broader language may sometimes be pragmatic, but it also raises questions about what becomes harder to name, evidence and defend.
This is not just about HR structures or committee terms of reference. It is also about knowledge, representation and what universities choose to sustain. The threatened closure of Black studies provision at Birmingham City University illustrates how financial decisions can intersect with race, curriculum, staffing and whose knowledge universities choose to sustain.
Care and capacity are not the same thing
A university can continue to value inclusion while reducing the specialist expertise, leadership and institutional memory needed to deliver it. On paper, functions may be merged, renamed or mainstreamed. In practice, the people who collect and interpret data, support managers, challenge complacency and maintain momentum may simply disappear.
The work does not vanish. It becomes dispersed. Responsibility moves from identifiable teams to already overstretched colleagues. Accountability becomes harder to locate. Problems become more difficult to raise, monitor and resolve. This may not represent a deliberate retreat from inclusion. It may reflect genuine attempts to simplify structures or integrate work more effectively. But intentions are not outcomes.
A whole-institution approach can quickly become a no-one-in-particular responsibility.
That is the central risk facing the IIF. Not that it is misguided in principle, but that its breadth could make accountability easier to dilute. The IIF may well prove to be a more mature and effective framework. But its success will depend less on its design than on whether institutions are prepared to act on what it reveals.
If the IIF is to succeed where previous approaches struggled, it needs to answer difficult questions. Where will responsibility sit? Who has authority to act? How will progress be measured? What happens when evidence shows persistent inequalities? What resource will support change?
The answer cannot simply be broader language or a more holistic framework. It must be visible ownership, protected capacity and meaningful accountability.
From evidence to transformation
The sector is right to want inclusion work that is less fragmented and more embedded. But embedded must not become a euphemism for invisible. We should be wary of assuming that the next framework will solve what previous frameworks exposed.
The problem was not that universities lacked evidence. In many cases, they collected an extraordinary amount of it. The problem was that evidence too often stopped short of transformation.
If we cannot answer what happened to the evidence we already collected, the risk is that we mistake framework fatigue for framework failure. We move on before we have acted, replace accountability with aspiration, and convince ourselves that a new framework will succeed where old evidence was ignored.
