2024 Social Inequality

Like most twenty-first century institutions, the University of Exeter aims to be equal and inclusive in every aspect of its policies. But does it always succeed? And how can you help to shape policy and/or publicise the university’s policies around inequality?

This enquiry group will investigate the policies currently in place for trying to ensure equality amongst students in the university. It will discuss these policies with a policy-maker in the university’s Equality and Diversity Team and seek to identify areas of strength and weakness. Using these insights alongside workshopping ideas in focus groups and analysing policy documents, the enquiry group will then set out to develop/define new policy in an area it feels could be better.

The end goal is to present a campaign aimed at university leaders using a range of media that could include an informatics poster, a short film, a pamphlet.

Disadvantaged pupils in the South-West are the furthest behind of any region in the country at the end of both primary and secondary school. In 2022, only 37% of disadvantaged pupils left primary school able to do basic reading, writing and maths, compared with 59% of all pupils nationally. Just 18% of disadvantaged students entered higher education by age 19, compared with 45% in London.
As part of this enquiry group, you will identify ways to raise awareness and provide guidance and training about the importance of valuing socioeconomic diversity. What you create could, for example, highlight the experience of what someone from an under resourced background might experience in a workplace or at university (for example, everyday ‘micro-aggressions’ like jokes about clothing, make-up or accent, or exclusionary conversations involving expensive hobbies or holidays). We’d love you to identify a manageable problem and the means to improve outcomes for under-resourced young people in the South West, using your choice of media.
This challenge group will work with the South-West Social Mobility Commission (SWSMC), which has been set up to drive forward transformational change in education and employment outcomes for young people from under-resourced backgrounds in the region. You can read more about the background to the Commission here and here.

Is the Harvey Weinstein scandal indicative of an endemic problem in the Hollywood film industry? How does the Daily Mail’s language position and judge women as bodies? To what extent does the BBC perpetuate gendered assumptions in how it sets the news agenda? How are women portrayed in films and television?

These very diverse and current questions cut to the heart of a gender bias at the media. The task of this enquiry group is to identify where and how media bias operates and address what the next generation of journalists, policymakers, presenters and media executives can do about it.

In Grand Challenges week, this enquiry group will investigate how the media and films shape our perceptions of gender in numerous subtle, often, invisible ways. It will give you the opportunity to draw on recent articles, cutting-edge research in the field, and extensive discussions and analysis in your group. The task is to draw this research together into a campaign, specifically aimed at people in the 18-25 age category highlighting the images and language that define damaging gender stereotypes through the media and/or films. The aim? By highlighting exactly how gender is represented, you will help your target audience to see beyond the myths they perpetuate.

Your product might include the following: a pamphlet, a short film, a website, a poster to showcase your ideas, alongside a campaign. But ultimately, it’s up to you!

 Covid 19 has accentuated the crisis of income inequality and poverty in the UK. There are currently 320,000 people living on the streets. Food poverty has increased exponentially with the Trussell Trust issuing 1.2 million food packs to people in food poverty banks in 2017/18, compared to 41,000 packs in 2009/10. And 135,000 children do not have permanent homes. This enquiry group begins by brain-storming manageable initiatives to create practical solutions/aids for an aspect of poverty; it will then proceed to draw up a plan of action, contacts sponsors and prepare to put the plan into action as a test case. Aspects of poverty that might be addressed could include the following:

• Period poverty: getting sanitary products to homeless women
• Getting fresh fruit and vegetables to people using foodbanks
• Books for people on the streets

It is ultimately up to you though! This is a high-octane challenge that will involve you in a range of activities to develop your creative problem-solving, practical research skills, and strategic planning.

Global Economic Inequality

Environmental change has exacerbated existing inequalities, with climate change hitting many of the poorest people around the world first, and hardest. Weather extremes, floods and draughts, food and water shortages threaten the lives of people in poverty; with different types of health crises, lack of harvest, and people losing their jobs and homes. Recent research estimates that climate change will push another 120 million people into poverty by 2030.

Because of this crisis, affected people need to cope with negative mechanisms causing social inequalities, for example dropping out of school, early marriage, healthcare inequalities, unemployment, poverty, and climate change immigration.

Affected countries do not necessarily have the economic and technical capabilities to overcome all these challenges, without an international support system in place. Students working in this group will consider how these complex challenges can be addressed.