Gender equality plans accelerate progress towards gender equality in research

That’s it, Elisabeth!
As I’ve recently read from Creating a more supportive and inclusive university culture: a mixed-methods interdisciplinary comparative analysis of medical and social sciences at the University of Oxford “the implementation of Athena SWAN action plans is associated with increased awareness of gender equality and diversity, efforts to challenge discrimination and bias, visibility of female role models, institutional support for women’s careers, appreciation of work-life balance and caring responsibilities, and new mentoring and professional development opportunities for all faculty and staff”.
Also, in this respect, another article (Advancing gender equality through the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science: an exploratory study of women’s and men’s perceptions) supports this statement as men and women who participated in Athena SWAN acknowledged structural and cultural changes related to three main aspects such as increasing of women’s careers support, more appreciation of caring responsibilities, and also greater efforts were perceived to challenge discrimination and bias.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2019.1603880
https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-017-0177-9