ETH Zurich is making progress in appointing women professors

In its Gender Action Plan, ETH Zurich has committed to periodically collecting data in support of measures that promote equal opportunities at ETH. Specifically, every year as part of its Equality Monitoring, ETH Zurich reports on the development of the proportion of women at the various academic and non-academic levels. The report also documents other diversity criteria such as age and language.

The results of the 2021 Equality Monitoring show that most academic career areas at ETH have not seen any significant new developments. Among students (including doctoral candidates) as well as academic staff, the proportion of women rose by only a few percentage points in 2020 and stayed at a relatively low level (female students = 32.6 percent, doctoral candidates = 34.6 percent, academic staff = 27.4 percent). The proportion of female professors (permanent and assistant professorships) rose slightly from 18 percent in 2020 to 19.6 percent in 2021. Among administrative-technical staff, the proportion of women in 2020 was 43.5 percent and remains unchanged.

For the first time, the new report also includes data on the proportion of women in administrative-technical leadership roles. In 2021, this figure was 29 percent for the Executive Board and central services and 22 percent in teaching and research.

On the right track

There is one figure from the current Equality Monitoring report, however, that is particularly positive: that for newly appointed women. In 2021, the proportion of women appointed to permanent professorships was 44.8 percent, up from 34 percent in 2020: an increase of 10.8 percentage points. This exceeded not only the ETH Board¡¯s goal of 35 percent for newly appointed women at the professor level but also ETH Zurich¡¯s self-defined goal of 40 percent. For assistant professorships (both tenure and non-tenure track), a full 57 percent of all new appointments were women in 2021, up by 17.5 percent compared to the previous year.

Major differences between departments persist

The Gender Parity Index (GPI) highlights that in 2021 (as in previous years), the 16 departments differed noticeably in the proportion of women across the various academic levels. Compared to other departments, the D-HEST, D-BIOL and D-USYS departments boasted a very high overall proportion of women among students, doctoral candidates, academic staff, professors and administrative-technical staff. D-ITET, D-PHYS, D-INFK and D-MAVT remain the departments with the lowest proportion of women across all five groups.

Data on other aspects of diversity

Since 2020, ETH Zurich¡¯s Equality Monitoring has also been collecting data on diversity criteria other than gender distribution development.

Age: One such aspect is the age distribution between genders within academic career stages, from undergraduate studies to assistant professorships. On average, this factor is more or less the same for all genders (in some cases, the age difference is only 0.1 years).

Internationalisation: This aspect of diversity has a relatively good data basis. The degree of internationalisation at ETH Zurich remained very high in 2021. The higher the academic level, the higher the degree of internationalisation. In 2021, this trend increased by a few percentage points compared to the previous year. At 90.5 percent, 77.5 percent and 80.1 percent, postdoc, senior assistant and research staff as well as assistant professorships were the academic levels that had the highest proportion of people from other countries in 2021.

Native languages: In 2021, 41 different native languages were spoken at ETH Zurich, with German remaining the most common one across all academic levels, followed by Italian among undergraduates and doctoral students. Among administrative and technical staff, too, Italian is again the second most common mother tongue; as in 2020, however, English is almost as common as a first language. At the postdoc level and above, English remains the second most common native language. The only new finding was among Master¡¯s students, where Chinese has for the first time replaced Italian as the second most common native tongue.

It should be noted that, at ETH Zurich as well as most other universities, there is still little data on many diversity criteria. This is mainly because most of these characteristics are not usually documented in order to protect individuals¡¯ privacy.