Broad acceptance of gender equality at ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich first launched its Gender Action Plan back in 2014. This set out concrete areas of action, including a drive to increase the proportion of female students, research assistants and professors. Another of the plan’s objectives is to create a working and learning culture free from any form of discrimination – one that instils an equal sense of belonging in both men and women.

Two years on, Professor Renate Schubert, the ETH President's Delegate for Equal Opportunities, has initiated an evaluation of the progress made to date. Over the past months, she and her team interviewed the heads of all ETH departments, as well as people from many administrative units and university bodies to canvass their experiences of the Gender Action Plan. “Our interviews made it quite clear that the Gender Action Plan has been successful in significantly raising awareness of gender equality issues across the entire ETH”, comments Schubert. “In this respect, broad acceptance of the importance of the topic has been reached.”

Avoiding negative incentives

Nevertheless, it will take a while before the Gender Action Plan has a sustained impact on the number of female students and professors. “Unfortunately these processes tend to take longer than two years”, says Professor Schubert. Even so, the Delegate for Equal Opportunities is already glad to report positive effects on ETH’s culture. One of the findings of the recent assessment is that the Gender Action Plan is still valid and does not need any updating at the moment.

One of the Action Plan’s successes, according to Schubert, is that various departments and administrative units have in recent years implemented measures to improve the balance between work and family life. The Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (D-GESS), for example, pays the family allowances for its doctoral students from a departmental budget rather than taking it from the budgets of the individual research groups. This helps to reduce the negative financial incentive of favouring candidates with no children during the selection process.

Support for parents

The Department of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) has recently set up a family room as a pilot project. This offers parents a stop-gap solution if they have a temporary childcare problem: the family room is set up so that ETH members can work there while their children play alongside them.

Another example is the support tools recently developed by ETH Human Resources to help expectant mothers and their supervisors plan for maternity leave and the period beyond.

Stereotypes and discrimination

The evaluation of the Gender Action Plan, the results of which Schubert presented yesterday at the Conference of the Heads of Department, shows that those departments with a smaller proportion of female students tend to be stronger supporters of equal opportunities measures. That’s only obvious at first glance, according to Professor Schubert. All departments face the problem of a “leaky pipeline” – the fact that fewer women are found towards the top of the career ladder, which accounts for the comparatively small number of female professors. “Hence, all departments need to  commit themselves to a significant amount of equal opportunity measures.”

And there are additional areas where action is required: on the one hand for example teaching, where ETH is keen to ensure that the conditions for studying are equally attractive for men and women. On the other hand, the culture lived out at ETH Zurich matters – not all research groups or labs are free of prejudice and discrimination in their social interaction, warns Professor Schubert.

ETH’s Office of Equal Opportunities (“Equal”) plans to run a series of workshops on dealing with stereotypes, targeted at a wide circle of participants within the university. ETH is also planning an information campaign to foster mutual respect in the workplace. The first “Respect Campaign” ran back in 2004; the new version could address aspects such as attitudes towards gender and towards people from different backgrounds.

“The ETH community is incredibly international, and most research teams comprise members from many different nationalities”, comments Professor Schubert. “We are therefore trying to work out how to create an atmosphere in which everyone is at ease when working and is able to fully develop his or her creative potential, irrespective of their gender or ethnic origin.” This is essential for ETH Zurich and its international competitiveness. The Delegate for Equal Opportunities expects that after another two years ETH Zurich might expand the Gender Action Plan into a broader “Diversity Plan”.