«Status of women faculty» at ETH Zurich
In November 2021 the Executive Board of ETH Zurich appointed seven professors to a commission to investigate the status of women faculty at ETH. Professor Gudela Grote is leading the project.
Purpose
The purpose of the commission is to thoroughly investigate what it means to be a women professor at ETH, what female professors experience at ETH, what support and resources they receive and how they feel about it. The commission wants to dig deeper and discover what obstacles women face and how they can be overcome.
Methods and design
The study will consist of two components below.
A qualitative study (interviews) to investigate those inequities that can be more challenging to detect, for example, marginalisation, isolation resulting from small numbers of women faculty, gender harassment and greater family responsibilities. To reduce bias and ensure anonymity, an external vendor will conduct and analyse the interviews. Furthermore, the interviews will:
- Interview a sub-sample of male professors built with a pair-matching process.
- Include several female professors who left ETH to find out was about their experiences.
- Look at intersectionality in as far as possible and reasonable (e.g., gender & family status & nationality).
- Aim to understand what obstacles female professors face working in Switzerland as well as at ETH, specifically.
- Aim to understand what obstacles female professors face in career progression and how they manage to overcome/work around them.
The commission
Members of the commission:
- Prof. Dr. Gudela Grote
- Prof. Dr. Niao He
- Prof. Dr. Judit Szulágyi
- Prof. Dr. Eleni Chatzi
- Prof. Dr. Manu Kapur
- Prof. Dr. Renato Renner
- Prof. Dr. Nicolas Gruber
Support of the commission:
The commission is supported by the Vice-Presidency for Personnel Development and Leadership and several technical administrative staff members from different departments: