Sterling results for gender equality: UCL holds highest number of Silver Athena SWAN awards in the UK

A further four UCL departments recently received Athena SWAN awards for progressing gender equality.

With 26 awards in total, UCL now holds the most Silver awards in the country with 62% of all UCL STEMM departments being award holders.

The latest award winners are:

• School of Pharmacy (Bronze award)
• Department of Statistics  (Bronze award)
• Institute of Global Health ( Bronze award)
• Physics and Astronomy  (Silver award)

The Athena SWAN Charter encourages and recognises commitment to combating underrepresentation and advancing the careers of women in research and academia. It was originally developed for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) but will shortly be extended to all disciplines.

UCL President & Provost Professor Michael Arthur offers his congratulations to the latest award winning departments. "I'm delighted that 4 more departments have been recognised for their activities in removing gendered inequalities. I'm aware of how much work goes into the applications and so I'm grateful to departmental SWAN teams, and the Equalities and Diversity Team in HR, for their efforts in positioning UCL as one of the leading universities for excellence in promoting gender equality."

At an institutional level, UCL has just applied to upgrade its Bronze award to a Silver, aspiring to join only 5 other universities that have accomplished this level.  14 of UCL's departmental Athena SWAN awards are Silver and 12 are Bronze with a further 7 departments having also just applied. If these are successful, UCL will be poised to overtake the University of Oxford as having the highest number of awards in the UK.