Gender Equality

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UCL believes that universities seek to generate and apply knowledge in order to transform society. Men are no better than women in doing this. Yet at UCL, as at other universities, the number of women pursuing academic and clinical academic careers declines with seniority. For example, at UCL the proportion of female professors is 22.1%.

UCL has a long history of being at the forefront of equality. It was founded on ideas that were radical at the time and we have never wavered in our ambition to be loyal to our founding ethos of egalitarianism and inclusivity. UCL’s goal is to achieve a 50:50 split in the proportion of women and men in senior roles.

The Academic Careers Office therefore seeks to take positive action to achieve this goal by encouraging and supporting women in their academic and clinical academic careers.

Athena SWAN

The Athena SWAN Charter scheme recognises and celebrates good employment practice for women working in science, engineering and technology in higher education and research. It aims to assist the recruitment, retention and progression of women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) and to promote good practice.

UCL is a Bronze Award holder overall, two units within SLMS (Psychology and Language Sciences and the Laboratory for Molecular and Cell Biology) hold Silver awards and the Mental Health Sciences Unit holds a Bronze Award. You can find out more about this and read their successful applications on the UCL Human Resources website. In response to the Chief Medical Officer’s announcement that future NIHR funding will be linked to gender equality, SLMS is now engaged in an ambitious plan for all Divisions and Institutes within SLMS to achieve Silver status by 2014.