Gender equality
We are dedicated to improving gender equality in the workplace, in study, and in the field of law more generally.
Athena SWAN at UCL Laws
In March 2022, UCL Laws achieved a Bronze Athena SWAN award in recognition of its work towards gender equality.
The award recognises the ongoing role of UCL Laws in improving gender representation, progression, and the working environment for all staff and students, and for identifying and working towards addressing key challenges facing the Faculty.
The Bronze award is the first of three available awards within the Athena SWAN Charter and is the first award made specifically to the Laws Faculty. You can see our application here:
The submission presented an opportunity to reflect as a community on the Faculty’s gender equality policies, practices and culture, and through detailed data gathering and analysis, develop an Action Plan with clear targets to meet the Faculty’s ambitions for equality for all.
UCL Laws has a proud tradition of championing equality and diversity. Our Faculty works together to promote UCL’s founding values of equality and academic excellence among our academics, professional services staff, and students.
We believe that equality and academic excellence are not competing goals to be traded off against one another, but go hand in hand. We cannot be academically excellent unless our doors are truly open to the world’s best students and staff regardless of background.
Action plan
- Addressing award gaps in our student body, promoting diverse post-graduation options, and allocating resources to promote their career development at all levels.
- Embedding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion awareness in all our academic recruitment, appraisal, and promotion decisions, and ensuring adequate training.
- Continuing to support colleagues with caring responsibilities, including adjusting leave polices and output expectations.
- Adopting a tailored approach to workload distribution and ensuring adequate recognition of all contributions, especially voluntary ones.
- Supporting the career development of and fostering an inclusive work culture for our Professional Services staff.
UCL is committed to the aims and principles of Athena SWAN and was one of the first universities to sign up to the scheme. UCL was awarded its first university wide Bronze award in 2006, and has since renewed this award in 2009 and 2012. In 2015 UCL received its first institutional Silver Athena SWAN award which was renewed in 2021. Find out more about Athena SWAN at UCL.
Advance HE’s Athena SWAN Charter was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine) employment in higher education and research institutions. Since 2015, the Charter was expanded to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL), and in professional and support roles, and for trans staff and students. The Charter now recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women.
100 Years of Women in Law
In 2019, UCL Laws launched an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 - which paved the way for women to become lawyers for the first time – and recognise UCL’s important role in the changing attitudes that enabled progress to occur.
Read about the inspirational women we featured in the 100 Years of Women in Law campaign.