Fourth Gold Athena Swan award recognises UCL’s commitment to equity and inclusion

UCL’s commitment to gender equality has been recognised in the latest round of Athena Swan awards, where it gained a gold for Chemical Engineering, increasing the number of top-rated departments.

Inequalities in career progression and pay still exist for women in UK universities and research institutes. The Athena Swan charter provides a framework for higher education institutes to improve gender representation, progression and the working environment for all staff and help them to address inequalities.

In 2023, UCL’s Chemical Engineering department received a Gold award for the first time, having held silver awards since 2009. Its award recognises the department’s ongoing commitment to championing initiatives that promote inclusivity and gender equity.

It brings the number of gold departmental awards at UCL to four, joining Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Institute for Women’s Health and MRC Lab for Molecular Cell Biology. They are among only 22 university departments across the UK to hold gold Athena Swan awards.

““These latest awards illustrate UCL’s founding commitment to equity and inclusion and evidence how we are embedding best practice across the university.”

The department’s Deputy Head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Professor Panagiota Angeli, who led the submission, says: "Equality and inclusion is the backbone of our department, it is part of our ethos, and we will continue to strive towards ensuring that all members of the department feel included and appreciated, and that we have the policies and procedures in place to monitor this."

Over the next five years, priorities for the department include to resource and champion inclusivity and gender equity initiatives and role-model best practices; enhance its support to Research Fellows for their career progression; maintain high proportions of female taught students and further increase the number of female researchers and academics; support the continual improvement of the performance of female and male BAME students; and support the UCL and sector community with gender equality and inclusivity initiatives.  

UCL now boasts a Silver institutional Athena Swan award and 51 departmental awards, icluding Silver awards for UCL Division of Biosciences and UCL DIvision of Infection & Immunity. The Departments of Information Studies, Science & Technology Studies and Institute for Global Health also received awards for the first time in the 2023 round.

“These latest awards illustrate UCL’s founding commitment to equity and inclusion and evidence how we are embedding best practice across the university,” adds Tom Glynn, UCL Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Manager.