Equality Monitoring

• Professorships: The figures from ETH Zurich's Equality Monitoring 2023 show a positive trend for the professorship level (FP and AssP). In 2023, 67% of new hires at professorship level were women. This has a positive effect on the still low total number of women professors at ETH: Compared to the previous year, the figure rose by around 2% and now stands at 22%. Particularly in the departments D-GESS (+6.4%), D-ARCH (+6.1%), D-USYS (+5.6%) and D-HEST (+3.9%), the total number of women professors rose sharply in 2023. The differences between the departments in terms of annual growth and the proportion of women remain large, with D-HEST continuing to have the highest proportion of women professors at 35% in 2023.
  
• Senior scientists and leading scientists: Among senior scientists and leading scientists (SS), all of whom have a permanent position, the proportion of women at ETH has hardly changed in 2023 since the previous year (+0.3%). Compared to the other academic levels, it remains at the lowest point (15%) and has stagnated at this level since 2015. It is worth noting that there are also major differences between the departments here: the proportion of women at D-MATH is 47%, while most other departments have a much lower proportion of women. The D-BSSE has never had a woman in this position since the start of the monitoring in 2006. Similarly, not a single woman has held a permanent position as senior scientist at the D-MATL since 2021.
• Senior assistants and scientific assistants: At the level of senior assistants and scientific assistants (SSA), all of whom have fixed-term contracts, there has been little change in the proportion of women across ETH. It stands at 27% in 2023 and has increased by only +0.6% since the previous year. That said, the fluctuations in the individual departments vary greatly in terms of both annual progression and the proportion of women itself. In 2023, the proportion of women in D-MATL rose by a whole +26.9% to 45% since 2022 (in 2021, the SSA proportion of women in D-MATL was still at 12%). Meanwhile, the proportion of women in the D-MATH fell by -14.4% and now stands at 0% (in 2021, the SSA proportion of women in D-MATH was still at 50%). In 2023, there were not quite as many changes in the other departments. In addition to D-MATL, the proportion of women in SSA positions has also developed particularly positively at D-INFK (+4.7%), D-BIOL (+4.6%) and D-ERDW (+4.4%).
• Postdocs: Since 2022, there has been an increase of +2% in the proportion of women at postdoc level at ETH Zurich in 2023. This is in line with the positive trend observed since 2022 (+2.7% in the year 2022). The proportion of women across ETH now stands at 36%. Compared to ETH as a whole, the proportion of women at postdoc level has changed at an above-average rate in 2023 in the departments D-BAUG (+7.2%), D-BSSE (+6.1%), D-ITET (+4.5%), D-ARCH (+4.3%), D-GESS (+3%) and D-MAVT (+2.7%). At D-HEST (55%) and among extradepartmental postdocs (60%), women are slightly overrepresented at postdoc level in 2023. Compared to 2022, the proportion of women at postdoc level has changed disproportionately negatively in 2023 in the departments D-ERDW (-5.7%) and D-MATH (-3.4%).
• Doctoral students: In 2023, there was a slight increase of +1% in the proportion of women at doctoral student level at ETH Zurich since 2022. The proportion of women at doctoral level at ETH is 35%, with individual departments having already achieved a balanced gender ratio (D-BIOL, D-ERDW, D-GESS, D-HEST, D-USYS). There was a change of +/-1% in women doctoral students in most departments in 2023. The development in the number of women doctoral students in the departments D-GESS (+9.5%), D-MATL (5.1%) and D-BAUG (+4.4%) was particularly positive in 2023 compared to the previous year. In the departments D-MATH (-1.5%) and D-BSSE (-1.4%), the development in 2023 was below average.
• Students: The gender ratio among Bachelor's and Master's students has not changed significantly across ETH in 2023. The proportion of women remains at a low level (women Bachelor's students: 34%, +0.1% since 2022; women Master's students: 32%, -0.2% since 2022). Moreover, since monitoring began in 2006, very little has changed at Master's level: over this period of 17 years, the proportion of women Master's students has improved by only +0.6%, making the Master's level the academic level with the smallest change since the start of monitoring. There has also been little change at Bachelor's level in the same period since 2006 (+4.5%). In comparison to 2022, there were also only changes of +/-1.5% for women students overall in individual departments in 2023. In 2023, the proportion of women students increased particularly in the D-MTEC (+4.6%) and D-BSSE (+3.9%) departments since 2022.

Topic area language

• In 2023, 40 different first languages are spoken at ETH Zurich, with German continuing to be the language most frequently cited as a first language across all levels. 
  
• As was already the case in 2022, Italian is the second most common first language spoken by Bachelor's students and technical and administrative staff in 2023, with almost the same number of technical and administrative staff reporting English as their first language. Also unchanged since 2022, English is the second most common first language from postdoc level up to professorships in 2023. Since 2022, French became the second most common first language among Master's students, overtaking Chinese by 1% in 2023.
  
• After German, the most common first languages at all levels are Italian, English, French and Chinese. At all levels, French, Italian, English or Chinese is the third most common first language.
• The postdoc level is the most diverse in terms of proportion of first languages and also has the lowest proportion of people with German as their first language. The doctoral student level is the most diverse in terms of the number of first languages named: all 40 first languages present at ETH Zurich are represented among doctoral students.
• Both proportionally and in terms of the number of first languages named, the group of apprentices is by far the most homogeneous across ETH Zurich. In 2023, almost 100% of students stated German as their first language, with Italian being the only other first language named.

Topic area internationality

• In 2023, many different nationalities continue to be represented at ETH Zurich. With the exception of professorships and senior scientists, internationality increased slightly at all other levels in 2023 compared to the previous year.
  
• Although the figures in 2023 have hardly changed since 2022, the academic levels of postdoc, senior assistants and scientific assistants as well as assistant professorships continue to have the highest proportions of international researchers in 2023 at 91%, 79% and 81% respectively.
  
• At most levels, there are no major differences between the genders in terms of nationality. Only at the level of Master's students slightly more men than women without Swiss citizenship study at ETH Zurich (6% difference). In contrast, more women than men without Swiss citizenship are working at the levels of senior scientists (7% difference) and assistant professors (8% difference) in 2023.

BSc = Bachelor's students

MSc = Master's students

Doc = doctoral candidates

Postdoc = postdoctoral candidates and research associates II

SSA = senior assistants and scientific assistants (fixed-term)

SS = senior scientists and leading scientists (permanent contracts)

AssP = assistant professors

FP = full and associate professors (permanent contracts)

TT = tenure track

Techn. & adm. = technical and administrative staff

The observation of a decline in the proportion of women on the academic career ladder after graduation is known as the "leaky pipeline". ETH Zurich has recognised this phenomenon and, among other things, has been offering the career programme "external page Fix-the-leaky-pipeline" for young women scientists together with the other institutions of the ETH Domain since 2007.

As is standard practice, new professorships at ETH Zurich are posted publicly. An appointment committee is assigned to assess these candidates. The graph on the standard search procedure shows the respective gender proportions for the various stages of this procedure:

• the applicants for the posted professor positions,
• the candidates invited by the appointment committee,
• the new professors taking up office as a result of these procedures.

More information on the appointment process  

There are also professorships that are not awarded via the standard search procedure. See the definition of new hires of professors

The standard search procedure for professors is not used for assistant professorships of young researchers with starting grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) or the European Research Council (ERC). It is also not used for joint professorships where the other university is the leading house. In special cases, ETH Zurich can also fill professorships by means of a so-called direct appointment. The total number of hires, including SNSF, ERC, joint professorships and direct appointments, is shown in the graph "New Hires of Professors".

More informationon the appointment process and direct appointments

A tenure track professorship includes the assurance that, after a successful tenure procedure, a temporary contract will be transferred to a permanent professorship without any further recruitment or appointment procedure. If academics have performed outstandingly during their tenure to date, they can be awarded a permanent professorship via a direct, multi-stage tenure procedure. The decision as to whether such a procedure is initiated, i.e. whether an assistant professorship with or without tenure track is awarded, lies with the respective department. The performance achieved is evaluated by means of an international peer review process. The ETH Tenure Commission assesses all tenure applications and makes a recommendation to the ETH President.

The figures in the graphs refer to full-time equivalents (FTE) for staff and to individuals (headcounts = HC) for the levels below, i.e. students. The exceptions to this are the graphs about new hires and standard search procedures of professorso: There, HC are counted and not FTE. One FTE corresponds to a full-time position at ETH Zurich.

In some graphs, the departments D-AGRL and D-UWIS are shown. These two departments only existed until 2011 in the period shown, which is why the figures for these departments are only available for the years between 2006 and 2011.

The selection of the department "other" is used if the individuals in question cannot be assigned to a department. This includes the staff units and other school management divisions. The category also includes Competence Centres, affiliated associations as well as extradepartmental teaching and research institutions and projects that are not assigned to a department. The classification is based on the organisation types in the organisation database.

In general, there is still little data available on many diversity aspects at ETH Zurich, as is the case at most other Swiss universities. This is mainly due to issues of privacy protection of individuals, which prevents many of the diversity aspects from being collected as standard.

At ETH Zurich, gender is routinely recorded for all ETH members. The standardised data can only be based on what is legally recognised in Switzerland.
Furthermore, for reasons of comparability with other Swiss universities, these figures correspond to those of the Federal Statistical Office. The Federal Statistical Office also uses the legally recognised binary gender system in its statistics and therefore only the categories of woman and man.
It therefore remains unclear in the Equality Monitoring data how trans, inter, non-binary and agender people are recorded.  

The data visualisations of the interactive Equality Monitoring graphs are based on a Tableau software product. Some of the right-click visualisation options provided by Tableau are not suitable for the data shown and result in an incorrect visualisation. ETH Diversity therefore recommends limiting the visualisation options to left-clicking on the data.