Gender On The Agenda
Issue 1
The Athena SWAN Charter aims to promote gender equality within science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine throughout the UK and beyond. The department’s equality and diversity committee, chaired by Alex Donov and Niloufar Abourashchi, meets regularly and works to ensure that the principles of the charter are upheld.
During my first meeting with Alex Donov, he explained that at UCL Statistics, there are roughly equal proportions of men and women across the BSc and MSc levels. However, from the PhD level onwards, there is an imbalance: the proportion of male students is larger.
To find out more about this imbalance, surveys were conducted among groups of students in the department. I was responsible for the processing and analysis of a survey conducted among a cohort of MSc students at the end of their course. The main tasks were filing the paper survey answers into an electronic data set and analysing this data set. The analysis mainly consisted of trying out different techniques to visualise the data as clearly as possible. In the next Athena SWAN meeting, I will present the results from this analysis.
So far, I have really enjoyed working on the project. It feels as if the work is appreciated and I was given real responsibility, which is very motivating. I have learned a lot in the process, partly because of useful feedback on my work and partly because it was a nice challenge to rise to. I hope to contribute some ideas based on the data in the upcoming months.
Look out for Doranne’s results in a future edition of Sample Space.
The Numbers Game
UCL has long been at the forefront of promoting women within mathematical sciences.
Twenty-five years ago, the department initiated a Celebrating Women in Mathematics day, aimed at encouraging aspiring female mathematicians to study at UCL. With the ongoing commitment of staff and students, this event has run almost every year since, and is now a firmly established annual departmental event.
Past events, including Celebrating Women in Mathematics, have attracted audiences numbering over 300. And the cross-departmental meeting series UCL Women in Mathematical Sciences, which organises several events per year, is also highly subscribed.
The IMSS will enable us to increase our engagement with groups that are under-represented within the discipline, and ensure that UK mathematical science attracts talent that is as diverse as possible.