How to improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – Key learnings from a tour of Technical Universities in Europe and the US

Report, 2024

This report is based upon interviews (23 interviewees) about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at technical universities in the United States and Northwestern Europe. The universities are top performing technical universities based on the Times Higher Education ranking of engineering focused institutions. The interviewees are academics researching gender and diversity or staff working full-time with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (any combination of those words or other related terms) at technical universities. Two STEM scholars are included as they provided insights from their perspectives, their experiences of gender equality initiatives and gender disparities in their field. The number of people working in technical universities with gender equality, diversity and inclusion for faculty and research staff varies, in the visited universities numbers ranged from 1 to 17, centering positions that work with these issues the majority of their time, i.e., not including faculty representatives. The universities and interviewees have been anonymized in this report, sharing their region and position.

The report is structured as follows: First, organizational suggestions for Chalmers University of Technology aimed at reaching 40% female research staff in 2029. Second, the main qualitative findings are presented in brief under key findings.  Third, chapters exploring the main findings focused on successful methods and challenges.