The Technion Office for Diversity and Inclusion was established in June 2022 with the goal of promoting human diversity and nurturing fair gender representation at every level of the institution, while safeguarding quality and egalitarian academic standards.
Human diversity is important for enhancing creativity and innovation within the Technion itself. However, given Technion’s considerable impact on Israeli society, its importance goes well beyond the campus. Diversity at the Technion directly affects diversity in the Israeli high-tech industry; it helps in the development of human capital and of social and intellectual leadership in the spirit of Technion’s vision throughout Israeli society.
Recently established, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion is focusing in its first year on formulating a coherent institutional vision about gender equality and other aspects of diversity and inclusion, on developing a strategic plan for its activity, and on better integration of the many different Technion initiatives and activities aimed at advancing diversity, equity and inclusion. At the same time, the office continues to implement recommendations made by the 2020 Technion Ad Hoc Committee for Gender Equality that examined ways to increase the representation of women in Technion senior academic faculty, influential committees, and management.
Gender Diversification
Currently, women are still underrepresented among the senior academic personnel in many of the Technion faculties. Overall, the proportion of women faculty continues to increase slowly but steadily, reaching 20.5% in October 2022. The representation of women at the level of full professors has increased significantly to 16% (Figure 1). The major challenge in this respect is to reach a steady rate of >25% women in the recruitment of entry level tenure track positions.
Unlike women’s representation rate in the senior academic faculty, the representation of women among our student body has dramatically improved in recent years. The overall percentage of female undergraduate students continued to rise, from 40% in 2021 to 41.5% in 2022. This upward trend continues into 2023, in which female students constitute 46% of new admissions to the Technion. As for the graduate student body in 2022, female students comprised 38.2% of all master’s students and 44.6% of all doctoral students (compared to 37% and 44%, respectively, in the year before). The distribution of women across the different faculties is highly uneven.
In order to address the low representation rate of women, especially in the high-tech oriented faculties, a comprehensive plan continues to be implemented. The various activities are directed at all stages of the academic career. As a technology research institute founded almost entirely on the STEM disciplines, the Technion faces unique challenges. Only a small proportion of female high-school students graduate with high levels of proficiency in math, physics, and computer science. Lacking appropriate high-school credentials, a girl would have little chance of continuing on to higher education in a STEM field. Thus, a major challenge is to help increase the pool of high-school students with the appropriate credentials while reaching out to all candidates who have the required qualifications.
One example of activities aimed at these goals is the TechWomen Event (supported through the Rosalyn August Girls Empowerment Mission), which this year brought to the Technion 700 outstanding high school girls for the purpose of exposing them to the beauty of science and engineering and to the ample opportunities for interesting and rewarding careers that STEM studies can afford them.
Another example of an activity that took place this year is bringing middle-school educators (homeroom teachers) to the Technion in order to expose them to the beauty of the scientific and engineering professions, to possible career tracks and to female role models from academia and industry, and to turn them into agents of change who encourage middle-school female pupils to choose a science-oriented curriculum in high-school. This event was conducted in collaboration with a high-tech company (KLA) and the Ministry of Education and was hosted by the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
A major blind spot that we have regarding women’s academic career track is the stage/period between the end of their PhD and the application for a tenure track position. We do not know how many of Technion graduates pursue a postdoctoral training and how many of them apply for a tenure track position. We do know however that this is the stage in which the representation of women drops dramatically. It is therefore our goal/interest to fill in this gap in our knowledge by systematic data collection.
Promoting Equal Opportunities for Minority Groups
Even as we welcomed the first Arab women to the Technion faculty in 2022, gender disparity in the senior academic faculty coincides with a much greater underrepresentation of the Arab community (less than 4%). We aim to reduce this underrepresentation, which likely reflects a combination of cultural, societal and historical factors.
In contrast to their percentage in the senior academic faculty, the representation of Arab minority students among Technion undergraduate students exceeded 25% in 2022; and their proportion in the large high-tech oriented faculties of Computer Science and of Electrical and Computer engineering was around 30%. In 2023, Arab representation amongst Technion’s newly admitted students has reached a peak of 30%.
The challenges concerning our Arab students include: the facilitation of academic achievements and reducing dropout rates; increasing the sense of belonging to the Technion community; increasing the number of Arab students that pursue master’s and doctorate degrees; supporting the integration of students approaching graduation into the job market via the Career and Employment Counseling Unit; and strengthening the social and collegial connection between Arab and Jewish students.