Sapienza regularly draws up its Gender Balance, an analytical document that provides a detailed description of the gender balance for the three components of the student body, academic staff and technical-administrative staff, systematically monitoring the proportion of women for the three components. In particular, according to the most recent data for the 2022-2023 academic year, the female enrolment rate among students is 58,6%, corresponding to 10.636 women and 7.507 men. The gender balance sheet tracks women’s graduation rate. At Sapienza, the share of regular female graduates, compared to the corresponding share of male colleagues, is higher at all levels, with 59% and 64% of them in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees respectively.

The document is edited by a working group comprising lecturers from various fields and technical-administrative staff. The Gender Balance sheet, based on CRUI guidelines, is submitted to the Academic Senate and the Board of Governors for approval.

Gender balance 2023 (summary)

The Gender Balance 2023, now in its fourth edition, is based on 2022 data; where available, more recent data were examined and in some cases the entire previous three-year period was considered.

From an overall point of view, looking at the individual categories - students, lecturers and TA staff - without distinguishing between the different components into which they are divided, the gender balance is substantially unchanged throughout the five-year period 2018-2022.

However, the 2022 data collection shows a significant change with respect to the careers of lecturers, which are notoriously characterised by the so-called glass ceiling: for associate professors, the imbalance between the two genders decreases in 2022 compared to 2020 in favour of female associates. For full professors, on the other hand, the imbalance remains effectively unchanged. There is also a slight decrease in the gender gap in favour of women among PhDs and PhD students, while the gap widens more in favour of women among research fellows in the last year compared to 2020.

As in the previous edition, the document includes a chapter on the use of economic resources in relation to gender, which examines in detail the distribution of salaries by gender, roles and categories. Compared to the previous edition, there is a section on STEM, which is of particular interest for the promotion of women in scientific and technical disciplines.

Gender balance sheet 2023 (in Italian)