The Gender Gap in Faculty Posts at British Universities

A new study by Times Higher Education finds that women make up 20.8 percent of all professors at universities in the United Kingdom. There are 3,558 women among the 17,145 professors at UK universities. Women are a slightly higher percentage of all professors at universities in England and Northern Ireland but are a smaller percentage of all professors at universities in Scotland and Wales.

When data is examined by individual university, there is a huge gender disparity. There are four universities where women are a majority of all professors: the Institute of Education, Roehampton University, Courtauld Institute of Art, and the University of the Arts in London.

At the other extreme, women are only 7.9 percent of the professors at Aberystwyth University and 8.7 percent of all professors at Bournemouth University. There are 14 other universities in the UK, where women are less than 15 percent of all professors, including the University of Bath, the University of Liverpool, and the London Business School.

Women are 15.6 percent of the professors at the University of Cambridge, 18.5 percent at the University of Edinburgh, and  19.8 percent at the University of Oxford. One quarter of the professors are women at the prestigious London School of Economics and Political Science.