Author: Future Manager Research Center

The different has always been frightening and what is considered foreign intimidates. What various institutions are still trying to do today is to reverse this trend, to consider diversity as a value, because it is precisely from the confrontation with different realities that new opportunities arise. To confirm this, just think that if researchers did not think “outside the box” there would be no innovations and new solutions.

Precisely to combat this mistrust of the different, the Politecnico of Milan launched in 2018 the POP program, an Italian acronym that stands for “Pari Opportunità Politecniche” (“Equal Polytechnic Opportunities”), which deals with enhancing cultural diversity, religion, sexual orientation and, above all, gender equality.

The latter goal is pursued through the Gender POP project, which considers gender equality an indispensable element of growth for a developed and sustainable economy. Precisely for this reason, its purpose is to bring girls closer to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degrees, offering students, doctoral students and researchers an ideal study and work environment, supporting them throughout their training and professional.

The Politecnico of Milan is very sensitive to this issue and the numbers speak for themselves!

The Gender Report drawn up in 2019 shows how wide the disparity between men and women still exists within the university as regards students, teaching staff and technical-administrative staff. In fact, out of a total of 44,012 students, only 14,450 are women, the teaching staff is made up of 1403 teachers but only 403 of them are women and there are only 732 women among the technical-administrative staff made up  of 1233 members.

Precisely the evidence of these numbers pushes the Politecnico of Milan to adopt various actions and measures to promote equal opportunities, thus tracing new goals and points of arrival.