From january 1st, 2008 the federal programme "Equal Opportunities" ist managed by the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS).

• Summary
• Contact
• Steering Committee
• german
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• Publications

• List of courses 2007 (mentoring)
• listed by universities

In 1999 and 2003, the Swiss government devoted 2 x 16 million Swiss francs to the support of gender equality programmes at Swiss universities. The programme’s stated goal is to double the proportion of female professors from 7% to 14% by the year 2006. A steering commitee representing each university, a president and a coordinator (based at the Swiss University Conference) was elected. For the implementation of the programme, specific measures at various levels were established. They are divided into the following 3 Modules:

Module 1 – Incentive system: The 1.10–1.35 million Swiss francs p. a. provided by the federal governement are distributed to the 10 cantonal universities at the end of each academic year according to the number of newly hired full and associate female professors. Allthough the individual university is principally free to decide how to use the financial support in Module 1, recommendations to invest into gender equality activities are being followed.

Module 2 – Mentoring: The money (1.5 millions p.a.) of Module 2 is divided between basic, proportional contributions and projects. Up to now, a total of 4 project application rounds enabled a realization of 53 Mentoring projects of various types. Gender equality divisions have been established with the help of the basic and proportional contributions, coordinating the majority of the projects of Module 2 and Module 3.

Module 3 – Childcare: This module aims to institutionalize daycare facilities at each university and/or to expand existing structures to meet existing and new needs. The money (1 million/year) for Module 3 was divided between projects, basic and proportional contributions in the first period (00–03) of the programme. In order to minimize administrative costs, the project submitting process was omitted for the (04–07) period.

Rector's Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS)
Dr. Gabriela Obexer-Ruff
Sennweg 2
P.O.Box 607
CH-3000 Bern 9
Phone: 0041 31 306 60 23
Fax: 0041 31 306 60 50
e-mail: gabriela.obexer-ruff@cus.ch