None of us are equal until all of us are equal.
Equality is one of the lynchpins of sustainable development as expressed through the United Nations' sustainable development goals.
Achieving Gender Equality has been expressly identified as a critical goal for our world through SDG 5. According to the UN, "Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world." Moreover, reduced inequalities more broadly has also been identified as an urgent goal for humanity. This is identified in SDG 10. According to the UN, "Reducing inequalities and ensuring no one is left behind are integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Inequality within and among countries is a persistent cause for concern."
QS's Equality lens assesses a university's efforts to instill not only an atmosphere of gender equality, but of reduced inequalities more widely - including discrimination based on other personal characteristics such as sexual orientation, disability, race and wealth.
With the same principle in mind as many of the other performance lenses in this ranking, we also take into account performance at a national level. It is our collective duty to ensure that students, who use rankings, get a rounded and realistic view of the equalities environment not only at the university they will study at, but in the country in which they will potentially spend several years.
We aggregate the following data to produce a score: research being done by institutions in relevant SDG's, the operational activities of the institution, student and staff gender ratios, and national-level statistics on equality.
Weight of metrics in Equality:
| Code | Metric | Weight (In the lens / Overall) |
| EQ1 | Research Impact into SDG's for Equality | - |
| EQ2 | Student Gender Ratio | - |
| EQ3 | Faculty Gender Ratio | - |
| EQ4 | Women in Leadership Ratio | - |
| EQ5 | Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy | - |
|
EQ6 |
Academic Equality (Staff View) |
- |
|
EQ7 |
Disability Support |
- |
|
EQ8 |
Equality National Statistics |
- |
EQ1. Research Impact of SDGs for Equality
| Data Point | Description | Scoring |
| EQ1.1 | Research output produced by institutions, classified by Elsevier as research in SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). | A score from 0 to 100 per SDG is produced using this methodology, and then averaged into an overall score, subject to at least two of the four mentioned SDG scores being 5 or higher. |
EQ2. Student Gender Ratio
| Data Point | Description | Scoring |
|
EQ2.1 |
Total number of students in the institution |
|
|
EQ2.2 |
Total number of male students |
The % of non-male students is calculated, and then scaled to a score between 0 and 100. If an institution does not submit data, then the location minimum is checked, if the location has less than 5 institutions in the location, then we use regional averages.
Please see our data appendix for general definitions of students. |
Please see our data appendix for general definitions of students.
EQ3. Faculty Gender Ratio
| Data Point | Description | Scoring |
|
EQ3.1 |
Total number of faculty staff in the institution |
|
|
EQ3.2 |
Total number of male faculty staff |
The % of non-male faculty staff is then calculated, and then scaled to a score between 0 and 100. If an institution does not submit data, then the location minimum is used. If the location has less than 5 institutions, then regional averages are used. Please see our data appendix for general definitions of faculty. |
EQ4. Women in Leadership Ratio
| Data Point | Description | Scoring |
|
EQ4.1 |
Total number of people in leadership positions at the institution* |
|
|
EQ4.2 |
The total number of male leadership |
The % of non-male leaders is then calculated, and scaled to a score between 0 and 100. If an institution does not submit data, then the location minimum is used. If the location has less than 5 institutions, then regional averages are used.
Please see the footnote below for how to define leadership for this metric. |
*The executive leader of the university plus the highest level of university management. To draw parallels from the corporate world, it is is the 'C-Suite' - e.g. the CEO, COO, CFO, COO and so forth. The important point is that these individuals report into the executive manager of the university. In our experience, the total headcount for 'leadership' would not much exceed 10 people.
EQ5. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy
Each institution will be scored on the fullness of their EDI provision. Evidence of the policy is required before any additional points are given for each attribute mentioned by the policy. This will be capped at a certain number, which we will update once we have assessed data breadth and quality.
| Data Point | Description | Evidence |
| EQ5.1 | EDI Policy | URL |
| EQ5.2 |
Groups specifically protected by the policy: a. Age |
URL |
EQ6. Academic Equality (Staff Perception)
| Data Point | Definition | Scoring |
| EQ6.1 |
As part of QS Academic Reputation Survey, we ask respondents about what institution they are affiliated with and three specific questions on to what extent their institution:
|
Institutions which meet the response rate threshold receive a non-zero score for Academic Equality (Staff View) averaged across all responses per question, with all three questions carrying same weight in our analysis. To avoid a low number effect, institutions with eligible but still low response rates are damped on a sliding scale.
|
EQ7. Disability Support
Each institution will be scored on the fullness of their disability support provision. For each question, they will be asked to provide a URL or supporting text as evidence. If accepted, they will received a score for each. The information required is:
| Data Point | Description | Scoring |
| EQ7.1 | Existence of Disability Support Office | URL |
| EQ7.2 | Campus is easily accessible by people with disabilities | Supporting statement |
| EQ7.3 | Access schemes for people with disabilities such as mentoring or other targeted support. Examples of targeted support may include: specialist equipment, for example a computer; extra travel to attend the course or placement because of a student's disability; other disability-related study support, for example sign language interpreters or specialist mentors | URL |
| EQ7.4 | Our university offers on-campus accommodation | URL |
| EQ7.5 | We have a reasonable accommodation policy or strategy for people with disabilities, including adequate funding | URL |
EQ8. Equality National Statistics
We take the score of the country for each of the following points and them average them to create the indicator score. For example, if the university is in the UK, then we take the UK's score for each of these points.
- Gender pay gap from the Sustainable Development Report (scaled to 1-100)
- Ratio of Women in the workforce from the Sustainable Development Report (scaled to 1-100)
- Seats held by women in parliament from the Sustainable Development Report (scaled to 1-100)
- Ratio of Education Achieved from the Sustainable Development Report (scaled to 1-100)
- Palma Index from the Sustainable Development Report (scaled to 1-100)
- Global Acceptance Index from UCLA (scaled to 1-100)