75% of Lancaster University Physics Graduates are female!

Lancaster University has recently graduated 11 females out of a class of 15 in the Physics Department. This number of students, who graduated with an MPhys degree, beats a national average of between 10 and 20% of females studying Physics. We are not aware of any other University that has had remotely near this percentage of female Physics graduates before.

Jenny Francis, one of the eleven female students, stated, "Physics is such an exciting and fascinating subject and it is a shame that some students, particularly girls, are put off by it. We never felt there was anything unusual about the high proportion of female students in our class because the course was equally accessible to all of us. Hopefully this will lead to a greater number of students studying the subject and encourage female graduates to become physics lecturers themselves to help end the perceived gender bias."

Lancaster has one of the highest quality Physics Departments in the country with a 5*A research rating (along with Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial) and an 'Excellent' teaching quality grade. This increase in female students is a positive step forward both for the University and industry.

Dr Peter Ratoff, from the Physics Department stated; "Compared with many of the arts and humanities subjects such a female proportion would not be unusual, but in physics it is quite extraordinary."