The FLP program – Foster. Lead. Promote. (formerly known as Fix the Leaky Pipeline program) is a career-building program in the ETH Domain that gives young female scientists on the academic career path the opportunity to reflect on their professional situations and to develop a strategy for finding the career path that fits them best. The program – actively supported by all ETH Institutions and the ETH Board – also aims at providing opportunities to discuss alternative career tracks outside the academic system. The target audience of the program are female doctoral students, postdocs and other young scientists in the ETH Domain.
The core elements of the program are coaching groups, courses on career relevant topics, mentoring and networking events. The program aims at a significant increase of women at all levels of the academic career and therefore fix the “leaky pipeline” of women in science.
The FLP program is financed by the six institutions of the ETH Domain and by the ETH Board. It was initiated in 2007 and is now in its 6th round (2025 to 2028), which comprises an extension of the previous activities and some new offers. It is supervised by the Working Group for Equal Opportunites in the ETH Domain and managed by an ETH Zurich and EPFL team.
This graph shows the proportions of women and men at different academic career levels in the ETH Domain in 2019 & 2021. Women are underrepresented in all cases. The term “Leaky Pipeline” stands for the decreasing proportion of women from university studies towards advanced and leading positions in research and science.
