How the Student Project House works to increase the female ratio

At Student Project House (SPH), we are proud of our vibrant community - but we also recognise where we need to do better. Like many organisations in the field of innovation, we’ve long faced a challenge with a low female ratio among our students.

We believe that a more balanced and inclusive community with diversity amongst all areas from gender to study degrees and cultures, leads to stronger collaboration, richer perspectives, and better learning outcomes. That’s why we’ve made it a priority to work on that topic.

For the Open Days 2025, we adjusted our language, adapted our offer, and focused on the feedback that female students gave us. We also included Andy Pawsibility, a fortune-telling panda in our campaign. The LLM chatbot panda helps students take their first step. Instead of asking students to fill out forms, Andy simply listens, writes a letter from their “future self,” and suggests three concrete next steps. To make the idea tangible, Andy also appeared as an origami flyer. Students could fold the flat paper into a little panda — a symbolic first step into SPH’s maker spirit. It turned a simple flyer into a small act of creation and curiosity.

And it worked (yay!) - the two Open Days in 2025 had an average of 47 percent of participants being women, the highest number since we began tracking and well above the average female students at ETH of around 35 percent. In total, 837 students participated at the Zentrum Open Day and 540 at the Hönggerberg Open Day. Looking at the development over the past few years, the SPH Zentrum Open Day saw female participation move from 28.2 percent in 2023 to 40.1 percent in 2025. At Hönggerberg, the numbers went from 43.2 percent in 2023 to 56.7 percent in 2025.

These differences partly reflect the study fields of students visiting each campus. Hönggerberg hosts more Life Science students and the Architecture Department, fields where female representation is higher than in other ETH disciplines. This means that campus-specific trends can amplify female participation rates, but the overall rise in 2025 clearly indicates that SPH strategies to make the first step more accessible are having an effect.

In general, we’ve also refreshed our visuals and content, and placed more emphasis on curiosity rather than ideas - because curiosity feels open-ended, playful, and less intimidating. Many students, especially women, hesitate to present their ideas because they fear they’re not “ready” yet. By focusing on curiosity, we lower that first barrier. Our website now mirrors this philosophy: sph.ethz.ch makes it easier than ever to get started.

The new Makerspace and Life Science Lab overview helps visitors explore what’s possible — from 3D printing and electronics to creative crafts. We already offer textile work, and plan to expand that area while exploring new topics such as jewelry making and leatherwork to attract even more diverse makers.

To be clear, expanding into areas like jewelry or leatherwork doesn’t imply we think these topics appeal to only one group. Women at SPH are active across all areas of making, from electronics and robotics to biotechnology and hardware development, and our goal is simply to open up more pathways that welcome diverse skills and interests.