DENMARK
12 research groupings across five Danish universities have been selected to investigate and recommend concrete strategies to enhance gender diversity and inclusion in Danish research settings specialising in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields.
A collaboration between the non-profit Villum Foundation, the strategic innovation agency IS IT A BIRD and the Novo Nordic Foundation, the project seeks to address the noticeable disparity in the number of women compared to men who pursue careers in academia, and particularly to senior levels.
It is inspired by a report, Paving the path for a diverse STEM-research environment enabling world class research and education. An anthropological exploration of the potential benefits and experienced barriers of attracting and retaining a diverse talent pool within STEM-research in Denmark, written by Jacob Schjeldrup, Marie Pers, Emilie Baage Stuhr and Louise Vang Jensen from IS IT A BIRD.
According to the report, fixing the ‘leaky pipeline’ of female talent in academia and research is critical for Denmark’s ambitions of being a future world leader in STEM disciplines.
The study points to concrete opportunities for universities to take action to increase diversity and promote better research and education. Such opportunities might include initiatives aimed at reshaping maternity and family support systems, emphasising the recruitment and retention of female staff, or addressing broader cultural shifts within research settings.
According to Susan Wright, professor of educational anthropology in the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University, Denmark’s “awful record of gender inequality at universities is well known”.
Citing figures from the Ministry of Education and Science’s latest Talent Barometer, she said women constituted 56% of masters students and there were roughly equal numbers of men and women PhDs.
“But a gap immediately opened up with post docs (58% men, 42% women) and the gap continued to widen through the career path until women formed only 23% of the professoriate,” she noted.
Wright said the Danish percentage of women professors was similar to the EU average and the picture in Sweden, but “much worse” than other Nordic countries such as Norway, Finland and Iceland.
She said there was a “sad history” of strategies to improve the recruitment, advancement opportunities and working environments for women at Danish universities.
“Most had a burst of initial success but were brought to an end before substantial or long-term transformations could be achieved,” she told University World News.
However, she said the Paving the path report had brought “an immediacy and fresh energy” to the issue.
The need for change
According to statements from the Villum and Novo Nordisk foundations, the number and diversity of the applications received by IS IT A BIRD by the deadline of 4 October showed that the need for change is “widely recognised at the Danish universities, and it holds great promise for the development work that the Living Labs are about to undertake”.
The 12 research milieus participating in Living Labs include: Technical University of Denmark (DTU)-Compute, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science; the DTU Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine; the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University; Globe Institute (Crossfield between Geobiology, planetary research, biology, geology, archaeology, and microbiology) at Copenhagen University; the Department of Green Technology at the University of Southern Denmark, the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, both at Aarhus University, the CAPeX Pioneer Center for Accelerating P2X Materials Discovery at DTU and Aalborg University; the Department of Agroecology and Veterinary Sciences at Aarhus University; and the departments of Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology and Computer Science at Copenhagen University.
The importance of support in producing ‘rock stars’
According to the Paving the path report which informs the project, the Danish STEM research environment is highly cited and attracts many applicants for grants, but is being held back by leaks in the pipeline of female researchers.
In a section titled “Researching the narrative of the research rock star”, which emphasised the need for support for early career researchers, the study found that: “No rock star makes it on their own, and for some talents the path to success is long”.
The report states: “Our deep dive into the everyday lived experience of research talents adds important nuance to this narrative. Across the personal stories shared, researchers emphasise the essential role of support within the competitive research environment, in the broadest sense of the word.
“While academia demands exceptional individual performances, a common belief among talents is that no individual research rock star gets there alone. Even the brightest minds need professional recognition from others, emotional support, mentor guidance and access to networks, to progress in their academic careers.”
When it came to barriers to women and minority groups in science, they identified five that were also believed to be applicable to minority groups.
These barriers include the fact that women (and minority) scientists experience a sense of “not fitting the profile” of a scientist. Women also reported a sense of “not belonging to a group” and being treated differently “because of who they are rather than the work they do”.
Female scientists also lack access to informal networks to understand ‘the name of the game’ and discover that it takes “specific traits to play the game of academia in order to succeed”. Finally, the report found that women had difficulty in achieving a healthy work-life balance.
Alongside the anthropological research, an advisory group representing a broad range of Danish STEM research environments, universities and faculties participated in a co-creation session leading to the identification of five opportunities to repair the leaky STEM pipeline.
These included: recognition of academic capabilities and diversity in the recruitment process; celebrating excellent academic group work; supporting local initiatives with a centralised diversity and inclusion knowledge hub; helping leaders and managers to create and lead inclusive research environments; and levelling the playing field for strategic mentoring among excellent academic talent.
The five recommendations are to be evaluated in the 12 selected living labs which will “supplement the anthropological knowledge with inspirational cases, learnings and experiences gathered and qualified through practice”.
Widespread agreement: something needs to be done
The positive response from the academic community to the Living Labs project suggests that there is widespread agreement that something must be done to improve the participation of women in STEM.
Wright said that if the alliance between the Villum and Novo Nordisk foundations and Is It a Bird is sustained in the long term and succeeds in creating a ‘bottom-up’ approach to changing university environments, she said it would “not only benefit women but all colleagues, and not only STEM but all subject areas. It would still leave untapped the academic potential of ethnic minorities, which does not even feature in these measures of ‘diversity’”.
The President of Polyteknisk Forening – the student union at DTU – Natasha Hougaard told University World News:
“I am really happy that DTU is increasing its focus on women in male-dominated fields. It is important to create awareness about it, because then we attract more women.
“Being a bachelor student of artificial intelligence, I would appreciate having more women as teachers because I feel that it is valuable having women as role models.”
Professor Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, based in the division of chemical biology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, who was the first director of the Genie project (Gender initiative for excellence) at Chalmers, said the project was “an excellent concept”.
Wittung-Stafshede explained: “As a starter … it will stimulate … action … and awareness around Danish institutions. To get a wider effect, communication throughout will be key …. Asking for bottom-up ideas, as they did here, will create engagement. In my Genie initiative we found that supporting people’s own ideas is what generated most action and engagement.”
Drawbacks and recommendations
She said a possible drawback is the short timeframe of only two years. “Not much can really be evaluated or become a habit in that time frame. After four years of running Genie, we were still working to get things ‘into the system’.
“Another drawback is money. There does not seem to be an extra chunk of money that goes into these projects. But money helps (trust me, I know). It kickstarts a lot, and gets more people onboard,” she said
Wittung-Stafshede described the foundational report (Paving the path) as excellent and commended it for listing the issues facing women and minorities in academia – and possible solutions.
However, she said one possible solution that should be also considered is the introduction of reward systems.
“If diversity-gender efforts-results are valued (in rankings, financially, etcetera) at our universities or by funders, more people will follow along and take action. To get real change, we must get leaders on-board pushing for change from the top, in combination with a range of bottom-up efforts,” she said.
Ana Teresa Maçãs Lima, a tenured professor at DTU, told University World News that securing a career in academia was not easy.
“It requires persistence and a lot of sacrifices,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we do it because we love what we do – and that is valid for both men and women. Looking at it from a gender-neutral point of view helps since a lot of people struggle to get tenured.
“But if there is a country where I feel equality is on top of the agenda, it is Denmark”.
Jesper Langergaard, director of Universities Denmark said diversity was an “important priority” for the organisation. “Initiatives seeking to improve diversity in research areas with a weighty imbalance among genders are thus greatly appreciated,” he said.
Source link
credite