8 March 2023 | Today, we are celebrating International Women’s Day. In 2023, women remain underrepresented in many ways, and – let’s face it – as universities of science and technology, we in particular have still a lot of work lying ahead. The good news is: things are moving. Maybe not at the pace we would like them to move, but still. Below, a biased and far from exhaustive compilation of news, events, initiatives, and statistics providing a small glimpse into what is going on at our six universities and their activities around gender equality.
On 11 May 2023, Silvia Lenaerts will become rector magnificus at Eindhoven University of Technology, the fifteenth since the university’s founding. And the first woman to hold this position at any university of technology in the Netherlands. “My feelings about that are mixed,” she says firmly. “It’s incredible and I’m very happy about it, but to be the first woman after all these years, that’s very telling. I was the first woman when I started work after completing my studies in Chemistry. Throughout my career I’ve often been the first or only woman. And now it’s the same again.” She emphasizes the necessity of TU/e’s Irène Curie Fellowship program, which prioritizes women candidates when academic vacancies are being filled. “There’s still plenty that needs to be put to rights, so it’s important that TU/e is working on this.”
Read the full article on TU/e’s website
Photo: Photodette
At EPFL, you are currently able to admire stunning portraits and fascinating stories of seven EPFL women working in STEM. For the past four years, Italian biologist and photographer Elisabetta Citterio has traveled the world to meet leading women scientists in the field of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). She has produced a gallery of portraits recently enriched with seven new faces, one from each EPFL faculty and college, to be discovered from March 6 to 19 at EPFL’s Rolex Learning Center. In total, she has photographed and interviewed more than forty-five women scientists from twenty-two renowned scientific institutions in nine countries. The motivation behind the STEM passion project comes from the fact that just one-third of the world’s researchers are women, according to UNESCO sources mentioned by the photographer.
2022 was an important year for École Polytechnique as it marked the 50th anniversary of women being admitted to the school. École Polytechnique commemorated this anniversary with activities throughout the year, which culminated in a closing event featuring Élisabeth Borne, Prime Minister of France and a Polytechnicienne herself.
“Over the past 50 years, the graduating classes (of École Polytechnique) have been partially feminized, but we are still far from achieving this goal,” declared Élisabeth Borne. Eric Labaye, the president of École Polytechnique and Institut Polytechnique de Paris, also emphasized in a speech that “the School wishes to be even more mixed, and is not satisfied with the number of women in the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program today.” “École Polytechnique is aiming for 30% of women in its education programs by 2026 and 40% of women in terms of recruitment among professors and researchers, given that 45% of the members of the Executive Committee of École Polytechnique are already women,” said Eric Labaye.
Read the full article on École Polytechnique’s website
Photo: École Polytechnique
The 8th of March is an official holiday in 26 countries worldwide. Only slowly, Germany is following suit: Berlin established the day as a statutory holiday in 2019 and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will do so in 2023. Even if this celebratory day does not happen to be an official holiday in Bavaria, the Technical University of Munich is celebrating it with a range of events. The motto is “Career Paths of Strong TUM Women” and it is indeed a motto that packs a punch: Participants get to meet women who carved their very own path at and through TUM, visit their workspaces, and listen to their stories. With a nod to Equal Pay Day on the 7th of March, there is also the option to join an online Money Talk, run by a financial advisor specialized in wealth building for women.
DTU recently hired Deniz Atan to consult the university on its effort to become more diverse and inclusive. In this interview, Deniz talks about what diversity, equality, and inclusion mean and why DTU must be successful in this area. He says:
“[…] We can look at ‘academic housekeeping,’ where women and younger employees take on more community-oriented tasks, which don’t carry very high academic value since academic assessments typically reward individual tasks. […] We often see an unequal division of labour for which men don’t have an eye. It’s rarely with ill will or bad intentions. This is typically due to privilege blindness and a lack of understanding of the situations in which certain biases can take effect. As a man, you should be aware of your privileges and the bias mechanisms that can arise in different work situations. I am consciously speaking to men because we men shouldn’t place the responsibility for equal division of labour on women alone. Several universities are starting to change their accreditation practices so that community-oriented tasks have a higher value, as they are also crucial for running a healthy and productive research environment.”
Read the full article on DTU’s website
Photo: Haseeb Ahmed
In the last President’s Report (June 2022), the Technion took stock of its efforts to improve gender representation at all levels. And while there is still work to be done, quite some progress can be spotted: In the 2021-2022 academic year, the Technion welcomed a record number of women in senior academic positions. A dedicated committee has examined gender representation of women in the senior academic faculty, committees, and management, and focused on aspects that can be changed in the near-term: increasing the number of women candidates for faculty positions, increasing the number of women in management positions, on committees, and other key positions, and improving the organizational culture to prevent unconscious biases.
The effort is also evident on other fronts: Female representation has risen to 40% in key committees responsible for senior appointments, promotions, and tenure. It also increased among students – 44% of the students who began their studies at the Technion in the last academic year were women, and the total percentage of undergraduate students increased to 42%.
