The world celebrates the International Women’s Day today, an excellent opportunity to reflect on the progress to be made in the area of gender equality. To mark the occasion, we interviewed Skerdilajda Zanaj, Gender Equality Officer at the University of Luxembourg who discusses the underrepresentation of girls and women in research and leadership positions. She highlights some of the most prevalent challenges and what can be done to help overcome them.
The challenges of Women in Academia are multi-faceted. What, in your opinion, are the main ones and why?
Skerdilajda Zanaj: There are many challenges and striking differences across countries and across different research fields. The latest figures by Eurostat Women in Science show that in developed countries, women are unequally represented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculties. A study called Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students shows that STEM faculty members, both men and women, hold unintentional biases towards women. This undoubtedly contributes to gender inequality in professorial positions, since these biases affect recruitment and promotions. For instance, a study called How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science found that during recruitment in maths-related tasks, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women.
A second issue that I would like to mention is the unintentional biases held among parents. A recent study Born in the Family: Preferences for Boys and the Gender Gap in Math shows that parents believe boys are more adapted for STEM fields than girls. It is well known that parent expectations crucially affect the choice of studies by their daughters, implying that gender inequalities among bachelor students in STEM fields originate from parents’ beliefs and gender norms.
Also, all preliminary studies show that the COVID-19 pandemic is aggravating and accentuating gender gaps. Home schooling combined with rigid deadlines are negatively affecting the number of research papers written by women. I wonder whether the series of COVID-19 policies that we have observed across EU countries are actually gender proof.
It has been previously shown that when young women decide to pursue an academic career, there is a clear distinction between the careers women pick based on gender beliefs. What can society do in this matter?
Indeed, there exists horizontal segregation on the choice of field of research. A study of 2017 shows that girls hold biases about what a girl can do and what a boy can do at the age of 6. Girls become less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender. This means that beliefs about the educational outcome and the consequent study choices are formed way before a young girl or boy enters the University. We need to change this inefficient allocation of resources by rethinking the way we teach and what we teach from the very beginning, at the age of 4, when kids start to go the school. When I visit high schools to speak to students about gender inequality in Academia, I observe that girls and boys know nothing about it. This is a clear sign of how gender norms are profoundly unintentional and implicit. High school pupils start being aware of this when they get to University, and by then, they are unprepared to deal with it.
Female researchers are generally underrepresented in leadership and research. What can be done to encourage positive changes in relation to the low representation of women in leadership and research?
The problem is generally the leaky pipeline. The higher we climb in the academic career, from bachelor students to full professors, the smaller is the number of women. As a consequence, the smaller is the number of women leaders in academia. We can only improve the situation if we first understand and then improve recruitment and promotion schemes.
Men play an important role in advancing gender equality. What are the actions that men can take to support women’s rights?
Men obviously play a crucial role in advancing gender equality. In my opinion, we can only help to close the persistent gender gaps when men are entirely on board and convinced that gender equality benefits us all, they must be the agents of change. Improving gender equality is not in any sense about pitching women against men. Gender equality is not about taking from men to give to women. It is about social, economic and political equality — fighting unintentional biases to provide the right opportunities to everyone, girls and boys, men and women. Men should question stereotypes and harmful gender norms in everyday life, within the family and workplace. As an example, sharing childcare responsibilities equally with their female partner helps advance gender equality in Academia.
Last year, the University of Luxembourg conducted a gender equality survey. What are the main findings?
The University strives to be an inclusive place to work and study. We are honestly committed to providing equal opportunities to all genders. This is also a strategic objective of the University.
This is the reason why we decided to conduct an audit to identify challenges related to gender inequalities. The participation rate in the audit was 30% of the total number of staff members. We find persistent and large gaps in perceptions, especially among academic staff members. For instance, a large majority of academic staff members perceive a large advantage of men in career advancement and access to power.
What are the next steps in terms of progressing to gender equality at the University?
The Gender Equality Committee is working actively for the last 6 months to propose a Gender Equality Policy with the aim of improving and possibly closing many of the existing gender gaps in the coming 3 years. The policy will have a holistic approach covering areas such as awareness, gender equality in staff composition, workplace climate, work-life balance, but also teaching and research. The purpose is to guide our community towards a more gender-equal climate.
© Photo: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels