“Not a goal that everyone takes higher education”

Not everyone should take higher education, but every person should have equal rights to education. We need to keep those two ideas in our minds at the same time, believes political scientist Ingvild Reymert.

Most read articles in 2021

Check out our top five most read news articles about COVID-19, the recruitment of top researchers, foreign researchers in Norway and a technology professor with two gender equality awards.

Sociology: a women's subject with low-status

According to the science hierarchy, sociology has low status whereas mathematics has high status. Both this hierarchy and the peer-review process have characteristics that structurally downgrade women’s position in academia.

Winner in Brussels

A Norwegian gender equality committee won the poster competition at a large EU conference held recently in Brussels. The winning poster was “Mission: Gender Balance”.

New tool for gender equality

Uppsala University in Sweden is proud of its new tool that reveals gender balance at the touch of a keyboard. Gudrun Schyman of the Feminist Initiative is positive towards the tool, as are Ministers Tora Aasland and Audun Lysbakken. Norwegian educational institutions, however, seem sceptical.

Uncertain future for the Research Council’s gender initiative

The Norwegian Government’s national budget for 2012 does not allocate any funding to the Research Council of Norway’s initiative on Gender Balance in Senior Positions and Research Management (BALANSE). Executive Director Anders Hanneborg confirms that the initiative is in danger of being discontinued.

More money for networks

Norwegian researcher networks in fields with an uneven gender balance can once again apply for financial support from the Committee for Gender Balance in Research (KIF). The application deadline is November 1st.

Inharmonic gender balance at the Academy of Music

In 2007, the rector of the Norwegian Academy of Music said the institution would implement measures to improve the uneven gender balance among academic employees. He cited figures showing that only three professors were women while 41 were men. Now as 2011 draws to a close, only seven professors are women and 53 are men. Minister Tora Aasland is not pleased.