Now there are more women researchers at Norwegian research institutions than before, but women still hold only one-third of the highest researcher positions.

Foreign women have flocked to temporary researcher positions in the Nordic countries. Without these women there might have been far fewer female post-docs in Norway and Sweden.

How do we ensure that the best candidate for a professorship is hired, while still securing gender balance and diversity? A new study shows how committees that hire professors struggle to meet different expectations.

“I felt that now I need to give something back,” says Letizia Jaccheri. She was named this year’s ODA Awards Woman and recently won a gender equality award at NTNU.

Ulf Sverdrup, Director of NUPI, is seeking talented researchers among students with immigrant backgrounds. He is calling for a new diversity programme.

When universities and university colleges look to increase their ethnic diversity, they often choose the path of internationalization. “In Norway, we are by no means done discussing what diversity really means,” says Beret Bråten.

A new survey report reveals that many Norwegian research institutes lack action plans and that no universities are satisfied with their efforts to increase ethnic diversity.

More than a year has passed since a virus pandemic shut down most of society, including the university and university college sector. Researchers with young children as well as teaching duties and research to conduct have been squeezed the hardest, according to recent research.

“My impression is that many PhD students and post-docs get used as workhorses on research projects,” says a former employee representative for researchers.

Headhunting top international researchers does not necessarily make academia more diverse. Diversity is not achieved by hiring from a pool of academics from well-known US universities, says Mariel Aguilar-Støen.

But the vast majority of them are foreign researchers. Immigrants educated in Norway and descendants of immigrants are underrepresented in Norwegian academia, new statistics show.

The top five news articles in 2020 deal with topics such as sexual harassment, discrimination, COVID-19's effect on scientific productivity, and new EU demands for gender equality plans.

It is pointless to start a search for female applicants one week before the application deadline. If you want to increase the number of women in a male-dominated field, you have to make long-term plans. This is according to Tor Grande, who recently stepped down as head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

“We don’t discuss gender equality very much; after all, it’s an integral part of our job,” says Vice-Dean Helge Klungland of the Faculty of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). “Nobody is hired or granted project funding here without gender equality being part of the process.”