New study on ethnic minorities' career paths in research
Research on ethnic minorities in academia is mostly non-existent in Norway. Now the research institutes AFI and NIFU have been commissioned to remedy this situation.
Research on ethnic minorities in academia is mostly non-existent in Norway. Now the research institutes AFI and NIFU have been commissioned to remedy this situation.
The Norwegian police academy has long sought to increase diversity among the student body and the future police force. Since 2012, they have been working systematically with recruitment to achieve this.
There is a large body of research on the barriers to gender balance in academia, but very little on ethnic diversity. Now the KIF Committee has announced funding for a study to fill this gap.
The KIF Committee’s strategy for its work with gender balance and ethnic diversity in research up to 2017 has been completed. Feedback from the sector shows that the institutions appreciate the committee’s active role, but they would like a clearer definition of “ethnic diversity”.
When the Research Council recently selected 17 new Centres for Research-driven Innovation, one-third of them had women at the helm. According to the Research Council, an awareness-raising campaign was the main reason for the increase.
“If Norwegian researchers do a better job of fulfilling the EU requirements on gender perspectives in research, they will have a competitive advantage in Horizon 2020,” says Curt Rice.
There are sound legal arguments both for and against allowing the niqab to be worn at higher education institutions. A ban can send a clear signal in support of gender equality, but it can also be exclusionary and lead to more extreme attitudes.
It is more difficult for women to meet the requirements to qualify for tenure track positions, according to one researcher.
When the daily newspaper VG presented Norway’s top 20 economists, there was not a single woman among them. “Economics is a male-dominated field,” states economist Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe of the University of Oslo.
She is future oriented in her work to bring diversity and change to the IT field, but Oda Award winner Beathe Due thinks it is just as important to be aware of the past when working for change. “It’s worth remembering that information technology has not always been a man’s field,” says Due.
Now that government award schemes for gender equality efforts in academia have been discontinued, it is up to each individual institution to improve the gender balance in senior-level academic positions.
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.”
This was the clear message from the CEO of the SINTEF Group, Unni Steinsmo, when she opened a conference on gender equality in the independent research institutes.