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.

Numbers suggest that women are lagging behind in Norwegian innovation. A narrow and outdated definition of innovation explains why, says Elisabet Ljunggren at Nordland Research Institute.

Female professors feel that they spend more time teaching after the introduction of the Quality Reform, the Norwegian follow-up to the Bologna Declaration. Women, to a larger degree than men, also say that the reform has changed their methods of teaching.

The University of Oslo is the first scholarly institution that has looked at its budgets from a gender equality perspective. The survey suggests that male researchers at the University get more money than their female colleagues.

The Ministry of Education and Research has established a new gender equality award worth two million Norwegian kroner. The award will go to the institution that has done the most to promote women in science.

Women leave the field of science, both during and after the studies. But why? A new research project at the University of Oslo aims to find out.

The Ministry of Education and Research in Norway has appointed a new Committee for Mainstreaming – Women in Science. The new committee will be chaired by pro-rector Gerd Bjørhovde, and its period of office will extend until 1 April 2010.

An abridged version of the final report from the Committee for Mainstreaming – Women in Science in Norway is now available in English. The report is entitled Gender balance in higher education and research – golden opportunities.

A new Nordic network for research policy is currently under way. The initiators hope that the network can contribute to promote gender perspectives in research on national, Nordic, and European level.

The Committee for mainstreaming – Women in Science asks the Ministry of Education and Research to consider economic rewards to institutions that hire women as associate professors and professors. If the Ministry follows this advice, Norway will be the first country with such a model.