Women professionals oftentimes fell into low paid and temporary positions that hinder their access to mentoring programs, training and career progression. But why is this happening?
Firstly, we are still dealing with many historical and cultural barriers as a society. Independently on their individual value and professional merits, women´s potential is still heavily underestimated due to deeply rooted stereotypes and unconscious bias. Added to this is the fact that many women find extremely difficult to balance work and family with ambitious career goals. We need to keep in mind that not many years ago, child and elderly care benefits were not in place and a whole generation of women scientists are now reaching an age where such “unjustified” periods of professional inactivity or unemployment are hindering their consolidation as senior researchers due to the strict career-age policies established within academia. In my opnion, this situation has contributed in part to a generational gap and a gender imbalance where female senior scientists have been left out of the system, have quit or are stuck in their career, while the next generation are reluctant to embark into scientific careers or still in need of training. In my opinion, this gap is just going to worsen in views of the current strategies that are prioritizing retaining younger scientists.
So, what can we do to integrate gender equality within academia? It all starts from offering a truly fair and attractive working environment. In this view, is up to leaders and policy makers to break down at the institutional level with all those historical and cultural barriers, reminiscence of the old days that are very much alive. But is also up to us to make a change, as researchers we can ensure gender equality within our groups, labs and departments.
Gender equality, gender equity and gender diversity are all important in here. Talking about gender equality, we need to ensure that the academic system do not fail at implementing merit-based recruitment and promotion processes independently on gender or age, so to offer equal opportunities for career progression and access to leadership positions to both men and women. But will that be enough? No.
Gender equality is stalled in academia and in the private sector. Women have been quitting leadership positions at an alarming rate in the last years. This phenomenon seems to be caused by a lack of gender equity. In an interview to female leaders and CEOs, they were recognizing that one of the reasons to quit was feeling burnout and overwhelmed by overloaded schedules and responsibilities. Increasing accessibility to leading roles is not enough, this needs to be accompanied by increasing support and accessibility to mentoring and training programs, so to be able to cope with all the challenging situations that come with those positions.
Unfortunately, access to mentoring programs and well-defined professional paths aligned with the individual career goals are still very much limited to only few. Thus, achieving adequate training and long-term career development is pretty much an impossible endeavour in many cases.
At Umeå University, and more specifically at the strategic innovation program bioinnovation, we can find useful information on how to get started with integrating gender equality in our groups. Worth having a look:
https://www.vinnova.se/m/jamstalld-innovation/hur-kommer-jag-igang/
Do you want to know more about promoting gender equality. Check this out:
https://www.ioe-emp.org/policy-priorities/gender-equality-and-diversity
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andiekramer/2019/12/05/why-gender-diversity-is-stalled/
