Awareness is key to equality
Martin meets JML* enthusiasts
At the ITM School, more than twenty people engage in gender equality, diversity and equal conditions. Martin Edin Grimheden, JMLA at the School, met Raquel Lizarraga Jurado at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) to learn about her engagement.
Who are you, and what is your role at KTH?
I am an incredibly curious person, which probably led me to become a scientist and study Physics in the first place. I came to Sweden to start my PhD studies at Uppsala University, and since then, I have had a close relationship with Sweden.
After a postdoc in the USA and a lecturer position at the Austral University in Chile, my family and I moved back to Sweden, where I began working at KTH as a researcher. Apart from my research activities, I like to be involved in teaching when possible.
I have met you in two roles: as one of the JML representatives at MSE and as one of the IRIS* coordinators. What made you engage in issues in gender equality, diversity and equal terms?
In my career, I have worked in different places and countries and what strikes me as very important is to feel equal to your colleagues and included in your work environment. You need to have access to the same information everyone else has. We can claim that we have the same opportunities, but it is not true if we do not have access to the information needed to find these opportunities. (For instance, how to get promotions, how to advance your career, where to apply for funding and when you should start to prepare for this or that. )
When I started at KTH, I saw that we were lacking in that aspect. I wanted to contribute to making this better. Within JML, we have done a lot of work to inform and make information more visible for newcomers.
Can we learn anything from IRIS that we can apply to the JML work?
I think IRIS can do a lot to improve on JML issues and vice versa. IRIS began with the aim to promote collaborative activities within the departments at ITM. That is a huge effort because ITM is quite heterogeneous. People come from different disciplines, backgrounds, work cultures and academic positions (professors, researchers, postdocs, etc.). Therefore, one needs to be especially aware about inclusion, equality and gender equality when participating in multi-disciplinary efforts such as IRIS. Personally, I think IRIS is doing well on those aspects and can be used as good example.
Is there anything that has surprised you when working with JML?
It surprised me that there were JML problems to work with at all. From the outside, one thinks that Sweden is one of the countries where equality is valued dearly, and of course, that is correct. However, JML issues do exist anyway. Sometimes, they exist in subtle ways or hide, but they are there. It is important to be observant and ensure that people do not get hurt because if people do not feel well, it affects us all.
What advice would you give to the JML representatives at other departments?
Awareness, awareness, awareness. Many people (I was one of them) tend to think that there is no issue at all to solve. That is a problem. When one starts talking to people, one realizes that a lot is going on in the background. JLM issues are subtle and are even considered subjective, which makes it easy for people to dismiss these issues. But in the long run, people get hurt, and our social-work environment becomes negatively affected, so we need to make an effort to discover these issues and talk about them more openly before being able to solve them.
Interviewed by: Martin Edin Grimheden
*JML is a KTH concept that stands for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal opportunities. More about the JML work at the ITM School
**Research Initiative on Sustainable Industry and Society (IRIS) is an initiative for enabling researchers to work together across departments at the ITM school on joint research projects. With the holistic, interdisciplinary perspective, the aim is to enhance the impact of KTH's research for more a sustainable industry and society.