Newsmail #17, 2022-02-11

Dear all,

Today, Feb 11, is declared by the UN as “The International Day of Women and Girls in Science”. At KTH, “JML” is a keyword for efforts aimed at Gender equality, diversity and equal treatment. JML-related work is one of the top priorities of KTH, with a dedicated vice rector leading the work.

On Wednesday, I joined a three hours zoom-workshop led by the vice rector for JML (Prof Anna Wahl) where the heads of three of our schools presented their JML-work, their strategies for equality and diversity. In all schools, there is a gender imbalance and there are many activities aiming to change this that we can learn from. Yesterday I also joined a seminar with the same purpose, a talk on “Female Faculty: Why so few and why care?” and “The Double Blind of Gender Bias”. In the last workshop, I got to make an online test to measure unconscious bias. This test showed clear signs of bias in my judgement, which was not surprising at all.

At the ITM school we have two groups on school level focusing on JML, and at MMK we have our own JML group supporting us. These groups are extremely valuable for us. This year I have been assigned the role to chair the school-level groups, an assignment that rotates among the heads of departments. I find it very valuable to learn from the work at the other departments and look forward to learn more.

What often troubles me is a feeling (supported by statistics) that things are not improving. We still have a gender imbalance, all over KTH. Our surveys still show inequality and even harassment. And it’s not improving between the surveys. We have signs of unconscious bias, from our corrections of exams to recruitment to meeting cultures.

Today, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, I wanted to thank the growing number of people at KTH who are eager to change and challenge the system, from our vice rector and our JML strategists to the JML groups and all the people who contribute locally. This is the real difference between now and a few years ago, the number of people who wants to see a change and engage in the activities is constantly increasing.

Now I wish you all a nice weekend,

Martin

If you also want to do the test: Gender-Career IAT (harvard.edu)