The Genie support that encouraged leadership

The higher up the hierarchy, the fewer women there are, whatever the initial gender distribution. It is a well-known fact that the proportion of women in the academic world in senior and leading positions is decreasing – and Chalmers has a clear objective to do something about this.

Hanna Härelind, Head of Department, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Maria Abrahamsson, Director, Materials Science Area of Advance, believe that Chalmers must work to remove the structural barriers that contribute to the uneven gender balance in leading positions. They believe that creating opportunities for further research is key, including for the women who take on such a role.

Both have been able to continue doing research in their joint research project "Sunlight for demanding reactions", even after they were appointed to leadership positions. But this was far from a foregone conclusion. Together they applied for and received funding from the Open Call for proposals within the framework of Chalmers’ gender equality initiative Genie. The support enabled them to employ a researcher in a post-doctoral position and continue developing the research project.

"I would not have taken on a senior position if I had not been able to continue my research. I chose this career because of my interest in research, and I am not done with it just because I also have other responsibilities," says Maria Abrahamsson.

Hanna Härelind was Head of Division when the duo applied for the Genie Open Call research funding. A while later, she was given the opportunity to take on the role of Head of Department.

"I have always found the position of Head of department exciting, but I would certainly not want to stop doing research. Thanks to the support from Genie, I was able to seize this opportunity without losing all my research," she says.

The need for role models and practical support

The purpose of the Genie Open Call was to encourage projects and activities with a broad focus on gender equality that will contribute to the requisite cultural change at Chalmers. Most of the applications related to a variety of research projects with a gender perspective or the possibility of employing women in a project.

In this respect, the application submitted by Hanna Härelind and Maria Abrahamsson stood out. At the same time, both were clear about how it linked to the purpose of the call for proposals – and they were met with support from Genie.

"Women in leadership positions face so many expectations and unspoken demands. For example, they are often expected to handle more tasks than male managers, and they may find it difficult to get administrative support. Being able to continue doing research under these conditions is difficult and may make it even more difficult to reverse the trend producing few women in managerial positions. This is why we need role models, and it is important to support the women who really try," says Hanna Härelind.

Maria Abrahamsson agrees.

"For it to be worthwhile for us to take on leadership roles, we needed to be able to continue our research activities. If Chalmers wants more women in positions of leadership, they must be given the opportunity to continue their research," says Maria Abrahamsson.

Benefits the whole of Chalmers

The fact that only about a fifth of Chalmers’ researchers are female is also an important argument in favour of supporting women to continue their research activities,’ says Hanna Härelind.

"If more women disappear from research as an area of work, it will be clearly noticeable, because there are so few of us to begin with," she says.

Both of them also believe that it would benefit Chalmers as a whole if the opportunities to combine research with leadership increased overall.

"I think it would be very helpful for Chalmers to not just create a purely administrative path, where leaders completely drop their research activities. There is so much going on in the world of science and research, and it is important to keep a foot in the door to really understand the work being done," says Maria Abrahamsson.

Active recruitment efforts needed

Increasing the number of women in the Chalmers faculty is one of Genie’s primary goals. Hanna Härelind and Maria Abrahamsson believe this to be precisely the right focus. They emphasise that providing the long-term support needed to recruit and retain women is imperative because – contrary to what is sometimes asserted – they do not believe that the trend will reverse itself.

"Here at the Department of Chemistry, the gender distribution is 50/50 among the doctoral students, and in the applications to our undergraduate programmes, the distribution has been 40–60 per cent women since the 1980s. So, it is not the recruitment base that is the problem. Yet the proportion of female professors is only 28 per cent, and about 30 per cent in the entire faculty are women. So, we need to think about whether men are so much better than women, or whether it could be that in recent decades we have had affirmative action measures directed at men," they say, adding:

"The answer to getting more women into the faculty is quite obvious: employ more women! And always work actively in recruitment to make this possible."

More about the gender balance at Chalmers

In October 2023, the proportion of women in the entire Chalmers faculty was 32 per cent. One of Genie’s main goals is to increase the proportion of women in the faculty to 40 per cent at all levels.
Proportion of women at Chalmers, different roles (from 2022 annual report):

• Students, full-time equivalents: 33 per cent
• Active doctoral students: 34 per cent
• Instructors: 29 per cent
• Assistant professors: 50 per cent
• Lecturers: 15 per cent
• Senior lecturers: 26 per cent
• Associate professor: 30 per cent
• Professors: 26 per cent
• Full professors: 19 per cent

More about Genie Open Call

The Genie Open Call ran from 2019 to 2022 and was an internal call for proposals for projects and activities with a broad focus on gender equality that would contribute to the requisite cultural change at Chalmers. Thirty projects were selected and supported by Genie. The projects were divided into themes: Education, Research, Gender Perspective Research and Facility.

Three examples of Open Call projects supported by Genie:

• Chalmers Undergraduate Research Initiative, CURIE
Objective: to involve undergraduate students in research projects.

• Women in Architecture Leadership
Objective: to create more diverse role models for architecture by highlighting the contributions of women in leadership positions.

• Analysis of gender bias in texts
Objective: to examine gender bias in different types of texts linked to Chalmers, such as press releases, syllabuses, course evaluations, articles in Chalmers’ magazine, job adverts.

Read more about Genie - Gender Initiative for Excellence