Clinical medicine wants more female researchers

It is well known that many women opt-out of a research career. The most senior career levels certainly demonstrate male dominance and at Aarhus University, four out of five professors are men. AU also lies well below the level in the rest of Scandinavia at assistant professor and associate professor level. A new AU action plan intends to correct this.

The Department of Clinical Medicine is well on the way with a number of new initiatives targeted at female researchers:

"It is no secret that clinical research is still very much male-dominated. It is a fact that there are less and less women as you progress from the medicine degree programme, where the majority of students are women, up to professor level. We must not discriminate, but as a department we ought to ensure that the best talents have equal conditions. We will therefore take a closer look at how we can make a research career more attractive for women," says Department Head Kristjar Skajaa from the Department of Clinical Medicine.

The department’s Management Forum has therefore received specific input from four female researchers at different stages of their research careers. The women recommended a number of areas that the department should look at, including managerial focus on gender equality, recruitment and appointments, talent development and studying abroad.

Cultural change through talent development

One of the four women is Professor Grethe Andersen from the Department of Neurology. Her focus is on the junior researchers in particular:

"Talent development is a very important area in which to take action. We have to acknowledge that the whole culture needs changing, which is why it is important to take action as early as possible," she says.

Two specific tools could be to consider more long-term career guidance, as is the case in many places abroad, and then to reward the supervisors:

"It simply will not happen on its own. We will have to focus very specifically on the differences between men and women. This could be in the form of a course for supervisors and a carrot to encourage being good at helping female talents on their way. Not in the form of higher salaries, but for example by using research year scholarships that will strengthen the research group," suggests Grethe Andersen.

Medical doctor and PhD Anne Stidsholt Roug from the Department of Haematology has also provided input for the department’s efforts to promote gender equality.

She highlights the time following her PhD as particularly challenging:

"If you have a 37-hour-a-week job as a hospital doctor and children, then research very quickly becomes something that takes place in the evening between nine and midnight. You really have to want to do it," she says.

Like Grethe Andersen, she also points out that women often have different priorities than men, as well as more responsibility at home:

"What would make a huge difference is workload reduction for the clinical work a few days a month, so that research was not something you did in the middle of the night. I have no doubt that it would make research much more attractive for women – and for men," says Anne Stidsholt Roug. She emphasises that she does not support positive discrimination for women, but rather prioritisation of talented researchers so that men and women have a more even playing field.

The department is already in the process of putting some of the advice from the female researchers into practice:

"We have received a lot of good input about how we can make research more attractive for female talents at different levels. We begin by working to ensure equal gender representation in the recruitment and assessment committee, so that we can avoid what is known as homophily – that is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. This is something we have heard about from the female researchers. In addition, we will create a maternity fund to compensate for the external grants that do not cover the costs of maternity leave," says Kristjar Skajaa and continues:

"For families with children, for example, it is also problematic that they have to use funds from the university’s research accounts to pay for extra expenses in connection with childcare abroad, even though it is well-known that childcare often costs significantly more outside of Denmark. It is therefore particularly difficult for young researchers with families to fulfil the university's requirements for a study abroad period. This has an impact on young female researchers in particular. We at the university ought to discuss whether we can change this accounting policy."

Read more

Download AU’s action plan for more women in research 2016-2020 (pdf).

Further information

Department Head Kristjar Skajaa
Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University
Tel: (+45) 7845 9000
kristjar.skajaa@clin.au.dk