Have things changed during the 2010s?

Now that 2019 is coming to an end, it is not only a year but a whole decade we can look back to. When it comes to women in technology – has any progress been made? Statistics Sweden provides easily accessible statistics on a general level. If we compare 2009 and 2018 or 2019 (depending on how fresh statistics are provided) we can see that:

The percentage of women taking the advanced master of engineering (civilingenjör) degree has actually gone up some: from 28% in 2009 till 35% in 2019. However, the percentage of women taking a bachelor of engineering (högskoleingenjör) has remained almost the same (28% to 27%). It seems that those women who decide to go into technology are those who have good theoretical skills and prefer the office, rather than what can be perceived as technology work closer to practical implications.

Another table, which does not give the exams achieved each year, but the educational level in the population in numbers, shows that the working age population having higher education in “technology and production” has increased with 25% during the last decade. Women have increased their numbers with 50%, compared to men’s 20%. When only looking at the younger workforce (up to 44 years), both men and women born abroad increase their numbers at a much higher rate than native born Swedes. In particular the women born abroad seem to have detected technology. Compared to 2009, there are now 75% more women born abroad with a technical education. Even men born abroad increasingly acquire technical education, their numbers have gone up 60% in ten years. So, the rescue for our dearth of engineers may come from what are commonly perceived as the suburban immigrant ghettos.

How about the salaries? In October 2019, our media reported that newly examined female masters of engineering now had lower first salaries than their male peers – after several years of closing the gender pay gap, it seems that it was widening again. That development does not (yet?) show in the salary statistics available from Statistics Sweden. There, female engineers almost invariably have earned and continue to earn about 86-92% of the salaries of their male colleagues. However, it seems that among graduates from new, more transdisciplinary engineering programmes, as well as biotechnology, the gender pay gap is diminishing.

While the 2010’s seem not to have been that bad for technology, still another table in Statistics Sweden gives me, as a citizen, worried creases on my forehead. Here, employers tell whether the competence pool for their needs is sufficient or not. While 19% of employers in 2009 told that there was a lack of newly examined engineers, the percentage had risen to 45% in 2019. Obviously, we need more engineers. However, we need healthcare staff even more: 76% of those who employ nurses told that there is a dearth of newly examined nurses. And the situation does not seem to improve: while the number of people with a degree in technology has increased with 25% in ten years, the number of people with a degree in healthcare has increased only by 17%.

As a Nordwit project member, I’m all for improving the gender balance and women’s working conditions in technology. As a citizen, dependent on our Scandinavian publicly financed healthcare, I’m very thankful that not all the women (and men) follow the calls to become engineers and work with technology, but that some also choose to work with the immediate welfare of the citizens. Technology should and could be more attractive to more women – but this aim needs to be balanced by making different care professions more attractive to men. Technical inventions and economic growth  are not enough to create well-fare.

Minna Salminen Karlsson

Re-Thinking Research and Innovation: How Does Gender Matter?

This is the question we will be tackling at the Riksbanken funded workshop we shall be running on 25-27 February 2020. In our Nordwit Centre’s work, we have been addressing this question for some time, and it has also been at the heart of discussions in the Gender and Innovation Network in Sweden of which we are a part. So we are truly delighted that Riksbankens Jubileumsfond has given us the money to explore this issue further.

The genderization of research and innovation has many dimensions. For one thing, it includes the wholly under-researched poor completion rates for female doctoral students in the Nordic countries – e.g. according to the Higher Education in Sweden Report 2018, of 2009 female PhD study entrants only 23% of female Humanities PhDs had completed their PhDs after 5 years. These women who are the potential future researchers and innovators seriously lag behind but we don’t know why. And this is just one very small dimension of the question of gender in research and innovation. So roll on 2020!

Gabriele Griffin

Can we afford to lose skillful scientists?

In academia, we must have all heard about the research visits that did not go so well. One of my former colleagues said that he spend most of his year in a highly ranked North-American university alone in a cleaning cupboard that was transformed into an office. He felt desperately homesick but since he was able to write an article with the famous professor from the hosting institute, the visit was “successful”. Though the science politics in Nordic countries emphasize the importance of academic mobility, many academics find it hard to move for longer time to live in a foreign country.

In their study on Finnish physicists, Kristiina Rolin and Jenni Vainio (2011) show how mobility seems to be easier for men than women. However, when I talked about this issue with Nordic and Baltic young academics in their joint workshop in March, also men said that this demand is difficult, and if you (plan to) have children the best time for mobility is when your partner is on parental leave. In Nordic countries both parents work, and though the working life seems to be becoming more flexible in many sectors, it is still hard for partners of academic researchers to move their work to another country for several months or years. A situation is of course even more complicated if the parents have separated. Some of the interviewed women from biotechnology, whose children were born during their research visit, said that they could manage only because their own parents were able to travel and help with the childcare. Mobility is thus also an economic question.

One of the main reasons why our interviewees have left academia is, according to themselves, the lack of international mobility. Since in life sciences, medicine and technology the (only) way to continue academic researcher career is by establishing one’s own research group, and funding for this requires longer-term mobility experience, the interviewees felt that they do not have a future in academia. One of them said that “after you’ve turned 40 there is nothing but blackness ahead,” and she was sad that universities have chosen to give up the expertise of talented scientists who could work as independent senior researchers. Despite the lack of longer-term mobility, all of our interviewees had strong and vast international networks, they participated in conferences, they had written joint publications and research plans.

The international collaboration can be scientifically fruitful but in the time of digitalization, climate catastrophe, versatile family situations and everyone making their careers, the Nordic science politics must change and acknowledge all kinds of collaboration, both international and national as equally significant. In small countries like Finland, we cannot afford to lose any motivated and skillful scientists.

Tiina Suopajärvi

Reference
Rolin, K. & Vainio, J. (2011). Gender in Academia in Finland: Tensions between Policies and Gendering Processes in Physics Departments. Science & Technology Studies, 24(1), 26–46.