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| Dr. Anne Flierman, Executive Board Director of the UT, shows figures for the University of Twente, during his opening remarks at last week's FFNT conference. (Foto: Gijs van Ouwerkerk) |
Are the numbers getting any better for women? According to Flierman, chairman of the UT Executive Board, the promotion of female faculty and female staff members is a major issue on the board's agenda. Yet currently at the UT, there are 158 male full professors compared with only 11 females. That is a ratio of 93 percent to 7 percent in strong favor of males.
The numbers for the position of associate professor paint a somewhat rosier picture for woman with 126 males to 15 females holding this position, hence the figures indicate an 89 percent male ratio to 11 percent female ratio.
According to statistics from the Wiser Festival in October of this year, on average, only 15 percent of professors in the European Union (EU) are females. Sadly enough, the Netherlands, with only 9 percent female professors, ranks amongst the lowest of all EU countries.
The question begs asking, why are there so few women in the top positions? One reason could be attributed to the need for modern universities to value and develop policies that support diversity as well as promote the concept of mixed-gender teams that represent both the talents of men and women.
Speakers at the conference addressed the issue of the impact of diversity on organizations with full-force. Starting with Dr. Erwin Seydel, a professor in Applied Communication Studies, he said, `The careful shielding of a university from the activities of the world around us is the best way to chill interest and to defeat progress,' and he further added `We live in a remedial world. We study failure and weakness instead of strengths.'
The second speaker, a former Director of Communications for the Dutch Ministry of Health, Irene van Geest-Jacobs, spoke from a historical perspective about the role of women in society during the 19th century. In her opinion, `ambition has no gender, success does.' And why is this? What are the silent barriers for woman to reach success? She attributes these barriers in part to traditional perceptions in society of women that still exist today.
She was asked by a participant, `Do woman make a difference in a crisis situation?' Her answer was, `Groups manage a crisis-both good and bad people-it's nothing to do with gender.'
This praise for diversity was echoed in the words of the last speaker, Esther Mollema, as she asserted, `the UT is competing with the world,' and `together, men and women, make better decisions.' Owner and Executive Director for her own company, Direction, Mollema showed compelling statistics that confirm in High Performance Organizations (HPO), such as Dove (Unilever), diverse teams make better decisions and this leads to higher year-end profits. During the Q&A session, she challenged the leaders of the UT to adapt a policy of quotas to increase the number of women hired for top academic positions.
Looking to 2008, Flierman told the audience that he is certainly not satisfied with the progress that has been achieved so far, however he is optimistic about the ongoing dialogue and networking groups that are beginning to create an increased awareness in terms of this issue with the staff.
In the course of 2008, there will be many interesting professorship vacancies and a special conference will be held with the university Executive Board and the Management Team to discuss gender-related elements of improvement and talk more about how to promote women to top academic positions. It will be interesting to hear the results of these talks, considering among other things, the many professorship vacancies and the favorable financial situation of the UT that was cited for the coming year.
