 We are now ready for the final discussion. So please, can you use? I'm a little bit. So hi everyone. My name is Andrea Torken and I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Health. I have the honor to introduce the speakers for the today's session. We have four excellent researcher for the role of Ms. Blunteminer. She is a professor at the school of culture and society at the Department of Anthropology at the University and the mother of three boys. She received her PhD in 2001 and continued her academic career as an associate professor and since 2012 as a full professor. Professor Miner is well-known from her work on human security, post-conflict development, medical anthropology, education, AIDS in East Africa. Blunteminer has conducted anthropological fieldwork and worked in various parts of Uganda and for a total of more than seven years. She has also done shorter periods of fieldwork in Indonesia and Kenya. She was nominated two times for the British elite researcher prize. Please join me in welcoming Blunteminer. She is a professor at the Department of Physiology and Behavioral Science at August University. Also, she is a leader of the Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Konamor, a center of excellence founded by the Danish National Research Foundation. She received her PhD from August University in 1997 and continued her academic career person as CCA professor and since 2006 as a full professor. Professor Basen is well-known from her fieldwork on involuntary autobiographical memories, the kind of memories that suddenly comes to mind without your attention. In the year that Blunteminer received the Center of Excellence grant almost ten years ago she was the only woman and the only researcher from the Social Society in group of 90 researchers. Please join me in welcoming Blunteminer. She is the Vice Dean of the Department of Health at August University. She received her PhD from the University of Copenhagen in 1995 for her work in diabetes research. She worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the script in the United States. In 1994 she returned to Denmark as an associate professor and a professor at the Institute of Experimental Research at August University Hospital. Sixty years later she became the Vice Dean at Health of August University. Lisa Bogan is well-known from her research on Extracellular Microbiology and Inflammation. Please welcome Lisa Bogan. This is my third chicken. Unfortunately this person lives through another while. You're not a boy. And at last, but not at least, we have Trina Bielder. She is a professor at the Department of Bioscience at August University where she teaches Behavior Biology and Zoology. She received her PhD in 1999 at August University based on her studies on predatory interactions and life-history biology and abortion. She subsequently became a post-doctoral fellow at the Ben Jury University, Israel founded by the Danish National Science Research Council. She returned to August in 2002 as a Carlsberg Fellow. She was a researcher in Evolutionary Ecology focusing on social evolution of the making system, sexual selection, sexual conflict, in-breed effect, cooperation genetics and genotype-x-spinulotype interaction using spiders as a study system. She was awarded with Micrary and Cosmic Felucius. Please join me in welcoming Trina Bielder. To the four of you for being here we would like to open up a discussion about your life as a scientist and as a researcher and we have prepared some questions to help us with that and then we also welcome questions from the audience. So when we are thinking about academic life stories we want to learn what you have done for the last years of your academic life and I would like to meet myself as a memory researcher. I would like to ask you about the three most significant events that happen between your PhD for example and now. So I will give you five minutes to remain in sense about your academic life and we will appreciate with us this important breakthrough moments life milestones that you have experienced and then we can open up a discussion. So I leave you to remain in sense with us. Thank you. Imagine that you are telling your life story to a new friend. In these days a hundred new friends. Well I would like to first say very much to the organizers for organizing this really important event. I know that many of us are really busy trying to pursue our career so I think it's great to see that so many have come and that you've taken time to organize this. So tell your academic life story that's a bit of a challenge and you asked us to point to three significant moments or events and I thought and then I decided that a person can be an event because the most important event in my academic career has been a person. It's been my mentor Susan Reynolds White who is a professor at Copenhagen University. She was my PhD advisor and we've become we've become colleagues but I do think that having somebody who was a role model for me and who had an academic life that I admired but also a life beside academic that I could identify with was extremely important for me even wanting to pursue an academic career. So she's become my master Yoda she's the kind of person I turn to even sometimes just within myself to ask what would Susan have done in this situation but I also do sometimes turn to her and ask her to advise me because there are many difficult situations that you have to go through you have to choose between people sometimes choose between different options in your life making choices between career and family and children and meetings and all those kind of things. So that master Yoda Susan White is that my life one first and most significant event or moment. I didn't realize it when I first met her it happened sort of post-baptomb. I think another important event was when I defended my PhD in an auditorium like this and I realized in the process perhaps it was a bit late you could say but I realized that I was an expert. I realized that I actually knew most about this and about among all the people in the room and that they were actually really listening and that I wasn't just doing this for me. There was a kind of need for that knowledge and there was a it felt like it was more important than my little career it was actually important for something else and that was quite a moment because I think that many women and myself included we don't feel particularly good about only promoting ourselves. We kind of like it if it's for something bigger and for somebody else so that was quite a moment for me. I think the third if I still have a little time the third moment I want to highlight was when I got my first collaborative research grant for a project in Uganda I was an assistant professor and it was a bit unusual I was young I had to collaborate with African older men who were not always very respectful for younger women and I managed to somehow create support with my master Yoda and a group of women and people to be able to do this and feeling that there was support from so many different sites so that I could do it because it wasn't easy that was I think the third I want to mention. Thank you very much they all sound very significant I'm going to move to the side okay I also would like to thank you very much the organizers for putting this together I'm very impressed with the amount of people you have actually been able to make contact with and including some of the university management team I'm very impressed being here I also would like to say one thing before I start my life story and that is I have noticed that it seems that there's a lot of women here with another background a Danish background and I think that some of the problems we're talking about today with more women in research or to few women in research is especially hard on and additionally hard on women who come from a different who come from different countries and on top of being a woman has this other obstacle to fight with being not so I'm really glad that you are here in the audience and I had the pleasure to collaborate with a lot of women with another background than than Danish but my life story I don't think I've been quite as obedient as I should have but let me try so the first one I want to say is how I actually so my life is my academic life has now been very well structured in fact I never wanted to become a center leader I never wanted to become a professor it sort of accidentally happens because I was really interested I had a passion for research for writing and that was what I wanted to pursue okay so the first memory is the following I had a long standing interest for literature I wanted to become an alter myself and I was very interested in creating metaphors and how they were created and at some point I had to apply for a PhD fellowship and my mentor said to me and I remember that situation he said to me it's probably a bad idea to pursue this metaphor stuff because it's not very it's not clearly psychological so choose something that is clearly psychological if you want to become just close to getting one of these fellowships and then I thought clearly psychological what can that be and then maybe memory and then I stumbled over a phenomenon that caught my interest and that is what I have pursued since then that is continuously arising memories, memories that pop up in your mind without trying and I'm still fascinated by that phenomenon and still studying and also had a lot of influence on the the DNA center I am the grant we wrote back then as I said my life has not been that well organized so some detours and maybe the biggest detour was it took me eight years to decide that I wanted to study psychology and during those eight years I had many different jobs and also studied Nordic literature for one year and I wrote a novel and those eight years have had an enormous influence actually on me because I now know that there are a lot of professions a lot harder than being a university professor even if we say we work long hours I'm very grateful for the privilege I have my detours did not stop completely when I started studying psychology I also published novels, four novels while I was a PhD student and an assistant professor and basically I thought I should become an associate professor because then I would have time to write novels and work out well one final memory was I received an email from the Danish National Research Foundation saying that in response to my application that we had received that they would like to fund our proposal that was a big news that came as an email and I still remember that I should click or not and then telling myself won't change anything if you click they have already decided and then to my great surprise this belief said well we would like to fund you with this big amount of money so I had to run out and ask some of my female PhD students and colleagues to come and help me with reading this email I said yes, that's what it says that's what it says but I guess that's my my thank you very much okay I should turn this one on and how do you do it? I think it's good okay there is a number on it because the tower works, we have tested you want to go get it? no, that one is working I guess okay my story is completely different when I am looking down memory lane but I see I have made a lot of different choices and I have taken risks and I have also been very lucky I do not know if I have been ambitious and I was not knowing on farhand what I actually wanted to pursue in my career when I first had to choose between films for going to university one choice was medical doctor because I have something about an insulin receptor and biology I thought that was very interesting and on the other hand I had a very engaged teacher in history so that was actually my other choice that was to go into history at academia I was enrolled in medical school in Copenhagen and graduated and I saw an ad in the medical journal I could get a position for half a year at Steno diabetes center and I said well maybe I should try that now I had this with the insulin receptor and now something is coming up with the diabetes and I knew it was only for half a year it was working in the clinic but maybe I got a chance to go into research and to speak for more of this insulin receptor so actually I stayed there for five years and did my research for my doctor and medical science thesis so what then and I got my first child just to tell the story when I first started my supervisor my mentor said Lisa now remember you're going into research, you will be very busy no no trips to the cinema or something you really expect you to work really hard then I think it was three months later I realized I was pregnant and I had to tell him well I am pregnant oh that's great Lisa family means everything so in that way I was probably dogged with my supervisor well after the five years I had to choose, should I go back to clinic I was educated as a medical doctor my working priority I was actually educated to go to the clinic but I said well now I am trained in science for so many years I want to go on to learn something new and then I got the possibility to go to San Diego for three years working as a postdoc it's the script research clinic and my husband he found a place to stay as well and my son he got a kindergarten where he could stay during daytime and we had a nanny coming from Denmark I learned how to make transcyclic mice and work with transcyclic mice make biology and that was a risky choice but it has been worth all the work and all the work to go there after three years you consider should I stay or should this family stay or should we go on, go back to Denmark and my husband he got a position in Copenhagen should I go back to Copenhagen to where I was as a student in the lab where I had done a scholarship should I go back to Steno to my old supervisor and my old group no, I decided to go somewhere else where I was offered an empty lab an empty lab bench and an office so my husband he changed his job and I got the opportunity from the bottom to set up an university at our university that was a risky choice so that was actually number one significant was to go to US to be mobile, learn something new number two was to go back to start on your own research career and number three I will come to now and that is that I have been I was logged into this lab for a few years and then somebody one day came out and asked how is this going and actually it went very fine, my group was getting bigger but he asked what about your future and I said well I would like to do I would like to do management and research at the same time and actually by expressing a clear wish and taking the opportunity I think that's the way that I ended up as Vice Dean at the head faculty so it's about taking risks and also be lucky and grab the possibilities when they appear and yeah, try to feel your heart what you are dreaming for, follow your passion and I can say that my second child was born two months before I left San Diego and the third child was born in August thank you thanks they all sound very interesting stories with Artigual Lab Momentos Events that's right thank you also for me for the organizers that said to everyone and it's super interesting also to hear these memories I I've heard a lot of words that I agree with, passion, risk taking important people that are mentors when I submitted my PhD application in 93 I happened to become pregnant at the same time so this meant that when I started my PhD in August I gave birth in October and I remember going to a meeting with my to-be PhD supervisor thinking oh my god how on earth am I going to say this and of course I shouldn't it's unjustified to be nervous but I was and he was of course completely fine with it it turned out he has five children with three different wives business as usual but the administration at the Faculty of Science and Technology was not so fine with it because I had a PhD scholarship from there and I had to apply for an sort of extra time and they said oh we don't have any procedures for this this is not common and they said okay we'll give you six months extra PhD scholarship so I could go for six months maternity leave and then they said don't do this again and this is a true story and by the time we entered January 95 PhD students have earned the right to be employees with the same rights as employees so actually had earned the right also to have the chance to leave so when my second child was born in October 95 I actually had earned the right for 12 months maternity leave and no more talking down from the administration at science and technology so that was opportunities I guess I finished my PhD in 99 and a natural career path also in natural sciences is to pursue a postdoctoral position and preferably abroad and preferably more than one and of course with two small children it's a challenge my husband was he's an engineer and he quit his job we applied for grants, extra grants so we could pay for the family went to Israel to work live in the negative desert with the children and he became a housewife and so he took care of the children and went to the market once a week to do all the shopping and cook and all these things that housewives do and there's a big community of international couples a lot of couples with a company in partners and of course he was the only man that was in a company in partner and I I emphasize it because again it was something that allowed sort of open opportunities for me to do the things I had a passion for doing but what was not worthy is that he was a genuine hero I mean the appraisal that he received for a sacrifice his career and take care of the children and the house so that we could go and live to be a post-doctor researcher and also be a bad mom that is not taking care of my children but instead have their father doing it, God forbid I mean that was astonishing it made such an impression on me because it kind of followed up being an accompanying wife is the norm but being an accompanying husband was sensational so we did that was fantastic he came home he was unemployed for a while but he came back, got a job and all was good and I wrote all the fellowships and applied for all the fellowships you can try in Denmark, Karlsberg the science foundation Marie Curie, other things and I had almost 10 years of post-doctoral fellowships and was kind of running a bit out of places your PhD age becomes too high and got all the different stipends and they don't like to give them to you twice so at this point we were not really in a position to apply for a job abroad I decided not to apply for permanent jobs abroad so by September 2008 I had money for another three years sorry, three months and that was it but then there had been a job opening in biology and I had applied for it and I remember really thinking that wow this is actually a job like a real job not a sort of eternity student as most people think you are when you are being a post-doctoral researcher and if I get this it's like job security I'll actually have a chance to pursue my passion for with a longer time horizon and someone said to me well what would you do if you don't get the job and I didn't have any plan B I'd never occurred to me what I would do if I didn't get this job so I somehow was always just driven by the passion for what I was doing and wanting to do this and I didn't really have these secondary plans so I presume if I didn't if I hadn't received the job I would have had to I would be doing something else today probably but I got the job so it's also about being lucky being at the right time at the right place that there has to be a job being even if you are the most qualified person in the world there still has to be some match between where you want to be and where you can be so yeah that was that was sort of three things I came to think about but I think I have been lucky like Lisa said also being able to pursue and being willing to take some risks being able to pursue chances when they are there not necessarily knowing what will happen next not necessarily having a grand plan but it's a huge privilege to do what you love to do and to have a passion and to follow it and it's worth it definitely thank you so we hear about support systems in the family, support systems in the career and then grants being awarded in a collaborative level and in a national level about what to do what to pursue what happens when I don't get a job what happens after 10 years of precarity that many of us now experience as well in these times so there are all things that I can at least recognize myself in your life stories even though I'm competing with a much bigger pool of people than you were back then because there's more and more PhDs and more and more postdocs happening every year the financing and the funding is totally different and very complicated when all the money goes to these temporary positions but yes we are very eager to get that one job because we're interested in that and we're also interested in preparing ourselves to that point or also to courageously take plan B which might at the end of the day be an option or will have to be an option for many of us so it's very interesting that you are bringing all this knowledge into us and I'm sure that there's a lot of people already wanting to ask questions but I would like to be the first one could I I have never had a plan B you've never had a plan B and even I was only appointed for one year, two years or one year and three years because I loved what I was doing so I I was not thinking about a plan B maybe it is because if you fail and didn't get the position you have a mind with in some way find out something new yeah I don't know if that is part of the times now at least right now in the junior research program development they emphasize this idea that you can go out to the industry universities do not that's not a plan B oh well a plan B other than university yeah but that is right research can happen outside the university but for those who want to work and teach at the same time research and teaching I guess the university is plan A but you are right plan B is not continuing to research yeah which I think that's what you meant by plan B or opening a high school I think what I meant was that I didn't think now I'll get a plan for a job if I don't get the job what will I then do so having several opportunities open at the same time that I didn't have that because I didn't really I was only just focusing on what I loved doing and what I wanted to do so the passion drives you and you can become very strategic I presume I don't know but it doesn't sound as if it's a strategy that has driven these people that are sitting here now yeah plan B can be research still outside the university but we will have to explore those possibilities as well because one of the main topics or objectives of today is the action plan I would like to ask you after you've heard about the numbers and the different situations initiatives that we could take where you have one suggestion of what should be in the next action plan that you think my university researchers would really benefit from this or people that I am in touch with really would benefit from this if you can think of one strategy be in funding be in going abroad be in anything you can think of how should we improve gender balance thank you very much yes because I think it was really interesting to listen to this early presenter who said when you do something that's when things work so I would suggest one of the actions by the management is to make some of these graphs visual on our AU home page so that when you open our university home page you actually see it's called um um a gender monitoring dashboard so you can actually see what the situation is right now and how we progressed from last year and you know having arts and so forth sort of competing up against each other but making it visual because it is known for example from New Zealand that that works just getting the visuals every time you open and you're faced with your own universities embarrassing statistics or improving statistics so I think that would be a very doable practical thing to do and other thing I'm surprised still we had a little discussion about this but at least in arts I think all evaluation committees PhDs and so forth have to have both I'm really surprised that that's not the case in all faculties I realized you know it's been pointed out then if you make that the rule women will have to only say that we don't want that to happen we want to do our research um a third thing if I can say a third thing I actually think that it would be to have our own research foundation to do a kind of prior fund something that is a research run for women full stop I would like to continue by saying I agree with many of the things that are being said already but I think one from observing department policies and how things are going locally I think one important factor is the timing of open positions that was also part of the life stories and the timing of positions when you have a call for an assistant professorship in such and such area the timing is not accidental right we know that it's at least that's my impression it's often done with specific applicants in mind now it fits into this person's these people's career that they will be an open call now and I think some sort of policy making these things more transparent and more more favorable to both genders maybe people with also different national background would be a good thing to make these the timing of the calls is really really a crucial factor in ensuring positions I also think it would be good if we had more women in the management team of old university that I'm unhappy with the men who are there but it's just a fact that if there are more even balancing management maybe there will also be even balancing who are being hired for positions suggestion or whatever it's called number two the last thing I would like to say is I'm surprised that old university does not have a policy for more against sexual and other types of harassment because it does take place that is the story you don't hear about if we had that maybe something would also change so now I have two hats on now you have two hats on so which hats do you like to go with right now the researcher hat because I had been listening and writing down the notes for the coming action plan is that the so I can take my hat on as a researcher and I think at the old university when I arrived it was welcome you can be in the basement we will open the door and see how it's going for you so having a professional introduction to newcomers even and that's not only about all that but that's very important and to know the criteria for advancing in the career pathway is very important to be aware of possibilities for local grants and so on because if you don't get that information on forehand you may have difficulties for several years from there and if you allow me to intervene here it takes a tremendous amount of time to learn Danish if you manage to learn Danish as a foreigner so a lot of the times we find the material is not translated or is not available or you miss out on social networking scientific conferences science, contribution and communication because a lot of the things happen in Danish but even for me coming I know I can't come here but I know I've seen some kind of Danish so it's very, and you have not been starting at the old university I knew only a very few persons so obtaining a network takes years and you have to be aware about that when you receive talents from abroad or even from Copenhagen actually to be a professional and open, give all this information when I have to call people about the help, they didn't know it was that strange person she's speaking with a woman she's speaking with a funny dialect I don't know her and then they hang up so it takes a lot of time but at least then the worker has the research going on and I think the institutions should be much more aware about that than recruiting people we're taking notes yes, so it sounds as if you were talking about things one could do to sort of promote or retain the big challenges that we're losing the best female researchers because there's so many structures and biases that somehow prevents women to pursue the career needed and I actually think that this all comes down to biology because I mean there were long periods of historical time where this is not biology this is first culture but there are long periods of historical time where women couldn't even take an education because they were not allowed to be at universities in many places and then there has been a culture that as soon as you got married you stopped whatever you were doing I know many people that started an education and it was a past time for something you did until you got married and could become housewife so of course we have a huge cultural in heritage which is very very difficult to deal with because it also creates a lot of expectations whether they are conscious or unconscious there's a lot of expectations of what is a good researcher, what is a good mother, what is a good wife what is a good partner and so forth and if we want to live up to all of them it's basically impossible so I think that also creates a lot of conflicts in how to deal with different roles where we want to succeed in all of them but with biology I also think that because basically we have to perform and it's a very hard and long competition that we're in we have to perform well to get the right grades to go into PhD school generate good research write the good papers to be competitive and get the good research grants because in the end we'll be valued by having the good papers the high impact results and the grant money and that's basically how we get a job and all of these factors are hugely competitive and our biology our evolutionary history is in such a way that men who are stronger and have a much higher level of aggression and testosterone is a driver behind some of these traits these traits were needed they had to be able to fight they had to be able to catch animals for our food so they've been evolutionary selected to be competitive, strong and individuals sort of based in order to manage their chores and for many of the female traits it was about first of all we have to carry the babies for them because otherwise they won't survive so we are kind of evolutionary selected to deal with a family based situation, take care of the children, make everything succeed in a big environment, have many goals in the air so there are some differences in capabilities that might not be things that are shaped by history but which is actually our biology so I have a hypothesis which is that the career pathway is a male driven pathway for males so if we want to really change things we may not only need to be able to compete on publications, impact and grant money but we may need to develop a way of new criteria of skills that we think are necessary and that the university needs because it's really important that the university is not only writing down some things that they want in order to recruit all the good female talents but also actually make it happen by implementing new ways of evaluating, maybe and this is probably very difficult to do but I think we need to consider skills that contribute to excellence in science and it could be say skills at getting a sense of excellence or putting together the right group of people I don't know what maybe not individual based skills sorry this was a bit long and have a short one you also need to have fun are we supposed to comment on what happens? no I think you can contribute to the discussion we love it I need two seconds I just want to say that I think I disagree strongly what you said I think the evaluation criteria we have now and the more individualistic based evaluation criteria are the right ones for research and I think women can easily make it there as long as the assessments and the timing and so forth are done in a fair and open way that's my attitude and I also think women can be just as aggressive as men at least I certainly can but maybe in different ways I don't think I totally buy the idea although I appreciate you bringing it up because it's very interesting but I don't agree I hope nobody thought that I said that women can't compete on these conditions because that's not what I mean oh we have noted all of the contributions that you have made and they will go on the report that we will hand in to Ufe who is not a person he's a committee for mostly men but mostly men that has granted the money for this activity and other activities that we had earlier so in order to make this happen I'm going to ask you to raise your hand little by little and then I can take note and give turn to about 5 people at the same time so we open the question the floor for questions from the audience yes 1 2 3 4 5 first round of questions 1 2 3 4 wait wait wait I just try to remember yes I'm Marina I'm a lecturer in biomedicine here and I was wondering at least in my department we have been talking about role models and in my department the majority of the extremely successful researchers are made and in the last round of interested grants I think the department received 7-8 grants all of them were made which I cannot believe that we don't have any single female research in the department who didn't deserve a grant I don't know how many females applied for that but I think one of the things that I think it will be positive for the system is a little bit what a lot is suggested about how having some kind of a female oriented grant I'm just thinking that we should have some kind of like reward system where females researchers are good up in a visible place where students and other researchers can look up towards and that can be in the form of a prize or a grant or some kind of nomination of female researcher of the year of all those universities I think we need that and ok maybe they will say why don't we have a male researcher of the year because we don't have to look up towards men and when we hear from the U.S. for example when they support minority like the Native American minority to come to universities they are actually doing that they are trying to support the people who are minorities so in this place women are minorities so what do you think about these supporting towards women in a very active way so looking for a prize for a female researcher of the year what do you think about something like that would it be possible in the Danish cultural background because that's another thing I have two things I'd like to say one thing is that from talking to a lot of women women are women's worst enemy no women want any prize because they're a woman they want the prize because they're the best researcher but that's a wrong wrong understanding I know that but I know a lot of women that have a big problem with this and it's a really difficult problem because there's also a way of talking about these things people talk about it as if oh yeah you've got that because you're a woman so they always forget that you have to be super qualified to even be in contention for anything any prize of any sort but it's not the quality which is emphasized so there is something about this which is challenging I'm not sure how to deal with it but there is a way to deal with these things which is very common now in publishing, in biology and that's called double blind reviewing and there's a lot of studies showing that if you don't have the name of if you don't reveal the sex and even the name or group may come from the candidate and actually it also works for the reviewers you actually see less of the biases the journals for example that have done that for publications found that suddenly they massively increased papers accepted from female researchers you probably know of this study from Sweden where they gave a CV to be valued by the research council and when they swapped the female to a male name on the same CV the CV was judged much better when it was a male name compared to a female name so maybe one thing to do is to actually think about blind reviewing may I just do a short very short comment and please don't kill me because of that but this comment that you said about women being the worst enemy I found that it's more common sorry ladies among Danish women than other cultural background women so I've heard here many Danish women saying I don't need anything given as a gift and I said well I don't I don't believe it's a gift it's something that you earned yourself something in the Danish community has made women believe that they shouldn't be helped in any way in any direction even if it's obvious that you need help sometimes and even that you're quite happy that males get this help anyway I think we should be careful with saying this are the worst against women because it's also something that men pull up and say well you keep each other down well I also have a lot of really good female friends and colleagues who really help me, really support it but I wanted to say because this the quote had discussion and it's so big in gender issues and I of course nobody wants to get something at grand or price or something only because of their gender but the fact is that we are unequal that we have a situation that's structurally unequal and if we don't intervene then our university management will continue to be male or ever perhaps so we have to intervene somehow even if we don't like it and by the way even if we don't have quota for the professorship your male colleagues might say well you got it because you're a woman even though there aren't any quotas so I think it's a difficult discussion but we're in a structural situation where we actually need some kind of intervention and when it's very clear I think everybody can also appreciate that something is being done and also men can appreciate it just like it is the other way around when we study in anthropology we almost only have women because you have to have so high grades and males don't get that in our very biased gender education system which is something that I think we should also include in this discussion it's not only about getting more women women women it's about finding out where the inequalities are and then looking at that and acting on it alright so thank you very much for giving me the opportunity I have so many questions I had to boil it down to one and maybe I can also make a comment so my name is Victoria Antocchi I'm an astronomer and I'm at the physics and astronomy department and we are one of the red numbers very very red so there is a lot of action to do so first comment on the quotas I think there are some interesting studies that happened in Sweden actually different but I think it's applicable where they were showing that whenever they were opening a job for a man they would also hire women and vice versa they actually found out that more qualified women applied for those jobs and also interestingly enough only the qualified men applied at the same time meaning that the mediocre let's say applicants were not as interested at the end they ended up with a pool that was extremely highly educated or qualified for those jobs and also years after they had a high success but just as a comment now to my question so there are still a lot of colleagues around who think there are no problems connected to hiring or gender equity how did you approach so far these colleagues or do you have any advice to us how we can try to have a civil discussion and try to open their eyes because I think scientists should be and are open to facts so do you have any advice for us especially the younger researchers where it's not as easy to open our mouth because it may impact us the next time there is an opening for a job who do you want to talk to could you specify it's more in the general let's say if I now mention the staff members at my department I know that there are a significant number of male colleagues mostly because there are only very few women who are aware of the situation and that something needs to be done but there are also a lot of and interestingly enough young researchers who are very much against doing anything because implicitly it may take away their advantage of getting a position does it make sense what I am saying no unless they are males yeah so the point is how do you have a discussion with those that say that gender equity or equality should not be followed I find that one thing that really works with we dare to say work male showingists is to talk about their daughters even if they don't have them sometimes that really changes things would you like your daughter to have the same opportunity as you I probably would say you shouldn't be so afraid of taking the conflict she's not I'm not sure I mean I would support that comment that you should take the discussion, take the dialogue I have done that once myself when I was starting working at the stigma center that was about co-authorships and I did a lot of experiments in the lab and I was supposed to be acknowledged and then there were some males dancing around just passing through and they became the co-authors on the paper and I took that with my supervisor and I thought that was not the idea because I had done at least more than the males from the laboratory have precipitated creating the idea making the nest collecting dates and discussing the paper and so on and that was accepted but you need to have this open take the you need to have the gut to take the discussion you may come into a conflict but most of them actually can't be talked to and you can have a dialogue and agree upon a solution but of course you need to tell that to think that it's a problem I also think that these discussions often become emotional and when they become emotional they are actually more or less impossible to have and that's a big problem and it's always was a big surprise to me because we are scientists and we should be super rational but it somehow is a topic which people are not rational about so I like to point out the loss of talent that is really a big thing because there's often this perception that okay you're a woman you feel like a victim, you feel the whole world is against you and somehow it somehow the focus is not on the right things so I also think knowing the numbers knowing the statistics about okay let's look at some numbers and there are now a lot of excellent studies that point to some of the structural problems and directly identify structural things that we could deal with so I think if one can force a dialogue away from being emotional to dealing with the actual numbers and to pointing out the loss of talent so we want excellence everywhere but we also need the most excellent women as well as the most excellent men I think is a way to go thank you yeah, the thing that I wanted about the Teenage Mutual Story and that was when you talked about your husband going with you and taking care of the family that was great but then you made this joke about or maybe it was everybody laughed that he was perceived as some sort of hero for doing what he did and I was thinking well hero is maybe a strong concept but he did something that many men do not do you were able in your family to arrange things to enable your career that's a great thing and I think it's great to acknowledge that but so I would like to ask this to all of you in the panel so how do you want to deal or how have you dealt with this thing that is laid underneath that the gay society seems to have like a guilt that has to be paid back and it's becoming a bit sort of stereotypical so it's almost it sometimes gets difficult to do the right thing because it's not enough or it's ridiculous so what are your thoughts I felt the question became a little bit unfocused towards the end but so what seemed to me to be underneath the joke about your husband being a hero what are the thoughts but my point was that I really recognized that what he did was unusual and that's kind of the core of the problem if this became the norm then it wouldn't have been an unusual task and Lisa was pointing to her husband doing similar things so I didn't mean it as a joke or to in any way indicate that he did anything which is not very laudable you know but the fact that it's so recognized in my surroundings everywhere it's being noticed that to me was very very interesting to observe and I know that there's a lot of debates in Denmark about for example paternity leave and there's all these political in sort of thinking about should we force fathers to have more leave because that could have implications for everything particularly also women's career paths and one of the argument you very often hear for not choosing to do it in families is that fathers earn more than mothers and then there's this economical argument that we cannot afford it because his salary is too high we can't afford to lose it and for the statistics showing that for every child you have as a female and go on maternity leave you are ten years behind in the salary statistics by the end of your life so this is like something you can deal with you can say equal pay for equal job you can somehow compensate so that you don't lose out in your salary which means that you could equally well be the one to pursue your career while the father goes on leave because you don't have an economic loss so this is a structural thing which should be fairly easy to deal with all the statistics I accordingly concerning maternity leave and it maybe I'll get very unpopular now but it is it can be it is a problem to take a year out of the research career if you're part of collaborative teams and at the center I'm leading we have had maybe we have a lot of female researchers maybe 60 or 70 percent are female researchers and so there has been a lot of maternity leaves for good reasons and higher frequent researchers not like we discriminate of course against for females for that reason but at the same time I think we have to also acknowledge that it really is a problem for a research project if a key person goes out on leave for one year because it delays the publications it delays everything it can be the appointments with participants or other collaborators that are collapsing and so there's a lot of things to take care of in that context and it would really help a lot if it was just like six months and the father took the other six months or something like that it would make a huge huge difference it has made a difference that a good difference that all universities take over the salary expenses associated with because otherwise it really it was the grants the external funding that for a long time had to pay for it on top of losing the labor losing the people so that was a good step but it still it makes a huge difference if you take six months out or you take a year out so that's something to consider in the family thank you when she said that this no grants competition because maybe for you as Danish even when you go out from your comfort zone and you went to different places and different it's not the same as foreigners and also even it depends on our own background but we have to compete among our own colleagues against you and I mean it's not like in this kind of competition to wonder just it's not in that way but it's more complicated and sometimes to win or to earn a grant it's even more difficult so I think it's not because we can't it's more this kind of repainting how the grants could be assigned for example there's a grant in the Netherlands given by Rosanna Foundation and the requirements are to have a very good CV and also a good research but also to be a women and they ask for your background and how do you want to collaborate in the country and I think that's a very good idea because here in Denmark there's a huge community who want to share the knowledge and to build new knowledge so I also want to say that sometimes for women we have to do extra work and it's not paid like carry children but also to carry maybe a brother because we also have this historical pattern that we have to take care of others and I think we have to think about how the grants could be given to other women and also I want to say that on the on the contrary that some people say that women are the work energy for women I have to say that it's so delightful for me and it's a way to share with more women and to build and to learn and to share Thank you Oh sorry was it one, two, you were next What do you think when is the best time to start a family during your period when is the best time at when can I say when was the first time when was the first time and again it's not based on my it's based on my experiences essentially but I think that the worst time the worst time sounds so horrible but at best the most vulnerable time is right after PhD and sort of when you at the post-doctoral level because the PhD stipend will be extended so if it takes three years or four years you will have you will have an extension paid for but if you when you come to the phase where you have to compete for these few assistant professorships and that's where things are getting really tough and so that's where I would say that's the most vulnerable the period that is the most vulnerable to be no matter if it's maternity leave or other kinds of needs and I would say after one year a student maybe that's too late and I'm sure that other departments wouldn't like us to say that but I actually think at least for me it became increasingly difficult to have children because of my career but when I was a student I had the first one I had a second one during my PhD and then as an assistant professor I had the third one and I almost broke down but that's difficult so I actually and then I really also didn't agree about the biology comments you made but here there is there is some biology involved I agree here but it's actually maybe easier to get pregnant a bit younger so this thing about postponing postponing I think maybe we should also be careful about that well I think it's difficult to make any recommendation because I didn't plan the first one or the second actually the second because when I got the third one at that time maternity leave was only four months so it didn't actually have so much impact on my stay at the Steno Center I caught and seen back I would like to have more longer maternity leave but that was at that time I'm so old so and then I saw well I couldn't have any more children before I had done my thesis work and starting at US as a postdoc at a new place would not be a good idea then to become pregnant at that time so at the end of my postdoc I thought it could be nice to have give birth to a child number to and also because I thought it could be a good experience to have a baby in another country and try that so that day I planned so I could have Anna just two months before we left and then I started my work at all who's in May I was coming back returning to all who's in January and then I thought now I had to start up my own research group and that took some years and then I got Peter so I think probably when you are younger it's more easy and you don't speculate so much about anything when you're younger so but in another way we say we would like to have people or students in while they are young to doing research because they are more mobile but then at the same time we say we should have the kids but you know kids love to stay aboard as well my son he has got a network in Mexico and all over the world by staying three years in San Diego so also the kids get something out of it for a lifetime and he is actually now a husband following his wife to stay aboard it can be difficult to be able to plan as well as you did somehow it doesn't always go as you would like to go biology and I have many times thought that if you plan your children they will never fit because then there's an exam or there's a PhD to pass or there is a postdoctoral fellowship to complete so it will never be a good time it's never a good time to have children but when you do have children life fits around children so I actually think that if you want children and you are in a situation where it's possible to have children you should have your children and then life will fit around it I think that's a really important point I would say it's really difficult to be strategic with these things and it's really important to have a complete life because if you just your career is basically meant to direct everything you do I don't think that's a good idea I think you have to be complete people with complete lives that are enjoying what you're doing and feel that you are have many facets that you function in so I would say that you should have your children when you're in a life situation where it fits we'll do another round of three three questions one, two, three, four so I was wondering looking back at your careers they look very great and impressive but I'm sure there have also been difficult times and if you recall one of those couple of those difficult times what would you what advice would you give to your younger self in that situation I think to enjoy what you're doing which Lisa also said and the word passion has been said many times so seeing I think it's really important it is a difficult career it is a challenging career so you have to not see yourself as a victim I think you really have to see yourself as a player that takes control and you are enjoying what you're doing and you're making choices that are positive choices that you have made you are not a victim to a system that forces you to do things that you are not happy to do I think that's super, super important and I remember when I was a PhD student with small children I went home at three to pick my children up because I wanted to have a life with my children and I always felt all the others are sitting here studying and I'm going home they're better PhD students than me and when I came home I felt I didn't have enough child with the children and so I wasn't as good a mom as the others were and at some point I decided that this kind of thing is detrimental to me so having a bad conscience is the worst thing you can have so if you can decide not to have a bad conscience I think that would be super helpful, super helpful and also if you have limited time you become more efficient the people that were 12 hours at work were not very efficient they didn't accomplish more really they just spent more time there so bad conscience is something that you should dig away and never allow into your life I would say when things have been tough and they have been tough several times it's very important for somebody to talk to and somebody who is more experienced than yourself with good mentors and it can certainly be men as well as women as long as they are on your side and so that I think has maybe been the most important thing for me to have someone I could discuss these problems so that it's not just my problem but somebody I can discuss it with and who can tell me no it's not your fault it's something that can come with a more sort of structural interpretation of things when you're in the midst of all the emotions and I can see when the peers it's been really hard if I haven't had such a person to talk to then it's really really bad that is very get somebody older than you more experienced than you you mentioned that actually all three of you a mentor or some kind of role model and if I had more time I would ask how do you find that person because he or she seems very important there is a mentoring scheme at the university in power talent but can I also say that I think this is also about cultivating relationships and not being only about pursuing sort of me and mine but for example my relationship with my mentor is something that I think is mutually beneficial it's not only about taking, taking but it's also about giving and exchanging but I very much agree with what the author says that having somebody to turn to when things are tough I remember when I got my first book rejected at the publisher and exactly having somebody to talk to who can point out that it's not it's not your personality it's not you it's a long process and you don't die from it and then you move on and it actually makes you stronger and I think it also some of those blows that you get also makes you realize that others who get blows and we all do it's a tough world research seeing that others are being challenged and reaching out to others I think is what is good about some of those challenges thank you I'm from the physics and astronomy department where we have only two female professors my question is about mentors and committees mentors are very important to actually keep female researchers young researchers motivated I don't have a mentor because there is actually no one above me who can recommend me anything female of course and committees are also important to actually keep females in science because they have to be gender balanced to actually avoid unconscious bias in the selection so what would be your suggestions to university to actually improve the mentorship that actually doesn't work I'm from physics and astronomy and I got a male and I'm actually pregnant I got a male from chemistry which cannot help me at all and what would be also the recommendations to our university to actually have this with gender balance I mean taking into account that since we have only two females it would be all the time in committees how can we solve these two big problems which would help a lot I thought you were asking for some recommendations and the first thing is about the mentoring you say you have two female women at your institute but I don't think you need to have the mentors inside your own institute it can be one from a mentor from another institute I signed in to this mentorship and when I said he cannot really help me with with maternity leave issues and then they told me yeah well I mean we recommend one year so better sign off and when you have the kids in our back then sign in that seems that we have to do something about to improve the mentorship program we have for the academic career are you closed up or are you pleased to be assistant professor I have also been at the mentorship program and it is also the same thing and actually those who are selecting they are just HR people or something average and they choose based on your field so but you have an option to put debt if you want a female with children and another thing but very for me so you have an idea go to that woman and say like I wrote an email for a stranger and he was like look I am looking for someone as you as a mentor and I was wondering if you would enter with the mentorship program with me and mentor me and she said yes and she was happy so take an action go to a woman who you know or write specifically that we want a woman mentor who has children and I think it is also much more than having male practices rather individual actions I would like the university to take action and this is what I would like to ask have you had a PhD advisor or a postdoc advisor I had a PhD advisor this mentorship thing I think it works if somebody you really have been collaborating with and you really it has to be mutual all this that you pick somebody out from some department and go chat with the person I don't really believe of course it can sometimes work out I am not saying it couldn't work out but I think the most powerful relationships are the ones you build up through collaboration so that would be what I would suggest that you go to close collaborations prior advice or something like that thanks so make sure we can read the two last questions please yes thank you I really agree with Tina because we are just more like biological difference and I really think that equality doesn't make equilibrium because we have talked a lot about equilibrium in gender today everything has been 50-50% in both gender would not be really enough or it's that equal because before we meeting some standards the females always maybe devoted or sacrificed a lot before meeting those standards and evaluations and also when talking about the standards if we are going to adapt to some new criteria how to guarantee that the new criteria are not based on some old standards that we already have because I think as people have mentioned we have a lot of unconscious standards and this society is just more friendly to male and those standards are some male-oriented standards and we are unconsciously constructed by the male-oriented society how can we just avoid this kind of unconsciousness in our discussions as I said how could you actually define being equal the equality itself that's what it's all about isn't it to change the culture and I know that with the action plan we have formulated for the the present time is about intention what to do and some plans for how the individual institutes and the faculties can try to improve women in science or support women in science but I think that to expose the leadership at all levels and ourselves for these biases we are having and until that is done I don't think we can change the culture because we're still here if you're doing evaluations or looking at applications I know I'm very objective I'm very neutral I do not have any biases but if you make some tests that I mentioned in the morning you'll be exposed that you have a lot of biases in you I think that's what we have to work with but how we're doing that I think we need input from the outside also so we can learn and take in the experience and not just with this outside so we can improve I'll just keep it short I had a quick question I thought it was a really great idea to have these grants specifically for women I was wondering actually because I know that in some countries for instance in Australia, New Zealand Canada they have specific job openings for women or for minorities to apply for these faculty positions but I've been told that this is illegal in Denmark this cannot be done I was wondering how if you have some ideas on whether this is a situation that will improve or whether it can work around this but I do think that for grants like the old fire grant and the old hudon grant specifically for I think one was for younger women and something like that but even then I'm not sure about positions I suppose it's illegal to allow for women or men and other kinds of but I do think that for grants for women there's something like that but even there Danish Parliament had to pass an act so these huge grant programs so it's not something you just do so it really has to go through proper political process so it's heavy if we had an AUFF grant for women it would have to go through some kind of legal process well AUFF being private maybe there's a bit more wiggle room thank you then I think we'll conclude the panel session with the role models thank you very much to all and I would like to give an applause to them as a token of our appreciation