 It's a pleasure to be here and it would even if I was able to be there with you actually in our whose but sometimes they'll come, I hope. Thank you for having me here. My name is Yvonne Benchelp. I've been working at Rabbi University forever and all of that time my whole academic careers I have been working on issues of gender equality and diversity within organizations. So today to be asked about to talk to you about leadership. I'm very happy to do that. And I would like to look at two particular questions. One is, what does it take to be leading for gender equality. And the other thing is gender equality for leaders. And to start with that first one. I am trying to work the. Yeah, there we go. Hope. I need to go back and see. Oh, I'm going in the wrong direction. Sorry about that. Yes, here we are. So if we are talking about gender equality for leaders as you just have seen that is an aspirational ideal, but we are nowhere there yet. And you see that throughout Western society, actually, and the core point is, who can be leaders who do we see as leaders leadership in itself the way that where it comes from in terms of the theories and the studies we made of this stems from studies in the military in the 1940s. So leadership itself is traditionally masculine, even though we see some changes and some cracks in that and more effort on making that more a feminine thing. It is difficult to make that ideal of leadership as masculine. And then the core thing is also that we like to think of ourselves and that goes for Denmark I think as much as it goes for the Netherlands as a modern society that where gender equality isn't a big problem anymore. But still, there is a difference in who can we see as leaders and a lot of that has to do with our cultural expectations. What are the ideals of leaders, but also what are the ideals for men and what are the ideals for women. So one of the first questions that always comes to mind, even in 2021 when we talk about gender and leadership, and when we talk about gender in academia, the first question is why so few. This is a picture of the start of the academic year in my university. And we also have we are very similar to you you are at 23% women professors at about university. We are at 29%. At my faculty, we are at 35%. So there is some places where we are closely making some changes. And the changes look like this then. So this is a picture that we took with all the female professors a few years ago, thinking about that it would be good also to have this representation and to show that there is some mass going on already. But these are just the pictures so think about it more. If we think about legitimacy of leaders, then we need to take a bit closer look at what are the cultural expectations that we have of leaders. And if you only think back of ideas that we have about what what leaders should be like. And when somebody is a proper leader. The body has a lot to do with that, particularly when we talk about voice for instance so high pitch voices, we think are not very good for leadership. You could question what's wrong with a soprano. Somehow it doesn't fulfill our expectations of leaders, and that has a lot to do with our idea of with the proven success model. The people that we have seen succeed in leadership roles that makes an imprint on what we are expecting who can be good leaders. The rules that are implicit and do not have a lot to say about the reality of leaders, they do influence us. We also said, and I think I saw that comment in the chat earlier as well, numbers matter, and indeed numbers matter and for this we use the idea of critical mass. We use the idea that there is a threshold number before transformation starts setting in. And that is debated in politics, particularly where you can find those numbers because at universities, we are not really quite there yet, particularly in the higher functions. The idea is the underlying idea is that when we would have more women academics, then that would also make a difference. They would change organizations, they would change cultures, they would study different topics or they would address other workplace problems. They would form networks. And indeed, you see, if there are more people, if there are more women in leadership positions, they are not only seen as the representative of their sex anymore, they can also be seen as individuals. So there is indeed power in numbers. Yet, from my own work, studying women in the top of the Dutch police force, where they have critical mass for quite some time already. I was interested in, okay, so if there is critical mass, does that also mean that there will be new leadership subjectivities? Will there be the opportunities to really think different ideas about leadership? And what I found in that study is, unfortunately, that female leadership is still kind of precarious. Because it falls on the women then to do things differently and the expectations on them are really high. They are supposed to be different leaders and better leaders. Yet, leadership is also situational. It's not just with what is expected in a certain situation. So it might be difficult to make that breach with what we have already seen always as legitimate leadership. So, it's also precarious because for women leaders, we do not just only have expectations about them leading, we also have expectations about them being women. If they displayed the assertiveness that you would need for leaders, then they sort of lose points on the caring and the kindness that they would need as women. So it's a fine line that women leaders can walk there. And that is problematic. So because we tend to expect, particularly when there's low numbers, then we expect them to assimilate towards the behavior that the proven success models have always taken. So the idea is that can women leaders actually be different in cultures that have been catering to a larger majority? That is a difficult question and one that we definitely need more research on. And a particular area where it is interesting to see whether those women leaders can be different is the area of leading for gender equality. So here we would say that leaders have a particular important role to play and I'm coming now to the second question that I would like to address with you. What do leaders have to do to enforce gender equality? Both men and women leaders there have to lead by example. And that means that they would very much need to take into account their own, maybe urges to work towards similarity attractiveness. It is easier for all of us, the human nature. So it's easier for us to collaborate with people who look like us to interact with people who look like us. And also the idea that we tend to see the quality of people who look like us better than we see the quality in people who do not look like us. We all have personal biases, we all have our personal preferences and stereotypes that work against equality, maybe. So that's one thing that leaders need to be aware of. And that's not enough. It's working on your own ideas, but it's not enough in order to be able to lead for gender equality. It's also important that leaders acquire systemic gender knowledge, and that they have this idea about gender, not as the individual characteristic of individual people. That gender is a fundamental organizing principle. And that within organizations it is embedded in all of the structures, in all of the ways that we organize work, in all of the cultural norms that we have about work and about workers. In the daily interactions we have with people, but also in people's identities. And those particular organizational processes are also intertwined. So knowing what gender is like, how it works, how it functions in an organization is crucial to come to gender equality. So one thing is making sure that this is part of the leadership development. That's really important. So when it's there, it's also important that leaders who have a lot on their plate, and I know all about that because I'm also a head of department. And with all on your plate, you also have to acknowledge the responsibility for gender equality and take action for gender equality. And that is maybe not always that an immediate task, seen as an immediate task for leadership, but it should be an immediate task for leadership. Because the gender equality plans are devised somewhere in the organization, but they can only work when all the line managers, when all the leaders academically in their academic leadership actually do gender equality and take the action for it. So that means that they would have to display a leadership style that's been that's been coming to known as inclusive leadership. And for inclusive leadership that you need to do two different things. On the one hand, you need to make sure that you foster belonging that you make sure that everybody in the working group everybody in the team. That's their impact, that's their say is felt it can feel like they belong to that community, and that they are comfortable in that community, feeling the opportunity that they can speak up that they can speak out, and still be part of that team. So it's about working to justice working to equality to make sure that everybody gets hurt, and everybody feels that they are supported and rewarded for the things that they bring in. And facilitating belongingness, particularly for people who are not from the most overpopulated groups is quite a big thing so it is and it's work that the leader need to do. But it's the one thing that the leader need to do the other thing that leaders need to do is foster uniqueness, making sure that people are both feel that they belong, and that they are unique. So that they also encourage diverse perspectives that they make sure that everybody can bring their full contribution that it is that they are asked for their inputs that they can actually bring what is different from them and then celebrate that difference. And it feels like when we when you talk about that as a leadership style, it, it means that you have to make room for a lot of impact of others, and a lot of input from others. And that doesn't always sit all that easily with ideas about leadership, where people also ask of the leader to set some direction. And with inclusive leadership, it is exactly the place that you do not set that direction that you do not define the place on the horizon but that you collaborate with others to do so. So particularly when it comes to the field of gender equality there are some key processes and I would like to talk a little bit and that's the last thing I would like to talk about today, even though I have, of course, way way way more to to say about this topic. So the key processes, it is important to think about whenever you work towards gender equality, there is an underlying current of gender inequality going on. And when you do the interventions for gender equality taken to account those formal, but also very much informal processes of inequality. So working is one of those informal processes of gender inequality, where people seek out people who look like them, when it's easier to communicate, but that informal network takes up a lot of information it also provides a lot of information to its members, excluding the non members. So some of the key processes and and there will be more talk about that later on are around recruitment and selection. So leaders have a say in who is going to be on committees. And those lead on those selection committees are very political, and there is a lot of negotiation and networking going on in those committees. Those multiple criteria that we have for assessing whether somebody is a good academic and I talk particularly about the academics here. All of those criteria that we use are gendered. So a lot of it has to do with our research. And we feel like we have these wonderful metrics that are neutral, but there is so much research that shows how that all of those criteria are not neutral, but are very much gendered. The H index that that measures how many publications have been cited, not only measures how many publications have been cited, but also it measures some impact in a network. And again, those networks are geared towards people who are similar to the versus. So networks, the only criteria are gendered. Because they have to do with research, they have to do with teaching, they have to do with networking, they have to do with international funding, they have to do with so many different things. So one thing is the criteria, and you have to be aware that all of those criteria can be gendered and there is ample research about all those criteria and how they are gendered. And that's not just the criteria, it's also then the application to the candidates. I'm sure that many of you have heard about the John and Jennifer studies, where the exact same CV, the studies that have been done by Carolyn, in the US, where the exact same CV with the name of John and the name of Jennifer was rated very differently, with John getting a better job offer and better opportunities than Jennifer with the same CV. So, in recruitment and selection, there is a lot of work to do for leaders before they would get to gender equality. So in performance ratings of the people who are there so recruitment and selection is basically often about people getting in. But rating the performances of people who are there is also an important part. One of the issues that we hear a lot that is very gendered is the idea of visibility. So women candidates get the comments that they are not visible enough that they do not enough to present themselves in ways that are convincing to committees. And that particular type of visibility and be setting up a convincing presentation is also very much gendered. Again, here it has a lot to do with who gets to set the standard all the time for this. And the way that we've looked at academics for years is it has to do with very talented and learned man and their way of presenting themselves. If women start self promoting in the same way, if men do that we do not always even recognize it as self promotion. But if women do it, they get socially sanctioned because it goes against the stereotype of them being modest. And that is even if they can reach that stereotype themselves already. So when we look at performances, we need to take into account that these are gendered performances already and performance rating is also again something that you need to take into account. So one more thing here is probably you also rely on student evaluations as as we do in nine Megan as well. And there also are a lot of studies that show that these student evaluations are notoriously gendered that they see much more brilliance in man teachers and that they comment on women teachers. On their looks on the way that they present themselves, and not as much or that they say that women teachers are so well prepared. Even when men and women have been in experimental research doing the exact way same way of teaching, it still says that students still tend to say that men are faster and give better feedback, even when they say the exact same thing. One thing, last thing that is important for leaders is anticipate resistance. When you start working towards gender equality, not everybody is going to be happy. And that was already said before. So anticipate this resistance expected and deal with it. We hear it all the time. I get so many times that there are only opportunities for women left in modern academia anymore, but you only need to have that statistic of the scissors or the points that which just presented to show to people that that is just not the case. And so you have to be aware that this resistance will be there. But it can be counter and the resistance can also be made productive, but do not try to avoid resistance but lower it out. Because it's when you get the resistance that you know where the problems with gender equality are. And when they are not underlying and when they are not buried anymore, then it's also possible to address them. As hard as it is, we have been proven, we have proved that we can make these steps and more steps can be taken. And I'm very glad to stop here and take your questions if there are any. Well, thank you very much, even for an excellent presentation I think there are quite a lot of comments in the chat field regarding your presentation and, and it seems like the audience appreciated it. Oh, even when we spoke the other day you said it seems like women has to carefully select when they exercise their leadership, because they lead differently and there's a lot of focus on their leadership can you develop just a little bit on that. The idea is when women become leaders, then the expectations of them to do this differently are quite high. And that make it quite difficult for them to, on the one hand balance the expectations that we have of leaders, and on the other hand balance the expectations that we have of women. I saw in the study in the police force that it fell back on the women to make that balancing act to make sure that they figured out when they could do things differently and when they would be punished for doing it differently because it wouldn't be seen as leadership anymore. So you say we should also pay attention to the unconscious bias. And you said, you know, a leader is is a man. And as you said your faculty has 35% professors, can you tell us just a little bit about what you, what you did in order to to gain these heights. And it's also about 35 years of pushing this topic always and all the time at all the levels in the university. So, join the committee joining the committees making sure that we have developed training so in our university there's also a long standing group of women professors women staff working on these issues. We constantly bombard the management with our research findings. And that really helps and there's a lot of research and good research out there. Also without university so you were really lucky to have these good people, and it would be wonderful if they could have a very strong voice in the gender equality plans.