Symposium Gendered Innovations March 28, 2014 Simone Buitendijk Today we are discussing gendered innovations, a very important new development in science and research with particular importance to the Netherlands, a country with a large gender imbalance in academia. Many problems in this world are not easily solved. If they persists for a long time and if progress is limited, a degree of acceptance or even complacency sometimes appears, often for one or both of the following reasons. The first may be that the problem seems just not that important. The other reason may be that the problem appears to be so complicated that, frankly, we don t really know how to tackle it to make it go away. The issue of gender imbalance in academia in the Netherlands is one such problem. It has persisted for a long time and progress is rather limited. I believe that in our country both the sense that it is not really important and the idea that it is too complicated, occur together. On the one hand there is a strong sense in Dutch society that the gender imbalance is one of those luxury problems that we may pay attention to when the real challenges have been dealt with. On the other hand we are all aware of the fact that measures have been tried and that they have not worked well enough. We are not sure how to proceed, so we don t. We are wrong on both accounts, though. First, the problem is urgent and large, larger than we may have previously thought. Second, the solutions are here for the grasping and they will work if we are just willing to open our minds and work comprehensively. Why is the problem larger than we previously thought and why may we have new solutions at the same time? The reason is that a new element has entered into the discussion, that should and may change the way we think, namely the issue of lack of gender balance in the content of our research. So far, we have thought of gender balance mainly in terms of balance in the academic classroom, in research teams and in academic leadership positions. Those of us who know the vast literature in that arena are aware that the roots of the problem of imbalance lie in implicit bias against women as top researchers and leaders in the field as well as in belief in stereotypes of male and female behavior. The two are related and we all suffer from them, men and women alike. An emerging, new field of science that we will discuss today is that of gendered innovations. The global academic community is becoming aware that also in the design, carrying out and implementation of our actual research, we appear to have a blind spot for the 1
importance of women as a target group. The end result is that we are missing opportunities for innovation right now and that will only get worse. Why do we need to start paying attention in the Netherlands? The most important reason is that we are missing huge opportunities to be innovative if we don t. At present we are carrying out too much research that benefits one half of the population more than it does the other one, simply because we do not ask and answer the right questions. That costs money and sometimes even lives, as we will hear in the keynote lecture later. It will soon cost us even more money, because European project proposals will be less likely to get funded if we don t think of gender as an important factor. I am sure all excellent Dutch researchers have a keen eye on the possibilities that the calls for proposals are providing in the new 80 billion euro s European flagship program for research and innovation Horizon 2020. It started a few months ago and it will run for seven years. H2020 has a strong focus on societal challenges and application of research results. The program has three parts: excellent science, industrial leadership and societal challenges. Excellent science includes the European Research Council funds and the Marie Sklodowska Curie actions. Industrial leadership includes IT and biotechnology, and the societal challenges are: Health and wellbeing Food security; Secure and efficient energy; Integrated transport; Climate action and environment; Inclusive societies; Secure societies Truly global challenges that are important to everyone. Yet, in almost all these areas, if we are not looking at gender as a factor, we are likely to miss the differential effect that many issues have on women compared to men. Just a few examples to illustrate my point, you will hear more later on this afternoon: I. Extreme weather conditions have gendered impacts. In terms of mortality, flooding in Bangladesh in 1991 killed 71 per thousand women compared to 15 per thousand men, 2
while the heat wave in France in 2003 killed many more women. The total excess mortality for women was 75%. Even accounting for age distribution, the excess mortality for women remains 15% higher. II. The failure to invest in clean energy alternatives to burning biomass has a gendered impact on mortality. In Pakistan, indoor air pollution accounts for 28,000 deaths and 40 million cases of acute respiratory illness, annually, the majority of which are women, the elderly and children. III The material deprivation rate provides a headcount of the number of people who cannot afford to pay for their housing and fuel bills, keep adequately warm, eat meat or proteins regularly, go on holiday, buy a television, a fridge, a car or a telephone. Across all the member states of the EU material deprivation was higher for women than for men, with the exception of Sweden. IV Based on a 2009 survey of more than 12.000 women in 22 countries, it is estimated that by 2028 women will be controlling 72% of consumer spending worldwide. V The City of Vienna has enjoyed twenty years of gender sensitive planning. New neighbourhoods are planned on gender sensitive principles and both genders are fully represented in planning and design. The Viennese example is now used as an inspiration across the globe VI Heart disease is the number one cause of death in European women but for decades it has been studied primarily in men. It took a long time before researchers realized that women can have heart attacks too and that if they do, their symptoms are different from those in men. Clinical standards for diagnosis and treatment have been created based on male pathophysiology and outcomes. But the EU is catching on. Article 15 of the H2020 text reads: Gender equality 3
Horizon 2020 shall ensure the effective promotion of gender equality and the gender dimension in research and innovation content. Three gender related objectives have been formulated in Horizon2020. o Fostering gender balance in Horizon 2020 research teams o Ensuring gender balance in decision-making, in order to reach the Commission s target of 40% of the under-represented sex in panels and groups o Integrating gender/sex analysis in research and innovation content, helps improve the scientific quality and societal relevance of the produced knowledge, technology and/or innovation. the gender dimension is explicitly integrated into several topics across all the sections of the Work Programme ( ) a topic is considered gender relevant when it and/ or its findings affect individuals or groups of persons. In these cases, gender issues should be integrated at various stages of the action and when relevant, specific studies can be included. These topics are flagged to ease access for applicants. This should not however prevent applicants to a non-flagged topic from including a gender dimension in their proposal if they find it relevant. With respect to monitoring: the following Indicators will be used on an annual basis to determine the prevalence of gender as a cross-cutting issue: - % of women MSC Fellows. -% of women as ERC principle investigators -% of women in advisory groups, expert groups, evaluation groups and panels-% of projects with gender dimension in the project design Another novelty of Horizon 2020 is the inclusion of gender training among the eligible costs of an action. The aim is to help researchers to further develop and share gender expertise in relation to the funded project. The EU Commission has understood that they have to work in these three domains: the gender balance in research groups, the gender balance in decision making panels and the gender dimension in research itself. With respect to the latter: they have understood that if they do not push scientists to think about 4
whom their research results apply to, scientists are likely to have a blind spot for half the global population, namely the women. How innovative and applied can research be, especially when it concerns the global and grand societal challenges, when it mainly deals with the issues of only half of the global population? The EU Commission is not messing about and Dutch researchers need to start paying attention. One may wonder whether there is a relationship between gender balance in research teams and gendered innovations? Not necessarily: male scientists can and have been proven to be able of being gender aware in their approaches to science and research. Perhaps I should say it is the other way round: there is more and more evidence that gendered innovations in the STEM fields attract young female students and scientists, just as we know multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in education and research do. In that sense there may well be a relationship between gendered innovations and gender balance in teams. And therein may lie the solution for the larger problem of gender imbalance in academia in the Netherlands. That issue is larger in the Netherlands than pretty much anywhere else in the Western world, likely because of the pervasive Dutch motherhood ideology and role division. The Netherland has the lowest percentage of female professors in Europe exceeded only by Luxemburg that has none, and Malta and Belgium. Both the sense that it is not really important and the idea that it is too complicated to solve, still exist widely, also among academics. The result is, especially in Dutch STEM, that more than full time, very competitive mono-cultures have been created that seem to favour the male model of thinking and seem to scare away young talented women. Six multimillion euro s recent NWO subsidized Gravity proposals with only male PI s and one female member in the teams of in total 40 people cannot be a statistical fluke. But the issue is really important, and increasingly so, as the rest of the world understands that we need a gender perspective in science to be truly innovative. I can t say it with enough emphasis: if we continue to be complacent, we will soon be lagging behind. We will have a very hard time replicating the fact that in the past Framework Program we got 1.5 times the money back from Europe that the Dutch government invested. Dutch universities and Dutch researchers right now are among the best and the most innovative in the world. But we need gendered perspectives to innovate. If we don t start taking them into account the consequences will be huge. We will not be able to keep our status as globally 5
competitive universities, at least not in the area of global challenges. My conviction is that within the next ten years globally competitive and focusing on solving global challenges will be largely the same thing. Academic leaders, funding agencies and the government in the Netherlands need to pay attention. NWO will have to change too and they will, if only under pressure of the EU and the ERC. But when will Dutch academia catch on and start moving? Soon enough? To conclude my introduction: the bad news is that the problem of gender imbalance in Dutch academia and research may even be larger than we have previously thought. Our biases don t only keep women out of academic leadership, they also cause us to ignore women as the beneficiaries of science knowledge. The good news is that the introduction of gendered innovations may change this. It can happen fast. Researchers can implement gendered thinking in their present research projects and in the ones they are starting tomorrow. The EU is not only more likely to reward gendered proposals, they also offer guidance and money for scientists who still need to figure out how to do it. The introduction of gendered innovations will certainly make our vast investments in new knowledge more efficient and effective, but it is also likely to lead to more interest of women in a science career and may create more gender balance faster than we believed possible. Today we will hear from five excellent speakers from the US, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands what can be done in universities and in science institutes and why it is important to start moving. What we can do in the Netherlands to make changes and how we can make them soon. And last but not least, how societies, men and women, can benefit from introducing gendered innovations. I hope you will all leave here with the sense of urgency that they and I have been feeling for a while. Dutch universities have a wonderful international reputation for the quality of their science and a very poor one for their gender balance. My fear is that the lack of attention to gender balance will hurt that reputation and will diminish our international competitiveness, my hope is that our drive to excel in science and research will improve the gender balance in the content of our research and will make it more innovative. I hope that today we can truly open our minds and change our thinking. That we will use our energy and our entrepreneurial spirit in academia to become the number one in the world in innovations that apply to all of society. It is not too late! 6