Karolinska Institutet has joined ten other European universities in signing a joint declaration on gender equality, signalling how critical the issue is to scientific quality and academic freedom.
This October, eleven European universities and research institutions agreed on a Joint Declaration on Gender Equality in Higher Education, Research and Innovation .
The initiative was envisioned by the winners of the EU Award for Gender Equality Champions , which Karolinska Institutet received in 2022 for its long-term efforts towards gender equality and inclusion.
Challenges facing gender equality
The declaration emerges from an increasingly challenging climate for gender equality in Europe and around the world. The need for special pro-equality initiatives and resources has become a moot point in certain quarters, and some research programmes have seen their equality requirements seriously eroded.
"The point of gender equality work is being questioned," says Alice Wahl , gender equality coordinator at KI's HR office . "But we're also experiencing more explicit forms of opposition, such as people arguing that gender equality is so self-evident that we don't need to give priority or resources to promoting it, or that it's a generational issue that will resolve itself."
For the eleven signatories to the declaration, the initiative is about taking a stand and affirming that far from being a special-interest issue, gender equality is essential to the quality of education, research and innovation.
"What we need to do is visibilise and clarify the values we endorse and the culture we want to have," says Wahl. "And at a personal level, for everyone who comes to work and study at KI, this carries a strong signal. We don't want to lose talent to others."
The declaration is of great symbolic significance and the initiative can leverage the practical work that needs doing.
"When visibilising our values, we can also show how we work with action plans and projects and what they can produce," she continues.
A priority for KI
Gender equality is actively promoted at different levels at KI within its equality-integration mandate.
"We work both strategically and practically with courses, information campaigns and support for the entire KI staff in order to integrate a gender-equality perspective into education and recruitment," says Wahl. "We're also developing new datasets and surveys to better understand how different groups experience their work and study environment."
Wahl also points up the WISE and FIELD projects, which aim to promote a more gender-equal career ladder and raise awareness of the challenges facing gender equality amongst the academic staff and at KI in general.
Another important part of this work is the Equal opportunities at KI project, which clarifies roles and responsibilities in the university's equal opportunities endeavours and which will eventually give rise to a new gender equality and equal opportunities action plan for KI.
