New projects to address the issue of gender bias at AU

20 March 2018

The Committee for Research and External Cooperation (UFFE) has granted funding for a total of five projects focusing on gender bias at Aarhus University. The projects are the idea of a number of AU researchers, who are now starting work on actual research, which is designed to address the issues of gender bias at Aarhus University.

“As a supplement to the departmental action plans in this area, we are now launching five projects across the faculties to offer concrete solutions to the challenges of gender bias. All five projects are headed by researchers studying gender bias, and we expect them to come up with specific tools to reduce bias in research environments,” says Vice-Dean Lise Wogensen Bach, vice-dean in the Health faculty.

Assistant professor Mathias Wullum Nielsen, who is heading the project on ‘Gender and networks in early-career academic advancements’, is one of the researchers who has received a grant from UFFE to carry out his gender bias project. He says:

“The grant is a great opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of equality at Aarhus University. We now have the time and resources to examine the role of networks for women’s and men’s career progression and prospects of advancement. We hope our project will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this issue, and we look forward to getting started.”

The grants for the five projects from UFFE total DKK 650,000, and have been awarded as part of the implementation of AU’s action plan for women in research, which was adopted by the senior management team in March 2016.

The five project managers met for a joint kick-off on Monday 19 March with a view to coordinating activities and planning a joint conference.