Asking for an Overall Equal Status Strategy
Ombudsman for Equal Status Kristin Mile craves a national coordination of measures to balance men and women in education.
In the last issue, Universitas reported that Norsk Medisinstudentforening, the national union of Medicine students, wished to employ measures to achieve a better balance between female and male students of Medicine. In a letter to the Ministry of Education and Research (UFD), Mile is asking for an overall, national Equal Status strategy in education since she feels that attempts to sort out imbalances often happen randomly and without superior supervision.
“The reason why special treatment is allowed is due to the establishment of gender imbalances in work groups,” Mile says.
She holds that it will become difficult if institutes of education only consider gender balance when they assess measures.
“The gender–divided labour market is one of the primary challenges concerning equal status in Norway, and special treatment within education is probably one of the most suitable means of changing this. When measures are random, it creates even less awareness among students of the importance of these measures,” Mile says.
Elsa Skarbøvik (representing the Norwegian political party KrF) of the Standing Committee on Education and Research feels it should be up to every university to assess gender balance.
Committee colleague Lena Jensen (representing SV) agrees to a large extent.
“First and foremost, it should be up to the universities to assess how they wish to go about this. However, if this appears to be a major problem, I think we need to look to our central authorities.”
Rector at the University of Oslo, Arild Underdal, agrees to some extent with both parties.
“The authorities should employ a superior policy that sets goals and allowed measures. But within this framework universities should decide for themselves what is the best option locally,” Underdal says.
