Clem Herman, The Open University

Gabriele Griffin is Professorof Gender Research at
Uppsala University andExtraordinary Professor at theCentre for Gender and African
Studies, Free State University.

The Nordic countries are regarded as
frontrunners in promoting equality, yet
women’s experiences on the ground arein many ways at odds with this rhetoric.
Putting the spotlight on the lived
experiences of women working in
tech-driven research and innovation
areas in the Nordic countries, thisvolume explores why, despite numerous
programmes, women continue toconstitute a minority in these sectors.
Contributors flesh out the differences
and similarities across different Nordic
countries and explore how the shifts inlabour market conditions have impacted
on women in research and innovation.

ePDF and ePUB available Open Accessunder CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

G AB RIELE GR IFF IN

This is an invaluable contribution to
global debates around the mechanismsthat maintain gendered structures in
research and innovation, from academia
to biotechnology and IT.

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION“Why do women continue to be largely absent
from technology research and innovation despite
decades of gender equality initiatives? This hugely
engaging and timely book delves deep into theso-called Nordic gender paradox. A must-read.”

ISBN 978-1-5292-1947-0

9 781529 219470

B R I S TO L

@BrisUniPress
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GENDERINEQUALITIESIN TECH-DRIVENRESEARCH AND
INNOVATIONL I V I N G T HE CON T RAD I CT I ON
E D I TE D BY
G A BRI E L E GRI F F I N

GENDER INEQUALITIESIN TECH-​DRIVENRESEARCH
AND INNOVATION
Living the Contradiction
Edited by
Gabriele Griffin

First published in Great Britain in 2022 byBristol University Press
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Contents
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

v
vi
x

1

Introduction
Gabriele Griffin

1

2Research and Innovation in the Academy: A Precarious
Business
Gabriele Griffin

21

3

Navigating Career Imaginaries in Academia: A View from
Women Researchers in BiotechnologyOili-​Helena Ylijoki

39

4

Unconventional Routes into ICT Work: Learning from
Women’s Own Solutions for Working around Gendered
Barriers
Hilde G. Corneliussen and Gilda Seddighi

56

5Changes in Funding and the Intensification of Gender
Inequalities in Research and Innovation
Marja Vehviläinen, Hanna-​Mari Ikonen and Päivi Korvajärvi

76

6

Promoting Gender Equality in STEM-​oriented
Universities: Institutional Policy Measures in Sweden,
Finland and Norway
Charlotte Silander, Ida Drange, Maria Pietilä and Liza Reisel

93

7

Uniformity Dressed as Diversity? Reorienting Female
Associate Professors
May-​Linda Magnussen, Rebecca W.B. Lund andTrond Stalsberg Mydland

109

iii

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

8“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” How Early Career
Researchers Imagine the (Im)Possible Future in Academia
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen and Guro Korsnes Kristensen

124

9“If It Had Been Only Me, It Would Not Have Worked
Out”: Women Negotiating Conflicting Challenges of
ICT Work and Family in Norway
Gilda Seddighi and Hilde G. Corneliussen

140

10

Co-​creative Platforms for Societal Impact of Researchon Gender Issues: A Comparative Study of The Gender
Academy and Gender Contact PointMalin Lindberg, Ulf Mellström and Paula Wennberg

156

11

The Discourse of Rurality in Women’s Professional-​life
Narratives: Gender and ICT in Rural Norway
Hilde G. Corneliussen, Gilda Seddighi and Carol Azungi Dralega

173

Index

188

iv

List of Tables
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
4.1
6.1
6.2

R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 2018
Proportion (%) of female and male scientists and engineersamong the total workforce, by sex, 2017
Proportion (%) of women among doctoral graduates bybroad field of study, 2016
Researchers in the government and business sectors,
2015 (headcount)
Proportion of researchers in the higher education sector
working under ‘precarious’ working contracts, by sex, 2016
Parental leave in the Nordic countries
Size of geographic territory (in km2) and population in 2020
by Nordic country (UK added as comparator)
R&D expenditure as % of GDP
Women’s unconventional entry routes into ICT workProportion of women in grade A positions in the studied
universities in 2000, 2010 and 2018
The use of GE measures in STEM-​oriented universities

v

4
4
5
6
7
7
8
10
62
100
102

Notes on Contributors
Carol Azungi Dralega is Associate Professor at NLA University College,
Kristiansand, Norway. She holds a Doctorate in Media Studies from the
University of Oslo (2008). Her research interests are in ICT/​Media anddiscourses on Marginality, e-​Inclusion, social justice and empowerment inpolicy and practice.
Hilde G. Corneliussen is Research Professor in Technology and Society
at the Western Norway Research Institute (WNRI). Previously she worked
at the University of Bergen for 18 years. Her main research topics include
gender, identity and ICT from the perspective of inclusion and exclusion.
She has been the PI of several research and innovation projects about girls
and women in IT.
Ida Drange is Research Professor in the field of labour market studies, withspecial emphasis on diversity issues and labour market integration of highly
educated immigrants. Her research encompasses gender equality in work life,
immigrant career outcomes in relation to employment, job mobility, wage
developments and occupational accreditation for migrating professionals.
She has also done research on workplace democracy, trade unions and work
environment factors. She is part of the NordiCore research group and hermost recent publications feature in Work & Occupations, Social Inclusion and
the Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies.
Gabriele Griffin is Professor of Gender Research at Uppsala University,
Sweden, and Extraordinary Professor, Centre for Gender and Africa Studies
at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She is coordinator of theNordforsk-​funded Centre of Excellence Nordwit (nordwit.com, 2017–22).
She is also editor of the ‘Research Methods in the Arts and Humanities’series (Edinburgh University Press). Her recent publications include Bodily
Interventions and Intimate Labour (co-​ed., Manchester University Press, 2020);
Body, Migration, Re/​constructive Surgery: Making the Gendered Body in a Global
World (co-​ed., Routledge, 2018); Challenging the Myth of Gender Equality inviNotes on Contributors

Sweden (Bristol: Policy Press, 2016) and Cross-​Cultural Interviewing: Feminist
Experiences and Reflections (ed., Routledge, 2016).
Hanna-​Mari Ikonen is a Lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Her research interests include different forms of entrepreneurial work andentrepreneurial mindsets. Her research has appeared, inter alia, in the Journalof Youth Studies and in Gender and Education.
Guro Korsnes Kristensen is Professor of Gender, Equality and Diversity
Studies at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research areas are
gender equality, gender balance, immigration and integration. She is theco-editor of Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway:
Same but Different? (Routledge, 2021).
Päivi Korvajärvi is Professor emerita in Gender Studies at Tampere
University, Finland. She is one of the founding members of the Nordic
Centre of Excellence Nordwit (2017–​22). Her long-​term research interest
has been in gendering practices in work. She has also studied the gendered
future expectations of young adults. Her recent co-​authored articles are
published in Qualitative Research (2019), the European Journal of Cultural Studies(2020) and Feminist Encounters (2021).
Malin Lindberg is Professor of Gender and Technology in the subject of
Design at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. She studies inclusive
innovation and organization in the public, private and non-​profit sectors,
in terms of innovative solutions to societal and organizational challenges.
Through a participatory research approach, societal actors are actively
involved in her research, in order to engender both scientifically and societally
relevant insights.
Rebecca W.B. Lund is Associate Professor (Docent) in Gender Studies,
Tampere University, Finland. She currently works as a postdoctoral scholar
and researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research at
the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research is focused on feminist
methodology, epistemic injustice, emotions and gendered social relationsin knowledge production and academia.
May-​Linda Magnussen holds a PhD in sociology from the University ofOslo, Norway. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology
and Social Work at the University of Agder, Norway. Her research concerns
gender and gender equality in the intersection between family and work life;
migration, everyday life and welfare state; and gender in academia.
vii

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Ulf Mellström is Professor of Gender Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden.
He studies gender and technology, masculinity, risk, crisis management,
engineering, globalization and higher education. He situates his workwithin the three fields of social anthropology, gender studies, and scienceand technology studies, in particular feminist technology studies.
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen is Professor of Gender, Equality and Diversity
Studies and Head of the Centre for Gender Research at the Department
of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology. Her research interests include the making andimplementation of gender equality policies, gender, diversity and power inorganizations, career choices and media discourses on gender and feminism.
Recently her work has focused on gender and diversity in academia. She isco-editor of Bodies, Symbols and Organizational Practice: The Gendered Dynamics
of Power (Routledge, 2018).
Maria Pietilä works as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Eastern
Finland. Her research interests include academic career systems, including
questions of assessment and evaluation in academic careers, and genderequality in higher education. Her most recent co-authored articles are
published in Higher Education (2021) and Social Inclusion (2021).
Liza Reisel is Research Director for the research group on Equality,
Integration and Migration at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo,
Norway. She is also Deputy Project Manager for the Nordic Centre of
Excellence, Nordic Centre for Research on Gender Equality in Research andInnovation (NORDICORE). She has published extensively on inequalities
in education, gender segregation in the labor market, equality and diversity
legislation, education and labour market outcomes among children of
immigrants, and health disparities.
Gilda Seddighi is a Senior Researcher in Technology and Society at theWestern Norway Research Institute. She has a doctoral degree in Genderand Media Studies from the University of Bergen (2017). Her researchinterests are in representations of gender, and constructions of identity andopinion in digital media and in processes of digitalization.
Charlotte Silander is Associate Professor of Political Science at Linnaeus
University, Sweden. Her current research focuses on gender equality policy
and diversity policy in higher education. Her recent co-authored articles
appear in Social Inclusion (2021) and European Journal of Higher Education (2021).

viii

Notes on Contributors

Trond Stalsberg Mydland is a social anthropologist who works as Research
Director for Welfare Research at NORCE Norwegian Research Centre. His
research is focused on welfare and development projects within democracy,
the organization of public services, employee involvement, recovery strategies
in mental health work and gender-​based inequality.
Marja Vehviläinen is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher in Gender Studies
at Tampere University, Finland. She is one of the founding members of theNordic Centre of Excellence Nordwit (2017–​22). She has researched gender,
science and technology extensively. Her research also includes genderedagency in nature cultures and environment.
Paula Wennberg is a Project Manager at Luleå University of Technology,
Sweden. She has a background in managing projects for gender inclusive
growth and innovation in Sweden and internationally, with a particular focus
on the IT industry. She is Project Manager of Gender Smart Arena, whichforms part of Gender Contact Point.
Oili-H​ elena Ylijoki was Research Director of TaSTI, the Research Centre
for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, and Docent ofSocial Psychology at Tampere University, Finland. She is a Senior Research
Fellow at TaSTI. Her research interests cover science studies, time studies andhigher education studies. She has investigated, among others, disciplinary
cultures, transformations of knowledge production, and academic identities
and careers. She is a member of the Tampere team of the Nordic Centre of
Excellence ‘Beyond the Gender Paradox’ (Nordwit).

ix

Acknowledgements
This volume is the result of many hours spent talking and working withwomen and men engaged in research and innovation in academe, the public
and the private sectors. Without these informants and collaborators ourwork would not have been possible, and we sincerely thank our interviewees
and research participants who contributed so much to our research andstimulated our thinking.
We would also like to express our thanks to the various research funders
who supported this work, most particularly Nordforsk (www.nordforsk.
org/​), who generously funded Nordwit (https://n​ ordw​ it.com/)​ , the Nordic
Centre of Excellence on women in tech-​driven careers (2017–​22) locatedat Uppsala University. Nordwit was the basis for much of the research thatis discussed in this volume. We particularly and warmly thank Siri Bjarnar,
our scientific officer, and Jesper Werdelin Simonsen, the Executive Director
at the Research Council of Norway who was programme director for theNordforsk programme under which we were funded. We would also liketo thank our Scientific Advisory Board set up by Nordforsk –​Mary Ann
Danowitz, Dean of the College of Education, NY State University; Marcela
Linkova of the Centre for Gender and Science at the Institute of Sociologyof the Czech Academy of Sciences; Elizabeth Pollitzer, Director of the
Gender Equality Summit; Martina Schraudner, Director of the Fraunhofer
Center for Responsible Research and Innovation –​with whom we batted
ideas about in more ways than one.
We also thank the Riksbanken Jubileumsfond (grant no. F19-​1506:1)
who generously co-​funded an international workshop on ‘Rethinking
Research and Innovation: Does Gender Matter?’ that we ran in February2020 as the last offline event before COVID-​19 locked us all down andtransported our lives onto online platforms. We had wonderful discussions
with colleagues such as Julia Nentwich (St Gallen, Switzerland), Yvonne
Benschop (Radboud University, the Netherlands), Hilda Rømer Christensen(Copenhagen, Denmark), Clem Herman (Open University, UK), Liisa Husu(Örebro, Sweden), Susanne Andersson and Karin Berglund (Stockholm,
Sweden), Katarina Pettersson (SLU, Uppsala, Sweden), Magdalena Petersson
McIntyre and Zehra Sayed (Göteborg, Sweden) and Felizitas Sagebielxnewgenprepdf

Acknowledgements(Wuppertal, Germany) who sharpened our thinking, and provided muchstimulating food for thought.
We salute our sister Excellence Centre under the same Nordforsk
programme, NORDICORE (www.samfunnsforskning.no/​english/​projects/​
nordicore.html), with whom we have collaborated and who, with Chapters 6
and 8 in this volume, are represented by Charlotte Silander et al and SiriØyslebø Sørensen and Guro Korsnes Kristensen here. Their work hasenriched ours, and we have learnt much from them. Plus: we have always
been envious of your brilliant infographics –​not reproduced here!
On behalf of all the contributors I would also like to thank our friends andcolleagues in Sweden, Finland and Norway at the institutions where manyof us contributors work: Uppsala University, Tampere University and theWestern Norway Research Institute. You have collectively and individually
been fantastic at supporting our work, discussing our ideas with us, providing
solace, dinners, suggestions –​and making our lives much more fun thanthey would have been without you! Particular thanks go to Elina Nilsson,
our lovely administrator and scribe, who has worked hard with us for five
years. You’re ace!
All the contributors have given many papers on their work over the last
three years. The places and events where we did this are too numerous
to mention but we’d like to thank the audiences in all those locations,and including conferences such as Gender, Work and Organization andWork2021, that engaged with our work, offered thought-​provoking input
and shared glasses of wine.
Each contributor to this volume has their own list of people they would
like to thank –​too lengthy to include here –​which often includes family,
friends and partners who encouraged and supported the work on this volume
through these COVID-​19 times. A heartfelt thanks to all of you!
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the team at Policy Press
who have overseen the process of this volume’s production and facilitatedits inception, and, of course, to the anonymous readers of the manuscript
for their attentive reading and helpful suggestions.

xi

1

Introduction
Gabriele Griffin
When my colleagues from Nordwit1 and I first thought about this volume
we had as its main title Living the Contradiction, with the contradictionreferring to the fact that we live and work in what are considered to be themost gender-​equal countries in the world –​Finland, Norway and Sweden –​while also being intensely aware that significant gender inequalities persist
in all those countries (see Martinsson et al, 2016), including in research andinnovation (R&I). This contradiction is also known as the ‘Nordic genderparadox’. All our research on women working in tech-​driven professions
highlighted these contradictions, showing that women are caught between
a strongly embedded public gender equality rhetoric and the fact that inemerging, highly technologized work contexts such as ICT and eHealth they
constitute certain minorities despite numerous programmes and initiatives
set up to increase women’s participation in STEM (science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics) domains (Stoet and Geary, 2018; Richardson
et al, 2020). Tellingly, Nordic Statistics produces a table showing female andmale participation in what they describe as ‘female’ and ‘male dominatedindustries’. The very fact that industries can be described in these terms
points to prevailing gender inequalities. In Nordic Statistics female-​dominatedindustries include ‘education, human health and social work activities, otherservice activities. Activities of households as employers, undifferentiatedgoods and services producing activities of households for own use’, andmale-​dominated industries: ‘agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining andquarrying, manufacturing, electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply,
water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities,
construction, transportation and storage, information and communication’(Nordic Statistics, n.d.). For 2019 these tables broadly show that only 25 percent or fewer of men work in female-​dominated industries, and 25 per centor fewer of women work in male-​dominated industries. Like other statistical
1

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

databases Nordic Statistics aggregate industries, employment sectors and, inhigher education, disciplinary domains, and there are questions regarding theextent to which such statistics reflect people’s actual lived work experiences.
Those actual lived work experiences and their gendered dimensions asthese pertain to R&I are what this volume sets out to explore. We argue
that these gendered lived work experiences broadly fall under the heading‘living the contradiction’.
Focussing on this issue both inside and outside of the academy, this volume
centres on the reported lived experiences of women working in tech-​driven
R&I arenas to understand how they negotiate this contradiction. The issue
is all the more pertinent since the Nordic countries are internationallyregarded as frontrunners and model states in both promoting equality andinnovation (SHE Figures, 2018; European Innovation Scoreboard, 2019;
Gender Equality Index, 2019). Yet women’s experiences on the ground are,as this volume shows, in many ways at odds with the positions these indexes
and statistics appear to support. This chapter briefly discusses gender, researchand innovation, before providing a comparative section regarding the Nordic
countries and their diverse positions in relation to gender equality issues.
This comparison will include a discussion of how the Nordic countries asplace and nation figure here. Finally, the Introduction will provide an outlineof the structure of the rest of this volume.

Gender, research and innovation
R&I may be defined as socio-​material practices involving multiple actorsthat produce new scientific knowledge and novel artefacts, processes orpractices for societal use (Leyesdorff and Etzkowitz, 2003; Carayannis andCampbell, 2009). In this volume we focus in particular on the academy asa site of R&I, on relatively new and emerging employment fields such as
biotechnology, Digital Humanities and ICT, and on women’s careers andgender inequalities in these tech-​driven work contexts. R&I both insideand outside of the academy is located within global orders such as capitalism
and neoliberalism, as well as regional and national policy regimes. It is high oninter/​national political agendas as developed economies become knowledge
economies. Transnational organizations such as the European Union and theOECD have produced white papers, guidelines and reports (for example
Joint Research Centre, 2013; OECD, 2016; NetWorld, 2020) on how R&I
might be harnessed more effectively to meet the requirements of these
economies and contemporary societies and cultures.
Simultaneously, there has been an increasing recognition that R&I are
significantly gendered (see for example the GenderedInnovations projectat Stanford or the EC-​funded Efforti project).2 These projects, and others(for example Valantine and Collins, 2015), clearly show not only how
2INTRODUCTION

genderization occurs in R&I but also provide suggestions as to how thismight be countered. Nonetheless, we still have a limited understanding of
women’s actual experiences of working in R&I within highly tech-​driven
contexts, and particularly in relation to the Nordic countries where equality
is largely assumed to have been achieved and to be fully embedded.
As research into R&I has gained ground over the past 15 years or so, it has
become clear that the genderization of R&I is a complex issue (for example
Andersson et al, 2012; Lindberg, 2012; Kalpazidou Schmidt and Cacace,2017), involving, in Charles Tilly’s (1998) terms, exploitation, opportunity
hoarding, emulation and adaptation. These mechanisms, but not just these, invarying and diverse combinations, establish and maintain gendered structuresand practices in R&I which, however, do not necessarily follow a unitary
path. Rather, they signal a variegated arena of complex interactivity that
requires further investigation (see also Valantine and Collins, 2015). Why,for example, is it that even in the Nordic countries, so renowned for their
public equality discourses and equality-​related legislations, we still see theglass ceiling, the leaking pipeline and the scissors model of women’s research
careers when we talk about R&I? How do women negotiate in/​equalities inthe everyday in R&I? What have the shifts in labour market conditions suchas changing funding regimes, moves towards the precarization of the labour
force, the rise of neoliberal market economies and new forms of culturalconservatism done in relation to R&I? These are some of the questions thisvolume seeks to answer as it explores what the contributors consider to begender paradoxes in R&I in the Nordic countries, that is, the contradiction
between the high levels of institutionalized equality measures in the Nordic
countries and the persistent gender inequalities that those working in R&I
experience and report. To understand these paradoxes it is useful to consider
the particularities of the Nordic countries in relation to gender equality.

The Nordic countries and gender equality: similarities
and differences
Discursively the Nordic countries are frequently treated as one entity when,
in fact, there are significant differences among them, including in terms of
how they manage R&I (Pinheiro et al, 2019), and equality measures (Teigen
and Skjeie, 2017). The phrase ‘the Nordic countries’ (Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faro Islands, Greenland and Åland) suggests
a block of similar countries. This emphasis is a response to a number offactors: geographical proximity; language similarities between Denmark,Norway and Sweden; the dominance of Protestantism; a history of similar
political regimes, social democratically oriented, in the post-​World War II
period broadly lasting until the 1990s; a socio-​economic welfare model; anda similar approach to international affairs as anti-​militaristic, peace-​building
3

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

and compromise-​ready (Browning, 2007). These similarities are reinforcedby significant, extensive literatures on ‘the Nordic welfare state’ (for example
Esping-​Andersen, 1990; Kautto, 2010; Pedersen and Kuhnle, 2017) and‘Nordic exceptionalism’ (for example Delhey and Newton, 2005; Browning,
2007; Loftsdóttir and Jensen, 2012; Martela et al, 2020). However, thesupposed cohesiveness of the Nordic countries has increasingly beenchallenged, not least from the 1990s onwards, when these countries began
to pull in somewhat different directions. Whereas Denmark, for example,
had been a member of the European Union since 1973, Norway and Iceland
became EEA/​EFTA3 states in 1994, and Finland and Sweden joined theEuropean Union in 1995. This went together with a gradual embrace ofneoliberal agendas such as deregulation, marketization and individualization,
and a concomitant reshaping of the welfare state. In 2010 already Kauttosuggested that ‘Nordic distinctiveness is by no means as self-​evident or as
straightforward as it was two decades ago’. This also goes for the ‘Nordic
gender equality model’ (2010: 600).
Spending on research and development as a percentage of GDP issomewhat different across the Nordics, with Finland and Sweden being
relatively high spenders while Norway spends comparatively little (Table 1.1)
but not as little as the UK, for example:
Table 1.1: R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 2018
Country

DK

FI

NO

SE

R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP

3.06

2.77 2.07 3.34

UK

USA

1.72 2.84

Source: World Bank (2019) https://​data.worldb​ank.org/​indica​tor/​GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS,
accessed 27 May 2021.

In terms of the proportion (percentage) of female and male scientists andengineers among the total workforce, by sex, in 2017, Finland manifested
the greatest gender gap by some considerable margin and Denmark thelowest (Table 1.2):
Table 1.2: Proportion (%) of female and male scientists and engineers among
the total workforce, by sex, 2017
Country

DK

FI

NO

SE

Sex

women

men

women

men

women

men

women

men

%

5.6

5.4

3.3

8.0

6.7

5.7

5.9

6.1

Source: adapted from SHE Figures (2018), Figure 3.3, p 40.

Teigen and Skjeie (2017) explore the ‘Nordic gender equality model’ andits supposed homogeneity in terms of economic equity and democratic parity
4

INTRODUCTION(2017: 126). Economic equity includes ‘equal educational opportunities,
equal pay for work of equal value, gender balance in family life, andgender-​balanced participation in labour markets’ (2017: 126). Democratic
parity includes ‘equal rights to vote, assemble and hold office … inclusive
opportunity structures for civil society and gender balance in politicaldecision making’ (2017: 126). Teigen and Skjeie (2017) argue that the Nordic
scores for democratic parity are more exceptional than those for economic
parity (2017: 142) and as high scorers overall, the Nordic countries might
be considered very similar but that, in fact, their underlying policies varysignificantly (2017: 144). As the chapters in this volume reveal, according
to the reported experiences of women in Finland (FI), Norway (NO) and
Sweden (SE) working in R&I, inequalities of different kinds are still a norm.
These include horizontal and vertical segregation in both education andin the workplace, the persistence of the gender pay gap and the unequal
distribution of household and care tasks. These persistent inequalities (Griffin
and Vehvilainen, 2021) are evident in relevant international statistics in mostareas of R&I. Thus according to the SHE Figures (2018) the proportion(percentage) of women among doctoral graduates by broad field of study
in 2016 was as shown in Table 1.3:
Table 1.3: Proportion (%) of women among doctoral graduates by broad field ofstudy, 2016
Country

Education

Arts &
Humanities

NaturalSciences,
Maths &
Statistics

Information & Health &Communication Welfare
Technologies(ICT)

EU-​28

68

54

46

21

60

DK

-​

53

37

-​

63

FI

74

59

49

18

63

NO

64

58

40

15

61

SE

73

55

41

24

61

Source: adapted from SHE Figures (2018), Table 2.2, p 23.

Table 1.3 shows that there are quite significant differences between the
different Nordic countries in the proportion of women among doctoral
graduates by broad field of study, involving a 10 per cent difference between
Finland and Norway for education, for example, and 9 per cent difference
between Sweden and Norway regarding ICT. The Swedish percentage for
ICT is the same as the UK (not shown here, but 24 per cent), and the Finnish
one at 18 per cent is only one percentage point above the Polish one which
was 17 per cent. Based upon these statistics, one could therefore postulate
5GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

quite different similarities and differences across European countries thanthe phrase ‘the Nordic countries’ suggests.
The gender wage gap also shows differences across the Nordics. Boschiniand Gunnarsson (2018) argue that:
Despite men’s and women’s almost equally high labour force
participation and women’s, on average, higher educational levels, themedian gender wage gap among full-​time employed has changed only
marginally since 1991. … It was 7.8 per cent in Denmark (2012), 18.7
per cent in Finland (2012), 7.0 per cent in Norway (2013) and 15.1
per cent in Sweden (2012) according to OECD. (2018: 105)
In other words, there are significant discrepancies regarding the gender wage
gap among the Nordic countries, with more than 10 percentage points
difference between those countries with the lowest wage gap (Denmark,Finland) and those with the highest (Norway, Sweden). Here, again, theNordics do not emerge as a unitary block but rather as countries withindividual particularities. This is also the case when one considers researcher
numbers in the government and business sectors (Table 1.4):
Table 1.4: Researchers in the government and business sectors, 2015 (headcount)
Country

Government sector

Business sector

women

men

women

men

DK

1,284

1,301

7,254

22,394

FI

2,160

2,728

4,849

23,128

NO

2,960

3,411

4,838

16,368

SE

5,574

6,657

11,28741,081

Source: adapted from SHE Figures (2018), Annex 3.2, p 55 and Annex 3.3, p 56.

The differences in number across the four Nordic countries evident inTable 1.4 cannot be explained through relative population size for example(DK =​5,792,202; FI =​5,540,720; NO =​5,421,241; SE =​10,099,265),4or relative size of the sectors. Table 1.4 shows that the number of female
researchers in the public sector in Denmark is significantly lower than in
Finland and Norway where the population is roughly the same size. It also
shows that the number of female researchers working in the government
sector is almost equal to that of men in Denmark, but less equal in Finland,
Norway or Sweden. The gender gap regarding female researchers in thebusiness sector is huge compared to the government sector at roughly 25
per cent or fewer of female researchers in that sector. Again, significant
discrepancies can be observed for Finland compared to Norway, but also in
6

INTRODUCTION

terms of numbers of female researchers in the business sector in Denmark
compared to those in Finland and Norway.
When it comes to precarious working contracts (see also Standing, 2011),
women researchers fare consistently worse than male researchers, again withsignificant discrepancies across the Nordic countries (Table 1.5):
Table 1.5: Proportion of researchers in the higher education sector working
under ‘precarious’ working contracts, by sex, 2016
DK

FI

NO

SE

Women

4.4

12.6

8.2

10.2

Men

3.2

6.9

5

6.1

Source: adapted from SHE Figures (2018), Figure 5.2, p 99.

Thus while the gender gap regarding precarious contracts is relatively small in
Denmark, in Finland almost twice as many women as men have precarious
working contracts, and the gender gap is also significantly larger in Sweden
than in Denmark. Further, there are sizeable differences regarding the parental
leave schemes across the Nordic countries (Table 1.6):
Table 1.6: Parental leave in the Nordic countries
DK

FI

NO

SE

Number of weeks

52

48

49

69

Number of weeks reserved for fathers

0

6

10

8

Source: adapted from Teigen and Skjeie (2017), Table 5, p 141.

Table 1.6 shows significant differences in the amount of time allocated toparental leave. There is a 17-​week difference in parental leave allocation
between Denmark and Sweden, and there are also important differencesin the number of parental leave weeks reserved for fathers. Since fathers’
participation in childcare is key to women’s ability to have a career in
R&I (see Chapter 9 by Seddighi and Corneliussen, this volume), thesedifferences matter.
What all the figures cited earlier tell us is that any finer-​g rained analysis
of gender equality issues in R&I across the supposedly very similar Nordic
countries will reveal significant differences among them (Åseskog, 2018).
But rather than assess the relativity of these differences and similarities,
it might be more pertinent to ask for what purposes these discourses ofsimilarity or difference are mobilized. One could argue that the public
assertion of achieved gender equality serves to silence dissenting voices
and absolves relevant bodies and organizations from addressing genderequality issues in the Nordic countries. One could further argue that the7

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

homogenization of the Nordic countries under that very umbrella term
serves to obscure significant differences (see Larsen et al, 2021) that theindividual countries involved might need to address. Conversely, one could
also suggest that highlighting the differences between the Nordic countries
and the range of gender inequalities that continue to prevail (Griffin and
Vehvilainen, 2021) is an incitement for action and change. Any emphasison differences or similarities between the Nordic countries is thus astrategic and political decision, based on the purpose the comparison ismeant to serve.
Institutionally the Nordic countries have cemented their similarities
through joint bodies such as the Nordic Council of Ministers. Given thegeographic location and proximity of the countries, their relative size
both of territory and of population (see Table 1.7), the linguistic affinities
between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and the Nordic countries’ social-​
democratic welfare state histories, it makes sense to emphasize the similarities
and to foster close allegiances among them. The Nordic countries occupy
comparatively large geographical spaces while having small populations
as becomes evident in their population per square kilometre ratio (seeTable 1.7). Sweden, for instance, is geographically roughly twice the sizeof the UK but has a population of less than one sixth of the UK’s. This alsomeans that there are few large cities and that large tracts of each country
except for Denmark are uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited. This impacts
on issues such as social cohesion and trust, but also on interdependence
among the Nordic countries.
Table 1.7: Size of geographic territory (in km²) and population in 2020 by
Nordic country (UK added as comparator)

Size of territory
in km²
Total
population
Population
density per km²

Denmark Iceland

Finland

NorwaySwedenUK

42,916 103,000

338,145

323,802450,295

242,900

5,792,202 341,243 5,540,720 5,421,241 10,099,265 68,192,697
137

3

18

15

25

281

Source: adapted from www.worldometers.info/​world-​population/​population-​by-​country/​,
accessed 12 May 2021.

Countries with small populations benefit and suffer from the fact thatmembers of specific subsections of the population such as those working
in Digital Humanities or biotechnology all tend to know each other. Suchfamiliarity fosters trust and social cohesion but it can also produce subtle
mechanisms of in-​and exclusion (Husu, 2001, 2005) such as become8INTRODUCTION

evident in some of the chapters in this volume (for example Chapters 5
and 11). The COVID-​19 pandemic has cast this situation into a new
global light, not least regarding R&I. The pandemic has highlighted thetensions between globalization and localization, two major forces thatare structuring inter-​and transnational interaction against a longer-​term
backdrop of rising populism, right-​wing politics and neo-​nationalism thatis anti-​global except where the circulation of capital is concerned. The
pandemic, but also climate change, for example, as global phenomenarequire global cooperation to address them. Here sharing knowledge
regarding the virus, for example, constituted a push towards globalized
collaboration in R&I, but the manufacture and especially the distributionof the anti-​viral vaccines reinforced nationalistic tendencies as countries
and indeed in some instances regions within countries ‘looked after theirown’, despite the setting up of Covax,5 a worldwide distribution system ofanti-​viral drugs by the World Health Organization. The Nordic countries
were no exception in this, responding differently to the pandemic interms of degrees and timing of restrictive measures and so on. Place andbelongingness have thus come to matter in new and unexpected ways,
including in the Nordic countries, which, despite their generally close
cooperation, closed borders against each other’s citizens, for example, inorder to stem the spread of infection. Travel abroad, there as elsewhere,
was discouraged and in 2021 many people did not consider holidays
abroad. We already have significant research showing how COVID-​19
has reinforced existing gender inequalities among women and men (forexample Alon et al, 2020; Collins et al, 2021). One concern must be thatthe pandemic provides license to entrench gender inequalities further, as
political and economic priorities displace certain inequalities from policy
and governmental agendas. This needs to be guarded against in these timesof challenge and change.

Structure of the volume
All the chapters in this volume are based on original empirical qualitative
data, collected between 2017 and 2020. Many of these, but not all, derivefrom research carried out under the auspices of the Nordforsk-​funded
Excellence Centre Nordwit (nordwit.com). They all engage with the issueof gender inequalities in tech-​driven R&I from the perspective of those whowork in that context, in other words, from below, and centre on findings
from three Nordic countries: Finland, Norway and Sweden. These countries,
as discussed earlier, have many similarities, particularly historically, not least
their public emphasis on gender equality, and their relatively high investment
in R&I as a percentage of GDP (Table 1.8):

9

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Table 1.8: R&D expenditure as % of GDP
Country

DK

FI

NO

SE

USA

UK

R&D expenditure

2.9

3.1

1.7

3.1

2.7

1.6

Source: http://​uis.une​sco.org/​apps/​vis​uali​sati​ons/​resea​rch-​and-​deve​lopm​ent-​spend​ing/​,
accessed 26 May 2021.

However, the Nordics are also countries that have become increasingly
drawn into the orbit of neoliberal policies and dispositions (for example
Berg et al, 2016; Kamali and Jönsson, 2018; Nygren et al, 2018). Somewould argue (for example Browning, 2007; Kautto, 2010) that this is what
has begun to create subtle differences among these countries, their policies
and modi operandi. Others have suggested for some considerable time thatconceptual frames such as ‘woman-​friendly states’, applied to ‘the Nordic
countries’, ‘downplay differences between the five Nordic countries’ andthat there are ‘important differences in the form of women’s mobilization,
their inclusion in political parties as well as the extent of institutionalizationof gender equality’ in these Nordic countries (Borchorst and Siim,
2002: 92). The chapters in this volume explore those similarities anddifferences in dialogue with each other, in the understanding that, to quotea well-​established feminist line, knowledge is situated (Haraway, 1988),
and that gender and R&I, as entangled constructs in particular contexts,
are also situated, even as they operate at local, national and international
levels simultaneously.
Gabriele Griffin’s chapter on the precariousness of R&I in academe sets thetone for much of the work in this volume which highlights the ambivalencesthat accompany women’s and to some extent men’s (see also Hearn, 2017)
reported working experiences in R&I in contemporary academe (see also
Murgia and Poggio, 2019). She draws on interviews with Digital Humanities
practitioners in Finland, Norway and Sweden to argue that emerging
inter-​and multidisciplinary knowledge domains which constitute epistemic
innovations operate in ‘unsettledness’. This term describes R&I as such
which is all about the new, change and the transformative. It also applies tothose working in new knowledge domains which are frequently establishedin atypical higher education formations such as centres, labs or forums thatexist outside the main conventional decision-​making structures of academe
and are hence marginalized. Drawing on Charles Tilly’s (1998) depiction of
inequality mechanisms, in particular opportunity hoarding and exploitation,
but also on Henry Etzkowitz and Carol Kemelgor’s (1998) elaborationof the role of centres in universities, Griffin illustrates how conditions ofunsettledness which extend to the provisional contractual situation of many
Digital Humanities practitioners enable gendered inequalities to flourish incontexts where there is –​public equality discourses notwithstanding –​little
10

INTRODUCTION

room for redress. Thus R&I institutions such as universities both invite anddisavow innovation, for instance through how they both desire innovation
as long as it is accompanied by external funding, and disavow it by notsupporting it in terms of their recruitment and promotion criteria whereinterdisciplinarity, for instance in publications terms, can be an active
disadvantage. Universities emerge as not agile here, and as insecure sources of
employment, pushing women who often embrace innovation opportunities,
either out of their jobs or into service appointments which fail to do justiceto their expertise, knowledge and competences.
This topic is also taken up by Oili-​Helena Ylijoki in her chapter onnavigating the career paradoxes of women researchers in biotechnology.
Biotechnology, like Digital Humanities, is a new kid on the R&I block,and in academe. And like in Digital Humanities, the researchers are
predominantly female. Indeed, Ylijoki’s case study, a biotechnology centre ata Finnish university, originally had only female researchers. As an emerging
knowledge domain biotechnology has no track record of institutional
embeddedness, professional associations or other obvious support structures.
It is hence the object of institutional and educational policy decision-​making
in ways that challenge its efficacy. Ylijoki discusses how the multiple mergers
which this centre underwent as part of a national Finnish higher education
restructuring strategy to create bigger units, led to its dissolution, with half
its female staff leaving to seek work in the private sector and the other halfcontinuing under constraining working conditions in which they found it
almost impossible to gain institutional recognition in the form of permanent
jobs and promotions to professorships despite bringing in more money
than some of their colleagues from other, much more established, related
disciplines such as medicine. Ylijoki identifies three career imaginaries thatshape these women’s views of their professional lives: i) the tenure track
position, introduced into Finland (but not into other Nordic countries) in
2010, which is open to younger scholars on the basis of their ‘promise’ andwhich leads to a permanent professorship but is only achieved by very few,
hence not a realistic prospect for most; ii) academic entrepreneurs who exist
from project to project on insecure temporary employment even if they arehighly successful in terms of generating external funding; and iii) leaving
academe to gain more secure and less stressful employment in the private
sector. The paradox in all this is that biotechnology when it emerged wasregarded as having great potential to generate transformative scientific results,
opportunities for commercialization and academy-​industry links, and its
institutionalization was accompanied by great hype. Academe clearly desiredit, but unrealistic expectations of the instantaneity of its transformational
and income-​generating potential coupled with structural changes in higher
education challenged the biotechnology centre’s viability, and its absorption
into ever larger male-​dominated units within the university dissolved its
11GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

potential, leaving the women in the unit floundering and unable to see theircareer futures in anything other than bleak terms.
Against such bleakness Hilde G. Corneliussen and Gilda Seddighi’s chapter
shows that women find ways into ICT even when the odds are stacked against
them, not only because ICT is considered to be male dominated but also
because they are not encouraged into ICT at the point of entering higher
education or because they are interested in something else at that stage.
Corneliussen and Seddighi focus on ICT work in Norway. They found thatwomen migrated to ICT through three different, circuitous routes. One wasby doing a second degree in an ICT field later on in life after the women
had already completed a first degree (this is, of course, a more likely routein countries where education is free, rather than where one has to pay fees
as in the UK). The second occurred as a function of the technologizationof non-​tech contexts. And the third came about as a result of the need for
non-​tech specialisms within ICT fields. Importantly, women such as theones interviewed for this chapter are not captured in OECD and otherdatabases documenting ICT domains because these databases often take only
the first higher education degree into account –​which in these women’scases was in non-​ICT subjects –​and because we have as yet no effective
ways of measuring either shifts in occupational parameters as a function ofincreasing digitalization, or of tracking career moves across domains. The low
numbers of women in ICT that are conventionally reported may therefore
be somewhat misleading in terms of actual numbers of women engaged in
ICT-​focussed research and innovation.
In the same way that we know little about women finding their way
into ICT through circuitous routes, we also have little research to date that
addresses how changing research funding regimes impact differentially on
women and men although it is established that gendered biases in researchfunding occur (Ranga et al, 2012; Van der Lee and Ellemers, 2015).
Vehviläinen et al’s chapter provides useful insights into this phenomenon.
They chart experiences of an initial great welcome followed by a narrativeof decline as a function of changing research funding regimes in relation
to women working in biotechnology, a new R&I area in contemporary
Finnish academe. They outline Finland’s shifts in research funding, theresult of changing economic fortunes and in particular the spectacular riseand decline of one company and private research funder, Nokia. Here thedisproportionate influence of one company on the finances of a country
with a small population become evident. But Vehviläinen et al’s account also
demonstrates that in times of economic contraction women fare significantly
worse than men, being excluded from research opportunities, particularly
where these collide with family responsibilities and childbearing issues.
The women’s inability to resist their exclusion from R&I as funding shrankis painful to behold; it speaks to the difficulty of changing the underlying
12

INTRODUCTION

cultures of gender inequality which are held at bay during times of plenty but
surface in almost unchanged ways in times of austerity, even in supposedly
gender equal countries.
Charlotte Silander et al’s chapter discusses the effectiveness of different
equality measures in redressing prevailing gender inequalities in Finland,
Norway and Sweden. It covers the period 2000–​18 and compares the relative
effectiveness of organizational measures such as having gender equality plans
and targeted measures directed specifically at women in STEM universities.
They reveal interesting differences between the countries: while all ofthem use organizational equality measures, Finland did much less regarding
targeted measures. However, the findings show that targeted measures,some of which might be construed as positive action, are more effective inachieving change than organizational measures. The paradox and problem
is that targeted measures that could be construed as positive action are notpermissible under EU law and hence the two countries that used them themost, Norway and Sweden, had to discontinue them (see also Skjeie et al,
2019: 443–​4).
The effectiveness of such measures is also under scrutiny in May-​Linda
Magnussen et al’s chapter, which provides very concrete evidence of whatsuch targeted measures might mean. Here a specific measure, preliminary
evaluations of more junior female academics in a technology university
in Norway, is under scrutiny. The preliminary evaluations concerned
the women’s curricula vitae (CV) and their readiness to be promoted toprofessor. The chapter finds that women who underwent such evaluations
by and large felt motivated to work towards a professorship. For some thiswas because they felt recognized and made visible through the process ofthe evaluation itself –​they were being paid attention. For others it was
about gaining a better understanding of what was required in CV terms,
and negotiating more research time to improve their outputs. Magnussen
et al, however, point out that such recognition came at a cost. They argue
that the women were effectively invited to emulate male-​centred academic
cultures, that is, become more competitive, more narrowly focussed, say‘no’ to anything that was not CV-​supportive, focus on number one (that is,themselves) and so on; in other words, they were neoliberalized and indeed,
invited to adapt themselves to the masculinized work environment that theneoliberal academy has promoted (Hearn, 2017). The authors rightly ask
if this is the kind of R&I environment we want to foster (see also Morleyand Lund, 2020).
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen and Guro Korsnes Kristensen’s chapter shows how
much that work environment has already become rooted in early career
researchers’ imaginaries regarding their futures in academe. The Norwegian
postdocs they interviewed saw the academic environment as highly
competitive and extremely demanding, leaving little room for ‘having a life’.
13

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONIn this they clearly resembled the Finnish academics whom Oili-​Helena
Ylijoki discussed in her chapter in this volume. However, unlike in Finland
where tenure track positions have become a new norm, such positions are
not available in Norway, thereby changing the futures early career researchers
can imagine. A professorship which would change the Norwegian postdocs’
status from temporary to permanent employment was seen as a way out ofthe precarity that accompanied their present status, but it was not something
they regarded as possible to ‘choose’ as such. This contradicts the neoliberal
rhetoric of ‘choice’ that has come to dominate many work-​related discourses.
‘Choice’ also played a very limited role in their initial decision to undertake
postdoc positions. Being supported by more senior academics, having
luck, and serendipity loomed larger than any notion of choice in their
imaginaries, with the added gendered, not necessarily expected dimensionthat women were much more upfront about that support than men who
tended to downplay it. Differences in gendered perceptions also played aninteresting role in how the entanglement of career and family was narrated.
Men talked about their partners as equally committed to their careers as
they were, while the women talked more in terms of their own agency inmanaging family and work. Interestingly, male interviewees suggested thatthe question of having a family was as pertinent for them as for women,thus pointing to potential new alliances between younger men and theirpartners regarding this issue.
For the Norwegian postdocs becoming a professor was regarded as
desirable because it led out of precarious work situations, it lent authority
and it seemed the inevitable goal of pursuing an academic career, but it wasalso viewed as hugely demanding and incompatible with having a work-​life
balance. That issue of the work-​life balance is also taken up in Gilda Seddighiand Hilde G. Corneliussen’s chapter regarding the challenges women
working in ICT research and innovation in Norway in the governmental
and business sectors face as they try to reconcile work and family life in anage when flexible working has been heralded as the means to enable womento spend more time with family, and to have both a career and a family.
However, and first, the generous childcare policies that are a hallmark of
Norway proved insufficient to the needs of these women who were required
to draw on their individual personal resources regarding childcare to enable
them to pursue their career. In the context of the dual-​earner model thatis prevalent in the Nordic countries, Norwegian women working in ICT
had to rely on partners with different work patterns than their own, inparticular predictable standard-​office-​hour work times, not too much travelor commuting and the flexibility to be home early to manage childcare
issues. Second, flexibility in these women’s account of their careers meant
working more, rather than less, and often evenings and weekends to ‘makeup for’ time spent with children. The ‘greedy’ work cultures that prevail in
14

INTRODUCTION

ICT R&I were difficult to negotiate for women, and even as they worked
there full-​time, and indeed more, some felt like that they had opted out
from a career because they gave their time to family.
One answer to such difficulty might, of course, be to save time bygoing online (though COVID-​19 has shown that this has many gendered
implications also –​see Alon et al, 2020; Collins et al, 2021; Hupkau andPetrongolo, 2020). Malin Lindberg et al’s chapter on co-​creative platforms
deals with the question of how gender research can be used effectively acrossacademe and industry or business/​enterprise through just such platforms, inthis instance two located in Sweden. Co-​creative platforms in themselves
constitute an innovation, and Lindberg et al’s work explores how genderresearch can inform –​ through a co-​creative, collaborative endeavour
between academe and business –​innovative equality practices in businesses.
Their study reveals that these platforms engage researchers and stakeholders
in innovation processes of joint identification, exploration and solution ofsocietal and organizational challenges, as is common in social innovation.
Both struggle, however, to bridge the critical agenda of the researchers andthe constructive agendas of the stakeholders. Lindberg et al emphasize thepotential of gender research to improve organizational competitiveness,innovativeness and attractiveness, on the one hand, while advancing academic
knowledge on mechanisms for organizational and societal transformation, on
the other. However, they also indicate some of the vicissitudes of collaborating
across sectors, ranging from incompatibilities of timetables which made thearrangement of meetings difficult to managers’ disbelief regarding some of theresearch findings. Cross-​sectoral collaboration, a much vaunted desideratum incontemporary academe, proves more demanding than anticipated.
The volume finishes with a text on a little explored subject, the relationshipbetween ICT R&I and geographical location. We tend to think of R&I as
occurring largely in urban conglomerations but technologization has changed
work opportunities in rural regions as businesses and government bodies
have relocated there, both to support local and regional development and in
search of cost effectiveness. This is important in the Nordic countries whichhave huge rural areas that are sparsely populated and where out-​migration
by women is more common than out-​migration by men (SSB, 2018). For
women, as Hilde G. Corneliussen et al show, the changing workscape in rural
regions produces interesting job opportunities that might not be available
to them in urban areas. In the Norwegian context, on which this chapter
concentrates, these opportunities coincide with women’s desire to live in areas
where they grew up, to spend more time with family and to enjoy the benefits
that living in a rural environment offers such as outdoor activities which
are highly popular in the Nordic countries, such as hiking in the summer
and skiing in the winter. Corneliussen et al found that scarcity of humanresources in under-​populated areas in Norway and the technologization of
15

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

companies and the public sector afforded women who were either keen to
move to the countryside anyway or who already had family connections
there meant that women had opportunities to get jobs and utilize or develop
their ICT expertise while at the same time cutting down on commuting
and improving their work-​life balance. However, for migrant women withno prior family connections isolation in the countryside could also becomea problem, and all women had to grapple with the fact that overall there
were far fewer workplaces to choose from than in urban arenas. NonethelessCorneliussen et al’s work counteracts the prevailing assumption that womenin ICT research and innovation are inevitably low in numbers and cannot
find a way of reconciling work and life. The countryside emerges as a spaceof qualified opportunity for women in ICT.
Gender inequalities in R&I continue to prevail (see Striebing et al, 2020),
even in the Nordic countries. This much is clear. However, there are also
signs of gradual change. According to the SHE Figures (2018) ‘the proportionof tertiary educated women and men working as professionals or technicians
are almost equal at the EU-​28 level’ (2018: 40). ‘Women are also more
likely than men to work in knowledge-​intensive activities’ (2018: 42) and‘While women are under-​represented as authors in research publications,they are slowly closing the gap’ (2018: 142). The funding success rates for
women and men show that in Denmark and Finland overall women havegreater success rates than men; in Norway they are almost equal; and only in
Sweden do men have higher funding success rates (SHE Figures, 2018: 173).
These indicators may signal that women in R&I are gradually adapting to
the neoliberal workscape they inhabit without this necessarily changing thework cultures they have to navigate, or it may suggest an overall shift in work
environments affecting both women and men. One thing is for sure: living
the contradiction is not sustainable.
Notes
1

2

3
4

5

Nordwit is a Nordforsk-​funded Excellence Centre (2017–​22) focussing on women intech-​driven careers (see www.nordwit.com).
For details of the GenderedInnovations project see https://g​ ende​ redi​ nnov​ atio
​ ns.stanfo​ rd.
edu; for the Efforti project see www.efforti.eu, both accessed 15 April 2021.
EEA: European Economic Area; EFTA: European Free Trade Association.
Figures from www.worldometers.info/​world-​population/​population-​by-​country/​ ,accessed 24 May 2021.
See www.who.int/​initiatives/​act-​accelerator/​covax, accessed 26 May 2021.

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16

INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

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2

Research and Innovation in the
Academy: A Precarious Business
Gabriele Griffin

Introduction
Research and innovation (R&I) in academe is a precarious business.
Considered highly desirable by policymakers at local, national andinternational levels (Veugelers et al, 2012), it is nonetheless fraught withdifficulties (Treussard and Arnott, 2017; Kuzma and Roberts, 2018). This
chapter explores these difficulties as they arise in the context of Digital
Humanities in academe in three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway,
Sweden). It asks how women and men working in Digital Humanities farein this emerging area of work. Digital Humanities (DH) is a knowledge
production domain that conjoins humanities disciplines, conventionallyassociated with a strong female presence in terms of student and staff numbers,
and technology, an arena more commonly associated with a strong malepresence (OECD, 2019). DH is also a domain that depends extensively
on collaboration (Deegan and McCarthy, 2012) since its inter-​and multi-​
disciplinarity, minimally already encoded in the conjoining of technology
and humanities, requires interaction between humanities scholars andtechnology experts (Griffin and Hayler, 2018), often from several disciplines.
This collaboration is in itself already demanding (Griffin et al, 2013a, 2013b),
partly because it defies the ‘lone scholar’ tradition that has been common in
the humanities, and partly because very different, and differently demanding,knowledge arenas are brought together.
To date, and in contrast to the US (Zorich, 2008) and to some extent
the UK, DH in the Nordic countries exists mainly in centres, labs, fora
and other such formations within the university –​formations that arelargely atypical for higher education institutions that still function mainly
along the divisions of faculties and departments. This atypicality in itself
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

has consequences regarding the (relative) precarity of R&I in academe asthat manifests itself in DH. It is part of the precarizing culture and practices
that pervade much of contemporary employment (Berardi, 2009; Standing,2011). In this chapter I explore these precarities and their gendered effects
and consequences for those who work within DH. Theoretically, I frame
this chapter in terms of the four durable inequality mechanisms identified
by Charles Tilly (1998): exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation andadaptation. Of these, and based on my data, I focus in particular on two
mechanisms: opportunity hoarding and emulation. But I begin by discussing
the literature on R&I in academe in its relation to DH, and Tilly’s fourmechanisms, before describing my research methods, the participants, mydata and their analysis. I shall then discuss three issues that emerged in theinterview data as factors that produce precarity for research and innovationin academe, before analyzing their implications.

Digital Humanities as research and innovation inacademeDH as a knowledge domain has a fairly recent history in academe, datingback to the 1980s and 1990s (Kirschenbaum, 2012). It co-​emerged with thearrival of new information and communication technologies in universities(Duhaney, 2005; Levin et al, 2012), which invited the digitalization of data
and their digital exploration. Originally concerned with the creation ofdigital versions of analogue data (for example in computational linguistics
and of library collections), it quickly expanded, aided by the rapidly
increasing affordances of digital tools, to encompass the creation, curation
and analysis of materials both analogue and born digital across a significant
range of humanities disciplines. In the Nordic countries, as much as in manyother countries which embraced this higher education innovation, DH wasinstitutionally configured as research groups, labs, centres or forums. These
formations are in many ways atypical for higher education institutions (HEIs)
and their decision-​making structures (Griffin, 2019) which tend to continue
to operate largely through faculties and departments. However, these atypical
HEI formations were also part of the diversification of university subdivisions
that occurred largely in the 1980s and 1990s, partly in recognition of theincreasing ‘importance of academic research for technology, innovation andeconomic growth’ (Veugelers, 2014: 3) and changing funding regimes inhigher education.
R&I in academe have been viewed as key drivers for economic growth forsome considerable time (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). In recognitionof this, HEIs have transformed in the past 30 years or so, even though ‘thehistory and legacy of universities can make them resistant to change’ (Blassand Hayward, 2014). Part of this transformation has been the accelerated
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RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMY

establishment of research centres of different kinds within universities(Etzkowitz and Kemelgor, 1998). These centres share certain characteristics
which render them precarious. Etzkowitz and Kemelgor argue that centres‘represent less of an institutional commitment than departments: they need nopermanent staff’ (1998: 272). As a university tactic ‘in [the] academic struggle
for funds’ (1998: 274), ‘centres are temporary bodies that may close if funds
run out’ (1998: 277). Altogether, this signals the ‘transferring [of] risks andinsecurity onto workers and their families’ (Standing, 2011: 1), which Guy
Standing diagnoses as a key aspect of the neoliberal labour market and of
the emergence of the precariat. It, in a nutshell, describes the situation DH
has found itself in in many European countries including the Nordic onesin the past 25 years or so. It heralds the precarization and unsettled work
conditions which afflict much cognitive work in contemporary academe.
Academic institutions, of course, and ironically perhaps, seek to safeguard
their own existence through this process of the precarization of the staff.
The traits described earlier make these centres part of the ‘endless transition’which Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff diagnose as being a key characteristic ofcontemporary academe’s place in the R&I nexus, described by them as
the triple helix of university-​industry-​government relations.1 As they alsosuggest, not only is there an unsettled dynamic among the helixes but also
within each one, unsettledness is part of its specificity. While unsettledness
may be described as the necessary corollary of, or synonym for, innovation,transformation and change, it has consequences for those who work in
conditions of unsettledness, and for those who seek to innovate underthose conditions, whether as institutions, funders or researchers. These
consequences will be explored later.

Unsettledness and Charles Tilly’s inequality
mechanisms
The unsettledness of HEIs as research and innovation hubs, and their
peripheralization of DH in atypical institutional formations occur in a context
where ‘inequality regimes’ prevail (Acker, 2006). Charles Tilly (1998: 10)
has identified four mechanisms which sustain these regimes: exploitation,
opportunity hoarding, emulation and adaptation. These mechanisms are
based on distinctions being made between categorical pairs (for example
woman, man; professor, student) that are constructed as standing in an
asymmetrical relation to each other. That asymmetrical relation produces
inequalities. Exploitation involves the use and benefit of resources fromwhich those who help to produce them are excluded. Opportunity hoarding
refers to people having access to and using resources within their own
network that they simultaneously deny others whom they regard as outside
their network. Emulation involves the reproduction of existing models
23

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

of institutions and practices which reproduce the inequality mechanisms
already inherent in them. Finally, adaptation references the adjustment of
oneself, one’s situation, one’s environment to existing norms, practices andstructures such that one reproduces their particularities and biases in the
new context. These mechanisms thus (re)produce durable inequality. It is
worth noting that Tilly’s inequality mechanisms describe relations between
people working in institutions rather than institutional mechanisms as
such. In that sense they lead back to individuals. However, as will become
clear later, much of the opportunity hoarding and emulation that occurs in
R&I contexts is undertaken on behalf of institutions which condone andsupport those mechanisms. There is hence an institutional and structuralcomponent to the persistence of these inequality mechanisms. Of theseinequality mechanisms, two in particular –​emulation and opportunity
hoarding –​manifested themselves in my data.
Tilly’s inequality mechanisms continue to have salience in contemporary
academe (Griffin and Vehvilainen, 2021). Their explanatory force becomes
evident when one considers the experiences detailed by my interviewees, DH
practitioners working in HEIs in Finland, Norway and Sweden. I shall now
turn to these and describe the research process, participants, data collection
and analysis, before turning to the discussion of my data.

Methodology and data analysis
Between 2017 and 2018 the author conducted one-​on-​one, semi-​structured
interviews in English with 30 DH practitioners, 17 women and 13 men,from Finland, Norway and Sweden. The interviewees’ ages ranged from 29
to 62. The interviewees were purposively selected by searching university
and research funder websites; the main criterion was that the participants
should work in or with DH. Both women and men were interviewed to geta sense of how they experienced their working conditions and the latter’s
genderization. Thus women and men generally agreed that those mainly
working with technology, for example as programmers or technicians,
were usually men, and this proved to be the case in my sample. Of the 23
interviewees who were, broadly speaking, academics, 14 were women andnine were men –​the majority were therefore women. Since DH is stillin a state of disciplinary unsettledness, and involves collaborations acrossknowledge domains, many job descriptions emerged when the interviewees
were asked what their current job was. The descriptions included professor,
associate professor, assistant professor, temporary lecturer, researcher,
postdoc, PhD student, technician, programmer, director of studies, course
coordinator, director of a DH centre, collaboration manager and others.
Some had more than one job description, being, for instance, both a directorof a DH centre and a professor, or a programmer and a researcher. This is24

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMY

partly because a number of them had multiple jobs, being for example split
50/​50 across different posts (Griffin, 2022).
Most interviews were conducted face to face but some were done online,
related to participant availability. They were given information sheets
about the project and asked to sign consent forms allowing the use of theiranonymized interview data in subsequent publications. All interviewees were
pseudonymized, and their institutions and other identifying traits eliminatedfrom the transcribed interviews. The interviews lasted between 43 and 70
minutes. They were audio-​recorded and transcribed, then uploaded into
NVivo 11 Pro for thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). That analysis,done in the form of close repeated readings of the interviews and coding
according to emerging inductive and deductive themes, produced a rangeof themes such as ‘interdisciplinarity’, ‘mentoring’, ‘male mentor’, ‘leaving
job’, ‘going into industry’, ‘supportive institution’, ‘support for DH’,
‘career blocking’ and so on. These were then re-​read and grouped together
according to larger themes such as ‘support’, ‘career progression’, ‘working
conditions’. Re-​reading those themes revealed how institutional structuresand practices in their entanglement with gender produced precarities for
DH practitioners that had important consequences for their working lives.
These will be explored next through three issues that were typical for DH
as an emerging field.

Issue 1: Uncertain support –​the case of the work thatwas closed down
DH as a knowledge domain has both female and male staff but with afairly conventional gendered divide: the researchers are often women, the‘techies’ tend to be men, a situation that was confirmed across the board by
my interviewees. Terras (2012) describes this bipolar situation in terms ofwomen tending to function as the ‘other’ in this environment since someof them may lack the technical education and know-​how to translate theirresearch ideas into ‘doable’ DH projects. As one, Britta, told me: “Without
the technicians, the two men who helped us, nothing could have beendeveloped.” And as another female interviewee told me: “The very earlydays, I suppose it was male-​dominated, you know, throughout, there werevery few women who were interested in this side of, this kind of research”(Aava). Even in 2018 when I interviewed her, she said, only “20 per centin our faculty are female professors”. Another female interviewee put itlike this: “It’s a bunch of guys, they are adorable, but you know, it’s a little
bit like the Silicon Valley show. The administration is a girl, you know, andthat’s it” (Nina).
Several of the interviewees who came into this environment as young
female doctoral students or postdocs reported significant difficulties with the25

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

male professors leading these research environments in which the womenfelt frequently unsupported and sidelined. As one woman said: “I didn’t
get any support at all, I mean the support I got was that I was invited to bepart of the project, but I was very much left on my own … it was terrible,[those] years were not good in any way, I think it was kind of devastating
because I was lost” (Lena). Another interviewee described being bullied byher male professor when she was doing her PhD, and while she ultimately
resisted this behaviour, it did make her leave the university “disillusioned”
and work in private sector research for a number of years. Another woman
described how lack of support from the senior male professor meant that
her work was closed down, meaning that she was deprived of opportunities
to apply for further funding in her DH research area when her money ran
out to the point where she had to look for work elsewhere.
Her experience occurred at the interface of gender, seniority and theembedding of a new discipline, DH, into academe. The professor in question,a linguist, had “hired one to the group who was more into DH in order tomake it more experimental”. However, “when we actually tried to workwith it, he [the professor] got afraid because of reviewing or yes, you know,
publishing and so on”. In the interviewee’s view those who started to “getscared” were men “who wanted to polish their careers in a more traditional
way”. Here we have evidence of Tilly’s inequality mechanism of emulation
where people, in this instance men, seek to profile themselves professionallyby emulating traditional ways of promoting their careers, here through the
publishing of conventional research articles. This is not unreasonable giventhat careers in academe depend significantly on researchers’ publication
profile as a key criterion for their advancement (Balsmeier and Pellens
2014). The professor in question “didn’t want to endorse further ideas …
he didn’t believe in our results, so he got very conservative along the way”
(Lena). Etzkowitz and Kemelgor (1998: 282) refer to professors’ ability tolimit what researchers can do. But in this instance the informant saw what
happened as part of a wider question of the legitimacy of DH as an innovationin the institution. As she suggested, “that’s part of what people in Digital
Humanities … like always see as like their biggest problem, convincing
people that this is valid, it works … very often they feel people don’t believein them or think it’s real research” (Britta).
Treussard and Arnott (2017) talk of ‘bubbles in academe’ and the issue of
how one knows when to (dis)invest in an innovation. DH as an innovationin academe had to, and continues to have to, establish its legitimacy in theuniversity and, as part of that, suggesting that DH is ‘just like other disciplines’
is a powerful but also potentially highly conservative mechanism that invites
emulation and hence the reproduction of existing biases, including those ofgender. It also does not encourage the university to recognize change but
rather invites it to maintain the status quo. Britta, the interviewee referred
26

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMY

to earlier, was eventually forced to move into an administrative role within
the university to secure her livelihood since her DH work was closed down.
All this was in stark contrast to many of the interviewed men’s experiences.
They expressed a great sense of support from male colleagues who had
encouraged them into jobs and careers –​the classic boys’ network –​, even
if their academic credentials did not meet the job requirements at the timethey started that job (Griffin, 2022). As Jens, for example, said:‘I always felt supported and always felt that I got, you know, I’ve been
helped into being promoted, why I have been able to stay in academia
for this long after doing my PhD is that I have been invited to be parton several research projects … and this has really helped my career,and it’s all because of these male project leaders, and they have beenvery supportive in that sense.’
Here there was a clear sense of Tilly’s opportunity hoarding in that men
supported other men to enter into university careers within DH. However,as indicated, this was mostly not the case for the women, many of whomon the contrary talked about being actively discouraged from pursuing theirinterests or career aspirations.

Issue 2: The vicissitudes of interdisciplinarity
Since DH requires collaboration across radically different knowledge domains,
work within the field gets caught up in the ‘mangle of practice’ (Pickering,1995). This entails unsettledness as a condition of collaborative practice. It
emerged in the example of Britta earlier, in her professor’s anxiety about thereception and acceptance of more experimental DH work within the fieldof linguistics. Britta also revealed that “every year you can apply for researchtime based on publication and stuff, and other stuff as well, but developing
tools or making new research corpuses or whatever it is that you do in DH is
not part of that reading”. This lack of institutional recognition of DH work
had contributed to the lack of support she experienced at micro level fromher professor who grappled with the fact that new paradigms of researchoften have a hard time achieving institutional recognition. As she described it:‘The [male] professor was quite sceptical … he hired one to thegroup who was more into digital humanities in order to make it moreexperimental but when it came to be or when we actually tried towork with it, he got afraid because of reviewing, or, yes, you know,
publishing and so on. So that halted things … he didn’t want to endorse
further ideas of that and got really … he didn’t believe in our results,
so he got very conservative along the way.’
27

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONThis problem of recognition was already evident at the point of recruitment.
As a male interviewee put it:‘people talk about interdisciplinarity … you know, as something thatshould be … supported but then in fact, in quite a few cases, when
decisions, for example, teaching are made, or on hiring people, quite
a few people tend to focus on this kind of a disciplinary backgroundthat they can say, well, this person who has a degree in, a BA fromhere, an MA from here, and a PhD from here, so let’s take that
person.’ (Anders)
Although there is slippage here from the question of disciplinarity tothat of the alma mater (in the repeated ‘from here’), the implication isclear: deviation is not welcome. Institutional practices such as recruitment
processes which insist on monodisciplinarity as a condition for employment
through the expectation that one’s publications are all clearly within a
specific discipline or disciplinary field thus try to force adaptation to existingnorms by requiring individuals to submit to the prevailing demand to be
monodisciplinary in one’s profile. Unsurprisingly, another interviewee,
Britta, like Anders, asserted that she could not compete career-​wise withothers because she had done too many different things to be identified witha single discipline.
Anna, however, yet another interviewee, said of herself: “I am a researcher
in not any particular field, but I have a field, an interdisciplinary field, that
I feel I belong to.” This stance was fairly unusual. The more common response
from both female and male DH practitioners was to disavow any identification
with DH and instead to assert an academic affinity with the discipline inwhich they had been trained (Griffin, 2019), for example linguistics, history
or anthropology. Jan summed this problem up as follows: “multi-​disciplinarity
is one challenge, also the novelty of the whole field … there is as yet no long
tradition of research in the field of digital humanities”. The opportunities
that the unsettledness of a new knowledge domain produce are missed whenabsence of tradition becomes a criterion for excluding practitioners in new
domains from full participation in the university.
It is worth noting that across my interviewees there was consistentand unselfconscious slippage across the phrases trans-​, multi-​, post-​andinterdisciplinarity. The DH practitioners were much less concerned withdefining these terms than with exploring how working across disciplines
in an emerging field impacted on their work experiences. I use the terminterdisciplinarity here since the imbrication of humanities with technologies
is one of the hallmarks of DH but in the awareness that a huge literature anddebate attends terms to do with trans-​, multi-​, post-​and interdisciplinarity(for example Klein Thompson, 1990; Strathern, 2004; Moran, 2010).
28

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMY

An interdisciplinary disposition can go back a long way. Five womenin particular in my sample had very divergent disciplinary backgrounds
which began at school where they were good at both natural sciences
and languages for example. The assumption that different knowledge
domains require different and potentially mutually exclusive kinds ofaptitudes, and that some subjects are ‘serious’ while others are not, iswidespread and feeds into the anti-​interdisciplinary stance that is pervasivein education institutions to this day. One of my interviewees, for instance,
had been keen on rhythmic gymnastics and dance at school, which she
wanted to study but her parents’ view that she ‘should have a decent
first degree first’ prompted her to go from Norway to France to take adegree in engineering. She returned to dance much later but, missing
certain mental rigours of engineering, then went into human-​computerinteraction (HCI) to combine her interests in human movement with theaffordances of HCI. Encouraged by a mentor she set up her own company
to develop particular hard-​and softwares but that company eventuallywent bankrupt because, from her particular perspective, her innovation
was ahead of the curve, and it was not understood. At the time of theinterview employed in academe in an innovation collaboration manager
capacity, she said of herself: “I have this very complex background …
I don’t have this, you know, like ideal path. … I don’t have this deep nicheknowledge within a specific field … so it’s not easy to benchmark me
against other candidates, for example. I think it’s been difficult to create
a good CV” (Berit). Another interviewee, Elsa, studied technical physics
but then found “maybe physics was not that interesting … so I was moreinterested in partying and also language courses” which in turn became
her springboard into corpus linguistics.
Interdisciplinary backgrounds, often forged between high school anduniversity, served as useful starting points for becoming involved in DH,
not least because as an emerging discipline it is not hampered by the norms
and conventions that attend more established disciplines. Eleven female andnine male interviewees talked about their divergent backgrounds, usuallycombining interests in arts, humanities or social science domains withinterests in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). They
would say things such as “my history is a bit curled and swirly” (Anders),
or “Somehow I’m not disciplinary any more. … I could even use the term
post-​disciplinary” (Harriet), or “I’ve for a long time thought of myself as
being in a sort of interzone that’s not defined as traditional, from a traditional
disciplinary standpoint” (Knut). These non-​disciplinary educational andprofessional histories and self-​definitions propelled my interviewees into
DH where practitioners, according to one interviewee, had “one thing incommon, and that is that they are not, they are not afraid of being outside
their comfort zone” (Marta).
29

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

But this very openness also meant that they bucked institutional trends. As
Olof put it: “there was a dream that people could take some part in different
departments … [but] it has turned out it has in practice been very difficult
having things going on in between different departments”. Here divergencefrom conventional structures and disciplinary divisions created obstacles
in realizing the potential of interdisciplinarity. It led some to returning to
the conventional disciplines they had left behind. The unsettledness thatinterdisciplinarity entails could not sustain them in the positions they had
assumed, not least because it was not amenable to emulation of conventional
disciplinary structures as these manifest themselves in the organizational
structures of the university.

Issue 3: Caught in [sic] the Scylla of project work andthe Charybdis of unsettled funding
The establishment of DH in Nordic universities coincided with increasingpressure to gain external funding in a context where the professional normin the Nordic (and some other European) countries was that following on
from one’s PhD, one would go through an often quite extended period ofmany years of working as a postdoc on projects before securing a permanent
position (OECD, 2021). Permanent positions in Nordic universities areusually tied to teaching-​related funding which universities receive as a
block grant. Those on permanent teaching contracts can buy themselves
out of (some of) that teaching by obtaining research funding. However,there are also significant numbers of academics who work as researchers,
existing solely on externally gained competitive funding, in other words,
under precarious work conditions. And, increasingly, many academics areon so-​called permanent contracts but their employment is nonethelesssubject to them bringing in external funding. As Michel, working in a
Norwegian university and half employed in a DH archive, half in a traditional
department, described it: “my position … was always depending on a sortof funding. I mean it was called permanent … but it was dependent on
attracting external funds, but here then the archives got a real permanent
position.” This complicated scenario, with ‘real’ and not really permanentcontracts generates instability and suggests the casualization of staff, with adiversification of contracts, which evacuates these contracts’ meaning since‘permanent’, for instance, does not de facto mean permanent any more. It
leads to exploitation by universities of their staff where, as Etzkowitz andKemelgor (1998) argued, institutions show limited, some might say no,commitment to their staff whom they try to put into expendable positions
through the contracts they issue. Such expendability, however, comes at a
price: staff who do not feel valued do not feel loyal to their institution in
turn, and will readily depart for ‘greener sites’. Unsettledness in the form
30

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMYof temporary contracts thus exerts a price, in particular the loss of highly
qualified staff, often at inopportune moments such as in the middle of a
project (Griffin, 2022).
Project work is by its very nature time-​delimited and hence precarious.
It foreshortens the horizon of possibility to the duration of the project. In
many contexts, junior researchers also cannot apply for project funding intheir own right but are dependent on being invited into a project by a moresenior researcher making an application. This means that their employment
depends on having the right connections and personal networks rather thanon academic competence alone. Lena described this as follows:‘like your employment at university, everything is about securing
funding and the only way to do this is through external funding andlike, knowing people … applying for money yourself … is difficult
as long as you’re a junior researcher … the only option seems to be
to know the right people and get invited to be part of their projects
because otherwise you would lose your position, no matter how you
got it’.
This situation lends itself to the preferentialism associated with old boys’
networks that constitute, in Charles Tilly’s terms, a form of opportunity
hoarding since it allows senior staff to shoe juniors of their own ilk into
positions. Unsurprisingly one female interviewee told me: “from my old
graduate school … there’s at the moment six people with permanent jobs,
five of them are men”. These men, Nina said, “were instantly given positionsin their networks. Permanent”.
Project work is in that sense a social enterprise (Griffin et al, 2013b), a
tricky business when one works in an emerging field. Aarne, one of myinterviewees told me, “when I was writing my thesis I was kind of alone
in my department, there was no kind of like-​minded supervisors around”.
Such lack of connection had knock-​on effects. Berit said: “when I finished
my PhD … I didn’t have any funding for continuing it, and I hadn’t been
so proactive in trying to find it either, and part of that was because I didn’t
really know the academic system”. Lack of mentoring reflected in ignorance
about the academic system here led to temporary unemployment. Britta,
too, commented on this lack of mentoring, saying that the PhD students she
started with “were quite lost” and that “almost nobody in [her Humanities
discipline] got finished with their PhD because they did not know how to
do it”. Britta’s experience is not unique; completion rates across the Nordic
countries for PhDs are poor. In Sweden, for example, only 23 per cent of2009 female PhD entrants had completed their degree after five years; in
Norway only 35.1 per cent of 2014 female PhD entrants had completed
their degree after five years (Sadurskis, 2018; Statistics Norway, 2020). More
31

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

women than men reported such lack of mentoring and lack of initiation
into research and innovation funding regimes, which often continued into
postdoc positions. Britta, for example, talked of a PhD student who “always
met resistance from professors and so on … so she had to do everythingherself, and find mentorship within peers and her own hierarchy, so to
speak”. She said that “in the humanities, they’ve never been organized withmentorships”. This meant that the doctoral students “were quite lost, almost
nobody in art history got finished with their PhD because they didn’t know
how to do it or where to go”. Lena described a terrible work situation withthe male professor leading the DH project she worked in and “not feelingsupported in what I did. … I never got any substantial feedback from him,
he never asked to read anything that I wrote … it was so badly organizedand being like at the start of your career, I think it made me feel kind of
helpless”. Nina also said, “I didn’t feel I had that kind of support.”
The unsettledness of R&I funding, conjoined with institutional inertia tointervene, effectively creates unproductive environments. As Lena described
it: “It was terrible … because everything was quite unsure during a longtime because we didn’t know if we would lose our funding or what would
happen, we didn’t have proper leadership in the lab. … I don’t think a lot of
people felt very well during that period … a lot of people also quit during
this process.” Lengthy periods of uncertainty without key appointments were
not uncommon. As Nicole told me: “we were like three years without [aprofessor] after [female Norwegian colleague] left before they let us advertise
positions”. Nicole attributed this to the emergent nature of DH: “it speaks
volumes I think about their sort of like ‘oh, I don’t know, is it a real subject?’
I think they’ve still … not been quite sure if it is a real discipline or not,you know?”
One thing that institutions and to some extent researchers in DH had notbargained for is that DH itself is very different from conventional Humanities
subjects in that it no longer relies on just a “well sharpened pencil”, as
Petra put it, but involves technological infrastructure, itself in many ways
an innovation which institutions find difficult to handle. Academics andinstitutions can apply to research council infrastructure funds or private
foundations to acquire technological equipment such as eye-​movement
tracking equipment, ‘cave’ environments (with surround screens), or floor
screens but these then have to be serviced and maintained and became
obsolete very quickly as technologies move on. Nina had several stories
related to this. She told me: “the floor screen we have, it’s been leaking
for three years and nobody is fixing it because it is more expensive, andthen we don’t use it for anything other than showing people things”. She
also said: “we have invested in two massive angled screens. Nobody knows
why they were angled … we need a coder to run them, and they have alife expectancy that will cost a lot of kronor to fix.” The prohibitive cost
32

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMY

of fixing things also spelt the death knell for cave technology at anotheruniversity: “the caves in [Danish university]. Fantastic when they came out.
For two years. And then too many expenses and they could not keep it up”(Nina). Nina’s view was that universities, in contrast to private industry, failed
to understand technological infrastructure in the Humanities as a processthat needed long-​term iterative investment on multiple fronts to maintainit and use it. However, often only one or two researchers work with thattechnology, making it an expensive resource. Humanities as the Cinderellaof academe in terms of infrastructure investment has radically changed withthe arrival of digital methods and tools but this has yet to become fully
acknowledged by higher education institutions.
The pattern for funding for DH more generally was either entirely
external, or a mix of some limited university funding and external grants,
all on time-​limited terms. Inevitably when, as was the case in Norway,“national funding disappeared, the centre was reduced” (Olof). Sven told
me that: “some project money was about to end … we had redundancies,
so we had to, what do you say, lay off or fire people”. This process affected
women more than men because they were the majority of the researchers.
So while the technicians were retained, according to Sven “to do withthe funding”, the researchers were let go. To forestall a recurrence of thissituation, Sven said, “we put a lot of effort into applying for money”. But
in the age of competitive research funding “it’s never easy to get money”(Sven). Another interviewee, Knut, described having no continuing money
to maintain the database he had been funded to set up, saying, “even kindof some basic maintenance things right now are a problem”.
For emergent R&I, universities are not a safe source of employment. As
Dirk put it: “they pay our salaries and if they don’t do that any more, they
don’t”. His centre was funded by the Faculty, “so that means three years andthen we have to apply for a new period, and it’s not a lot of money”. This isin a context where research councils may announce strategic funding on aparticular topic but, as one programme manager in Finland put it to me, “itrarely happens that an academic programme … receive another programme
more or less directly in the same field”. In other words, strategic priorities
are changed after three or five years, signalling the end of the related funding,unless one can squeeze one’s project in under another heading.
The majority of my interviewees talked extensively about the precarities
that arose from such short-​term, insecure funding. As Lena said of her
situation: “I mean the future seems quite insecure. … I have a positionright now and I know I have funding for a couple of more years, but afterthat I don’t know what happens.” Nils pointed to the contradictions in his
institution’s attitudes towards this situation: “everybody knows this [bringing
in external funding] is the conditions for being here … in academia that’s
also a major condition, competing about financing, but you are not supposed
33

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

to talk about it that way. You do a lot but you also try to uphold some kindof idea that you are actually part of this organization for different reasons,
you know?” This recognition and simultaneous disavowel of the realitiesof academic employment in R&I, reflected in Michel’s description thatthe archive he worked in was “owned by the university but not part of theuniversity”, testifies to the university’s uncertain relation to the changes
in its practices and procedures, and staff’s difficulties in negotiating these.
Unable to continue just to emulate previous practices and unable to fully
absorb the new conditions, the university emerges as a greedy institution,
ready to exploit its labour force while unwilling to accept responsibility forthe consequences of these shifts.

Discussion and conclusion: The price of unsettledness
and precarity
R&I in academe, of which DH is one manifestation, have to contend withthe unsettledness that changing precarized labour market conditions entail,and which the imperatives of innovation –​change and transformation –​demand. However, as the earlier discussions show, that unsettledness comesat a price. The institutional organization of R&I into centres heralds
their provisional nature, since centres as atypical –​even if proliferating –​formations do not signal institutional commitment to their continuanceor the permanent employment of their staff. As emerging epistemologicaland methodological fields such as DH seek to establish themselves, part ofan increasing drive to foster interdisciplinarity, they are invited to be partof the university while also remaining apart from it. In so far as they areinvited in, they are also invited to emulate the organizational practices into
which they are inserted which encourage them to reproduce the biases
and particularities already inherent in the organization. This is especiallyevident in terms of how these centres are asked to legitimize themselves(for example through standard measures such as publications), which,however, can be difficult to do if the practices the new knowledge domain
entails, such as digitizing collections or producing born-​digital scholarly
work, are not recognized in conventional research assessments or when
staff are recruited.
Emerging interdisciplinary knowledge domains offer opportunities for
those with a divergent education history who defy the mono-​disciplinary
imperative that governs much conventional academic work, and in thisstudy both women and men with divergent backgrounds responded to thoseopportunities. These knowledge domains invite researchers who are content
to be outside their comfort zone and curious beyond the boundaries of asingle discipline. However, they also condemn these staff to hover on theedge of academe, with uncertain employment prospects because of that very
34

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN THE ACADEMYinterdisciplinarity, and, through the prevailing funding and project culture,in perpetual pursuit of the next project or grant. The acquisition of suchgrants which benefits the university in terms of its research profile is done atgreat cost to the researcher, since time to prepare applications is not usuallypart of any grant allocation process, and there is no guarantee that they will
be duly included in new project work even if it is based on their ideas (seealso Chapter 7 in this volume). One might argue that this constitutes aninstitutional form of exploitation in Tilly’s terms. Especially for women who
may take time out to have a family this is a threat to their career. Women inthis study in particular could find themselves excluded, already at doctoraland postgraduate level, from the opportunities to get jobs extended to theirmale peers, a classic version of Tilly’s (1998) opportunity hoarding among
men where senior males would invite juniors into projects and jobs that set
these young men up for their academic career.
Universities’ lack of commitment to the R&I they encourage wasalso evident in the materially compromised working conditions that theinterviewees spoke of. Institutions expect new formations within themto emulate their existing context. However, that context, for instance the
low-​tech history that accompanies humanities disciplines, is inadequate to
the R&I that contemporary new knowledge domains such as DH bringwith them. The inadequacy of much of the technology provision that DH
centres or labs had –​inadequate because inadequate thinking and resource
provision had gone into the fact that these technologies need to be serviced,
maintained, and that they also become obsolete –​retards possibilities forinnovation and new research to take place. Especially in the case of women,some of whom had clearly been ahead of the curve with their work, it led
to them abandoning the work they did and moving into administrativeor other posts within the university. This implies a concomitant loss ofexpertise and knowledge to the university, with highly trained staff moving
out of R&I into secure administrative posts that, however, contribute only
to the bureaucratic processes of the institution and not to its R&I. The
point here is that emulation and adaptation are mechanisms to reproduce
existing structures, but these mechanisms are inadequate to the contemporary
demands of our changing academe.
The agility demanded of those working in R&I needs to be matched byinstitutions becoming more agile. In ‘Agile methods for agile universities’
Michael Twidale and David Nichols (2013) discuss institutional manifestos
to foster agility, based on underlying principles and values. Agility, however,does not mean expendability, or a heedless embrace of unsettledness
as a permanent condition. It demands a considered disposition which
acknowledges the complexities of changing knowledge domains andcombines a proper assessment of what is needed with appropriate care forthose working at the forefront of research and innovation.
35

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Note
1This model has been extended into the quadruple helix to encompass society as well(Carayannis and Rakhmatullin, 2014), but the fundamental notion of a continual
dynamic, and hence unstable, relation between these components has not been changedby that addition.

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3

Navigating Career Imaginaries
in Academia: A View from Women
Researchers in Biotechnology
Oili-​Helena Ylijoki

Introduction
In the current managerial university context, academic career building
has become increasingly competitive, selective and demanding. Growing
dependence on external funding, metrics-​based performance assessments
and intensifying managerial control over academic work have shaped theways in which academic career building is understood and evaluated. Several
studies have pointed to an increasing fragmentation and polarization ofacademic staff into winners and losers (Musselin, 2005; Ylijoki and Ursin,
2013; Murgia and Poggio, 2019). There are elite groups of academics with
abundant resources and space for autonomy and academic freedom (forexample Henningsson et al, 2018) alongside a growing mass of fixed-​term
academics on insecure and uncertain employment, the majority of whom
are women (Murgia and Poggio, 2019). Apart from the individual level,
this polarization takes place across various disciplinary fields that are locateddifferently in terms of science-​policy priorities and possibilities of engaging
in academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). Many STEM fields,
in particular, are often regarded as winners because their research culture
and mode of operation fit well with the current priorities: they have along history of collaboration with industry that generates research funding,patents, spin-​offs and economic impact, and their publication patterns andresearch organization in project teams produces results that are favoured inmetrics-​based performance assessments.

39

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONThis chapter investigates women researchers’ career building in one STEM
field, biotechnology. Since this is a new and interdisciplinary field freighted
with great expectations of commercial and practical utility, one might thinkthat career building in this kind of policy priority area would be especiallyrewarding and easy. However, by looking more deeply at the experiences ofwomen researchers in one specific university context in Finland, the chapter
shows a much more complicated picture, involving strikingly circumscribed
and limited career imaginaries on the part of the research participants. These
imaginaries, in turn, shape the ways in which people make sense of what is
possible and what is impossible, how goals can be reached and what obstacles
are to be expected.
Career imaginaries are shaped not only by specific epistemic andinstitutional contexts, but also by general national academic career models.
In the Finnish higher education system, academic career building has
traditionally been based on what Musselin (2005) calls the tournamentmodel, in which many candidates apply for an open post against heavy
competition. In this model, academic career paths are particularly uncertain,
risky and selective. Getting a permanent position, especially a professorship,require waiting for an open position to emerge as well as the long-​term
accumulation of merits. This means that achieving a professorship typicallyoccurs in a rather late career phase, often when candidates are already intheir 50s. However, this has gradually changed since 2010 when the tenure
track system was introduced in Finland (Pekkola et al, 2020). Universities
have implemented the system in different ways but common to all is thatthose recruited into the tenure track progress from a fixed-​term appointment
to a tenured full professorship if they pass their performance assessment(Herbert and Tienari, 2013; Pietilä, 2015, 2019). Although candidates
need to be already-​established scholars, their future potential has become an
important selection criterion as tenure track recruitments usually take place
at a rather early career phase (Pekkola et al, 2020). This increasingly leaves
room for subjective and unreflexive elements in the assessments, includingones related to subtle gender biases (van den Brink and Benschop, 2011;
Herschberg et al, 2019).
In the following, I examine how women researchers in one Finnish
biotechnology unit envision their career futures in the current managerial
university context. I first present my data and the analytical lens to interpretthem. Next, I describe the future horizon of the biotechnology unit inwhich researchers’ career building takes place, thereby setting it in the
broader epistemic and institutional context. Then, I move to individual
experiences and distinguish three career imaginaries –​the tenure track,academic entrepreneurship and leaving academia –​to discuss the prospects
and restrictions they impose on researchers. I end by reflecting on thecomplexities and narrow visions of academic career building.
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NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

Data and method
This chapter is based on a study of one biotechnology unit located at a
research-​intensive and multi-​faculty university in Finland. The unit wasestablished in the early 2000s as a small independent research centre of theuniversity. Since then, it has undergone a series of organizational fusions,first integrating sequentially with two research institutes, and then merging
with the Faculty of Medicine. In this process, the unit’s history illustrates well
the recent Finnish higher education policy, in which structural development
and mergers between and within universities have been priorities, aiming
to strengthen the dynamics, effectiveness and competitiveness of universities(Ylijoki, 2014b). From the beginning, the primary goal of the biotechnology
unit was to create new commercial and clinical solutions in the health caresector. The unit’s research involves interdisciplinary laboratory science,
combining biosciences and engineering. Unlike technology more generally,
biotechnology is a female-​dominated field. In this unit, too, almost all the
researchers were women.
The empirical material in this chapter comprises focussed interviews with
16 women researchers who all have a close connection to the biotechnology
unit. At the time of the interviews, one half of the interviewees were
working at the unit, while the other half had worked there before but
had recently moved to work outside of academia in private, public andthird-​sector organizations such as pharmaceutical companies, start-​ups andhospitals. The interviewees’ ages, and correspondingly the lengths of theircareer histories, differed: five interviewees were born in the 1960s, five inthe 1970s and six in the 1980s. By and large, those who had left academia
were younger and those who had stayed represented the older generation;
only one interviewee born in the 1980s was still working at the unit. Of
those who remained in academia, three were professors (all belonging to theoldest generation), one was a project researcher and the rest were researchgroup leaders. All interviewees were qualified researchers with PhDs. Theirdisciplinary backgrounds varied. Some of the younger researchers had studied
and gained a doctorate in biotechnology, but the majority came from otherfields, such as biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, material technology
and medicine. All but two interviewees had children and all had partners.
The interviews were open and informal in nature, allowing the interviewees
to talk freely about their work experiences. The themes discussed included
work history, career support and obstacles, the role of gender, future goals
and work-​life balance. The interviews which lasted one to two hours wererecorded and transcribed verbatim. All quotes presented in this chapter aretranslations from Finnish into English and the names are pseudonymized.
The interviews were analyzed through a temporal lens (Ylijoki, 2014a),by exploring the future horizons embedded in the ways in which the41

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

interviewees made sense of career building in academia. The point of
departure was that career building is not solely a personal pursuit basedon individual choice but is deeply rooted in culturally and sociallyavailable career scripts and narratives (Cohen and Mallon, 2001; Duberley
et al, 2006). These both facilitate and constrain individuals in their career
construction. The focus of the analysis is on future imaginaries that shapeand mould present understandings of what it means, and what it takes, tohave an academic career in biotechnology. The specific research questions
were: i) How many and what kinds of career horizons were there?; ii) Whatkind of temporality was embedded in the career horizons?; and iii) How
did the researchers navigate among different career imaginaries?

Future horizons of biotechnology: from hype toharsh reality‘This was really a sexy topic at that point [2000s], we will produce
human spare parts and things like that. … People said wow, are you
really doing these things? I felt so proud of being part of this kind ofresearch. It got so much respect and media visibility. … When I started,
we still had this hype that we will be able to cure the whole world.
Then the reality struck, perhaps these human spare parts will not be
available within ten years. We had big plans but, at some point, we
needed to start to give up. … The situation changed; we turned into
a normal university laboratory.’ (Anita)
In the aforementioned quote, Anita describes the changes that took place atthe biotechnology unit in terms of a declining storyline. This narrative arc
was shared across the interview material. According to this trajectory, theunit started with great hype that gradually faded away, transforming radicallythe future horizon of the research work. The beginning of the unit is a good
example of an economy of technoscientific promises (Felt, 2009), which
offers grand visions of fast science making accelerating progress with immensecommercial and practical success in the future. The unit was expected to create
not only rapid scientific breakthroughs but also powerful dynamics that would
lead to economic growth and innovative solutions for overcoming diseases.
This future horizon was appealing both inside and outside of academia. The
unit got much media visibility nationally and received abundant funding
from various sources ‘as money followed money’. This horizon represents
what Adam and Groves (2007) call the present future: the future is seen as
empty, open and subjugated to human will. It is an unlimited terrain, full of
possibilities, which can be seized for the benefit of the present.
However, this horizon gradually transformed due to various obstacles. The
open horizon turned into the future present (Adam and Groves, 2007), a42

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

contested and limited future which de facto was already latent in the present.
Epistemic constraints emerged when the promises of an accelerating scientificpace were not fulfilled. Fast science turned out to be slow science because
the laboratory experiments involved much waiting time that could not be
sped up by human will. Thus, although the research work was, in many
respects, successful, it involved much ‘epistemic uncertainty’ (Fochler and
Sigl, 2018). Likewise, converting scientific results into commercial products
was a long-​term process, strongly regulated by the authorities and requiring
time-​consuming testing. Therefore, the vision of great commercial andclinical success moved into the dim and distant future. This was accompanied
by financial obstacles, which were further aggravated by a general decline
in research funding in Finland (see Chapter 5, this volume).
The narrowing of the future horizon was also related to the institutional
context of career building. The unit started as a small, all-​female, independent
centre but then underwent several mergers that turned a close communityof women researchers with “a crazy drive” into a component of increasingly
large formations within the university structure. As a consequence, the size of
the work environment “increased exponentially”. This substantially changedsocial relations and the general atmosphere. Anita, one of the interviewees,
described these changes as follows:‘We had such nice people there and such a great spirit. … We didn’t
have any kind of hierarchy; we were all best friends. We spent a lot offree time together and we had such lovely crayfish parties. It was sorelaxed. It really was a fantastic work community. … But of course,when the size grew, you couldn’t know all the people. People wereof different ages, different kinds of people came, and the spirit of thecore group broke up.’ (Anita)
The mergers had an important impact on the prevailing research culture,values and management practices of the unit. While the unit was very
outward-​looking and business-​oriented in the beginning, with a fancy office“almost like in start-​ups”, after the mergers it needed to adapt to traditional
faculty-​based university structures and modes of action. More than that, themergers meant declining autonomy in decision-​making. In particular, thelast merger with medicine created tensions and a sense of marginalization.
Sara, who worked as a research group leader, described this relationship as“a state of war” as she related the difficulties she had experienced:‘When the merger took place and we were not professors, we were
not seen as being as good as they. And the funding that we brought in
was not as good as their funding from the Academy. But if you bringin 100,000 Euros in a year and I bring 300,000 Euros, how can you say
43GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

that you are better than I am, and how can you get more benefits thanI, and I’m not allowed to sit at the same PIs table. And we all happened
to be women and none of us had the status of a professor.’ (Sara)
The interviews suggested that, in this changing institutional context, thefuture horizons of biotechnology were circumscribed by the power of
medicine, in several senses. Biotechnology was an interdisciplinary andentrepreneurially oriented newcomer in academia, with only very few
permanent positions, while medicine had a strong disciplinary status, along history in academia and a mass of professorships. Consequently, theinstitutional position of biotechnology was weak and vulnerable, as manifestedby the repeated mergers. Further, biotechnology was not a professionallyoriented field with strong linkages to a given professional group in society
to provide backup support. In clear contrast to this, medicine had powerful
institutional standing in the university structures and influential professional
support from medical doctors outside. On top of this, the biotechnology
unit was a female-​dominated field with a history of a close-​knit community
spirit without hierarchies, whereas medicine at the professoriate level was
male-​dominated and its overall work culture reflected the spirit of hospitalhierarchies, as the relations between the university and university hospitals
were intense and deep-​rooted.
All these distinctions between the two fields worked to the disadvantage
of biotechnology and put it in a subordinate position to medicine. At
the individual level, visions of the future narrowed, at worst leading toexperiences of not being acknowledged and valued as a colleague, as in Mia’s
account: “There are those men who have arranged everything beforehand.
This makes me feel that I’m a smaller and smaller mosquito in their eyes,that is to say, I am nothing at all” (Mia). The tensions and uneven power
relations shaped the ways in which career futures were envisioned. Insteadof an open career future full of possibilities, the future appeared restricted
and limited by persistent and long-​lasting structures, cultural barriers, and“Neanderthal rules” which made career prospects in this biotechnology unit
blank. For instance, Tanja, having experiences of being disregarded by the
medical professors in power, felt that there was no future for her at the unit
and was seriously considering leaving –​which, in the end, she did not do:‘It was a really tough situation. I even thought of leaving altogether,
I won’t accept this. I could have transferred my research to [anotheruniversity]. And my team already had work contracts here, so theywould have been forced to pay salaries to the team. It would havebeen a real mess for them, I could have taken all my money with me.
At that point I really was considering leaving, there was no sense inthis.’ (Tanja)
44

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

Career imaginaries
In their career building, researchers draw upon socially and culturally available
career scripts and narratives. National career models and the specific local
conditions shape the understandings of what kinds of prospects for academic
career building are imaginable and what is required to become a successful
academic. Basically, the prevailing career imaginaries among the participantsof this study entailed only three visions of what was possible: to become aprofessor, mostly via the tenure track route; to work as a research group leader
dependent on external research funding for both one’s group and oneself; andto move away from academia. Instead of a free, unlimited and open future,these career imaginaries provide a predefined and circumscribed view ofwhat is possible. Next, I shall explore each of these three imaginaries in turn.

Tenure track positions
According to the interviewees, in their current university context the tenure
track represented the most valued and recognized way to build an academic
career. It led to a permanent position as a professor at the top of the career
hierarchy, offering career safety and success. The competition for a tenure
track position is, however, intense, and only very few succeed. Therefore, thiscareer vision was experienced as out-​of-​reach by most of the interviewees.
Correspondingly, securing permanent employment in academia was seen as
overly difficult. Leena, who was one of the three professors who had gained
their positions before the rise of the tenure track system, painted a gloomy
picture of the employment prospects for early-​career researchers:‘The university is the worst employer in the world while the hospital,
there is always a need of medical doctors. … If I think of my own
research group, it is easy to get funding as long as you’re doing yourdoctoral dissertation but, when you finish, what then? The university
has nothing to offer. … A research career is really bleak.’ (Leena)
Apart from being highly selective, tenure track positions are embedded in arigid and standardized vision of academic career building. The latter involves
a linear and vertical career trajectory with predefined, steady progression toa professorship. In this, it contradicts the notion of a boundaryless career(Arthur and Rousseau, 1996), which understands career advancement inpresent-​day flat organizations as horizontal enlargement and enrichmentof duties and competences rather than as vertical progress. Contrary tothis, the tenure track position always rises upwards, entailing only the
options up or out. This sustains the traditional imaginary of the academic
profession, with professors holding power and influence at the top of the45

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

career ladder. Among the interviewees, this hierarchical image did notresonate particularly well, as the unit’s history had been one of cherishedequality and community spirit.
Furthermore, this vision of the tenure track allows no deviations orboundary crossings. Although career moves between different sectors,
especially between academia and industry, are strongly advocated in policy
discourses, the tenure track works against these. To keep oneself competitive,
one must avoid wasting time with false steps outside the scientific circle since,in the final analysis, only scientific merits count in tenure track evaluations.
The common understanding among the interviewees was that what reallymattered were publications in high-​impact journals and the amount of
external research funding from prestigious sources one could get. Again, thisdid not sit well with the research culture adopted in biotechnology since,as they explained, “research is not just research, but we always have an ideaof commercial products” and “benefits for others”. From this perspective,
the tenure track vision entailed a narrow image of what it means to be a
successful academic (see Pietilä, 2019).
The tenure track vision also entailed a specific kind of temporality called‘anticipatory acceleration’ (Müller, 2014). This refers to the speed-​up
in the pace of work for the sake of gaining a reward in the future. Since
the competition for tenure track positions is fierce, researchers need towork harder and harder to testify to their excellence and overcome theircompetitors. And, if they are successful in this, they cannot but keep up theaccelerated tempo to ensure that they meet the rising standards of their final
assessment and are granted a permanent position as full professor. Thus, theimaginary of the tenure track intensifies the notion of academic work as anincreasingly high-​speed activity requiring total commitment, superhumanperformance and hyper-​productivity (see Ylijoki, 2013; Murgia and Poggio,
2019; Pietilä, 2019). This image was emphasized, for instance, by Emilia,
who said that “if you want to continue in the research world you have togive it your whole life”.
Tenure track positions are also important institutional investments in the
future, involving struggles for resources and research priorities. Having
investigated the tenure track system in Finland, Pietilä (2015) concludes thatthe system is utilized as a strategic instrument and a control mechanism byuniversity management to steer future activities into the desired direction.
Faced with tensions with medicine in their work environment, theinterviewees in this study said that they needed to be watchful and keep an
eye on how “the game is played” to protect their interests. Since the potentialof academics plays an important role in tenure track recruitments, thiscareer vision becomes particularly risky and prone to biases (see Herschberg
et al, 2019). Liisa, working as PI without a permanent position, offered agloomy view:
46

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA‘Tenure tracks provide just more space for different games and also
for discrimination because you don’t need to say any more that okay,
we take the most qualified. That’s why it is completely and totally inthe control of those who are on the recruitment committee to decide
who is selected.’ (Liisa)
At the time of the interviews, only one research participant had secured a tenure
track position. She had been very determined, watched out for an appropriate
position to open up and, when an opportunity came, “managed to snatch itup”. Yet, she was still concerned about the risk that her position might be
cut because of institutional micro-​politics. In this sense, the imaginary of thetenure track was freighted with heavy competition not only among individuals
but also among disciplinary fields and research areas. In this competition, theresearchers in biotechnology felt that they had unequal conditions comparedto the researchers in medicine because, among other things, disciplinary merits
tended to count more than interdisciplinary ones in academic recruitment.
All in all, although the tenure track vision had alluring elements andwas associated with success and prestige, it represented a normative ideal
which most interviewees found difficult to identify with. It was seen asvery competitive, individualistic, demanding and available only to very few
people –​not an obvious path for their own career futures. Heidi, for instance,
distanced herself from the tenure track image of a successful researcher andhoped to find some other way to build her academic career –​at the timeof the interview still without success:‘Although I don’t aim to become a professor or anything like that but
even so I could produce high-​quality research, I hope. … But theuniversity has really nothing to offer my kind of researcher, the path
you should take is somehow so clear-​cut, there is no place for my kindof researcher.’ (Heidi)

Academic entrepreneurship
The majority of the interviewees who worked in the biotechnology unit
were research group leaders employed on temporary contracts. They acted
as principal investigators of externally funded research projects and were
responsible for fund-​raising both for their group and for themselves. In
this sense, they were academic entrepreneurs leading quasi-​firms within
academia. Entrepreneurial activities are part and parcel of present-​day
academia since the university system at all levels engages in academic
capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997) and depends on external funding.
Yet, there are significant differences among different categories of academic
staff. Although established professors and tenure track academics also need47

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

to be successful in fund-​raising for their research groups, their own salaries
are covered by the university. In contrast, academic entrepreneurs work attheir own risk and need to attract funding for themselves, which makes theirvision of their career future uncertain and vulnerable.
What is more, a temporary position is not a brief entry-​level phase before
permanent employment but rather, an enduring situation, as growing
numbers of academics, especially women, work for years or decades ona series of fixed-​term contracts (Murgia and Poggio, 2019). This was thecase in this study, too. All the research group leaders without permanent
employment were born in the 1960s and 1970s and had more than 30 yearsof temporary research work in the university. Thus, the career trajectory ofan academic entrepreneur is circular and horizontal, moving from contract
to contract, with no promises of future upward mobility on the career ladder.
The uncertainty and insecurity embedded in academic entrepreneurshipmakes this imaginary look like a rocky road. In the first place, it is a questionof money and livelihood. While working on temporary employment, one
cannot know whether there will be a next project and a next contract, which
the interviewees experienced as stressful. They described fund-​raising as“really awfully difficult” due to tight competition and the amount of timeand energy it took. Further, over time salary became an issue. For instance,
Maria said that she had begun to think about the financial side and wanted
to earn some money at some point, and Pirjo remarked that she had notreceived any salary increase for a long time but needed to get her salary on
an upward trajectory in the future.
Being stuck in the same position over a long period of time also impacted
on the interviewees’ emotional relations to their career futures. Although
circuitous and horizontal career trajectories have become increasingly
common, the linear career progression to professorship is still largely
regarded as a sign of success and high-​level merit in academic culture.
Therefore, the lack of linear advancement upwards easily carries a certain
professional, and even social, stigma. Among the interviewees, this was
related to comparisons with those who had managed to get a tenure track
position. Comparisons with the neighbouring discipline in particular, thatof medicine, led to a sense of unjust and unequal treatment in recruitment
to tenure track positions. Pirjo emphasized that she did not need to worry
about funding because she had been very successful in that respect and wasconvinced that “money would bring money” in the future. However, she
was frustrated because she felt that she should have received a tenure track
position and that not having it did not look good in her own and in others’eyes, hampering her work situation:‘It begins to look absurd. My colleagues in Finland keep saying, “Oh,
don’t you have it yet [a tenure track position]?” … It begins to look48

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

so absurd. Those colleagues who have got tenure do the same kind ofwork, they have exactly the same job description and, in fact, I havebrought in the biggest amount of money. It will be rather absurd if
I don’t get it next time.’ (Pirjo)
Even though the tenure track includes aspects that did not accord with theinterviewees’ career building preferences, this model had a strong normative
power, shaping their understandings and self-​conceptions. The award of atenure track position signalled long-​term commitment by the university
to these scholars and their work, which was thereby acknowledged andvalued, whereas the academic entrepreneurs tended to feel that they were
not appreciated and, instead, left to their own devices (see van der Weijden
et al, 2016). Although they brought in significant sums of money, the local
work environment did not offer recognition or encouragement regarding
future career prospects in return. As Nora said:‘The university has not provided me much more than to allow me tobe here; it is the Academy of Finland that has given me the funding.
I received a significant grant and with this funding I was able to realize
my dream. … There was no space, nothing. I managed to get newlaboratory space, buy new instruments, and get new people. I recruitedthem and educated them and developed the methods. And we createdgreat systems and our research has really progressed. … The university
has had nothing against this, but they have given nothing to me.’ (Nora)
The future horizon of academic entrepreneurship seemed, thus, constrained
and unsettled, further complicated by struggles with the neighbouring
discipline and its top professors who seemed to downplay their biotechnology
co-​workers’ work and merits. When such a situation has prevailed for a longtime and there seems to be no possibility of change in the future, work
motivation can diminish and “a nihilistic feeling” can easily take over. Yet,
the temporarily employed researchers were not submissive and desperate
victims. For instance, Pirjo said that she was not “the kind of person who
digs a hole and cries that I want to spend the rest of my life here”. She
had decided to give the university two more years to offer her better work
conditions, and if this did not occur, she would be ready to move away. Nora
explained her feelings and future plans in a similar manner:‘I have possibilities to do international, really interesting, and really
important research, but somehow it is awfully difficult to commit to it if
you don’t have any position. It is hard to do this as a half-​freelancer who
rakes in money but has no official position anywhere. In a way, it has
slowed me down and affected my career advancement and obstructed49

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

my research. I wonder how long I really want to go on if it continues
to be very hard and there is no position in sight. … I need to start tothink about creative solutions outside of academia in that case.’ (Nora)

Leaving academia
Half of the interviewees in this study had worked in the biotechnology unit
but had recently moved outside of academia. A couple of them had neverseriously considered an academic career but stayed for some time after their
PhD, when their group leader had invited them to continue in an ongoingproject. Others had more fluid and complex career intentions both towards
and away from academia (see Wood et al, 2020), but, finally, they either
decided to, or had to, leave. Common to all was that the imaginaries ofacademic career prospects had turned out to be too narrow, too risky andtoo demanding for them. Katja summarized her feelings in a way that was
typical for the interviewees:‘I had seen how competitive all funding is after the dissertation, andeveryone preaches that you must go abroad for at least one year if you
ever want to get any money from anywhere. And then you must haveexcellent ideas and establish your own research group at once. And
I wondered if I’d be able to do that, and I started to think what do
I want to do with my life and what is important to me? At that point,
I got the idea of applying to [elsewhere]. I will have a firm source ofincome and yet interesting work. If you want to continue in the researchworld, it requires so much, and especially as a woman, you really haveno time for anything else. And I certainly want to see my friends andmy family and take a holiday with a clear conscience.’ (Katja)
Among the interviewees, there was a widely shared understanding that“the university is a place mainly for those who want to become professors”.
Without a professorship as a goal, it seemed rather pointless to stay. The career
path to a professorship, in turn, was envisioned as exceptionally exhausting
and challenging, requiring living with financial insecurity, coming to termswith serious competition, working hard for long hours, creating brilliant
research ideas and having competencies beyond compare (see Laudel andGläser, 2007). It was, therefore, not for “an ordinary person”. Academic
career building was also viewed as focussing merely on the accumulation ofscientific merits and on writing publications. For many, this was not enough,as they preferred more direct and quicker impacts that would benefit thehealth care system and patients. In consequence, these interviewees hadconcluded that the career future offered by the university did not coincidewith their own preferences.
50

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

Yet, there were also those who would have wanted to continue in academia
but had to leave because they were not successful in getting grants. In thesecases, leaving was a painful experience, recalled in a tragic tone of voice.
Emma said that, after moving away, “it lasted for a long time, a couple ofyears, that I felt pain”. Mia had similar feelings. She had been part of thebiotechnology unit almost from the start and experienced it as akin to herhome. Despite this long-​term commitment, she had ended up in a situation
where she had no funding for herself and was therefore forced to leave.
This was a nadir experience, which made her lose her vision of the future:‘All those plans that we had made together, they were suddenly takenfrom me. It was a hard moment. I became unemployed, I didn’t have
any idea of what the future would be, and I had a small child. … It was
hard to leave that work community and leave everything behind. They
were all my projects, and now I’m totally out of it. And I remember
how I felt when I was removed from our WhatsApp group, a feelingof shame.’ (Mia)
Irrespective of the reasons for moving outside academia, leaving was always
an outcome of a variety of factors (Wood et al, 2020) and related to theinterviewees’ overall life situation and the future horizon involved in it (seeMcAlpine and Emmioglu, 2015). All interviewees had commitments intheir private lives, and most of them had families and children. Hence, thefuture visions of their private lives were entangled with career decisions,albeit in different ways. Some utilized a “family first” strategy, some gavepriority to career considerations, but nobody planned their career future
in a social vacuum. For instance, the importance of financial security wasemphasized, as it ensured “that we will manage even if one of us becomes
unemployed”. Likewise, getting a better work-​life balance became crucial
when one had “the sweetest child in the world at home” and wanted to
devote time to her. Going abroad for a longer period, defined as necessaryin academic career advancement by the interviewees, became unfeasible
when one’s partner refused to come along because “he had just spent four
years as a postdoc in the US”. And for some, the crucial thing was that one’s
working-​class “eight-​to-​four environment” with a home-​centred lifestyle
could not be reconciled with the university’s culture of long hours. These
kinds of mismatches between one’s private life and the visions of academic
career pushed some interviewees out of academia.
All the interviewees who had left academia have, since, succeeded infinding good jobs in a variety of areas. However, leaving was challenging
because there were hardly any other career imaginaries than the academic
one available in their local environment. As the field was new and did noteducate people for a specific profession, the researchers simply did not know
51

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

what kinds of jobs they could apply for and where their qualifications would
be sufficient and relevant. In this sense, the future was fuzzy and veiled for
many, and they had to carve it out themselves. Hence, pioneers became
important. For instance, one researcher’s recruitment by an international
pharmaceutical company paved the way for a couple of others to follow
this route. Overall, the interviewees were satisfied with the employment
they had gained, but even so they kept their career horizons open and wereready to move again in the future.
All in all, these interviews reflected very narrow visions of career buildingin academia, basically excluding options other than the vertical progression
to the top of the career ladder. The university was viewed as a ‘greedyorganization’ (Currie et al, 2000; Thun, 2020) which requires personal
sacrifices but is not willing to give career security and support in return.
This image became all the gloomier due to local conflicts with the merger
partner, shaping the everyday life of the smaller unit. As a result, although
the interviewees were motivated to undertake research work, in the end
their visions of an academic career were not personally appealing enough,which ultimately made it easy to leave.

Discussion
This small-​scale qualitative study of one biotechnology unit at one Finnish
university shows the complexity and manifold tensions of academic careerbuilding in the current neoliberal higher education context. Althoughbiotechnology as a research field matches the policy priorities of major
scientific, societal and commercial expectations, the lived experiences ofwomen researchers were far from straightforward success stories. Instead,their career visions were strongly shaped by the intersections of gender,
disciplinary hierarchies and university institutional structures which worked
to their disadvantage. After several mergers, their career building took placein the shadow of the bigger, more influential and male-​dominated merger
party, medicine, which created extra challenges for them in the already highly
competitive and risky university environment. Yet, the researchers wereno victims of the structural barriers but, rather, skilful actors who crafted
personally meaningful careers both inside and outside academia.
In the career imaginaries identified in this study, professorship and tenure
track structures had a key role. Although introduced only in 2010 inFinland, the tenure track model has shaped the ways in which a successful
and valued academic career is made sense of. By 2019, it was already themost common way to recruit professors in Finland (Pekkola et al, 2020),
creating elitism and polarization between those who are on this track andthe vast majority working outside of it (Herbert and Tienari, 2013; Pietilä,2019). The tenure track system puts those senior researchers, who in this52

NAVIGATING CAREER IMAGINaRIES IN ACADEMIA

study are called academic entrepreneurs, in an awkward situation: they
are, de facto, too qualified and established for the tenure track since these
positions are usually targeted at rather early career academics. This darkens
their prospects for career progression. Moreover, the tenure track model isdeeply rooted in the meritocratic ideal that the best and brightest be recruited
to top positions. Yet, this ideal has been repeatedly challenged by showing
subtle and un-​reflective biases, such as gendered pre-​selection patterns andselection criteria as well as blindness to the life situations of candidates (vanden Brink and Benschop, 2011; Acker et al, 2012; Nikunen, 2014; Nielsen,
2016; Herschberg et al, 2019; Pietilä, 2019; Thun, 2020).
Based on this study, it is evident that the socially available stock ofimaginaries and narratives of academic career building are strikingly
circumscribed and limited, involving only three possibilities: tenure track,academic entrepreneurship or leaving academia altogether. There seemto be no alternatives in the current university context that is ‘inescapablycompetitive, individualistic and oriented to exchange value not use value’(Clegg, 2010: 359). Clegg calls for imagining higher education otherwise.
On a similar note, Escobar (2020) extends this call to include the whole ofsociety. He argues that the real, the possible and the political are all connected
and, therefore, ‘it is precisely because other possibles have been turned into
“impossibles” that we find it so difficult to imagine other realities’ (Escobar
2020: 3). Against this there-​is-​no-​alternative rhetoric, he advocates thepolitics of the possible, or a way of thinking that another possible is possible –​not least in academia.
Acknowledgements
The research was done in a Nordforsk funded Centre of Excellence Nordwit.
I thank Tiina Suopajärvi and Minna Leinonen who conducted the interviews
and Tiina Suopajärvi for contributing substantially to the initial analysis of
this study. I also thank all members of Nordwit for their valuable commentson the first draft of this chapter.
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55

4

Unconventional Routes into ICT
Work: Learning from Women’s
Own Solutions for Working
around Gendered Barriers
Hilde G. Corneliussen and Gilda Seddighi

Introduction
Diversity in the development of digital products and services is recognized
as vital for the benefit of a diverse society (Losh and Wernimont, 2019) andis a goal across Europe (Barbieri et al, 2020). A continuously low proportionof women in ICT challenges this goal. About one in five ICT experts in
Norway is a woman (Simonsen and Corneliussen, 2020), and a similar
trend is visible in most European countries (Eurostat, 2019). Research has
documented that gender stereotypes produce images of ICT as a male field(Master et al, 2016). A recent study from Norway suggests that girls needexternal influence in order to choose an education so closely associated withboys and men (Corneliussen, 2021). Most girls leave high school with nointention of pursuing a career in ICT. Some of these, however, find their way
to ICT education and work at a later point, and it is these women’s narratives
we analyze here, as we ask: what motivates women’s alternative and lateentries into fields of ICT? The analysis builds on qualitative interviews withwomen working with ICT-​driven research, development and innovation in
Norway. None of these women had chosen ICT when leaving high school.
Thus, pursuing a career in ICT represented a career change into ICT thatthey had not had in mind when entering higher education.
The narratives of the women in our study give a unique insight into how
ICT has become a more visible, relevant, even necessary field to engage
with, as disciplines and professions are changing through processes of56

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

digitalization. This study shows that when facing such processes, womenadjust their education and career path to include ICT. The analysis illustrates
three unconventional routes leading these women into ICT work: first, adelayed entry into ICT education; second, a natural progression into ICT
due to digitalization of non-​technological disciplines; and third, pursuing
opportunities, as non-​technological competences are needed in ICT-​driven
research, development and innovation.
Initiatives to recruit girls to ICT education often assume that the optimal
way for this is to make girls copy features associated with masculine relations
to ICT, for instance by sparking girls’ interest in tinkering and playing withtechnology, assumed to be important gateways to ICT education (McKinsey& Company and Pivotal Ventures, 2018). Most studies of women’s
recruitment to ICT focus on women following a conventional route where
the decision to pursue ICT happens before high school, or upon shifting fromhigh school to higher education. Our analysis of women’s unconventionalroutes expands and adds to this literature by identifying how other interestsand motivations work as door openers for women to choose ICT also atlater stages than the beginning of their time at university. With a theoreticalframework from Feminist Technology Studies (FTS) and theories about
predictors of academic choices, the analysis illustrates how the women’s
narratives draw pictures of alternative and unconventional routes leadingthem through a gendered landscape of ICT disciplines and professions,contributing new ways of co-​constructing gender and ICT.

Women’s entry points into ICT education and work: aliterature review
There are many studies of girls’ and women’s under-​representation in fields
of ICT, suggesting a complex problem that has changed over time andplace (Cohoon and Aspray, 2006; Misa, 2010; Charles and Thébaud, 2018).
Despite variations, it is widely recognized that gendered norms, discourses
and stereotypes affect young people’s choices of education in ways that
reproduce the gender imbalance in ICT (OECD, 2016; UNESCO, 2017;
Frieze and Quesenberry, 2019) because gender stereotypes work to limit
their educational choices (NOU, 2019: 19).
Studies of young people’s motivation to pursue a career in ICT have often
focussed on when and how interest in ICT develops, for instance indicating
the teens as a period when stereotypical perceptions of disciplines growstronger (Talks et al, 2019). Many youths lose interest in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This affects girls more than boys,
leaving a short gap to capture girls’ interest in ICT (Microsoft Corporation,2017). This interest itself is, however, coded masculine. Thus, the many‘road bumps’ and ‘potholes’ in women’s paths towards ICT (Branch, 2016)
57

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

make active support, mentoring and encouragement more significant forgirls than for boys (Corneliussen, 2021). This makes parents, teachers andeducators important for girls’ educational choices (Eccles, 2015; Tænketanken
DEA, 2019), but the former themselves are of course influenced by genderstereotypes, with an observed result being weak attempts to recruit girls to
ICT (Corneliussen and Prøitz, 2016). A Danish study found that 70 per
cent of parents believed that boys are more interested in ICT than girls; lessthan 1 per cent of parents imagined girls to be more interested than boys(Tænketanken DEA, 2019).
Despite gendered patterns in education, gender remains a little discussed
issue in Norwegian schools (Mathiesen et al, 2010), including in questions
relating to girls’ (lack of) participation in ICT subjects (Corneliussen andTveranger, 2018). Gender stereotypes combined with young people’s lackof knowledge about ICT disciplines also have a more negative effect on
girls than boys, making it less likely for girls to move from high school tohigher ICT education (Talks et al, 2019). A recent study from Norwayshows that many women enter ICT as a second education, which according
to Corneliussen (2021), represents a ‘penalty round for women’ who due
to gender stereotypes had not perceived ICT as a relevant or welcoming
discipline at high school and therefore had chosen other disciplines. This,
however, led the women to discover and get to know ICT in new ways thatmade it more relevant and available to them, for instance, because they could
identify a non-​technical interest or competence as an entry point and ‘aplatform in ICT that they identify as “safe and familiar” without competingwith the male image’ of computing (Corneliussen, 2021: 57).
Other studies have also identified women being recruited to ICT later andthrough other arenas than school, for instance through coding boot camps(Lyon and Green, 2020). Lyon and Green found that this came too late formany women to change to ICT, and Vainionpää et al claim that ‘senior highschool is the last opportunity to influence girls’ major and career choice’(2019: 1). While these studies clearly highlight an important and often
missed opportunity to recruit women through schools (Seibel and Veilleux,2019), they also point to the importance of increasing our knowledge not
only of what motivates high school girls to choose ICT, but also to identify
what makes women approach alternative routes to ICT competence andwork. One optimistic strand of research in the late 1990s and early 2000s
suggested that women were wanted and needed in the development of ICT,
based on assumptions of women representing a type of hybrid work profilethat incorporates feminine characteristics (Plant, 1997; Woodfield, 2000).
While there might be different interests and motivations behind girls’ andboys’ educational attainments (Microsoft Corporation, 2017; Master andMeltzoff, 2020), the differences between women and men working in ICT
and engineering are not so large (Faulkner, 2001) and what women and men
58

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

care about in ICT work is also rather similar (Holtzblatt and Marsden, 2018).
Expanding on the field of research revisited here, this chapter contributes tostudies of women’s recruitment into ICT education and work with an analysis
of how women’s alternative routes into this are shaped by gendered barriers
and how they identify entry points less affected by masculine stereotypes.

Theoretical framework
Gender is a reflection of socially constructed differences between womenand men, developed through cultural discourses and negotiated in many
arenas (Connell, 2005). Technology is one of the fields strongly affectedby gendered structures, and a growing field of research has since the 1980s
explored the relationship between gender and technology (Wajcman, 2004).
An illustrative example is the classic study of the gendered transformationof the microwave oven that was first imagined as a high-​tech device
and promoted for men alongside other products often bought by men.
However, when the microwave was reframed to target women, it was also
redesigned and presented as low-​tech device for domestic work often usedby women (Cockburn and Ormrod, 1993). This seminal study illustrates
how technology as well as users of technology are gendered in ways thatmake the one reflect the other. This as well as other contributions in thefield of feminist technology studies demonstrate that the gendering oftechnology is a cultural process, based on social and cultural choices andconsiderations (Grint and Gill, 1995; Oldenziel et al, 2003). Furthermore,social constructivist theories emphasize that gender and technology can beunderstood as mutually affecting each other, co-​constructed and reflected in
the images of who works with technology (Cockburn, 1992). This tradition
contributes to our understanding of the gendering of ICT, for instanceidentifying that a major challenge for recruiting women to ICT is causedby its masculine image, making it appear less welcoming to girls than boys
(Cheryan et al, 2013; Charles and Thébaud, 2018). Gendered images ofand stereotypes about ICT have different effects on girls’ and boys’ ability
to associate themselves with the field (NOU, 2019: 19).
While it is challenging to determine what has affected one particular
individual’s educational choices, it is even more challenging to determine
this for all women as Dee points out (2021). The aim of identifying how
men and women make educational choices that result in patterns of genderdifference has, however, generated a growing body of research. Some of themost popular motivational theoretical frameworks have roots in psychology
such as self-​efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977), emphasizing that the way weunderstand ourselves and our own abilities affect study choices (Dee, 2021).
Eccles developed this line of theories with the expectancy-​value perspective,
suggesting that individuals make their choices based on a combination of59

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

how well they expect to manage a task and the value they associate withthe task (Eccles, 2009). Master and Meltzoff (2020) add to this by including
research emphasizing how stereotypes affect students’ sense of belonging.
They develop a theoretical model describing how students (for example
women) who face negative stereotypes regarding their identity in STEM,
integrate these stereotypes into their self-​representation in ways that influence
their interest and engagement in STEM. The main difference between
the original expectancy-​value theory and Master and Meltzoff’s modelis that the first proposes that the subjective task value including interest,
together with ability belief, are the most important predictors of students’choices (Eccles, 2011), while Master and Meltzoff suggest that interest isan outcome, based on research showing that ‘ability beliefs are more likely
to predict interest over time than the reverse’, and that ‘interest has distinct
motivational properties, including the predisposition to re-​engage with adomain over time’ (2020: 160).
Although we have not engaged in a psychological study of the concepts
mentioned earlier, some of the concepts from these theories are still relevant
for our study as they emphasize how academic choices are affected bycultural stereotypes, interest, women’s trust in their abilities, or ‘ability
belief ’, and a sense of belonging, all of which are elements that we canidentify in the narratives of the women we have interviewed. One difference,
however, is that these theories are mainly developed with the conventionalroute into STEM in mind. Our analysis engages with these concepts as a
guide to exploring how these factors are valid for women who navigate
unconventional routes into ICT education and work.

Methodological framework
Qualitative interviews with women in ICT work
This chapter reports on a Nordwit case study where we interviewed women
working with ICT in western Norway. They were recruited through research
funders, incubators and other organizations in fields of ICT research andinnovation. Since we wanted to explore women’s experiences in ICT workfrom a variety of occupational fields and workplaces, we included women
working in the public and the private sector as well as women in academia.
In total 28 women, aged between 24 and 59, were interviewed. They all
had university degrees (one BA, 18 MAs and nine PhDs). The 28 women’s
disciplinary backgrounds reflect the fact that ICT work is not specific to ICT-​
educated specialists; only 15 of the 28 women had a degree in a discipline allied
to computer science or information science, while the others had graduatedin fields such as social sciences, humanities, natural science, health care, law,or economics. As the aim of this chapter is to explore unconventional routes
leading women to ICT work, we do not discuss the 11 women who had
60

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

followed a conventional route from high school to higher ICT educationand focus instead on the remaining 17 women. The interviews involved aprofessional-​life history perspective and included questions about education,
occupational history and experiences in workplaces, and relationship totechnology. The interviews followed an interview guide while also aiming
to give the women space for reflection (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). When
discussing individual women, we have in some cases omitted the exact
discipline and position to secure their anonymity. The study was approvedby the Norwegian Centre for Research Data.

Grounded theory approach
The interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory approach, suitablefor developing new perspectives and understandings (Strauss and Corbin,1998). We read and manually coded the transcribed interviews before
extracting the codes, organizing them in groups and developing categories(Charmaz, 2006). In the next phase, we explored the women’s work histories
as ‘routes to ICT work’, including the analytical categories resulting fromthe coding: ‘educational choices’, ‘finding a place’ and ‘belonging’. Whileemphasizing that the women’s voices should give meaning to the categories
and experiences that we analyzed, we continued to refine these categories
through reading and discussing sections of the interviews, comparing findingsin the categories, and comparing our findings with similar studies. Thus,
we were not only asking analytical questions of the interview material, but
simultaneously engaged in comparative readings, exploring how the patterns
we found related to research from other western countries. Through thisanalytical process we identified four routes leading to ICT work among theinterviewed women. One of these was the traditional route leading fromhigh school to ICT education and work. This route has been studied inmany projects. We were instead interested in the other three, less studiedroutes. We focus on these in the following section.

Three unconventional routes into ICT education andwork
The three routes into ICT work analyzed here are probably not the only
unconventional routes into ICT work, and nor are they entirely exclusive.
However, they contribute to highlighting how the field of ICT is still
gendered in ways that create barriers for young women to pursue theconventional route into ICT, while simultaneously documenting alternative
motivations for women moving into the core processes of ICT research,development and innovation. Table 4.1 gives an overview of some of themain features of the routes we identified, illustrating how they depart from61

newgenrtpdf

Route 1: delayed entry into ICT
education

Route 2: digitalization of (non-​technical) disciplines

Route 3: non-​technologicalprofessions engaged in ICT researchand innovation

62

Education

First degree in a non-​technical discipline Education in disciplines traditionally not
Second degree in ICT
recognized as technical

Education in non-​technical discipline

Reason for choosing
ICT

Support for future work

Necessary or natural change due todigitalization of chosen discipline

New opportunities in digitalization for
non-​tech professions

Way of acquiring
ICT competence

Degree in higher ICT education

Development in original discipline withhigher ICT education or workplace-​based
upskilling of ICT competence

Formal ICT courses and workplace-​based
upskilling of ICT competence

Current position

ICT expert

ICT as expert area within original (non-​tech) profession

Occupied in original profession in area ofdigitalization

Current work tasks

Designing, programming, implementing Designing, programming, implementing
new technology, management
new technology, management

Designing, implementing new technology,
management

Source: the authors.

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Table 4.1: Women’s unconventional entry routes into ICT work

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

formal education. The first route includes a university degree in ICT asa second education after changing direction. The second route involves
ICT training as well but as a form of competence development growing
out of a discipline traditionally not recognized as technological. The thirdroute builds on a non-​technological education while also involving mainly
workplace-​based, formal and informal ICT training. All the women were atsome level involved in designing, building or implementing new technology.
However, the first and second group were more involved in technical work
such as programming, while the third group was more involved in design andmanagement. The reasons for moving into ICT, however, had similarities
across the routes, as we shall see when we start to unpack the routes.
We start by illustrating the main features of these routes, with an emphasison when and how the women entered fields of ICT, before we engage withsome of the key concepts discussed in the theoretical framework: interest,
ability belief and sense of belonging.

A delayed entry into ICT education (route 1)
Four women had originally chosen a non-​technical education, before theychanged to an ICT discipline, illustrating a delayed entry into ICT education.
Like the conventional route, this route too involved a university degree in
ICT, but was shaped (and gendered) by how the women had not chosen
ICT but rather a non-​technical discipline in the first place. Three of thewomen described the transition as coincidental. One of them had started
with a degree in economics, but wanted to add something more “practical”
and took a course in ICT that resulted in a change of direction:‘The plan was to become an economist, I think. I’m not sure I had aplan, really. At least I knew I would take [subjects like] administration,organization and economics, and then I liked economics a lot, so that’s
what I wanted to continue with. But then I also thought that I neededsome IT because it is practical. Then I started in information science,and that was a good experience … and suddenly I had a Bachelor
degree in IT. … The combination was a bit coincidental. It wasn’t
according to a plan from the start.’ (Ann)Ann’s first entry into ICT was a strategic move related to future work
opportunities. She admits that initially she was not at all interested intechnology. She started working as a programmer after finishing her Bachelor
degree, realizing she really liked the job:
‘We started to build a data warehouse, and then I felt that I was in theright place, because then I got the combination of the analytical side63

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

of economics plus that you could work a bit with technology. It is not
the geeky type of technology. It is a very practical use of technology.
That appealed a lot to me.’ (Ann)She returned to university to do a Master’s degree in IT, and at the timeof the interview she was responsible for developing a data warehouse fromscratch, doing everything from designing and programming, to implementing
and teaching the users. She described this as “great fun”. Simultaneously
she illustrated the gendered landscape of ICT by emphasizing the limits ofher relationship with technology:‘I think my strength is that I am analytic and see connections andmanage to get things to fit together and the use of it, more than being
an expert or very good in programming. I’m not there at all. … For
me, technology is a means to accomplish something. … So I’m not
so into technology as such.’ (Ann)Bree was another woman who took a delayed route into ICT but had alreadybeen interested in it at high school. Her father advised her against choosing
ICT and she accepted his argument that she was not really interested in
it: “So I did not take any mathematics, because I was going to learn to talkto people and to understand society, that was what I wanted.” At university
she had wanted to study ICT, but then realized she was not eligible for
this, having followed her father’s advice. Cut off from ICT, she finished a
Bachelor degree in social science, before she once again thought about ICT.
This time she found an opening while contemplating what kind of jobs adegree in social science would lead to:‘What job prospects do you have when you take that kind of [social
science education]? … Then I realized that there were many job
announcements asking for a combination of technology and social
sciences, so I thought, okay maybe I should choose ICT to combinewith the social sciences I already have.’ (Bree)The turning point occurred when she realized that combining her degree
in social science with ICT could be a door opener to interesting jobs. She
was finally able to defy her father’s advice, but at the cost of starting all overagain with a new Bachelor degree. Bree’s narrative illustrates her growinginterest in technology including a geeky delight in programming:‘When I started to study IT I got a better understanding of what itreally was and how it works and then it was more like … it is a nicecourse, it’s great fun with things that you solve, and programming is
64

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORKa bit like solving the crosswords on the last page of the newspaper.
It is like, finally you crack the code! And then it works, and you aresatisfied.’ (Bree)
After her Master’s degree she had worked mostly as a programmer andsystems architect; at the time of the interview she was developing new digitalsolutions for a private company.
Like the other women who took a delayed route into ICT, Bree too
described this move as coincidental, not part of her original plan, and nota response to an interest in ICT per se, but rather a response to the sensethat ICT training would provide useful competence for her future career.
Though these women expressed doubt about their interest at first, whenlearning more about ICT they found themselves in ‘the right place’ within
highly technical work processes in ICT development and innovation. Breealso defined limits for her relationship to ICT with reference to a discourseof programming as an activity often pursued by men in their leisure time,saying: “I’m not programming at home in my spare time or use a lot of time
like that on technology” (Bree).

Digitalization of (non-​technical) disciplines (route 2)
The women described earlier had a delayed entry point into ICT education.
In the next group, too, there were ten women who decided to study ICT aspart of their formal education. However, the driving force for these women
was not a change from one field to ICT disciplines, but rather expanding their
ICT competence along with increasing digitalization within their chosen
profession in fields traditionally not recognized as technological such as
nursing, pedagogy, biology and chemistry. Recognizing ICT competence
as increasingly vital in their profession, these women made adjustments todevelop and update their competence in ICT, even returning to university.
While for some this meant a change of direction, others experienced it asa natural progression.
Health care is one of the sectors with a rapidly growing demand for
digitalization. Two interviewees were working with technology in the healthcare sector. One, originally a nurse, was now responsible for digitalization
processes including innovation and implementation of new digital solutionsin the public health care sector. Her interest in ICT was stirred when she
realized that her organization was like “Bambi on ice” regarding technology.
Developing technology-​driven health care services was “a huge transition”
that she wanted to be part of:‘There was a missing link between the job I was going to do [nursing]and the IT department. There was no communication at all and no65

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

dialogue. Because I did not understand what they said, and they did
not understand what we were saying. And then all of us just thoughtthat all the others were idiots.’ (Cora)
Cora returned to university to study for a Master’s degree in healthinformatics, encouraged by people in the organization telling her that she
would ‘fit’ that: “I started at the university in a health informatics programme,
because there were some holes that I felt I could contribute to, which had
to do with understanding technology and collaboration between technology
and people –​those who are in fact using it” (Cora). She saw herself as atranslator in the process of “digital transformation”: a total change in how toplan and provide health care services redefined as e-​health. Nurses like herneeded to learn more about ICT, but equally importantly, the ICT experts
also needed to develop knowledge about health care: “The boundaries for
those who work with technology have changed and it is no longer enoughthat they only know the platform and the technical side. They need tounderstand the effect of the system [in health care services] in order to solve a
problem” (Cora). This highlights the conditions for her intermediary position
between the tech personnel and the health care personnel, and between
technology and human beings. This role was vital because “technology is
nothing if the people who are supposed to use it cannot use it, because thatis where you find the real benefit” (Cora). The two work cultures meetingin her work were not frictionless but she had developed a “thick skin” and astrategy for letting things cool down as she navigated the gendered workspace
between health care and ICT:
‘I’m doing better and better because I am respected in the IT
department. They can see that I have knowledge. And if I feel thatthey look upon me as stupid, I do not care about that, I just continue
after a short break and then I go back into the situation. But it is still
as if they want to be in charge of their own areas, in particular thesemen.’ (Cora)
Cora’s narrative illustrates how her career changed direction due to her active
choice to be part of the new e-​health. Dani, on the other hand, regarded her
move into ICT as a natural progression. Dani had started in chemistry andmade choices during her Bachelor and Master’s degrees that gradually led
her to a PhD in cybernetics. We asked her about that choice:‘Well, in fact I chose chemistry. When I finished [high school] I didn’t
even know what cybernetics was. And I am not sure that I would
have chosen it even if I had known. … The most important thing isthat you see as you go along, whether you like the subject or not, and66

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

then make choices based on that. So, I started with chemistry but then
I chose the subjects with less chemistry, more towards control systems.
Therefore, it was a natural transition into cybernetics for me.’ (Dani)At the time of the interview Dani was working in research, developing
and testing technological process control systems. She worked in a highly
male-​dominated field, and despite initial doubts about her educational
choices she found the combination of chemistry and cybernetics a “goodfit” for her, one she “enjoyed a lot”, and she was “very happy” about her
current work. However, Dani also made sure to identify her limits: “There
are more boys and men who sit and spend their leisure time on things likethat [programming]. But we [women] use it, and we are interested in it in awork-​related setting, but when I go home, I leave it behind at work” (Dani).
Dani made a clear and gendered distinction between work and leisure here,with ICT being firmly located in her work environment.

Non-​technological professions engaged in ICT research and innovation(route 3)
The third route into ICT was also taken by women with a background in a
non-​technical profession. However, in contrast to route 2, it was not theirown profession that was being digitalized, but rather new opportunities
arose for these women’s non-​technological professions in processes ofdigitalization. Their original career choices, such as administration andmanagement, economy and law, became a gateway to working with ICT
and digitalization. There was also a trend among these women of being
promoted into ICT work. Many of them had developed their career to thepoint of high management positions in workplaces where technology anddigitalization were at the core of the organizations’ operations, and where
they recognized that non-​technological professions also had important roles
to play. One of these women, Ella, illustrated both the integration of non-​technological competences into digitalization, and taking on a leading role.
Her background was in an “old-​fashioned” and not at all technical discipline.
After many years of “traditional” work in this profession, a coincidence
provided a job opportunity in developing a framework for digital products
and services. She recognized this as a change of direction into a field she did
not know much about, when she recalled deciding to join the company: “Ichose [company], even though I didn’t really understand much of what they
were doing. I tried to read stuff to understand more. In the beginning I felt
like a very ‘analogue person’. … I had to learn about technology, and it
took a lot of time” (Ella). Technology and digitalization represented a newworld that she found “very exciting”. She contributed to national as well asinternational digital innovation: “we had to build a methodology and our
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

own tools. … We had to start with blank pages back then and we have built
some of it, but we still have more to do”. She is considered a digital pioneerin the field. Recalling the start she said: “there were no answers, so when
we were doing this, we had nowhere to look. No one had done it before,
so we have invented this ourselves”. After nearly a decade in this work she
no longer saw herself as an “analogue person”: “now I feel that I am very
technological, that I know a lot about technology, … because [my work] has
to do both with the code and with design and content, and now I know a
lot about all of that” (Ella). Not taking the time to stop and acquire a formal
education in ICT, she had developed her ICT competence on the job andshe experienced her work identity as “more on the technological side” than
within her non-​tech profession. She did not consider herself an ICT expert,
but for her, the fabric of digitalization was also not just technological:‘One of the reasons we have succeeded is that we don’t think about
technology as a separate field … it is a tool that needs to work in-​between, for instance me and you, or for something else, but at least
there are people at all ends. And to emphasize this perspective isimportant; that it is not just to build components that are supposed
to talk to each other and do stuff, but making it work in a holistic
perspective and asking what you want from it.’ (Ella)
Ella was one of five women in our sample who from a non-​technologicaleducation had become deeply involved in processes of research and innovation
with ICT and digitalization at their core. These new opportunities to workwith technology reflected the development of new digitalized workspaces,
products and services where multi-​disciplinary competences are required.
Different from the previous women, these women did not formally update
their education, but instead engaged in learning processes on the job. Theirlack of formal competence did not stop them; indeed, one of the womenin this group is recognized nationally as one of the most important people
in technology development in Norway.

Discussion: interest, ability belief and a sense of
belonging
Drawing on social constructivist theories within feminist technology studies
emphasizing the co-​construction of technology and gender (Cockburn,1992) and relying on theories of cultural stereotypes, interest, ability belief
and a sense of belonging, we have illustrated the entry points of the three
unconventional routes that led our interviewees to working within ICT anddigitalization. Different from the conventional route from high school touniversity, the unconventional routes include examples of women changing
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UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

their educational direction entirely (route 1), pursuing ICT competence indisciplines in transition due to digitalization (route 2), and becoming involvedin ICT because non-​technological professions are drawn into processes ofdigitalization (route 3). Although the 17 women were not recruited to ICT
at high school, this did not prevent their later entry into ICT or pursuing
opportunities in new fields of digitalization. We shall now unpack how
these routes and the women’s narratives fit into some of the key elementsof the theories about recruitment to ICT, such as interest, ability belief andsense of belonging.
Starting with the question of interest, Master and Meltzoff (2020) foundthat interest was a vital driver for recruiting students to a field because interest
would make you return to that field. Bree illustrated this as she describedseveral points where she had considered choosing ICT, suggesting that her
interest in ICT made her more aware of opportunities related to the field.
However, she did not refer to interest when describing why she finallydecided to leave social science and start over in ICT. Instead, she described
her change of direction as a strategic choice to secure interesting jobs in the
future, similar to Ann’s motivation to choose ICT. However, while Breedescribed interest in terms of a geeky pleasure in programming, some of theothers, like Ann, did not recognize ICT as interesting. This indicates thatwhen considering women who were not recruited through the conventionalroute, interest is not enough to make women enter fields of ICT, but it also suggeststhat lack of interest is not the main barrier to women’s entry into ICT.
Ability belief (cf. Master and Meltzoff, 2020) seems to be a much morepotent explanation for these women’s actual decisions to move into ICT.
Bree repeatedly considered ICT as a potential career, but it was not until she
could connect ICT to her already established competence and ability belief
in social science that she made the relevant move into ICT. This illustrates
a characteristic she shared with the other 16 women: they all had a non-​technological discipline or profession as a starting point for their engagementwith ICT. As Bree’s story illustrates, her already established competence insocial sciences provided a safe platform from which to move into ICT. The
women’s unconventional entry points suggest that they experienced lesscompetition with masculine coded fields of ICT when they could establish
their ability belief in a field less characterized by masculine stereotypes, oreven within professions dominated by women such as health care.
It seems that it is mainly at the entry point that the ‘safe platform’ makesa difference in relation to ability belief and interest, both of which arechallenged by gender stereotypes. After developing their competence in fields
of ICT, the women gradually established their sense of belonging into those
fields. Cora, for instance, became the support person for both health careand IT personnel in her organization, and Ella’s work identity increasingly
rested both on her original profession and her new competence in a field of69

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

digitalization. The importance of these starting-​points or platforms in thewomen’s narratives illustrates how their ability belief as well as their senseof belonging increasingly rested on a combination of ICT with their firstchosen non-​technological discipline. Although they worked with designing,
programming, developing and implementing ICT systems, it was the powerof producing and controlling technical systems in the context of other fields
that made the women feel that they were “in the right place”, like Ann
discovering she could work with both programming and economics, Breeworking on business development through producing information systems,
and Cora improving health care services through technology.
The women changed, some of them quite literally, by leaving one field andentering ICT; others by developing their competence in ICT in a directionthat they had not intended when they first entered university. Some of thewomen pointed out how this differentiated them from colleagues who had
not acquired ICT competence. They described new configurations of ICT
work where they saw themselves filling holes between the tech-​people and,for instance, health care workers, who did not speak the same language. They
illustrated also how ICT had changed: since none of them came through theconventional and direct route to ICT, they had added other competences to
ICT research, development and innovation, suggesting that they represented
hybrid work profiles. This hybridity was built on professionally acquiredcompetence that added to and expanded their understanding of technology.
This should not be mistaken for the type of hybrid work profiles supposedly
built on feminine features, as discussed in earlier research (Plant, 1997).
Unconventional entry routes into ICT are not reserved for women, but
the women’s narratives illustrate how they experienced this as navigating agendered landscape. This was most clearly articulated when they described
their limited interest in ICT, with references to different expectations
regarding men’s and women’s relationships to technology: unlike their malecolleagues, the women left the technology behind at work.

Conclusion: documenting a failure or proposing asolution?
After decades of research, we know quite a lot about factors excluding
women from ICT, but we are still short of effective solutions for recruiting
women. Most studies exploring the challenges of recruiting women to ICT
focus on conventional routes with career decisions made at high school.
Solutions often aim to produce changes in the same context: targeting
girls’ interest in ICT, aiming to support their ability beliefs, and making
them feel welcome (Master and Meltzoff, 2020). In this chapter we have
explored a much less studied phenomenon, which is women pursuing lessconventional routes into ICT education and ICT work, suggesting that they70

UNCONVENTIONAL ROUTES INTO ICT WORK

find other ways of dealing with the existing gendered barriers. Reflecting the
masculine stereotyping of ICT, the first route illustrates barriers excluding
even women who are interested in ICT. The women’s solution follows
after a delay, the gendered ‘penalty round’ shaped by women’s experienceof barriers to choosing ICT at high school and university that initially sent
them into other fields (Corneliussen, 2021). While this delay has a cost,for instance for Bree who literally had to pay for two Bachelor degrees, italso gave the women a platform in a non-​technical field. This provided
an entry point into ICT education and work that was not equally riddledwith gendered stereotypes. Learning more about ICT and how they could
combine ICT with their previous discipline, the women experienced being“in the right place”.
We agree with theories suggesting that gender stereotypes about ICT arelikely to affect women’s interest as well as ability belief in the field (Eccles,
2015; Master and Meltzoff, 2020). However, the women analyzed here
differ from the main target groups behind these theories, making questionsof interest and ability belief in ICT less relevant. In fact, our analysis showsthat interest in ICT is neither enough, nor a requirement, for women to choose
ICT. It is important to emphasize that our findings do not suggest thatwomen are not interested in ICT, nor that encouraging such interest isirrelevant. However, for this group of women who had not been recruitedat an earlier point, it was when they realized that ICT was important forbusiness development, that ICT and social science could go hand in hand
and that technology was necessary for delivering good health care services,that they became enthusiastic. They still had a major part of their professional
identity, including interest and ability belief, invested in their original non-​technological profession, but this did not prevent them from embracing
ICT, developing their competence and finding a sense of professional
belonging. Our analysis suggests that the ‘safe and familiar’ platform in a non-​technological field is one key to understanding how the women developed
a hybrid work identity combining non-​technological fields with ICT inways that avoided direct competition with the masculinized notion of ICT
experts (Corneliussen, 2021).
Our study supports findings such as Master and Meltzoff ’s (2020)
suggestion that ability belief is important for supporting women’s entry
into male-​dominated fields like ICT. However, different from expectancy-​
value theories that suggest that ability belief and interest reside in thediscipline in question, the women pursuing unconventional routes to ICT
described their interest, ability belief and sense of belonging as linked totheir investment in a non-​technological discipline. They successfully solved
the main challenge implied in Master and Meltzoff’s model, which is to
identify ways of motivating students (for example women) facing negative
stereotypes regarding STEM (for example ICT). However, the women71

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

we met found their own ways of solving this: by ignoring their discursive‘lack of fit’ with stereotypes of ICT and defining their fit based on a hybrid
competence model. A conclusion to draw from this is that ICT is not the
only relevant starting point for choosing ICT, and that other fields of interest
can provide less masculine coded entry points for individuals who do not
associate themselves with this type of masculinity.
Are these women illustrating solutions to recruiting women into ICT, or
do they rather represent failed opportunities? Our analysis suggests both.
Some represented failure by pointing out that they could have been recruitedearlier, while others rather rejected that view, such as Dani who doubted
that she would have chosen ICT earlier even if she had known more about
it. Thus, while learning from failures of recruiting women through theconventional route, we should also look at unconventional routes as solutions
with a potential for bringing a more diverse group into ICT work. Our
study supports the often-​repeated advice to develop the message about ‘who
belongs’ in ICT to also include women (Cheryan et al, 2015; Master andMeltzoff, 2020), though this is also mainly limited to the conventional route.
To capture a wider group of women including those who feel diverted awayfrom the conventional route, we need to expand the message to include thevital role of ICT across a vast range of disciplines, industries and sectors notpreviously considered technological, including fields dominated by women.
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5Changes in Funding
and the Intensification of Gender
Inequalities in Researchand Innovation
Marja Vehviläinen, Hanna-​Mari Ikonen and Päivi Korvajärvi

Introduction
The availability of funding is one of the central institutional constituentsof research and innovation (R&I) in current universities and other R&I
institutions. Universities are increasingly neoliberal and entrepreneurial(Ylijoki, 2003; Pereira, 2017; Rodrigo and Clavero, 2020), and access tocompetitive funding and the publications produced in competitively funded
projects are key indicators when the success and trajectories of R&I are
evaluated. The award of competitive funding justifies the subjects worth
researching, researchers and R&I institutions, and it shapes gender and its
intersecting differences in R&I. There has been a systematic disadvantage
in women’s and other minorities’ access to competitive R&I funding(SHE Figures, 2018: 174; Burns et al, 2019; Rodrigo and Clavero, 2020).
Although some funding agencies, in Ireland (Doona, 2020) and Nordic
countries in particular, have conducted gender equality planning (Husu
and de Cheveigné, 2010), gender inequalities have nonetheless remained
persistent also in Nordic R&I (Griffin and Vehviläinen, 2021). In spite of
the importance of the topic, the implications of R&I funding practices
for gender and gender (in)equalities are under-​researched, as Husu and de
Cheveigné (2010) and Steinþórsdóttir et al (2020) have also observed.
R&I institutions are key sites for R&I work. These institutions respondto neoliberal science policies, and reward research groups and units as well
as researchers that bring in highly competitive funding while simultaneously
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CHANGES IN FUNDING

employing researchers on fixed-​term precarious work contracts (Ylijoki et al,
2011; Siekkinen et al, 2017). They also continue to perpetuate gendered
practices and cultures, ‘corridor talk’ (Pereira, 2017), which shape the practices
of R&I groups and units, including gender inequalities in recruitment andcareer promotion, and sexual harassment, implying disadvantage for womenand minority groups (Husu, 2001; Acker and Armenti, 2004; van den Brink
and Benschop, 2011; Nielsen, 2016; Murgia and Poggio, 2019). Researchers
and researcher groups, women and minority groups in particular, grapple
with the simultaneous presence of neoliberal and gendered practices in
R&I, precarious work contracts and various gendered inequalities, and try
to secure the continuity of their R&I work through gaining competitive
funding, often in collaboration with international networks (Pereira, 2017).
The interplay between R&I funding and R&I work –​and gender in
R&I –​is complex and has local variations across countries, funding agencies
and R&I institutions. Governments allocate core funding to R&I institutions
and resources to funding agencies which deliver these through an application
process. Supranational actors such as the European Commission also grantcompetitive funding. Once secured, competitive funding gives credit in later
applications. The sources of R&I funding fluctuate over time. The researchintensities of countries, the share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent
on R&I, and resources delivered by funding agencies expand and decline(Eurostat, nd). Although the gendered access rates to competitive grants
and the gendered practices of funding agencies are recognized in discussions
about gender and R&I (that is, Van der Lee and Ellemers, 2015), there islittle knowledge about the gendered complexity of R&I funding and its
relations to actual R&I, and even less regarding specificities such as thegendered effects of the fluctuation in research intensities and changing
resources provided by funding agencies.
This chapter addresses the changes in R&I funding sources since the mid-​
1990s, and in particular the expansion and subsequent decline in resources
distributed by funding agencies in Finland. It examines the interplay between
funding opportunities and gendered practices (Korvajärvi, 2011) in R&I
that produce gender inequalities: intersecting social inequalities ‘that are
more often experienced by women than men’ and that cause disadvantage
for women (Evans, 2017: 9). Finnish R&I intensity was relatively high in
relation to GDP by 2008 and then dropped dramatically from 2010 to 2015
(Eurostat, nd), with consequences for the resources of the funding agencies
and the availability of competitive funding. It thus provides an interestingcase study regarding this issue. Our data consist of biographical interviews,
covering periods of expansion and decline in funding, with women who
work in R&I, namely Health Technology (HT), a field that has beenprioritized in Finnish R&I policies and is largely dependent on competitive
funding and changes to the latter. We explore gender inequalities embedded
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

in R& work and the R&I work trajectories of women produced in part bychanges in competitive R&I funding. We argue that significant changes in
R&I funding involve a risk of deepening gender inequalities and can havenegative implications for women’s R&I work. The chapter articulates how
this risk manifested itself in the reported lived experiences of women in
R&I and in the (often contradictory) gendered practices of R&I institutions.
In the following, we discuss the literature on gender and R&I funding,and then describe the R&I funding system in the Finnish context as well as
the data and methods and, before our discussion and conclusions, move tothree key accounts of our analysis of gender and gender inequalities in thecontext of changes to R&I funding.

Gender in competitive R&I funding
The gendered implications of competitive R&I funding have been discussed
in an increasing manner during the last decades by focusing on R&I funding
agencies and the austerity measures in academia (that is, Husu and de
Cheveigné, 2010; Moscowitz et al, 2014). However, the complex interplayof funding, R&I institutions and the grassroots level experiences of women
has rarely, if at all, been researched.
European and North American researchers have examined how R&I
funding agencies make funding decisions in gendered ways. Generally, theyfound various forms of gender bias, for example that women get relatively
fewer and smaller grants both in the US (Hechtman et al, 2018) and inEurope (Van der Lee and Ellemers, 2015. Rodrigo and Clavero, 2020;
Steinþórsdóttir et al, 2020). Husu and de Cheveigné (2010: 58) further
noted that the European countries vary significantly in gender equality
planning by the R&I funding agencies. The Nordic agencies have paid themost attention to their gatekeeping roles in selecting the researchers andresearch to be supported. While women are in the minority in expert groups
and decision-​making bodies in many other countries, the Nordic researchcouncils have introduced gender equality planning and gender balancein expert boards. For example, the Finnish National Research Council,
the Academy of Finland, developed these practices from the 1980s (Husu
2001: 85–​9). However, there is some variation among funding agencies
within individual countries. In Finland, differently from the Academy, theAgency for Innovation has not incorporated gender equality planning in
its activities, and in the US, Burns et al (2019) found differences in genderequality among the funding institutions. Gender equality planning is hence
not self-​evident, not even in Nordic R&I funding agencies.
The effects of austerity and cutbacks of research funding in the neoliberal
academy have also been widely researched. These effects are often negativefor R&I work, as austerity is used as a rationale for implementing neoliberal
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values in academia and marginalizing minorities and work for diversity andequality (Ahmed, 2012; Moscowitz et al, 2014). However, an ethnographic
study by Maria do Mar Pereira (2017) has shown that success in obtaining
external competitive funding in cutback situations may also provide
opportunities for the development of critical research.
In this chapter, we contribute to research on the gendered effects ofcompetitive funding in R&I. Distinctly from studies of gender in funding
agencies we contribute with a rarely acknowledged perspective of thereported experiences of women who work in neoliberal R&I institutions.
And differently from austerity studies, we raise another rarely remarked upon
phenomenon, changes in research funding in terms of national researchintensities and the actual changes in the resources of funding agencies acrossprevious decades. In the following, we describe more closely these contexts
and explain the R&I funding system in Finland.

Funding in research and innovation
R&I work is primarily carried out in universities, research institutes, privatecompanies and non-​profit organizations. It is funded through various public
and private sources: business enterprises, governments, private non-​profit andhigher education institutions, as well as international sources (Frascati Manual,
2002). Finnish universities receive governmental core funding through annual
negotiations and agreements with the Ministry of Culture and Education and,furthermore, they can receive additional, largely competitive funding fromvarious public and private sources. University structures vary but they usuallyconsist of units with financial responsibility (faculties, departments, centres)
which employ researchers and research groups. All these, from universities toindividual researchers, apply for competitive funding. Competitive sourcesof funding have overtaken governmental funding in several countries (thatis, Ireland, Sweden); in Finland they exceeded governmental core funding
for the first time in 2001 (Tieteen tila, 2003: 54–​5).
The level of R&I intensity, the R&I expenditure relative to GDP, hasrisen in the European Union since the turn of the century (Eurostat, nd).
In Finland, however, it peaked in 2009 (3.73 per cent), after having grownfrom the mid-​1990s (OECD, 2017: 18), and declined strongly from 2010
until 2016 (2.72 per cent). R&I expenditure nevertheless stayed at a relatively
high level, with the EU average hovering at around 2 per cent (OECD,
2017: 18–​19; Eurostat, nd). The increase of R&I expenditure in Finland
until 2009 was largely due to the strong performance of information andcommunication technology (ICT) and the Nokia company in particular.
Nokia was a major actor in research and development for several decades
and then shut down substantial parts of this activity from the 2010s (OECD,
2017: 18). Private funding dropped from over 70 per cent of total R&I
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

funding in 2008 to 53.5 per cent by 2014 (Eurostat, nd). Conversely public
R&I expenditure remained at around 1 per cent of GDP for decades (OSF,nd). Although the share of international funding for R&I in Finland grew
between 2008 and 2018, varying from 6 to 14 per cent (Eurostat, nd), it did
not offset the decline in national private funding. One effect was that the
total number of full-​time researchers declined both in the private sector andin higher education and R&I institutions in Finland, while it kept growing
in Sweden, for example (Eurostat, nd). These changes in funding in Finland
had significant effects on R&I institutions and the structure, work contracts
and working conditions of their personnel.
Competitive governmental project funding has been distributed in Finland
mainly through the Academy of Finland and the Finnish Funding Agency for
Innovation which became Business Finland in 2018. The Academy of Finland
funds individual researchers (postdocs, senior researchers and professor
levels), research projects, centres of excellence in universities and research
institutions, and more recently also universities as they build new research
profiles. Its resources have remained steady and grown slightly (Tieteentila, 2018: 12). The Agency for Innovation used to finance innovations andresearch-​industry collaboration, where the funded project groups consistedof university research units and their researchers, private companies andoften also public sector actors. Agency for Innovation funding increased until
2010 and then started to decline rapidly after 2011, following the patternof the prevailing national research intensity (Tieteen tila, 2014, 2018). As
the Agency for Innovation changed into Business Finland, the Academy ofFinland to some extent took over its strategic funding function.
Research fields vary significantly in their use of competitive funding(Ylijoki et al, 2011). ICT sciences in Finnish universities covered nearly all
their R&I costs through competitive funding in 2012, while in biomedicine
it was 80 per cent, in electronics 60 per cent, about half in medicine,biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, and less than half in all other fields(Tieteen tila, 2014: 20–​1). HT, a multidisciplinary field consisting of life
sciences, medicine and technology, addressed in this chapter, has been oneof the gainers of competitive funding. It was also one of the fields which
was hit hard by the decline in funding resources from 2009. We shall now
describe how we collected and analyzed our data in HT before we moveto our analysis.

Data and method
The data consist of interviews, conducted between 2018 and 2020, withwomen in R&I under the multidisciplinary umbrella of HT. Twenty-​eight of
30 interviewed women had PhD degrees, most commonly in bio or healthsciences, or engineering, but also in social sciences, humanities or business80

CHANGES IN FUNDING

studies. All 30 interviewees were White, all but two born in Finland. Theirages ranged roughly from 30 to 60. Twenty-​six had children (usually one tothree). About half worked in universities and the others mainly in privatecompanies and research institutes. Many of the interviewees had worked
through the period when R&I funding expanded strongly in the first decadeof the 2000s, and the period of declining funding (2009–​16). Many had
started research groups and had continuously acquired competitive researchfunding, even when national resources were scarce, while others had moved
to research institutes outside academia or to the private sector.
The interviewees first talked about their R&I work histories. Theinterview themes consisted of their current work situations and futureplans, the role of gender in R&I work and their work-​life balance. Theinterviews lasted one to two hours and were transcribed verbatim. They
were conducted and analyzed in Finnish, and extracts were translated into
English for the purposes of this chapter. Our methodological approachis institutional ethnography which starts the analysis ‘in the actualities
of everyday world, with the concerns and perspectives of people locateddistinctively in the institutional process’, and the ‘work knowledge’ producedin the interviews, and uncovers ‘the social relations implicated in the localorganization of the everyday’ (Smith, 2005: 34–​5). The analysis goes beyond
the everyday world and explicates also translocal forms of coordination thatorganize the local activity, for example, the patterns of R&I funding, even if
those were not always articulated in the interviews. We read the interviews
several times and, firstly, used thematic analysis to identify experiences
regarding gender that were reported in the interviews. All interviewees
had observations to make about gender. Gender neutrality/​irrelevanceand individuals’ equal opportunities were emphasized (Korvajärvi, 2021).
However, many also talked about gender inequalities in mundane R&I
work and a few about sexual harassment and gender discrimination in detail,some in the context of declining funding sources. We traced gendered
practices (Korvajärvi, 2011) that produced gender inequality in R&I work.
Secondly, based on a thematic analysis, we selected key interviewees among
the ones who talked about research funding (about half of all) and more
specifically among the six interviewees who described how their R&I workand career had been affected by the changes in R&I funding, even though
they had not been asked about funding (financial cuts in R&I were broadly
discussed in Finland during the years of the interviews). Two of the choseninterviewees talked about gender inequalities and further explained two
different kinds of funding arrangements taking place widely in the Finnish
R&I (Academy of Finland, Agency for Innovation). The third selectedinterviewee was the one who articulated most clearly the effects of both thegrowth and decline of funding for her career, and we analyzed how mundane
gender inequalities intersected her career. We built accounts based on each81

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

interview by highlighting their ‘work knowledge’ regarding the effects thatR&I funding had on their R&I work. We analyzed the interplay between
gender inequality and the changes in funding in our data through the lensof these three accounts. In the following sections, we present our analysis
through these accounts. The first one involves steady resources from theAcademy of Finland and serious gender inequality as the funding declinedin the research unit and at the university; the second turns to the Agency
for Innovation funding and gender inequality as sources became scarce inthe university unit. The third one did not articulate gender inequalities
at all. However, the changes of funding again affected that person’s R&I
work and career path in R&I.

Gender inequality in recruitment within declining
funding
The first account centres on Mirjam (about 50 years old) who had abackground in engineering and had worked in multidisciplinary research
since her Master’s degree. Her unit provided excellent guidance andprojects, implying a good funding period. She made extended visits toforeign universities through her supervisor’s contacts, which is considered
an important dimension of academic career development in Finland. She
established a research area of her own at the ‘frontlines’ of international
research. Additionally, she learnt to write successful grant applications. She
wrote her PhD thesis as part of a funded research school (four years). Aftercompleting her PhD, she received, through her own applications, individual
and research group funding from the Academy of Finland. She said that she
was well respected in the unit that she worked in and was invited to joinvarious funding consortia.
Mirjam’s career path began along the four-​stage career model promotedby the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC, 2016: 17) and theEuropean Science Foundation: doctoral student, postdoc, senior researcher
and professor. She had moved to career stage three, senior researcher, witha research group of her own. In contrast to most other higher education
positions, stage four professor posts, funded by university core funding, aremainly available through advertised vacancies, and their number is limited(Vipunen, nd). In Finland, as in several other countries (van den Brink
and Benschop, 2011; Nielsen, 2016), there is no self-​evident continuationfrom stage to stage of the four-​stage career model. Mirjam did not get a
professor position to run her research group. She explained that researchfunding had started to decline and described how male networks worked togive the professor position to one of their members: “And then this person,
he quite quickly got a professorship here at the university, and I’ve still notever gotten anything at all. … They’re part of this circle of friends and it
82

CHANGES IN FUNDING

makes sense that this person is a professor there, there supporting thoseother friends who are men.” When resources became scarce, male networks
banded together. Although Mirjam, with her successful external funding andresearch group, had been welcomed and supported throughout her early andmid-​career in the period of expanding funding, she now became excluded.
Male networks were mentioned in many interviews. The interviewees were
aware that they existed at the university and in the region. They are nota new phenomenon (Husu, 2001; van den Brink and Benschop, 2014),
and are present in male-​dominated fields in particular. They remained idle
and relaxed as long as funding resources were plentiful. During that time,
expanding projects needed a labour force, and women’s participation was
useful there. During periods of plentiful funding, all successful funding,including that of women, gave credit to the network members. However,as the resources declined, the network closed ranks.
At the time of the interview Mirjam continued to do R&I work in an
R&I institution through international collaboration. Her university unit
welcomed prestigious (international) resources, and she had also once more
received national research funding. Nevertheless, her situation in the local
academic hierarchy remained precarious.

Coping with innovation funding and gendered inequality
The second account features Katarina (also about 50 years old) who did
her Master’s degree during the period of expanding funding. She taught
and worked in projects funded by the national Agency for Innovation andhad a place in a funded doctoral school. Just a few weeks after completing
her PhD she gave birth and spent the following year on parental leave, but
continued to teach for a few hours weekly. Her PhD thesis established a
new field and her unit received additional funding to develop it further.
However, as she was on leave, she was not given any role in the new projectthat was based on her PhD:
‘There were two kinds of disadvantages as a woman, I’d say, so one
was that I’ve now sort of created a new field there, which would be
worthwhile to research and they got the project and the money. And
I couldn’t be part of it because I was on maternity leave … it’s that when
you have a project you hire the people when you get the money, you
can’t wait like, let’s wait a year, for that person to come back.’ (Katarina)
Katarina acknowledged that the Agency for Innovation funding involved
industry partners and deadlines, and the R&I unit could not wait forparticular researchers to come back from their leaves, even if they had been
the initiators and innovators of the project. However, another interviewee
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

explained that the head of her unit made sure that she had a place to comeback to from parental leave into an Agency for Innovation-​funded project.
Katarina’s unit did not do this but instead excluded her from the project.
In her own mind, she had not faced gender discrimination, even though
she thought that being a woman was a disadvantage. She said that there wasnothing to be done. However, she did not receive all possible support fromher superiors either. Furthermore, she did not get the academic credit that
she would have deserved as her thesis was the starting point for the new
project, and this points to gender inequality. There is also the obvious penalty
that she paid for having gone on parental leave.
Katarina also had a Business Studies background and, after coming backfrom parental leave, she found a new job to commercialize university
research: “So I’ve gone into this chief development officer position that was
selling the university’s research findings, specifically in this bio field, overseas.”
Science commercialization was emphasized and intermediaries and scienceparks were built within or near universities, following the national science
policy. This was also the case in other western countries (Pelkonen, 2003).
Katarina worked broadly internationally. In her own words, she worked
successfully for a couple of years with a colleague and wrote a business plan
for a new research centre. However, this was when the funding situation
started to change; private R&I funding had already declined, and Agency
for Innovation resources were also declining. She was not offered a job in
the new centre, although she had been a main planner for it, and instead hermale colleagues arranged the job to go to her male collaborator:‘Unfortunately that endeavour ended when the funding ended and[the new RI centre] didn’t have funding yet. And at that point it felt a
bit like, men were drawing together, how should I say it, that although
I was such a big part of [the preparations], it felt like it was each to theirown, and there was one person who got sort of temporary funding,for him but not for me. I feel like it was a grave injustice. And at thatpoint I left for [private company] [laughs].’ (Katarina)
This interview account is reminiscent of the interview with Mirjam and twoother interviewees. These women were appreciated as competent colleagues
as long as a good funding situation prevailed. When the funding declined,
the male networks excluded them and treated them unequally (Berger et al,2015). As the other cases were examples of professorship recruitments basedon university core funding, Katarina’s account shows that such exclusions
could happen both at lower career stages in R&I organizations, and also inthe context of innovation funding. Katarina acted differently from Mirjam
who continued to carry out research at the university with competitive
project funding. Katarina had worked in science commercialization and84

CHANGES IN FUNDING

was invited to join an R&I company. By the time of the interview, she had
worked in a leading position there for several years.

From hype to declining resources
The third account concerns Tuija (35–​40 years old) who entered a female-​dominated research group during the heyday of a newly emerging field.
Although she was rather ambivalent about her aims and her ‘match’ withthat field, she became drawn into a research group to do her Master’s thesis,
even though she was still completing her Bachelor degree, and into doctoral
research while she was still working on her Master’s. She got four-​year
funding for her doctorate:‘We had big Agency for Innovation funding, Academy funding andmoney did also come in then. It was like money came to money, that
we got research funding pretty well in the beginning. And, of course
at that point it’s pretty nice to jump into the academic world, when
it is in that kind of hype.’ (Tuija)
Like Katarina, Tuija gave birth to her first child right after completing her
PhD. After her parental leave, and a few months of unemployment, shestarted at another university in Finland. She was supposed to write research
applications for herself and for a newly established group to help the groupleader, and then she faced the decline of funding: “2015, … then at thesame time as these cuts in education started coming from the government… research funding decreased all the time”. Several interviewees described
how application writing had become more demanding, requiring more andmore persistent and continuous work as the competition became fiercer.
During the same years, she had a second child and took further parental
leave. She was supposed to write an individual application to gain fundingfor herself and her research right after she came back to work. Academy
funding had not decreased at that stage, and she might have got some, but
she failed to write an application and moved to a private company as aparticular kind of expert.
Other interviewees shared these experiences. They had received secure
funding for their doctoral research and at the point of declining resources
became anxious since they were expected to acquire their own funding,common for fixed-​term employees in academia in Finland (Siekkinen et al,2017). They, like Tuija, left academia with ambivalent feelings and found
relevant work in private companies.
Tuija’s case demonstrates a particular risk in relation to major changes in
R&I funding. When there was significant funding, large groups of researchers
were recruited at the same time, differently from the gradual recruitment
85

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

that occurs in periods of steady funding. Although these circumstances ofmultiple simultaneous appointments provide research opportunities, theyalso tend to have negative effects on researcher training and productivity
in research (Poropudas, 2018). Here the interviewee did not need to learn
to write applications independently, although she might have participatedin applications led by others. As the funding opportunities diminished, thecompetition became harder, and she badly needed the skills necessary towrite a successful funding application.
Tuija did not mention gender inequality at all. Rather, she stated that
she had never experienced any discrimination. She had received fundingfor her PhD and collegial support in her groups. She was not dealing withany straightforward gender inequality that took place in the context offunding changes. Instead, there were subtle processes during the change
from expansion to decline that made her vulnerable and unable to moveon in academic research. Furthermore, the period of declining funding hit
Tuija while she was on parental leave. She took one-​year parental leaves
twice, as is commonly done by highly educated women in Finland (Salmi
and Närvi, 2017: 71). The first time she did not have a job waiting for her,and the second time she returned to a fixed-​term position for her ‘mission
impossible’, to write a highly competitive application. The changing financial
situation and precarious work situation were a double-​edged sword forher: it invited one to take parental leave, as this was an attractive personal
solution in precarious work situations, and it also made it hard to comeback and continue in highly competitive academic R&I. There were subtle
gendered relations that came together and produced disadvantages for her
and her trajectory in R&I.

Discussion
The expansion of R&I funding in Finland until 2009 provided opportunities
for many interviewees to become qualified researchers and to visit foreign
universities with world-​class research groups, the latter being an important
requirement in Finnish academe. Many interviewees were offered full-​time
job contracts to do their PhD, which was, if not the norm, a common practicein natural, medical and technical sciences, different from the social sciences
and humanities where doctoral students often had to secure their grants
themselves (Hakala, 2009). Many were able to establish research groups oftheir own with competitive funding (SHE Figures, 2018: 174).
In this chapter, we analyzed how the significant changes in Finnish R&I
funding intersected with gender inequalities. Although not all genderinequalities in our data were rooted in funding changes alone, we suggestthat the major decline in funding after 2009 provoked particularly prominent
forms of gender inequality, as both Mirjam and Katarina experienced. As
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CHANGES IN FUNDING

studies by Berger et al (2015) and van den Brink and Benschop (2014) also
showed, male networks, in academia, and between academia and industry,worked to provide positions for male colleagues in male-​dominated researchcommunities when resources became scarce. This particular form ofinequality had major effects on both Mirjam’s and Katarina’s opportunities
and trajectories in R&I work. They could not get the promotions that would
have enabled them to continue their career paths as they had intended. It
also disrupted researchers’ work in their groups as they needed to find newsupervisors and new institutional settings.
The third account, Tuija’s, hints at a more subtle relation between genderinequality and funding. The rapid expansion of funding provided great
opportunities for (too) many, and research groups did not oversee and instruct
young academics in all academic skills, as suggested also by Poropudas (2018).
When the decline of resources hit, many were not prepared for this and it
became difficult to act and continue R&I work in a purposeful way. Many
researchers with fixed-​term contracts were distressed by constant application
work in situations of heightened competition (Siekkinen et al, 2017), andthe major decline in funding intensified this further. This affected more
women than men as fixed-​term contracts in Finnish higher education, morethan the EU average, involved almost twice as many women as men in 2016
(respectively 12.6 per cent and 6.9 per cent: SHE Figures, 2018: 99).
Furthermore, discussions of the reproductive body and having young
children appeared in all of our three key interviews. The significance of the
reproductive body is difficult to recognize and articulate, as has been shownin Pecis’ (2016) study. Katarina’s original contribution to a new project was
not acknowledged because she was on parental leave in the early stagesof the new project. Mirjam also told us that she started to lose support in
her unit after she had had children. Tuija was on parental leave twice andthen experienced difficulties returning to fixed-​term work. She was nolonger as well supported as she had been during her doctoral studies. The
negative effects of a neoliberal science policy and the academy for women
have been reported across the globe, for example, in Australia (Blackmore
and Sawers, 2015; Toffoletti and Starr, 2017); Italy (Pecis, 2016); Norway(Thun, 2020) and Finland (Nikunen, 2014). Pregnancy and the period whenchildren are young stand out as particularly vulnerable times for mothers in
the neoliberal academy. Our study suggests that the reproductive body andyoung children intensify gender inequalities and diminish opportunities whensignificant changes in R&I funding take place. More research is needed on
this phenomenon.
The practices of the funding agencies matter. Many interviewees received
funding from the Academy of Finland –​although it could take as long as
three years of repeat applications to succeed –​and this funding supported
their R&I work and career. Agency for Innovation resources require
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

university-​industry collaboration, and projects are built on networks in both.
In contrast to the Academy and the Swedish Innovation Funding Agency,
the Finnish National Agency for Innovation had done little if any genderequality planning. Although some R&I units were able to see that researchers
on parental leaves maintained ownership of their work, including in Agency
for Innovation-​funded projects, other applications and projects markedly
made room for old boys’ networks. The Agency for Innovation did not
pay attention to the continuity of the R&I careers of those temporarily onparental leave –​women more often than men. Innovation funding stands
out as a resource where the expansion and decline of funding created aparticular risk of gender inequality.
The practices of particular funding agencies intertwined with the overallchanges in R&I intensity. (Professor) positions funded through university
core funding became more valuable as R&I intensity declined, and not evenexcellent competitive funding brought into the unit could pave the way tothose positions, if they were controlled by old boys’ networks. Competitive
funding provided only conditional, precarious R&I paths, as Pereira (2017)has also observed.

Conclusions
In this chapter we have explored how major changes in competitive R&I
funding, one of the cornerstones of the neoliberal academy and R&I,
produced risks for women and their opportunity to advance their R&I
work and career paths. Our study supports findings from elsewhere that
financial cutbacks cause gender inequalities in neoliberal universities (thatis, Blackmore and Sawers, 2015; Pereira, 2017). Additionally, it suggeststhat major fluctuations in funding, expansion and decline following on
from each other, create a significant risk of creating and/​or reinforcing
gender inequalities.
From the perspective of women in R&I work, it is the R&I institutions
that play the significant role (also Griffin and Vehviläinen, 2021). Neoliberal
R&I institutions, their units and research groups welcome competitive
funding in growth periods and recruit personnel to conduct R&I. Some
research groups train those recruited to cope with the expanded tasksof the neoliberal university and support women through their parental
leaves, while others do not. And it is R&I institutions that allow oldboys’ networks to dominate as resources become scarce and women findthemselves excluded in R&I. These gender inequalities played a role when
women unintendedly leave academia for good or remained in marginal
positions. Our study calls for gender equality work that takes into accountchanges in R&I funding that inevitably occur in R&I institutions, funding
agencies and R&I policies.
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Acknowledgements
The research was done in a Nordforsk funded Centre of Excellence Nordwit.
We would like to thank Tiina Suopajärvi and Minna Leinonen who
conducted the interviews and Oili-​Helena Ylijoki for insightful comments.
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92

6

Promoting Gender
Equality in STEM-​oriented
Universities: Institutional Policy
Measures in Sweden, Finland
and Norway
Charlotte Silander, Ida Drange, Maria Pietilä and Liza Reisel

Introduction
Equal access to research-​intensive careers for talented academics of all genders
and backgrounds is vital to secure social justice and to ensure efficient researchand knowledge production. Still, gender inequalities endure in academia.
Although Sweden, Norway and Finland have been identified as forerunners
in promoting gender balance in research (Lipinsky, 2013), the share ofwomen in top academic positions in science, technology, engineering, andmathematics (STEM) remains well below the threshold for a gender balance(European Commission, 2019).
Previous studies on women’s under-​representation in STEM have notedthat female talent is lost at every critical career transition phase (‘the leaky
pipeline’ metaphor; Berryman, 1983; Ong et al, 2011; Liu et al, 2019). Thisapproach has, however, been criticized for its focus on the ‘supply-​side’(Metcalf, 2010), linearity and inability to account for varied career paths(Xie and Shauman, 2003; Etzkowitz and Ranga, 2011). Another streamof literature notes that maths and science continue to be perceived as maledomains, and the perception of scientists in STEM is predominantly male
(Makarova et al, 2019). This emphasizes that women are viewed as deviatingfrom the norm of the ideal worker (Acker, 2012). Male domination makes
the lack of access to networks (Fox and Colatrella, 2006; Terosky et al,2014) and role models more evident. In addition, intensified international
93

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

competition requires early career researchers to be mobile (Herschberg
et al, 2018), influencing women’s chances for recruitment and promotion(Jöns, 2011).
The under-​representation of women in STEM has created the necessity fornational and institutional measures to promote gender equality at universities.
National measures are particularly relevant in the Nordic countries whichhave comprehensive gender equality legislation that also applies to higher
education institutions. In addition, the state may provide different incentives
for universities to promote equality. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of thesepolicies depends on both the type of measures and their implementation atuniversity level. Previous studies on measures for improving gender balance anddiversity in organizations indicate that transparency in hiring and promotion,
policies that establish clear responsibility for increasing diversity within theorganization, and affirmative action plans in combination with responsibility
structures have the largest effects (Naff and Kellough, 2003; Holzer and
Neumark, 2006; Kalev et al, 2006; Timmers et al, 2010; Dobbin et al, 2015).
Only a few studies have investigated the types of equality measures used in
Nordic higher education institutions (Bergman and Rustad, 2013; Nielsen,
2017; Moratti, 2020). Nielsen (2017) analyzed the use of such measuresin six Nordic universities, two each in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Nielsen concluded that measures aimed at creating equal opportunities
and revising existing organizational cultures were the most efficient incountering organizational inequalities. Based on a longitudinal study fromone Norwegian university, Moratti (2020) found no detrimental effect on(rarely used) low-​transparency and low-​openness procedures. However,more controversial proactive measures, such as affirmative action policies,
showed clear positive effects, but they have become less available due tostricter European legislation over the past decades. These results indicate aneed for further studies on organizational gender equality policy that focus
on types of policy in more detail.
Against this background, in this chapter we seek to investigate how
the changes in the proportion of women in grade A positions in STEM-​
oriented universities are related to the use of gender equality measures. GradeA positions are the highest academic positions, typically full professorships.
Bacchi (2009) argues that policy always makes assumptions about the
problem the policy is meant to solve. In line with this, building on priorresearch (for example, Kalev et al, 2006; Timmers et al, 2010; Dobbin et al,2015), we categorize gender equality measures (GE measures) according
to how they seek to reduce gender inequalities. We investigated what GE
measures have been used by the universities that have achieved significant
positive changes in the proportion of women in grade A positions. This wasdone by analyzing how the proportion of women in grade A positions hasdeveloped in each university between 2000 and 2018, and by investigating
94

PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY

if the detected variation is related to the use of these measures. We discuss
which potential implications the use of specific GE measures have for theacademic career progression of women.
The skewed gender distribution in STEM fields, especially in the highest
academic career positions, has attracted high-​profile policy attention, callingfor states, research organizations and universities to take action to improve
gender equality in research (for example, Council of the European Union,2015). Against this background, we expect STEM-​oriented universities toface pressing issues related to gender equality, which may be reflected in their
institutional gender equality work. To our knowledge, previous research has
not investigated what measures STEM-​oriented universities have taken toaddress gender inequalities in academic careers. Thus, this study provides
new knowledge on how STEM-​oriented universities in three Nordic
countries –​Sweden, Norway and Finland –​have used policy measures tosupport and promote gender equality among academic staff.
We define STEM-​oriented universities as universities that have a highproportion of academics working in STEM fields and that have a strong
research and teaching environment in those fields, reflected in a highproportion of PhD graduates in STEM fields. The study uses institutional
survey data which were collected as part of the Nordic Centre of Excellence
NORDICORE. The data provide a unique opportunity to compare theuniversities’ use of equality measures, and to relate this to the changes infemale representation in STEM fields.

Categorization of gender equality measures
Policies that seek to combat gender inequality in organizations can bestudied from several perspectives. One approach is to investigate how thepolicies relate to different assumptions about men and women (Rees, 2005;
Squires, 2008). Another is to analyze GE measures based on what they seek
to target. Timmers et al (2010), based on Fagenson (1990), distinguishbetween measures that target individuals, the culture and organizational
structures. In another study on the efficacy of diversity measures, Kalev
et al (2006) use three broad approaches for promoting diversity: initiatives
to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, initiatives to reducebias through training and initiatives to reduce the social isolation of womenand minority workers. In another study, the same team (Dobbin et al, 2015)
focus on how managers are motivated to influence change by activities
that influence managerial motivation for promoting diversity, activities that
constrain managers’ discretion to discriminate and activities that increasetransparency and monitoring within the organization.
Policymakers can use different policy measures to achieve their intended
goals. Here we distinguish between policies that target individuals and policies
95

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

that target structures. The approach by Dobbin et al (2015) focusses onchanging the behaviour of actors, while Kalev et al (2006) focus on policies
emphasizing both social structures and actors. In this chapter actor-​oriented
policies include measures that target members of the under-​represented sex,
and training measures to reduce bias and stereotyping. Structure-​oriented
policies include measures establishing organizational responsibility andmeasures of preferential treatment (see Table 6.2, under the section ‘Findings’,
for an overview of the included measures in the study).

Targeted measures
Targeted measures are actor-​oriented as they aim to target members of
the under-​represented sex (in STEM, women) and seek to remedy their‘deficiencies’ so that they advance in the prevailing career structures. Genderdifferences are addressed by targeting women through measures that aim tochange individual behaviour and the choices made by women (althoughthese can be influenced by societal norms and values). These measures seek
to ‘fix’ the women through intervention strategies that support them (Kalev
et al, 2006). Such measures are often based on ‘deficit’ analyses that assume
that women lack the required knowledge or networks, or behave in waysthat make them less competitive (for example not taking enough risks,
not applying for promotion). Thus, women are offered targeted training,coaching, networking, mentoring and leadership programmes to help themmeet the norms of the ideal academic.
Questions in the survey referring to targeted measures were about i) special
funding for women to qualify for promotion; ii) the possibility for womento earn research leave in a shorter time compared to men; iii) mentoring
programmes for women; iv) career development workshops for female
academic staff; v) networking gatherings for female academic leaders; andvi) leadership development programmes for women.

Training measures
Training measures seek to change the culture of the organization and prevent
research and teaching staff, managers and gatekeepers from holding implicit
bias and stereotypes which may reproduce existing patterns of inequality(Kalev et al, 2006). Although academia is often presented as gender
neutral, previous research indicates that many practices in fact privilegemen (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008). Processes of assessment, selectionand evaluation are at risk of being performed by managers and gatekeepers
who hold stereotypes of men and women (Fagenson, 1990). Thus, training
measures target the norms and values of staff in an organization, especiallydepartment heads and members of recruitment and promotion committees.
96PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY

Questions in the survey encompassed i) diversity training for academic staff;ii) diversity training for department heads; iii) diversity training for hiring
or promotion committees; iv) sexual harassment training for academic staff;v) written instructions for hiring or promotion committees about genderand diversity bias; and vi) promotion of equality as part of the qualification
for department heads.

Organizational responsibility measures
This first category of measures among the structure-​oriented policies includes
measures to support organizational responsibility in gender equality work.
These are warranted because even if a policy sets out the direction for change,
this can be lost on the way if the policy is decoupled from the overall goals
and objectives of the organization. Based on the ideas of Max Weber, Kalev
et al (2006) argue that decoupling is likely to occur when there is a lack ofstructures of responsibility, such as a diversity office or expert to monitor
progress. If diversity efforts become everyone’s responsibility, they risk
becoming no one’s primary responsibility and policy might become decoupledfrom practice. If organizations fail to assign responsibility for diversity goals
to a specific office or person, these goals risk being lost when line managers
need to meet competing demands from scholars (Kalev et al, 2006). Weber’s
recommendation is to assign responsibility for setting goals, allocating means
and evaluating progress, which Kalev et al (2006) interpret as actions plans,internal monitoring and the introduction of diversity committees.
Policies that seek to make structural changes in organizations aim to change
the way rules, structures, decisions and processes are organized, for example
by increasing representation or transparency within the organization. Thismay mean transparent procedures for workload allocations and promotion
criteria (Probert, 2005) or official publishing of positions for recruitment(van den Brink, 2010). A number of policies representing organizational
responsibility in promoting gender equality, such as the requirement to havea gender equality plan and salary reviews by sex, are part of the legislationin the Nordic countries.
The organizational responsibility measures included in the survey werei) office or full-​time person devoted to equality/​diversity; ii) a standing
gender equality committee or equivalent; and iii) written procedures fordiscrimination or sexual harassment grievance for academics.

Preferential treatment measures
Our second category of structure-​oriented policy focusses on organizational
structures which can influence individuals’ entry and promotion inacademic careers (Ragins and Sundstrom, 1989; Fagenson, 1990). Existing
97

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

organizational structures and institutions are not gender neutral but favour
one gender (usually men) in a variety of subtle and often invisible ways. This
calls for policies that seek to enhance equality among historically excluded
groups with the help of preferential treatment. It should be noted thataffirmative action in the manner in which it is understood and exercizedin the US, for example, is not in use in the Nordic countries. Throughdeconstruction and redistribution, preferential treatment measures tackle
deeply rooted organizational cultures and work to increase the participationof the under-​represented group while trying to even out the imbalance(Rees, 2005). In international studies preferential measures have provento have limited effect (Holzer and Neumark, 2006; Kalev et al, 2006), but
a study in Norway proved them effective (Moratti, 2020). Such measures
may entail recruitment and promotion procedures in favour of women, forexample earmarking funding for the under-​represented sex, or organizational
incentives to recruit women academics.
In our survey, preferential treatment measures included i) promoting theuse of proactive measures to increase the proportion of the under-​represented
sex among academic staff; ii) use of invitation procedures to professorships
to increase the proportion of the under-​represented sex; iii) earmarking offunding to support hiring members of the under-​represented sex; iv) use
of nationally granted money to develop GE measures; and v) special funds
for start-​up packages to support hiring women faculty.

Methodological underpinnings of the study: Case
selection
We define STEM-​oriented universities as institutions that fulfil two
criteria.1 First, they have a high density of academics working in STEM
fields, which we measured based on the proportion of grade A positions
located in STEM fields. Second, STEM-​oriented universities have a strong
research and teaching environment in STEM fields, which we measured
based on the proportion of PhD graduates in the university that were in
STEM fields. We calculated these proportions using data from the official
databases for statistics on higher education in Norway, Sweden and Finland(DBH, Statistics Sweden, Vipunen Database).
To be part of the dataset, at least 45 per cent of grade A positions in theuniversity had to be in STEM and at least 55 per cent of PhD graduates
had to be from STEM fields. We calculated the grade A proportions using
university-​level data from 2018. As there is some yearly fluctuation in thenumber of completed PhD degrees, we calculated these proportions with
university-​level data from 2018, 2019 and 2020 for Norway and Finland,
and for 2018 and 2019 for Sweden and used the average proportion
from these years. It should be noted that as we used proportions of grade98

PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY

A positions and PhD graduates for each university in defining STEM-​
oriented universities, the dataset mostly comprises technical universities
and universities specializing in natural sciences. Thus, the analysis excludes
comprehensive universities that have extensive natural science faculties,
because STEM fields are not dominant in these university organizations.
Based on these criteria, nine universities in the three countries qualified
as STEM-​oriented universities in 2018. Of these, eight participated in the
NORDICORE study and are included in this dataset. Three of these arelocated in Sweden, two in Norway and three in Finland.

Data and method
The study uses organizational survey data on Swedish, Norwegian and
Finnish STEM-​oriented universities’ gender equality and diversity policies.
For the collection of the survey data, we targeted all institutions in Sweden,
Norway and Finland which in 2018 had a legal status as universities. For thisstudy, we employ data from the eight STEM-​oriented universities.
We collected the survey data between 2018 and 2020 in phone interviews(including Skype/​Zoom) and face-​to-​face interviews. Most respondents tothe survey were human resources (HR) personnel (for instance, HR directors
or administrators) or equality coordinators. In many cases, especially in large
institutions, we interviewed several people. The survey included questions
on universities’ formal central-​level policies and measures to promote genderequality and diversity and the timing of policies (start and end year of eachpolicy). Due to increased institutional autonomy and the strengthening of thecentral governance of universities, we expected policies on the institutional
level to be important (cf. Enders et al, 2013; Hansen et al, 2019).
The survey was strongly inspired by the work of Alexandra Kalev and Frank
Dobbin, who have studied diversity management in the US. The researchgroup worked together to develop the survey and to collect and analyze data.
This enabled us to verify consistency in the interpretation of questions acrossthe countries and institutions. The individual survey questions represented
binary variables, where the main response alternatives were ‘yes’ and ‘no’(with the option to respond ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t want to answer’).
When respondents were not able to answer questions, they were asked toconsult colleagues or institutional records.
For the analysis, we chose the variables (20 in total) which, according
to our estimation, represent the analytical categories presented earlier.
The analysis was based on the frequency of the measures by university andgraphic illustration of the results. We excluded measures derived directlyfrom national legislation from the analysis. That is, the analysis only
included measures that the universities had voluntarily chosen to use topromote equality.
99

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Findings
Table 6.1 provides an overview of the proportion of women in grade
A positions in the studied universities. It presents the situation in theuniversities at three time points (2000, 2010 and 2018) and visualizes thepace of development in the 2000s and 2010s.
Table 6.1: Proportion of women in grade A positions in the studied universities
in 2000, 2010 and 2018
University

Total
2000 2010 2018
FactorAbsolute change
FTE/sharechange of the of the proportionof women
proportionof women (pp)of women

SE1

Total FTE

57

98

150

Univ withwomen %
significant changes

2.6

14.9

25.2

Total FTE

485

597

782

Univ withwomen %
significant changes

8.5

19.0

25.6

Total FTE

132

182

214

Univ withwomen %
significant changes

6.7

8.0

16.6

NO1

SE2

Total FTE

194

288

308

Univ withwomen %
significant changes

11.1

20.8

24.0

Total FTE

110

128

194

Univ withwomen %
significant changes

12.9

17.3

25.6

FI1

Total FTE

264

338

243

Univ with smallchanges

women %

10.2

0.2

15.0

FI2

Total FTE

52

80

74

Univ with smallchanges

women %

11.5

18.0

15.0

FI3

Total FTE

106

146

94

Univ with smallchanges

women %

4.7

7.6

5.6

SE3

NO2

9.6

22.6

3.0

17.1

2.5

9.9

2.2

12.9

2.0

12.7

1.5

4.8

1.3

3.5

1.2

0.9

Note: The dataset includes two universities which merged during the timeframe of theanalysis. Figures for years prior to the mergers were calculated with data from the former pre-​merger institutions.

100PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITYIn Table 6.1, the overall change in the proportion of women for each
university is presented in factor and absolute terms. In the table, the orderof the universities is set according to the factor change of the proportion of
women. It should be noted that the starting point in 2000 differed in theeight universities: the universities had an average of 8 per cent women ingrade A positions, however, with variation from 3 per cent to 13 per cent.
In 2018, the universities had reached an average of 19 per cent of womenin grade A positions, again with significant variation from 5 per cent to26 per cent. It should also be noted that in the Swedish and Norwegian
universities, the number of grade A positions increased, whereas in two of
the Finnish universities, it decreased.
Based on the size of the change in grade A positions (in both factor andabsolute terms), we composed two groups of universities. In the first group,
the proportion of women increased significantly between 2000 and 2018.
The group includes five universities (SE1, NO1, SE2, SE3 and NO2). In thesecond group, changes were smaller or ambiguous. The group includes three
universities (FI1, FI2 and FI3). It is notable that the universities in the twogroups are located in different countries: universities with high-​level changes arelocated in Sweden and Norway, whereas all universities with low-​level changes
are located in Finland. The differences may partly reflect national regulation
and activity in gender equality work, such as higher education legislation withdifferent emphasis on gender equality issues (Borchorst et al, 2012).
This study focusses on how the variation in grade A positions is related
to the differences between universities in gender equality activity. Based on
previous literature, we expected some measures at the organizational level
to be more effective than others in promoting equality.
Table 6.2 displays the use of GE measures per university by the analyticalcategories presented above. The order of the case universities is definedaccording to the overall activity in gender equality work for each university.
The universities range from left to right from those with higher levels ofactivity in gender equality to those with lower levels of activity.
STEM-​oriented universities in the three countries vary considerably in theuse of organizational GE measures. Table 6.2 shows the pattern involving theuse of measures and the scale of change in grade A positions. Active use of
GE measures seems to be related to significant changes in the proportion of
women in grade A positions between 2000 and 2018: the universities which
witnessed the biggest growth of women had, on average, used a variety ofmeasures to promote gender equality. By contrast, the universities with alow use of GE measures all belong to the group with small changes in the
proportion of women in grade A positions.
When looking at the GE measures per category, the three measures thatreflect organizational responsibility were used most widely. For example,
all universities had gender equality and diversity committees. There is more101

newgenrtpdf

Table 6.2: The use of GE measures in STEM-​oriented universities

SE2

NO2 SE3

FI1 FI3

FI2

Targeted measures
Funding for women to qualify for promotion
Research leave for women in a shorter time compared to men
Mentoring programme for women academic staff(X).

Promotion or tenure workshops for women academic staff.

Networking gatherings for women academic leaders
Funding for women academics’ participation in leadership development programs
102

Amount

5

5

3

0

0

0

0

0

2

1

2

0

0

Training measures
Diversity training programme for academic staff
Diversity training for department heads
Diversity training for hiring or promotion committees
Sexual harassment training for academic staff
Written instructions for hiring or promotion committees about gender and diversity bias.

Promotion of equality part of the qualification for department heads
Amount4

2

2

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Universities
NO1 SE1

newgenrtpdf

Table 6.2 cont.: The use of GE measures in STEM-​oriented universities
Universities
Organizational responsibility measures
Office or full-​time person devoted to faculty equality/​diversity
Standing gender equality or diversity and equality committee
Procedure for discrimination or sexual harassment grievance for academic staff
3

2

3

2

3

2

2

2

1

0

1

0

Preferential treatment measures
103

Proactive measures to increase the prop. Of the under-​represented sex among academic staff(X)

Invitation procedures to professorship to increase the prop. Of the under-​represented sex(X)

Earmarking, funds or faculty lines to support hiring members of the under-​represented sex
Granted money to develop gender equality measures
Special funds for start-​up packages to support hiring women academic staff
Amount5

3

2

All measures (count)

17

12

10

8

5

4

3

2

% of measures (20 in total)

85

60

50

40

25

20

15

10

4

Note: Dark grey indicates that the measure was in use in 2018. Light grey indicates that the measure was used, but then stopped. (X) indicates that the measure wasused, but it is not known whether it was in use in 2018. Black indicates missing data.

PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY

Amount(X)

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

variation in the use of targeted measures, training measures and preferential
treatment measures. It is clear that while all the universities used organizational
responsibility measures, the universities with significant changes in the
proportion of women more often also used preferential treatment measuresand targeted measures for women in promoting equality. The universities
with only small changes, all located in Finland, used preferential treatment
and targeted measures marginally or not at all.
Table 6.2 also displays which measures were in use in 2018 and which had
been in use but were discontinued. Overall, there was a clear upward trend in
GE activity. However, there was a distinction between the measures that wereused only temporarily and measures which seemed to be longer-​lasting. Once
adopted, the training measures and the organizational responsibility measures
represent enduring structures for universities’ equality work: the majority
of universities which had adopted these measures continued to use them in2018. In contrast, the use of targeted measures and preferential treatment
measures was more temporary in nature. For example, the use of the strongest
version of preferential treatment, earmarking, was discontinued in many
Swedish and Norwegian universities as it was considered discriminatory
towards men after being ruled out by the European Court of Justice in 2002
and 2003 (Lerwall, 2001; Husu, 2015).

Conclusions and discussion
Our analysis shows that the STEM-​oriented universities which saw thebiggest growth of women in grade A positions between 2000 and 2018 usedor had used, on average, a variety of measures to promote gender equality.
In contrast, the universities with small changes used fewer measures. It isstriking that the universities which had significant positive changes in the
proportion of women in grade A positions had on average been more active inusing preferential treatment measures and targeted measures. The connection
between preferential treatment measures and targeted measures on the one handand female representation on the other is interesting because these measuresreflect politically controversial intervention strategies to promote equality.
All studied universities used measures that aim at strengtheningorganizational responsibility via institutional gender and diversity committees
and internal procedures to report on discrimination or sexual harassment.
Measures aimed at strengthening organizational responsibility seem toform the institutional base for STEM-​oriented universities’ equality work.
However, when compared to preferential treatment and targeted measures,
their influence (without simultaneous use of other measures) is questionable.
Case university SE3 is an exception, with only minor use of preferential
treatment and targeted measures and still significant growth in the proportionof women in grade A positions.
104

PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY

The use of equality measures by the STEM-​oriented universities increased
over time. However, we also saw differences in the type of measures used andtheir longevity. Training measures and measures that aim at strengtheningorganizational responsibility represent universities’ enduring gender equality
structures, whereas activities in preferential treatment and measures for
women were, in many cases, used only short-​term. Overall, the use oftargeted measures for women and preferential treatment was uneven acrossthe universities. This calls for discussions on the operationalization andimplementation of gender mainstreaming and future strategies for GE
measures in Nordic STEM-​oriented universities to change still-​persistentgender inequalities.
We cannot make any causal conclusions about the relationship between theuse of GE measures and the differences in the outcomes in grade A in thisstudy because the adoption of measures is endogenous (that is, the adoptionof measures may be related to university-​specific characteristics that affect
the gender balance). Also, we did not include any data on other variables
that might affect the gender balance, such as the gender distribution among
PhD graduates or academic staff other than professors in the case universities.
Still, the findings point to interesting hypotheses for further research that
seek to study what works when pursuing tangible changes in the highest
academic career positions in STEM-​oriented universities.
Note
1

STEM refers to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The exact definitionsof STEM fields or disciplines vary by national context and organization (see, for example,
Koonce et al, 2011). In this chapter, we incorporate the fields listed under ‘naturalsciences’ and ‘engineering and technology’ in the OECD Classification of Sciences as
STEM fields.

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7

Uniformity Dressed
as Diversity? Reorienting Female
Associate Professors
May-​Linda Magnussen, Rebecca W.B. Lund andTrond Stalsberg Mydland

Introduction‘I have not been very strategic in the past, and I realize that, when
I talk to others, primarily men, who have been focussed on becoming
professors as soon as possible. They have been more systematic whenit comes to what they have said yes and no to, and given thought towhat benefits them when it comes to that specific goal. But I havenot been like that myself. I have been like “Oh, that’s interesting
and that’s something I’m really committed to”, and I say yes andI want to be kind and then suddenly, when I’m sitting there andam supposed to assemble what I’ve done in a CV and application,
I think “Why did I prioritize that instead of that?” So, I wish
someone had knocked on my door a long time ago and made me
more aware of this.’This quote is from an interview with a female associate professor at the
University of Agder (UiA), Norway. At the time of the interview, she wastaking part in a gender equality action programme for increasing the numberof female professors at the university. This programme was enveloped in arhetoric suggesting that female associate professors should be more strategic
and self-​assertive –​‘lean in’.1 The programme taught her that her tendency
to ‘say yes’ was an obstacle to her becoming a professor, and that she had todevelop an ability to ‘say no’ (see Lund, 2020b). Many other female associate
professors at UiA talked of similar experiences.
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONIn this chapter we investigate whether, how and with what consequences
preliminary evaluations speed up female associate professors’ processes of
becoming full professors. To make sense of the effects of the evaluations, we
use Dorothy Smith’s (2005) concept of ‘ruling relations’ together with Sara
Ahmed’s emotional politics (2014) and queer phenomenology (2006). We
explore textually mediated understandings of the ‘ideal academic’ (Lund,2015) in the preliminary evaluation action, and how emotions ‘stick’ to thesetextually mediated discourses. Thus, we attend to the discursive as well as
the emotional (re)orientations the evaluations can produce. We furthermore
reflect on the particular understanding of gender equality embedded inthis action programme, and its consequences for diversity in the sense ofwidening notions of what a good academic might be.

The Balance project at the University of AgderIn response to continued vertical and horizontal gender segregation in
Norwegian academia (Ulvestad, 2017; KIF-​info, 2021), the Norwegian
Research Council (NRC) established the Balance Programme in 2013. The
programme aims at increasing the share of female professors and researchleaders through co-​funding local research-​based knowledge and action
measures. To ensure local commitment, the university leadership has to be
involved and willing to allocate funding. When UiA applied for funding
from the Balance Programme in 2014, only 22 per cent of professors/​
readers (dosents) at UiA were women.2 The university received funding andimplemented its so-​called Balance project between 2015 and 2018.
The aim of the project was to contribute to ‘structural and culturalchange’ towards gender equality. The university asked for co-​funding3 forthree gender equality actions. One was the integration of gender and genderequality perspectives in leader gatherings and courses, aimed at providing leaderswith knowledge about the gendering of academia and tools to change
it. Another was search-​and-​find-​committees, aiming at increasing the shareof female applicants for professorships at the university. The third was
the preliminary evaluations, which we focus on in this chapter. The lattermeasure was directed at female associate professors already working at theuniversity. In Norway, associate professors employed in a 50–​100 per centposition can apply for personal promotion to full professor and are therefore
not dependent on getting a professorship based on open-​call applications.
Those who received preliminary evaluations as part of the Balance project
sent a preliminary application for professorship promotion to an evaluationcommittee with one internal and one external member. The committee
provided, in return, a written evaluation of the associate professors’ academic
work. The associate professors could also contact committee members forstrategic advice concerning promotion. Administrative staff at the university
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facilitated the process, while department heads often identified candidates forthe evaluations and facilitated the actions for improvement recommended by
the committee. In practice, this frequently meant facilitating more (coherent)
research time.
In addition, all female associate professors at UiA were invited to participate
in ‘professorship promotion seminars’ and ‘shut-​up-​and-​write-​seminars’.
Promotion seminars provided information about what it would take toachieve promotion, and gave participants access to the career experiences andadvice of recently appointed female professors or female associate professors
close to promotion. In the ‘shut-​up-​and-​write-​seminars’, female associate
professors would sit in the same room and write academic texts for a wholeday, following a fixed schedule of writing periods and breaks. While these
two seminars were not part of the action measures funded by the NRC,
they aligned with the overall strategic ideas being transmitted through theevaluations, as we will show later.
In addition to getting funding for the three original gender equality actions,UiA received funding from the NRC for carrying out research on local
gender relations and inequality at the university. One pillar of the research
focussed on exploring female associate professors’ everyday lives and research
careers, seeking to theorize the social organization of academic working lives,
without paying direct attention to the action measures (Magnussen et al,
2018; Lund, 2020b). Another pillar focussed on the effects of the genderequality action measures. This chapter is an outcome of the second pillar
and zooms in on the effects of the preliminary evaluations, which turned
out to be the most successfully implemented of the three action measures.

Beyond body counts: understanding the productionof uniformity
Substantial amounts of research demonstrate that gender equality actions
are often reduced to body counts and incorporated in managerial quality or
excellence strategies with economic purposes (Eisenstein, 2009; Rottenberg,
2018; Lund, 2020b). Gender quality strategies in academic institutions also
tend to be based on the assumption that women are a uniform group, thus
downplaying differences between women while simultaneously reproducing
inequalities along lines of sexuality, class and ethnicity/​race (for example
Tzanakou and Pearce, 2019). We argue that the merger of competitive
agendas and gender equality agendas produce and (re)produce particular
discursive and emotional practices that result in increased uniformity rather
than diversity. The equality agenda, rather than nurturing space for a diversityof people and practices within academia, becomes a measure for ensuringthat the people in the organization are equally oriented towards narrow,institutionally defined goals of quality.
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Identifying ruling relations
Dorothy Smith developed institutional ethnography as a ‘method of
inquiry’ for exploring and challenging institutional processes and powerfrom the standpoint of people’s everyday lives and embodied experiences(Smith, 2005). The choice of standpoint, in our case that of the female
associate professors, is empirically and contextually justified as pointing
towards new perspectives, and challenging ways of knowing and doing
which are considered unquestionable, neutral and objective (Smith, 2004a;
Smith, 2004b).
In producing data, the researcher first aims to assist her research participantsin articulating as much as possible of the physical, mental and emotional‘work’ that a certain kind of practice –​such as trying to become a professor –​consists of, as well as the social relations this is being done in. If the productionof data is successful, these descriptions will contain clues regarding theinstitutionalized and objectified knowledge that shapes work and activities
across diverging local sites (Lund, 2015). Smith labels this knowledge ruling
relations, and defines these as:text-​m ediated and text-​b ased systems of ‘communication’,‘knowledge’, ‘information’, ‘regulation’, ‘control’ and the like. The
functions of ‘knowledge, judgment, and will’ that Marx saw as wrested
from the original ‘producer’ and transferred to capital become built
into a specialized complex of objectified forms of organization andrelationship. … Knowledge, judgment, and will are less and lessproperties of the individual subject and more and more of objectified
organization. They are constituted as actual forms of concertingand concerted activities and can be investigated as such. … The
concept of the ruling relations identifies a historical developmentof forms of social consciousness that can no longer be adequately
conceived as arising in the life conditions of actual individuals.
(Smith, 2004a: 77–​8)
Ruling relations are mediated through material and replicable texts. Their
coordinating and generalizing capacity lies in the fact that they can beread, heard and seen in many places, by different people, at the same time.
Having identified material texts, such as the preliminary evaluations and theintertextual hierarchy these are part of,4 the researcher returns to the chosen
standpoint, explicating how the identified texts shape the experience she
started out exploring. She aims to show how power works in the informants’
everyday lives and the consequences it has. She also aims to explore whether
and how the ruling relations are reproduced, challenged or even dismantled,
and whose interests this supports.
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Emotional reorientation
In addition to identifying the ruling relations shaping the experiences offemale associate professors engaged in preliminary evaluations, we used
Ahmed’s (2006, 2014) emotional politics and queer phenomenology to makesense of how emotions such as fear, shame, disappointment, discomfort,
hope and pride become attached to discourses mediated through the ruling
relations, thus hooking into broader textual-​affective higher education regimesof ranking and competition (for example Shahjahan et al, 2020).5 This involves
representations of the objects and subjects that people direct their emotions
towards and ultimately how people categorize and label objects and subjects.
According to Ahmed, with time, certain emotions tend to ‘stick’ to somepeople and objects, but not to others. This is relevant because the genderequality action programme we explore in this chapter involves ‘orienting’people towards particular objects and relations and away from others. Thisinstitutionally driven process of ‘reorienting’ encourages positive emotions
towards objects and relations that provide exchange-​value, and benefits thewomen’s own careers. It also encourages neutrality or negative emotions
directed at use-​value and care for others (for example Ahmed, 2006).
Furthermore, deep engagement with and concentration on particular objects
and relations that benefit the self involves cultivating blindness towards thework that other people must engage in to make this possible for you (Ahmed,2014). People are differently (dis)posed in terms of feeling ‘at home’ and‘comfortable’ with orienting towards objects and relations in the ways thatare institutionally and textually encouraged (for example Threadgold, 2021).

The case of UiA and our research dataUiA is one of many Norwegian university colleges that achieved university
status in the 2000s. Although the university’s activity and funding areclosely tied to professional study programmes (such as teaching, nursing
and engineering), the focus on research is increasing. The 2016 strategy
stated that the university aimed at delivering ‘world-​leading research’ and atincreasing its participation in international research projects and programmes(University of Agder, 2021). Statistically, the Agder region has the mostgender-​segregated work life in Norway, and research substantiates that theassociations between femininity and care work and masculinity and paid
work are particularly strong here (Magnussen, 2015). Faculty and other staff
at UiA are not unmarked by these regional particularities. Many have grown
up in the region or have lived there for a long period of time, have family
there and engage in social relations transcending the university.
The main data for this chapter are 57 personal, semi-​structured qualitativeinterviews with staff at the university, conducted between October 2015 and
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

November 2018.6 Thirty-​two of these were with female associate professors,and out of these, 13 had had preliminary evaluations. Some of the associate
professors we interviewed also sent us experience notes on specific issues.
We conducted two workshops about career challenges for female associate
professors. In these, many women who were not interviewed contributedwith their experiences. In addition, we attended meetings and events at
the university –​such as promotion seminars, meetings in the university’s
gender equality and inclusion committee, as well as leadership gatherings –​throughout the time period of the Balance project. The Balance project financed
one administrative staff member or faculty member in the four university
faculties with the lowest shares of female professors to spend 20 per cent of
their working hours facilitating preliminary evaluations and search-​and-​find-​committees. These people became important informants in the project andprovided us with valuable insights into their experiences of these measures.
The remaining 25 interviews were carried out with male associate professors
and professors, as well as with male and female management and otheradministrative staff. In the interviews with faculty, the goal was to make ourinformants articulate as much of their everyday academic activity, and as specificand detailed, as possible. In all interviews, we aimed at making our informants
put the relations and institutional texts shaping their activities and experiences
into words. The interviews with the managers and other administrative staff,
moreover, focussed on explicating their understandings of the research careersof female associate professors at the university, as well as their own experienceswith and reflections concerning the Balance project measures.
In the next section, we begin with female associate professors’ experiences
regarding the preliminary evaluations. We draw on our other data from UiA
to explore the ruling relations mediated in and through the evaluations, andthe ways emotions ‘stick’ to these.

The practical, mental and emotional ‘work’ of
preliminary evaluations
When the Balance project ended in 2018, 24 female associate professors at UiA had
participated in preliminary evaluations. Most of these were handpicked by theirdepartment heads.7 Our interviews with 13 of these women substantiated thatthe evaluations often did speed up their processes of becoming professors. Many
told us how the evaluations made them more certain that aiming for promotion
to professor was worthwhile, while also providing direction to and speeding up
the process. Some mentioned the usefulness of assembling their work, writing
up an application and tailoring a CV that they could improve –​based on theevaluation –​and use in their real application for promotion to professor. In
addition, several women used the evaluation and the connected career advice tonegotiate more research time with their department heads. One woman said that114

UNIFORMITY DRESSED AS DIVERSITY?

for her, getting more research time –​“time to think and to breathe” –​was her
main take-​away from, and her main reason for, having a preliminary evaluation.
The advice she had received from the evaluation committee did not add anything
to what she had already learnt from participating in promotion seminars.
Many of the women we interviewed also voiced important emotional
aspects of being invited to a preliminary evaluation. Some expressed becoming
motivated by being identified as “professor material”, which made them feel“seen”. One woman said: “Preliminary evaluations are about being seen andfeeling that somebody thinks that it’s important to acknowledge you.” Other
informants said that the evaluations’ external validation made them feel more
confident about their research interests. Even in cases where the evaluations werein line with the associate professors’ self-​evaluation, they expressed how it felt
reassuring to “have it on paper”. Feeling acknowledged and seen is particularly
valuable in an affective economy where you can easily become either invisible
or hyper-​visible if you are not perceived as being oriented towards the ‘right’goals. Being one of the few selected for preliminary evaluation may havemade the female associate professors feel special and worthy of consideration.
Such processes can be seductive, hooking people into what has been termed‘neuroliberalism’, capturing the combination of principles of neoliberalism
combined with the insights of behaviourism (Morley and Lund, 2020).
The more you align, and direct yourself towards the ‘right’ things, the moreacknowledgement you receive and the less resistance you experience. In otherwords, everyday life, in some respects, becomes easier (Ahmed, 2006: 14–​21).
Our data substantiates that ‘being seen’ may have a stronger reorienting
effect on the academic work of women than that of men. Among theemotional work in our data, we found many traces of highly genderedemotional work, particularly dealing with feelings of insecurity and the so-​called imposter syndrome (Chandra et al, 2019). We understand such feelings
as themselves produced by and shaped in gendered social relations in academia(Lund, 2020a). For instance, some of the interviewed women said that they
were preoccupied with ensuring that they would get promoted when they did
send in the real application for promotion. Being overqualified was seen as
better than overestimating themselves, and the preliminary evaluation helped
them to navigate this terrain. In our material, this was only one of many signs
indicating that the female associate professors we interviewed manoeuvred
contradictory gendered ideals on their way towards a professorship. While
the gender equality rhetoric dominating the Balance activities told them to be
more strategic on their own behalf, and thus counter feminine stereotypes,
they were often simultaneously expected to conform to such stereotypes
by being emotionally invested in the well-​being of students and colleagues(see also Magnussen et al, 2018) and avoiding ‘boastful’ behaviour (Lund,
2020a). Thus, the self-​promotion encouraged by gender equality action
measures can be risky for the women we interviewed.
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Another emotional aspect of the preliminary evaluations in our data was thatsome of the interviewed women said that setting a professorship as a clear goal
motivated them and lent speed to the process of becoming a professor. Some
said that the signalling effect of the preliminary evaluation also provided such
extra impetus. Certain expectations, capacities and potentials were attachedto them by their surroundings, thus generating a sense of urgency and focus.
One woman talked about how the evaluation generated high expectations
and a sense of pressure from her leader and colleagues: “I notice that I have
speeded up. I have felt that pressure a little bit, because you get many questions
about when you’re going to send the application for promotion. Some thinkthat there is a lot of support. But it’s not actually like that.” This associate
professor met expectations to perform more and faster, without having much
extra support and time, and later on in the interview she said that this resulted
in recurring health problems. Speeding up had a cost.
Not all of our informants were that interested in becoming professors,
however. Being a professor “is a title and I’m not that into titles”, one woman
said, suggesting that the meaning of the status attached to a professorshipwas not self-​evident. Another interviewee would have liked some discussion
about the reasons for wanting to become a professor and about institutional
expectations regarding professors. A third woman said that she was not
motivated by the prestige of a professorship, but by specific research andteaching agendas and how becoming a professor opened certain doors. When
asked about what motivated her, she said that:‘I think what I do is important. It helps people. … I don’t need anyother motivation than that. So, I think it’s important. And teaching,that’s perhaps the part I enjoy most of all. Really. … But the evaluation
gave me a small push to at least think about [professorship promotion].
Because the days pass so quickly, so I seldom sit down and think
about promotion. For my part, it doesn’t mean that much. In a busy
everyday life that’s not important, but I can see that in applying for
research projects and in international collaboration the title actually
has something to say. So, I think that’s a reason to become a professor.’
However, the majority of the women we interviewed told us how the
preliminary evaluations had changed the way they thought and felt about
academic work. The criteria used to evaluate their research careers, combinedwith the gathering of emotions, bodies and resources around the aims ofreformulating their goals and redirecting their attention, made several think thatthey should have made better –​that is, more ‘strategic’ –​choices throughout
their careers. They began to attach value to the standardized quality measuresused to evaluate their work and to the seductive notion of ‘making it’. It madethem think that their work should have been less shaped by, for instance,
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UNIFORMITY DRESSED AS DIVERSITY?

teaching and commitment to solving societal challenges, and more by choicesthat would have speeded up their own processes of becoming professors.
Saying ‘no’ was, however, not only invoked as a way of speeding up thestrategic path to a professorship, but also as self-​care. In the face of pressure to
perform in particular standardized ways, responsibility for well-​being at work
was experienced as individualized, adding another layer to the redirection andemotional orientations of the female academics we interviewed. They were
responsibilized and had to carefully manage their ‘investments’ of time andresources, both for the sake of becoming professors and for keeping healthy.

Gendered academic ideals
By February 2021, 12 of the 24 women involved in preliminary evaluations
during the Balance project period were full professors, and the share offemale professors at UiA had increased to 30 per cent, from 22 per cent in2014. The preliminary evaluations probably contributed to this increase.
However, they also had problematic side effects. In the following sections,
we investigate these by unpacking the ruling relations (Smith, 2005) of thepreliminary evaluations. More specifically, we explore understandings of thegood academic that are promoted through them and, in turn, what kind of
academia these contribute to.
Our total data material from UiA shows that the understanding ofacademic ideals as neutral and as equally desirable and attainable for all iswidespread (Magnussen et al, 2018). One woman we interviewed about thesepreliminary evaluations, however, connected the ideals promoted throughthe action measures –​individualism and careerism –​with masculinity andmale-​coded practices:‘I know some [women] who have stated very clearly that they want
to become professors, but what is obvious to me is that if you’re kindof a competitive lonely rider, if you’re only running your own race, if
you’re not a team player, you will not to the same degree be invited
to join projects. … But is it the women who use their elbows andwho say no to everything and sit by themselves, are they the ones
who succeed the most and become professors quicker? That would
be interesting for me to know. Because even if it is so, I might notchoose that strategy, because it doesn’t match what I stand for. But ofcourse, it’s still interesting to see if that’s the way it is, if the women
who are a bit more like men, if you know what I mean, are those
who are most successful.’This associate professor probably did not change her orientations as aconsequence of the understandings promoted in the Balance action measures,
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

even if they might be the quickest way to a full professorship. She also pointed
to the risks of doing academic work in this way, as mentioned earlier.
While women doing academic work “more like [some] men” probably
contribute to numerical gender equality, merely increasing the presenceof female bodies in professorship positions does not automatically translate
into a more equality-​and diversity-​favouring culture (Ahmed, 2017; Lund,
2020b). Instead, this as a one-​sided approach will probably strengthen alreadydominant academic ideals that favour particular ways of being an academic,
historically associated with certain men (Bailyn, 2003; van den Brink andBenschop, 2012). At UiA, as well as in academia more broadly, publication
points, citations and certain kinds of international collaboration, the maincurrency of a global competitive ‘excellence industry’, increasingly shapeacademics’ everyday lives (Lund, 2015; Magnussen et al, 2018). Individual
self-​promotion, in the form of publication output and external funding,seems to become more important, while tasks such as pastoral work aroundstudents, mentoring, reviewing for journals and so on tend to become
invisible. This is work that the female associate professors we interviewed(still) did a lot of and often regarded as important, but are encouraged
to reduce in order to get promoted to professor. The ‘competitive ethos
underpinning the university produces a binary of winners and losers’ (Morley
and Crossouard, 2016: 4) that is in turn associated with particular emotions.
The preliminary evaluations and other actions measures responsibilized(Lemke, 2001; Wright, 2014) the interviewed associate professors: they
provided tools with which the women could work on their thoughts,
emotions and actions. Academic work they had hitherto not been particularly
aware of or had negative emotions towards, gradually became attached
to other and more positive emotions such as pride, joy and a sense ofbeing seen. Such affective and emotional shifts are central to complying
with and internalizing neoliberal value systems (Morley and Crossouard,
2016; Morley and Lund, 2020) and, ultimately, for the exclusion of thosepositioned as losers. Through the reponsibilization of individuals, differencesin opportunity structures are concealed (Lund, 2020b).

Repurposing feminism
The preliminary evaluations and other action measures at UiA also promoted
specific understandings of gender equality. In line with much feminist
research on organizations, the NRC (2021) states that actions funded by the
Balance Programme should not ‘fix women’, as many ‘traditional’ actions
for gender equality have done (for example De Vries and van den Brink,2016). The UiA’s application for funding included the feminist intentionof ‘changing gendered cultures and structures’ at the university. Even so,
the project to a large degree ended up helping women ‘fix themselves’118

UNIFORMITY DRESSED AS DIVERSITY?

to fit standardized, seemingly neutral quality standards (Magnussen et al,2018).8 This conclusion is supported by the fact that one of the other action
measures, integration of gender and gender equality perspectives in leader meetingsand courses, encountered a lot of resistance at UiA and was not successfully
implemented. In addition, initiatives such as ‘shut-​up-​and-​write’ sessions
and promotion seminars all focused on shifting how individual womenprioritized their time and efforts. These offered generalized advice of ‘saying
no’ to (assumed) non-​meritorious work in order to, as one top manager
said, ‘make it’ (Lund, 2020b). Presenting academic ideals as neutral andunproblematic reduced gender equality to a question of numbers, glossing
over more subtle and informal gendering in the university. The Balance projectat UiA helped women play the gendered academic game more effectively,
rather than critically engage with the structural and cultural forces at play
(Colley and White, 2018). That female associate professors were asked tobe more individualistic and careerist, and to code this as feminist, concerns us.

The gendered global knowledge economy
Considering the reflections in the previous sections of this chapter, thereorienting of the female associate professor behind the opening quote ofthis chapter becomes problematic. Even if she aims at gender equality, she
can be understood as first and foremost contributing towards strengthening
the competitiveness of UiA and Norwegian academia in the so-​called
global knowledge economy (Wright, 2014; Hazelkorn, 2015). This processprobably contributes to a less diverse academia, effectively hidden within
the language and discourses of research excellence and feminism. Even if
the NRC (2021) states that having more female professors is important forbringing new perspectives into Norwegian academe, it is also framed as ameans towards increasing the sector’s competitiveness. The European Union,
for instance, has made gender equality in grant-​awarding a clear ambition
although no clear penalties or rewards ensure this in practice. As a result,numerical gender equality has become a currency in the excellence industry(Lund, 2020b). Moreover, it is based on the assumption that gender is themain (or only!) category of difference, while other signifiers such as class,sexuality, race or age, are made invisible, creating a problematic institutional
assumption of universality and sameness among women, in turn justifying
a one-​size-​fits-​all ‘reorienting’. This may very well have consequences
concerning epistemic diversity (Aarseth, Bråten and Lund, forthcoming).

Concluding remarks
In this chapter we have explored how women engaged in preliminary
evaluation action measures became re-​oriented through the ruling relations
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

mediated in textualized quality criteria. We have shown how gender equality
measures ended up fostering uniformity rather than diversity through anaction measure that ultimately aimed at ‘fixing the woman’ rather than ‘fixing
the system and culture’. Actions directed at individual women can be asmart entry to working with gender equality in academia, seeing that actions
focussed on furthering women’s individual careers align with dominant
understandings of gender equality and feminism, as also De Vries and van
den Brink (2016) have pointed out. And indeed, as we showed, numerically,such individualized action measures turned out to be a success. However,such measures should not stand alone. Instead, they should be supplemented
with developing knowledge and collegial practices that challenge the subtle
ways gendered and intersecting differences become (re)produced in everyday
practices, as well as in gender equality action measures. In carrying out
research as part of the Balance project we encountered many women who
had never reflected on their academic work from a gender perspective.
Coming together, articulating experience and finding commonalities andcommon concerns –​the consciousness-​raising tools of the early women’sliberation movement –​do not seem to have lost their relevance and may
serve as an important driver for taking the agenda for equality and diversity
further. While consciousness raising does not provide a quick-​fix solution
to subtle, inadvertent and unintentional forms of gendered bias in academic
structures and cultures, it does provide faculty members with a sensibility fornoticing, and a language for expressing, the complexities of inequality (see for
instance Carnes et al, 2015; Remich et al, 2017 for such consciousness-​raising
initiatives and interventions in US context). This is ultimately a first step
towards cultural and structural transformation over time.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the
University of Agder. Norwegian Research Council project number: 245466.
Notes
1
2
3

4

Here, we refer to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (2013).
10 per cent less than the national average (KIF-​info, 2021).
The Norwegian Research Council demanded 50 per cent co-​funding from the institutions
receiving funding for gender equality action from the Balance Programme.
The researcher often identifies local texts that shape the experience she aims to understand.
These are texts with which the informants in their research interact directly, for instancecriteria for promotion to a professorship. The researcher then moves on to explore how thesetexts are part of a trans-​local intertextual hierarchy. This means that the texts that the people
she started her research with, engage with and which shape their actions, are themselves
shaped by texts of a higher order, such as white papers about higher education and research.

120

UNIFORMITY DRESSED AS DIVERSITY?

5

6

7

8

Being ‘affected’ differs from having ownership of certain ‘emotions’ (Probyn, 2005). Ahmed(2006) theorizes emotions as operating within an ‘affective economy’. Emotions areunderstood as intentional in the sense of being ‘directed’ towards something or someone
in particular ways –​either attracting us or repelling us. The capacity to affect, and be
affected, is, however, shaped by what we come into contact with. According to Ahmed(2006: 2), ‘emotions involve affective (re)orientations’. This means that in order forsomething or someone to make a particular emotional mark on us, we must be affectively
oriented towards it in a particular way, and this orientation is, in turn, shaped by ‘ouraccumulated history’ (Threadgold, 2021: 58). As such, Ahmed’s theory of an affective
economy points towards how people become (re)oriented emotionally towards particular
objects and subjects, and explains why some people feel comfortable while others feel
uncomfortable with this (re)orientation.
We recorded and transcribed most of the interviews. When recording was not possible, wewrote interview or field notes. Rachel Fishberg, former Master’s student at the Universityof Aarhus, contributed to developing our interview data.
However, some also contacted the administrative staff connected to the Balance project
directly or were encouraged by them to have preliminary evaluations. Furthermore,
towards the end of the project, female associate professors who were further from being
qualified were invited to have these evaluations done.
Some of the female associate professors we interviewed understood academia and thelack of gender equality there this way, but we found these understandings much more
often among male faculty, leaders and administrative staff at the university.

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8

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?”How Early Career Researchers
Imagine the (Im)Possible Futurein Academia
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen and Guro Korsnes Kristensen

Introduction
Interviewer:
Post doc:

What do you think about the possibilities to pursue
what you described as your plan A, an academic career?
To stay in academia? … It’s not like that. It doesn’t feellike that is something one can just choose to do.

This short exchange captures the ambiguous situation early career researchers
find themselves in: regardless of any genuine desires to pursue an academic
career, the fact that it is not up to the young scholar alone to make thedesired future happen was a strongly present awareness among several of the
29 postdocs that participated in the study presented in this chapter. There
are multiple ways of dealing with and making sense of this situation. The
purpose of this chapter is to explore how early career researchers reflect
upon their potential future within academia, and the ways in which thesereflections draw on their experiences of entering an academic career.
A better understanding of how early career researchers perceive theirpotential futures in academia is crucial for informing future work on genderbalance (Murgia and Poggio, 2019). This is particularly relevant to the current
Nordic context, where one policy goal is to enhance the gender balanceamong professors (Brandser and Sümer, 2017). Despite longstanding efforts
to promote women in academia, 74 per cent of all professors in Norway aremen (Wendt, 2019). Even in fields where women outnumber men in the124

“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”

student population, and the numbers of female and male PhD candidates
have been equal for more than a decade, an imbalance persists in top positions(Næss et al, 2018). The postdoc period of an academic career trajectory isin other words crucial in terms of gender balance.
Postdoc researchers are potential future professors. However, their position
within academic institutions is ambiguous: on the one hand, they have alreadymade their way into a narrow and highly competitive working life whichsuggests that they are both ambitious and privileged. On the other hand, as
their position within this system is still by definition temporary, they are in
an ambiguous and precarious situation, commonly referred to as a ‘career
stage’. By studying careers and perceptions of career choices, one gets tounderstand how societal context, organization and individual agency relates(Inkson et al, 2012). Thus, we argue that exploring their experiences andreflections provides valuable insights into the ongoing efforts to promotea gender balance and inclusion in research and innovation. To guide theempirical investigation and analysis, we asked the following questions: how
do early career researchers make sense of their academic endeavours? Howare past and current experiences within academia linked to perceptions ofpossible futures in academia? And whether and how is gender made partof these reflections?
In the following, we describe the contextual background of the chapter,
before introducing the empirical data, methods and analytical strategies. The
analysis is organized into three sections, exploring i) how the postdocs makesense of finding opportunities and starting an academic career; ii) how they
view challenges in pursuing a career; and finally iii) what makes them wantto continue. The chapter ends with a concluding reflection on how crucial
elements in assembling research careers for early career scholars provide thebasis for future change towards a better gender balance.

Gendered career trajectories: patterns and perceptions
Nordic higher education institutions (HEIs) have seen rapidly growing
numbers of postdoc scholars in recent years and in Norway, where ourstudy was conducted, there has been a particularly sharp increase in that
number over the last decade (Kwiek and Antonowicz, 2015; Kyvik, 2015).
Postdoc positions provide opportunities for PhD graduates to qualify for apermanent academic position. However, the substantial increase in use of
postdoctoral positions and temporary research contracts across Europe hascoincided with changes in funding structures and an increased demand on
universities to engage directly with partners outside of academic institutions,suggesting that postdoc positions potentially also enable alternative career
trajectories outside of academic institutions (Chantwell and Taylor, 2015;
Yudkevich et al, 2015).
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Academic career trajectories are not identical across national contexts.
Thus, local situations influence how early career researchers make senseof their opportunities (Le Feuvre et al, 2018). For example, tenure track
positions do not exist in Norwegian HEIs, but once one is employed as an
associate professor, a full professorship can be achieved based on personal
merits, that is, through personal promotion (Kyvik, 2015). Since theearly 1990s there has been a tendency in Norway to announce positionsat associate professor level as a means in particular to keep women in theacademy (Olsen et al, 2005).
This structural change has contributed to an increasing number of women
staying on the academic career path in science, technology, engineering, andmathematics (STEM) and technology (Suboticki et al, 2021). It has beencombined with targeted recruitment and efforts to redefine the genderedsymbolism of STEM and technology studies, both discursively and in
representations (Lagesen, 2007; Lagesen et al, 2021), as well as funding
schemes to support women academics, alongside with women’s networks
and mentoring programmes.
However, there are gender differences across academic careers, after
achieving permanent positions. Women outnumber men in teachingpositions, while men to a larger extent occupy research positions (Frølich
et al, 2018). Model calculations based on Norwegian data still show that
if you compare female and male associate professors of equal age within
the same academic discipline, employed at the same type of institution,
the probability of becoming a full professor is four percentage points lower
for women compared to men (Frølich et al, 2018). Thus, it is important
to explore whether and how early career scholars navigate this genderedlandscape. Does it influence their experiences and perceptions of future
possibilities? Are they aware of gender in how they make sense of theircareer experiences, choices and prospects?
The extant literature shows that scientists’ sense of professional self isshaped by understandings of research as purposes and ‘passion’, and alsostrongly influenced by gendered perceptions of the self (Søndergaard, 2005;
Armano and Murgia, 2013; Bozzon et al, 2019). Some have emphasized how
discourses of ambition and practices of boasting are inherently gendered,resulting in patterns of gender inequality (Benschop et al, 2013; Lund, 2020).
Furthermore, gender stereotypes are shown to influence perceptions ofcompetence and merit in the peer review processes (Tregenza, 2002; Reuben
et al, 2014). We also know that precariousness in relation to family situationinfluences the likelihood of pursuing an academic career (Manzi and Ojeda,
2014; Bataille et al, 2017; Sutherland, 2018). Ideals of work-​life balance are
known to be discursively gendered (Sørensen, 2016, 2017), and empiricalstudies have shown how women academics take on the responsibility for
managing that balance (Toffoletti and Starr, 2016).
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When we planned our study, we expected early career researchers to be
more or less conscious about the various obstacles and drivers identified inprevious research in how they navigate the landscape of academia. And, as
we will show, ideas about work-​life balance, required merits, international
mobility, self-​esteem and social background did play significant roles in the
narratives, but not always in coherent or consistent ways –​and not always
according to our anticipation.

Empirical data, methods and analytical strategies
The empirical data analyzed in this chapter are based on group interviews
with early career scholars, conducted by the authors and research colleagues
in a project entitled ‘Gender balance from below: Towards a gender-​balanced
NTNU 2025’. This project aimed to enhance the gender balance at
departmental level at Norway’s largest university, the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU). As part of an initial mapping of the situation
we conducted individual interviews with professors and heads of departments,
as well as group interviews with PhDs and postdocs from across the university.
For this chapter, we draw on the eight group interviews we conductedduring 2017 and 2018 with 29 postdocs in total: 12 women and 17 men.
Approximately half of the participating postdocs had done their entire
education in Norwegian institutions, while the other half had an international
background, with either a Master’s or a doctoral degree from institutions
outside of Norway. Their ages varied from late 20s to early 40s. This isindicative of the fact that the average age of Norwegian PhDs and postdocs
is relatively high (Kyvik, 2015).
The research participants were recruited from departments at NTNU
with different levels of gender balance and gender balance change patterns,
representing a broad range of academic disciplines, including both humanand social sciences and the STEM disciplines (Sørensen et al, 2019). Theinterviews were conducted by two, sometimes three, researchers taking part.
One researcher led the conversation, while the other(s) observed, took notes
and joined the conversation with additional questions. The interview guide
was structured around career experiences, career expectations, perceptions
and opinions about gender balance and inclusion in academia.
All the interviews were recorded and later transcribed verbatim. The
study was approved by the Norwegian Center for Research Data, and theparticipants signed consent forms to enable us to use their data in publications
from this research. The interviewees were given pseudonyms and those
who participated in the same conversation were given names starting withthe same letter. This allows for some sensitivity towards the interactional
context of the individual voices. The transcribed conversations were codedthematically, using the software Atlas.ti.
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

We used thematic analysis to categorize the different narratives of how
the postdocs entered their academic career trajectory in the first place(Braun and Clarke, 2013). The stories were then further processed bydrawing on the tools of dialogical narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008; Frank,
2012). According to Bakhtin (1981: 426) the dialogical constitutes an
epistemological mode. Instead of being occupied primarily with identifying
the narrative structure or any coherent pattern that can be labelled a narrative,
dialogical narrative analysis allows one to pay attention to and capture thecomplexity of how stories come to make sense. Language use is always
saturated with meaning, both in descriptive and ideological ways. By paying
attention to what utterances respond to, both in terms of capturing pasts andimagining futures, we were able to identify not only the material obstacles
facing early career researchers, but also the subtle and less tangible barriers
and possibilities that are experienced by prospective academics.
Our main interest lay in exploring how these stories relate to imagesof a future career. We looked at how ideas about a future career wereperceived in the context of a broader notion of a future life situation.
The main themes addressed by the early career scholars were work-​life
balance, geographic mobility and scholarly identity or ‘sense of self ’. In
order to keep the complexity of individual voices accessible and visible wehave chosen to focus on a limited number of research participants in theempirical analysis. All the interviewees in this chapter are white and bornin a Nordic country. The selected voices represent diverse backgrounds interms of family situations. The voices we will meet in the analysis, belong
to the following interviewees:
Agnes was 37 years old at the time of the interview, lived with a partnerand had two children. She was in her fifth year of postdoc research withinlife sciences. Berit was also a 37-​year-​old woman, without children. She
lived with her partner, a dog and a cat. She worked in social science andwas one year into her postdoc period. Henriette was 35 years old and hadcompleted her PhD three years previously. She combined academic workwith paid work as a consultant. She had two children, both born during
her PhD period. Hilde was 38 years old and had four children. She had hadvarious temporary lecturer and teaching contracts since finishing her PhD
five years previously, and recently started her postdoc. Both Henriette andHilde worked within the humanities.
Are was a 29-​year-​old man, one year into his postdoc. He was single, withno kids. Børre was another 29-​year-​old man, two years into his postdoc, also
single with no kids. Are worked in engineering, whereas Børre worked insocial science. Harald was the third man in our sample. He was in his mid-​
30s, married and the father of two young kids. He worked in the humanities,
and just a month before the interview took place he had landed a permanent
position after several years on temporary postdoc and research contracts.
128

“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”In the following, we explore some of the complex dynamics and ambiguities
that came to the fore when the interviewees were encouraged to share theirreflections upon their life in academia, voicing career-​choice considerations.

“Skills, help and luck, basically”
When asked about why and how they took the first step into an academic
career, the postdocs shared a variety of experiences. Most of them, regardlessof family situation and other circumstances, talked about their motivations
for being in academia, closely linked to a sense of purpose. The majority
talked about their research as a desirable activity in its own right. A good
example of this was Are:
‘I started on my PhD studies because I wanted to become a researcher,
not necessarily to become a professor. I just want to learn new things
all the time, thus becoming a researcher would be optimal. But, I guess
one has to become a professor at some point, and then you need toapply for funding, take on responsibility for other people and things
like that, tasks that are less tempting to me.’ (Are)At the core of Are’s expressed motivation was an urge to “learn new things”,
and the idea of a researcher embodies this motivation in his story. Still, he
responded to the idea of an expected future in which becoming a professor
was implicitly understood to be the goal of an academic career. There isa dissonance between the expressed genuine, personal motivation and theinstitutionalized expectations –​embodied by the professor. Thus, becoming
a professor did not emerge as a goal in itself, but rather as a means to being
able to continue to do research, at least part-​time.
This ambiguity regarding a professorship was also articulated in othercareer-​choice narratives, for example in Børre’s who told quite a different
story from Are. Børre did not base his story on a sense of purpose or a
genuine research interest. Instead, he talked about almost randomly starting
his academic career path, currently “making something good out of it”:
‘I never had an ambition to become a professor, or to do anything within
academia so I was kind of also just a bit thrown into it because I wasoffered a PhD position, and didn’t have any other job offer at the time,
and then we received funding for further research so I could continue
into a postdoc. And now that I am in academia, I want to do the best that
I can do and use my energy to make something good out of it.’ (Børre)Børre’s story illustrates a ‘seizing the opportunity’ narrative. He describes
how he was offered a position and had no better alternative for an income at
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

the time. The next step was described as seemingly random as well throughthe use of the passive “we received funding”. There were no visible tracesof hard work or luck in this narrative of career moves. Børre articulated his
agency by stating that since he happened to be in academia he would “makesomething good out of it”. Interestingly, this type of story too responded
to an implied expectation of becoming a professor as an end-​goal, by
distancing itself from the idea of pursuing an academic career as such andinstead emphasizing the “making something good”.
Another way of framing one’s career start, different from Are’s and Børre’s
narratives, was presented by Berit. Berit, like Are, expressed genuine interestin her research subject and for that reason wanted to pursue an academic
career. In her story, the opportunities she had had were not represented asarbitrary, nor invisible. Instead, she stated quite clearly:‘I have definitely been helped. I am not a bad scholar, because I guess
there would be no point in helping me if I was. But I guess someone
needs to get involved, to personally make an effort. And I was very
lucky to have that. First for my PhD, and then also for my postdoc.
But, then it was also a matter of luck. I was the right person at theright place at the right time. And someone saw that. So, skills, help
and luck, basically.’ (Berit)
The striking contrast between this story and the two previous excerpts of the
men’s narrative is the distribution of agency in creating a career. Whilst Are
and Børre both narrate their career starting from issues of their individual
agency –​purposeful or lucky –​centre stage, Berit highlights the relational
aspect, and the crucial helpers she has had. In her story Berit responds toa potential sense that being helped implies one is somehow incapable. But
she regarded the fact that “someone” had decided to make an effort on her
behalf as a confirmation of being a good scholar. The way Berit narrated
her story resembles an element central to several narratives, namely ‘being
seen and supported’ by someone in power.
This was also the case for Agnes. In her story, the supervisor was animportant figure: “In my experience, my supervisor really wanted me tocontinue, even though they did not have the money to fund further research.
I have the impression that if they really want to keep you, there are ways.”
These quotes reference a combination of hard work and dependence on
people in power for ‘finding ways’ to support one’s career. In our material,both women and men told stories about being supported as part of how
they had succeeded in academe. However, there was a gendered difference inthese narratives about support, in the sense that the women more explicitly
articulated and highlighted this as a significant factor, whereas more of themen tended to downplay any direct dependence on others –​as we saw in130

“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”

Børre’s story, who narrated the same kind of circumstances in an altogether
more passive way when explaining how he was “offered a PhD position, anddidn’t have any other job offer at the time, and then we received funding for
further research so I could continue into a postdoc”. Both instances, however,echo the statement by Henriette, the postdoc quoted at the beginning of
this text: “It doesn’t feel like that is something one can just choose to do.”A striking feature across the stories about opting for a career in academe
was that the general idea of what a professor is, portrayed across the narratives,
was construed as less desirable, and not compatible with pursuing one’s
research interests as the main motivation. This might seem surprising, givena general notion of the supposed desirability of achieving higher ranks.
However, for these early career researchers, pursuing a professorship seemed
to be a consequence of wanting a permanent position, rather than a goalin its own right.

“If you want to live a balanced life, it is difficult tobecome a professor”
When we asked explicitly about career aspirations and expectations it quickly
became evident that the most important threshold was having a permanent
position. Becoming a professor was expressed as a rather reluctant ambition.
This is illustrated in the exchange between Berit and Børre:‘I want to see a future in academia, that, I mean you have to kindof decide to pursue a permanent position because living on these
temporarily contracts never knowing when you will get work again,that is not really a good way of living. So I have to say that my ambitionsin the end have to be to become a professor. Even though I don’t
want to say that I want to become a professor, but that seems like theoption. Because you can’t say that my main goal in life is to become
an associate professor. That’s not valid in a way to, to say that, to stop
there.’ (Berit)
The idea of a predictable future seemed to be the rationale behind pursuinga professorship in Berit’s narrative. Børre responded: “If you want to be aprofessor you have to sacrifice a lot of things. I think if you want to live abalanced life, it is difficult to become a professor.” Berit quickly followed
up on Børre’s claim about this required sacrifice:‘I agree. I don’t have a family, I have my job and my partner and a
dog and a cat, and it is hard enough to balance them with the typeof academic work that we do. You become your career in a way. If
I am to become a professor, that is not just my job, that’s my identity.
131

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

And to separate those things I can easily see myself not managing thatvery well.’ (Berit)‘Sacrificing things’ did not merely seem to be about time or effort; rather,
the idea of pursuing an academic career was linked to identity. The quotes
show how it seemed impossible to keep work and life separate if one wasto be a professor, and this merging of work and life was portrayed as socomprehensive that there was no room for anything but work –​work
becomes everything, so to speak, in the expectations expressed by these early
career researchers. Bringing it down to personal desires and expectations,
it seemed more difficult to envision a work-​life balance as something that
could be reconciled with becoming a professor.
Several of the postdocs who were not sure if they wanted to pursue anacademic career talked about conflicts regarding the investments necessary
to succeed. They talked about time as a scarce resource, that it was too time-​
consuming to do high-​quality –​or in many cases –​high-​quantity (‘enoughpapers’) research to succeed in academia, if one wanted more in life, eithera family or to pursue other, non-​academic activities. They also talked abouttime in the sense of life course, particularly in relation to starting a family
and having children. Hilde expressed it like this:‘There is something about having children in parallel with building
your career, both in terms of time-​management, but also –​at leastI think it influences my self-​confidence. There is something about thatfeeling of being stuck at home with the laundry, while others travel
to conferences and write up their articles. It is just as if it creates aself-​fulfilling prophecy in a system where you are supposed to brandyourself as the person who is willing to go “all in”’. (Hilde)
Hilde’s comments made it clear that if one could not see oneself mainly as an
academic, the risk of losing self-​confidence was very present and explicitly
linked to a feeling of not living up to a perceived expectation of going “allin”. Housework –​the laundry –​represents the counterpart to academic
work and career advancement in this story.

“Being stuck at home”
Being “stuck at home” was also a concern with regard to the issue ofinternational mobility in several interviews. Typically, mobility was on the
one hand presented as an opportunity that would potentially open up new
possibilities in academia, and on the other hand as a problem when the early
career researchers or their family members (partner, children) did not want
to relocate. Agnes explained:132

“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”‘My contract now is for one more year. I really want to continue inacademia as long as possible. But I have a daughter that is in school,
and a husband with a permanent position here. The focus on mobility
is really strong, so I guess it would be possible for me to get a position
somewhere, but when your family is here and they don’t want to go
elsewhere, it is hard.’ (Agnes)
The conflict between family commitments and mobility as a requirement forpursuing an academic career was not only expressed by the women taking
part in our study. Harald expressed a similar frustration related to short-​term
mobility and travel requirements:‘It is difficult to balance it all, when conferences are taking place atweekends, and you have to work late nights, and then taking care ofyour kids. I was actually supposed to be at a conference right now,
I really should have, but I can’t since my wife is on a job trip abroadat the moment, all the traveling makes it difficult.’ (Harald)
Several of the men in our study expressed similar concerns for balancing
family responsibilities with their work as a researcher. Common to all ofthem, however, was that they talked about a partner equally committed totheir career, and how they adapted to that –​implicitly presenting themselves
as gender-​equal spouses. Women in our study, on the contrary, tended tonarrate their own agency in planning family and career, implicitly taking the
responsibility for ‘being equal’. Henriette explained how she deliberately
planned ahead and made sure to have a longer research stay abroad before
she had children:‘I had my stay abroad before I had children. I made that choice
consciously, because I knew you have to go abroad, and I knew I wanted
to have children. Of course, the stay was beneficial in many ways, but
I have to admit that I did it mainly to “tick the box”’. (Henriette)
The timing of having children became a topic in most of the interviews,
here illustrated by an exchange between Agnes and Are:
‘You really cannot wait until you have reached professor level to havekids, because by then you might be 45 or 50. It will be too late tohave kids, at least for women.’ (Agnes)‘That is true, but then it is a bit like as if I, as a man, could be expected
to be 40 and successful and then find a much younger partner to starta family. I don’t find that right either.’ (Are)133

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONIn this dialogue, we can see how gendered perceptions of age and prioritizing
family and children are challenged by expectations regarding academic
careers. Prioritizing family is first portrayed, implicitly, as optional formen who can pursue their career first, and thereafter family. Implicit inthis dialogue are heteronormative stereotypes of age difference and status
difference between heterosexual partners. Are challenges this idea by arguingthat the same problematic is also relevant for men. The orientation towards
gender-​equal relations expressed both by Harald and Are is significant as it
paves the way for an allegiance between women and men in creating liveable
lives in academia. Equally important to note is the fact that the women in ourstudy talked about how they adapted to and assessed themselves according
to assumed work standards and gendered constraints that are embedded inunderstandings of personal choice (Gascoigne et al, 2015; Sørensen, 2017).

“When you’ve already invested a lot, it is hard tolet go”
Despite the fact that becoming a professor was associated with great
sacrifice, and many of the early career researchers explicitly stated thatthey were not pursuing an academic career in order to become a professor,
they also explained that they had already invested so much time and effort
in their academic career that it was difficult to imagine leaving academia.
This dynamic has been labelled a ‘trap of passion’ and ‘promise dispositif ’(Bozzon et al, 2019). The following conversation took place between Hilde,
Henriette and Harald:‘I have been willing to live on temporary contracts because I havealready invested so much, both time and energy in this work, andI don’t want to let go of that.’ (Harald)‘I agree, it is such a huge choice to make to give up, to let go of theidea that one day I will be sitting there, looking out.’ (Hilde)
Here a sense of purpose as the motivation for staying in academia becomes
self-​fulfilling through the way in which Harald explains why he has put up
with years on temporary research contracts. Letting go, giving up, suggests
being defeated, while the idea of “sitting there, looking out [from the ivory
tower]” indicates victory and satisfaction.
It was not only the individual defeat or victory that mattered in the
postdocs’ narratives. Henriette commented: “Sometimes I think that it issuch a waste if the knowledge I have accumulated just disappears from theuniversity.” The underlying sense of purpose here relates to the efforts of theuniversity as a collective, rather than the individual career. Hilde added: “A
134

“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”frustrating thing about not getting hold of a permanent position is also thefact that you have to keep giving, without getting anything in return. At
the end of the day, your voice doesn’t count.” Implicit in this statement is
the longing for a position with the authority to be listened to. Interestingly,
having a permanent position was constructed as the relevant threshold forachieving this status, not ‘becoming a professor’. Thus, the sense of purposeand genuine interest in the research in itself was entangled with a desire forgetting a reward for one’s efforts, and the end of precariousness seemed tobe the most desirable reward.

Assembling academic career choices: discussion andconcluding remarks
In this chapter our main interest has been to explore how early career
researchers perceive their agency and possibilities for pursuing an academic
career. By analyzing qualitative interviews with postdocs employed at thelargest university in Norway, we explored how early career researchers reflect
upon their potential future within academia and how their experiences andexpectations were potentially gendered.
Focusing first on the postdocs’ reflections about their own experiences
when entering academia and being early career researchers, we found what
we labelled a narrative about having the right skills and motivation, being
supported and fortunate (lucky). This finding reinforces the notion thatcareers in academia are difficult to plan (Riordan, 2011). This narrative
was articulated across the gender divide, but the notion of being supported
turned out to be more strongly expressed by the women interviewees. In
the stories presented by the men the efforts of others were more implicit,
and rarely explicitly highlighted. Our interpretation of this is that eventhough both men and women to a great extent depend on active support
to succeed in making an academic career, the narrative of ‘being helped’ issubtly gendered.
The main narrative about having the right skills and motivation as well
as being supported and fortunate included elements of a sense of finding
a purpose in research. Others too have found that academics tend to
express great personal passion for their job, and that they tend to appreciateautonomy, independence and opportunities for individual self-​expression(Lindholm, 2004; Loveday, 2018; Murgia and Poggio, 2019). On theother hand career-​coaching models emphasizing community building andcollective support has been developed as a supplement to traditional research
mentoring to support minority academics. Evaluations of such schemes
suggest that collective career mentoring, informed by social theory, canpromote persistence in pursuing academic careers (Thakore et al, 2014;
Williams et al, 2016).
135

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Our study indicates that career mentoring should, however, include not
only theoretical insights about gender and diversity, and peer solidarity,
but should also aim to open up knowledge about varieties of experiencesof becoming and being a professor (see also Ylijoki, 2013). We argue thisas the ideas about what a professor is, and what it entails to be a professor,
played a crucial role in how the postdocs made sense of their own choices.
A strong perception of being a professor as an all-​consuming endeavour leftthe early career scholars with a sense of being incapable, and ‘stuck’ in life
outside of the university. This was true for both women and men. However,while women to a greater extent talked about taking active agency andplanning strategically to fulfil the requirements of international mobility, themen’s stories revolved around negotiating family concerns with an equallycommitted spouse. Again, the gendered perceptions of the obstacles weresubtly gendered.
Becoming a professor was explicitly discussed as something unattractive,
and involved a narrative of sacrifice, overwork and multiple responsibilities,
a situation that the early career scholars found undesirable. Nevertheless,becoming a professor was also and simultaneously portrayed as an
obligatory career goal, due to the fact that academics who have thepossibility of becoming a professor are likely to have invested muchtime and energy into the process leading up to it. This means that a trap
between passion and overwork, as discussed by Bozzon et al (2019), wasalso implied in the narratives of these Norwegian early career researchers.
Embedded in the narrative of becoming a professor was a strong perceptionof a permanent position as the threshold that could potentially resolve
stress and ambiguity.
In contrast to the ideas circulating among early career researchers,
professors at the same university regard academia as flexible and adjustableto family needs. Our understanding of this discrepancy is that the shift fromprecariousness to predictability that comes with a professorship is of crucial
importance to how both work within, and life outside of, academia is madesense of. This discrepancy needs to be acknowledged in future work topromote a gender balance. Furthermore, the inherent and often subtle ways
in which gender works in how early career researchers make sense of theircareer need to be discussed more openly in order to support early career
scholars and promote a better gender balance.
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139

9“If It Had Been Only Me, It Would
Not Have Worked Out”: Women
Negotiating Conflicting Challenges
of ICT Work and Family
in Norway
Gilda Seddighi and Hilde G. Corneliussen

Introduction
This chapter centres on women working in information and communication
technology (ICT), a male-​dominated profession that continues to imagine
the ideal worker according to the male norm of having little or no childcare
responsibility. There is a well-​established assumption that Norway is a ‘world
champion in gender equality’ (Selbervik and Østebø, 2013: 205). However,despite family-​friendly policies in the country, women struggle to reconcile
work and care responsibilities (Kitterød and Halrynjo, 2019). How dowomen who work in ICT in Norway’s gender egalitarian culture find theresources to negotiate the contradictory demands of work and family? In
Norway, as elsewhere across the western world, most fields of ICT work arestill male-​dominated. Women make up only 25 per cent of those studying
and working in ICT in Norway (Samordna opptak, 2018; Statistics Norway,
2018; Simonsen and Corneliussen, 2020). Despite the fact that digitalizationis changing the landscape of ICT work and increasing the need for ICT
expertise in general, women’s under-​representation in ICT has remained
persistent (EIGE, 2020).
Family-​oriented national policies in Norway such as flexible and longparental leave and a generous childcare system aim to increase women’s
participation in the workforce and to support their career development(Seierstad and Kirton, 2015). Although women make up 47 per cent of140

“IF IT HAD BEEN ONLY ME”

the workforce (Statistics Norway, 2018), traditional gender norms locating
women as the primary family caregiver are still common (Seierstad andKirton, 2015). Family-​friendly policies have contributed to the increase in
women’s participation in the workforce and helped them return to work
earlier following parental leave, but have also been criticized for not being
beneficial to women’s career development (Kitterød and Halrynjo, 2019).
Unequal gendered divisions of labour in care and household responsibilities
remain barriers to career development in the greedy work culture of ICT(Quesenberry et al, 2006; Bailey and Riley, 2018; EIGE, 2020). This is amatter not only of finding ways to make time for work and family, but alsoof navigating gendered work cultures and norms such as around parenthood(Ellingsæter, 2006; Hakim, 2006; Bø et al, 2008).
A recent European study found that women in ICT experience more
flexible working conditions and a smaller pay gap than in other fields, but theyalso work longer hours, and a lower proportion have childcare responsibilities
compared to women in other occupations (EIGE, 2018). In addition, fewer
women in ICT work part-​time as compared to other occupations (Simonsen
and Corneliussen, 2020). These features indicate a double pressure on women,
as they try to care as well as fit into a male-​dominated field and style of workthat favours men as ideal workers (Acker, 1990; Watts, 2009; Singstad, 2011).
The specific context of ICT work in Norway, recognized for its progressive
welfare regime and a high degree of gender equality, highlights the needto investigate how women working in ICT find the resources to reconcile
family and work responsibilities while pursuing their career.
This chapter is based on interviews with 22 women working full-​timein ICT research, development and innovation in Norway. Our findings
suggest that the boundary-​less work culture of ICT makes family-​oriented
national policies less relevant, while private resources are central to women’snegotiation of the contradictory demands of work and care. We also foundthat the gendered patterns of work and family are being re-​gendered, but
without challenging work cultures that discriminate against women morethan men (Padavic et al, 2019). Most importantly, our analysis reveals theneed to take a critical view of the work-​life balance discourse, as responsibility
for creating this ‘balance’ tends to be given to the individual (Gregory andMilner, 2009). Taking such a critical view is important for policymakers’
understanding of the economic and social structures that enable or restrict
women’s opportunities for careers in male-​dominated fields such as ICT.
We begin with a literature review before presenting this study’s theoreticaland methodological framework. Following on from that, the chapter turns to
the analysis of the women’s accounts of the resources they use in reconcilingwork and family responsibilities. This will be discussed in terms of theshortcomings of public childcare and how family is able or unable to stepin to cover these shortcomings.
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Sources of negotiating the work-​life balance for women
working in ICT
The term ‘work-​life balance’ has been defined as ‘the relationship between
the institutional and cultural times and spaces of work and non-​work insocieties where income is predominantly generated and distributed throughlabour markets’ (Felstead et al, 2002: 56). It is a dominant discourse in policies
seeking to increase women’s workforce participation and improve conditions
for them to pursue careers (OECD, 2007). As scholars have argued, achieving
a work-​life balance needs different levels of support, namely national policies,
workplace policies and private support (Abendroth and den Dulk, 2011).
Norway, along with other Nordic countries, is often seen as a frontrunnerwith regards to gender equality, especially in terms of family-​friendly
policies aimed at supporting the reconciliation between work and family life
(Öun, 2012). Family-​friendly policies have a long tradition in the Nordic
countries. They are ‘part of the general social-​democratic model of welfare
emphasising economic growth, redistribution of wealth, social rights andsocial security’ (Björnberg, 2016: 508). Norway often scores high in theinternational indexes (Chzhen et al, 2019), especially for its flexible parental
leave (Rudlende and Bryghaug, 2017), paternal quota leave (Gram, 2019)
and the extension of kindergarten access to one-​to-​two-​year-​old children.
These policies have been established to increase women’s participation in
the workforce as well as to strengthen fathers’ roles and engagement in care
responsibilities (Brandth and Kvande, 2005; Kitterød and Halrynjo, 2019).
Despite these policies, the number of women who work part-​time hasremained high and is currently 37 per cent of employed women compared
to 13 per cent of employed men (Statistics Norway, 2018). The statistics
indicate a similar pattern observed across member states in the EU whereon average one third of employed women work part-​time (Eurostat, 2020).
Although women’s high participation in the workforce in Norway at 68 percent (Statistics Norway, 2018) indicates the success of these national policies,
the national policies for childcare have had little impact on mothers’ careerdevelopment (Halrynjo and Lyng, 2010; Johnsen and Løken, 2016). Studies
suggest that fathers’ career preferences are prioritized over those of the motherwhile mothers take the main care responsibilities (Halrynjo and Lyng, 2010).
Work-​life balance policies in workplaces often refer to flexible working
conditions and the management of time and place of work (Fleetwood, 2007;
Lewis et al, 2007), implying that this balance relies on individual choice(Gregory and Milner, 2009). Controversially, Hakim suggests that womenand men tend to choose different career paths, with women being drawn
towards jobs that ‘can be fitted around family life’ (2006: 285). Focussing
on a vocabulary of choice in her discussion of women’s reconciliation ofwork and family life in Norwegian media, Sørensen (2017) identifies three142

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subject positions for women: ‘the part-​time working, good mother’ optingout of work; ‘the exceptional career mother’ who aims to have it all, bothchildren and a career; and ‘the failing mother’, who also aims to have it
all, but faces accusations of failing at motherhood. Sørensen (2017: 310)
argues that invoking the vocabulary of choice here not only covers up power
structures (McRobbie, 2009), it also produces differences and inequalities.
Pedersen and Egeland (2020) show that parents with flexible working hours
who have to solve work-​care conflicts during work hours catch up with theirwork in the late evenings or over weekends. Critical studies on work-​life
balance policies show that they make work-​life balance issues appear to rely
on individual choice while in actuality these issues are constrained by gendernorms (Gregory and Milner, 2009) and thus do not challenge well-​establishedstructures such as gendered work cultures (Chung and Van der Lippe, 2018).
In another study on women in high-​commitment careers, Seierstad andKirton (2015) found that flexible work conditions did not mean less workfor the participants of their study; rather, it was a matter of adapting work
to the family situation and vice versa. For mothers with flexible working
hours, adapting their work to their family situation put more pressure on
care responsibilities as these women are often the primary caregiver.
Research on working life in Norway has also shown that employees
in some sectors such as ICT experience a greedy or boundary-​less work
culture where standard, full-​time work is not enough (Brandth and Kvande,
2005; Nilsen and Skarsbø, 2009). In the male-​dominated fields of ICT(Watts, 2009), where the need to continuously upskill is a precondition
for a successful career (EIGE, 2018: 3), work cultures imagine the ‘ideal
worker’ (Acker, 1990) as one who prioritizes work over care responsibilities(Williams, 2000), something men embody more than women (Singstad,2011). As several studies have suggested, women in ICT work more than
women in many other occupations (Watts, 2009; EIGE, 2018). Watts’ (2009)
study of women in engineering within the UK construction industry showsthat women working full-​time adopt work styles that include long hours,as they perceive this as necessary for acceptance in the workplace. Flexible
working conditions in boundary-​less work cultures mean that the boundaries
between work time and private time, workplace and private space become
blurred and intensify the challenges of negotiating between work and family
time, for women more so than for men (Zerwas, 2019).
Interestingly enough, the women in Seierstad and Kirton’s (2015: 401)
study did not want more formal work–​life balance policies, but rathera change of ‘workplace culture to one where both women’s and men’s
domestic responsibilities were more fully acknowledged’. In a Finnish
context, Heikkinen et al (2014: 32–​6) investigated how women managers
experience the support given by their male partners and identified four ways
in which spousal support of women’s careers was constructed: harmoniously
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flourishing, irrelevant, deficient and inconsistent. It was only when the
spousal support was consistent and included practical and psychologicalsupport, that this positively influenced the women’s careers.
The flexible work arrangement in ICT might appear as an advantage forwomen as the focus of work-​life balance policies has been on employees’autonomy and flexible working time and place. But women’s work
arrangement also hides the potential double pressure as women have maincare responsibilities as well as trying to fit into a style of work that favours men
as ideal workers. The double pressure remains invisible as the responsibilityof achieving a work-​life balance is left to the individual, while the gendered
work culture is left untouched.

Theoretical framework
Some scholars critique the concept of work-​life balance because it implies
that work and life are two separate spheres (Warhurst et al, 2008). Others haveargued that ‘balance’ in work and life has become a neoliberal postfeminist
discourse that has produced a new feminist subject of autonomous and freely
choosing individuals, searching for a balance to deal with the conflicting
demands of work and family (Rottenberg, 2018). Women’s investment intheir sense of self has increasingly included mothering and the private spaceof life (Hays, 1996) as well as work (Rottenberg, 2018). Feminist technology
studies have shown that across the western world cultures and stereotypes
tend to associate men with ICT work more than women (Wajcman, 2004;
Corneliussen, 2014). Watts’ (2009) study suggests that gender stereotypes
in ICT work culture are largely accepted. In this context, the concept ofnegotiation refers to women’s attempts to overcome the competing demands
and practices of work and family life while imagining a ‘balanced’ work-​family life, that is, ‘having it all’.
In Norway this negotiation includes an established idea of the dual-​earnerhousehold (Melby and Carlsson Wetterberg, 2009; Singstad, 2011), though
men as the main earner are still the norm (Elingsæter, 2006). Work practices
create expectations favouring men (Acker, 1990) as the ‘ideal worker’ whoprioritizes work over care responsibilities (Williams, 2000). Despite policies
aimed at increasing men’s participation in care responsibilities (Kitterød
and Rønsen, 2012), the combination of the dual-​earner household andthis ‘ideal worker’ has created a pattern of a ‘two-​track parenthood’: one
track for mothers often taking long parental leave and part-​time work,and another for men regardless of whether or not they have children(Ellingsæter, 2006; Bø et al, 2008). Focussing on how full-​time working
women with care responsibilities reconcile work and family, we look closer
at how the negotiation of work and care responsibility in relation to a two-​
track parenthood model results in a ‘re-​doing’ of gender norms (West and144

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Zimmerman, 1987) associated with this two-​track model, not by changing
the model itself but by changing women and men’s positions in the model.
Compared to ‘undoing’ gender norms, which results in these norms losing
their importance in social interactions (cf. Hirschauer, 2001), the concept of
re-​doing refers to social practices enacted in new ways but still with reference
to the prevailing gender norms and values (Kelan, 2010).

Methodology
Interviews with women working in ICT
The data presented here are part of a larger dataset of 28 interviews weconducted in 2017–​18. We recruited women working in ICT in the westernregion of Norway through organizations working with regional innovation,
ICT development, research and funding agencies, as well as public and privatecompanies. The 22 interviews analyzed were all with women who had
childcare responsibilities. Fourteen of these women were born in Norway andeight women had immigrated to Norway due to work or higher education.
The women were aged between 37 and 59. They had between one and fourchildren. Some women also have children from several relationships. Thus,
our participants represented a variety of heterosexual family constellations.
The selection criteria for the participants included: having at least a
Bachelor degree, and diversity in terms of women working in the fields of
ICT in different sectors and industries, as we recognize that digitalizationis changing the landscape of ICT work. One interviewee had a Bachelor
degree, seven had PhDs, and the rest had Master’s degrees. Nine had degrees
in ICT. These women worked in different fields of ICT, in management,
design, programming, research, and implementation of new technology.
Thirteen interviewees acquired ICT competence by combining an ICT
education within a non-​technical education, or training and upskilling
combined with a non-​technical profession. The latter women worked withICT in a non-​tech profession in positions including management, design,
programming and implementation of new technology.
Our interviews lasted around one hour and followed an interview
guide with a professional-​life history structure, with questions aboutfamily, education, occupational history, career drivers, barriers and work-​family arrangements.
The fieldwork gained ethical approval from the Norwegian Centre for
Research Data and we followed their rules for data security. The informants
were invited to participate voluntarily. In order to make the research processtransparent for the informants, we told them about the project’s aim before
the interviews. The informants gave informed written consent to use
the interview data in subsequent publications. The interview data weretranscribed verbatim and anonymized.
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Analytical framework
Our initial analytical encounter with the empirical material was througha grounded theory-​inspired process, reading and coding the interviews
while writing analytic texts, or ‘memos’ to further our analysis. Since thisis part of a larger project, this was a rather open-​ended process in which thecoding resulted in the building of relevant categories. These categories were
explored and developed around labels we identified in the analysis such as
work, leisure and family. Key labels for this chapter were family, enablers,barriers, opting out and work-​life balance.

Analysis‘Establishing a family, managing that, you could call it a barrier, but
it was also a choice. It was completely voluntary’. (Gunn, late 30s)
The women in our study mentioned family both as a great support andas a barrier to their career though they described it as a conscious choice,as Gunn, one of the women in study, did in the aforementioned quote.
Dual-​earner parents experience time constraints in negotiating family andwork duties. This is a result of specific working life structures and family
policy schemes, and norms and values related to childcare and operatingin the workplace (Hayes, 1996; Pedersen and Egeland, 2020). This is evenmore strongly experienced by women working in greedy work cultures(Hakim, 2006; Padavic et al, 2019) and male-​dominated fields (Singstad,2011). The relation between work and family entered the interviews mostnotably when we asked about barriers and drivers for career development.
In this section we discuss how the women found resources to negotiate theconundrum of work and life when public childcare was not enough. This
will be discussed in terms of how family was able or unable to step in andcover for these shortcomings.

The shortcomings of public childcare
The national work-​life balance policies in Norway such as flexible parental
leave, paternal quota leave and day nurseries for all children over one year
old, are intended to regulate the conflicting demands of care and work
experienced by women. Women in our study often took family-​friendly
policies for granted, and rarely talked about childcare services. Whenchildcare services were mentioned, it was in relation to how the womenarranged their working hours to leave and pick up children. As one of theparticipants put it: “Because I’m commuting, it is my husband who picks
up and delivers in school and kindergarten every day” (Stine, 30s).
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“IF IT HAD BEEN ONLY ME”

These women experienced a conflict between their working hours and theopening hours of the childcare service. This is in line with earlier research on
daily family life in Norway (Pedersen and Egeland, 2020). Though picking up
and leaving the children in childcare services needs planning, it was working
odd hours that created the conflict between care and work responsibilities.
Many participants described working odd hours such as in the evening andat weekends, in addition to being away due to work-​related commuting
and travelling. As Mari, one of the women, explained: “I worked very hardat the start of my career. I had small children but worked after they slept.”
Many women in our study had taken part in training, Master’s courses
and upskilling, a crucial requirement in the fields of ICT as well as for one’s
career development. Ruth, one of the women in our study, described thisas follows:‘I could not have attended a Master’s degree or other courses I havetaken, if it had not been for the support of my family and my husband.
When I started the Master’s degree in another city which was quite
far away, the children were living at home at that time. If you havechildren, you need to have support and to know that it is okay that you
are leaving and staying away from them for a week.’ (Ruth, late 40s)
Since childcare services do not cover the needs of these women, thewomen had to find other solutions to deal with their childcare issues.
Some described the work-​life balance as a situation in which they took onless care responsibilities for family and children. This narrative challenged
the two-​track parenthood model where the mother is supposed to takethe main responsibility. Like Sørensen’s (2017) ‘failing (career) mothers’,
these women probably risked being perceived as prioritizing their careerand failing at motherhood. However, in their (non-​judgemental) narratives(different from the judgemental tendency in the media discourses Sørensen
analyzed), women described how they were dependent on other support.
As one of our participants said: “If it had been only me, it would not haveworked out” (Laila, 40s).
Unlike Sørensen’s ‘exceptional mothers’ who bought support in theform of cleaners and au pairs, only one of the women in our study
mentioned domestic help. Instead, their male partners took on thechildcare responsibilities:‘Fortunately I had a man that used to do at least as much I used to do
at home.’ (Mari, 40s)
‘My husband was very good at staying home. He has helped out there,
and he is still the one making dinner at home. He has taken that over
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

more and more, and now I don’t even know what we’re having fordinner.’ (Ellen, 50s)
Among our interviewees, there were also examples of dual-​career couples
who both had greedy careers. In these cases, support from other close
relatives was needed to help supplement the care for family and children,
such as the women’s parents: “My husband also has a demanding job. He is
travelling and away a lot as well, and then we have my mother and father. …
My father, he is still working, but he is working from home. He is looking
after them [the children] a lot” (Laila, 40s).
The aforementioned examples involve two generations of dual-​careercouples and a grandfather solving work-​life challenges, thanks to work
arrangements that make him available for the children. However, thisexample is different from Pedersen and Egeland’s study (2020) showing how
grandparents contribute by helping to unburden families’ everyday lives inrelation to care, as here the grandparents contributed by making an intensive
work culture possible.
Among our interviewees, aside from one case of a male partner who
became a stay-​at-​home dad to support his wife’s career, it was not the
women’s flexible working practices that helped, but something different: theirpartners had stable work positions with flexible and predictable hours andlittle or no work-​related travel. Ellen, one participant, described her partner’s
work pattern as follows: “My husband has not changed his job much. He
has not had jobs where he had to travel. If he also had a job where he had
to travel a lot, things would have been much more difficult. He was always
at home” (Ellen, 50s).
For our participants, it was not only the partners with flexible working
hours who dropped off and picked up children from school that solved
work and care conflicts, it was also the husbands who did not travel muchand were available out of office hours, and the fathers who took extra leave.
The women interviewed here identified their partners’ flexible working
hours as a support, so long as the work remained within and did not exceed
either standard work times or a standard number of hours. Here men takeon conventionally feminine roles of child-​and other domestic care, thereby
re-​gendering care work and their role in the household. This happened only
when the male partners had flexible and predictable working hours and used
this to take on more care responsibilities at home.

Not having support in the private sphereAs many as two thirds of the women in our study mentioned family as abarrier to their career though they described this as a conscious choice.
This narrative fits well with the dominant two-​track model. Family could
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become a reason for their feeling that they were opting out from their career.
Gunn, one of the participants, put it this way: “It’s more when you have afamily that things get difficult, but before that, I think that many womenare encouraged to come forward” (Gunn, late 30s).
Although this narrative is reminiscent of the ‘good mother’ or home-​
centred woman narratives (Hakim, 2006; Sørensen, 2017) where the woman
is often portrayed as a part-​time worker and traceable in national statistics,
these women were holding full-​time positions in ICT but nonetheless spokeof prioritizing family over work and feeling that they were opting out: “Iturn down travelling because I am away so much already. So, I avoided mostof the travelling I could have done” (Karen, 40s).
Interviewees not only forewent work activities such as travelling, but also
postponed career-​developing training. For instance, five of our interviewees
had left behind their desires to obtain a PhD. They were aware that they had
lost certain opportunities when deciding to have children:‘The fact that I have chosen to have four children means that I cannot
just take any job. That has to do with priorities. It was wanted andconscious. I could have chosen or prioritized differently.’ (Bente, 40s)
‘Every time you have a child … I’ve never been promoted or gotten
a pay raise when I’ve been on [maternity] leave. … So, you stagnate
a bit. (Lise, 30s)
Our participants justified their feeling of opting out by pointing to family andchildren as a choice. This explanation reproduces gender norms associating
women with childcare responsibilities within a neoliberal individualizing
ideology of ‘choice’. As they presupposed a balance between work and lifein their career development (Rottenberg, 2018), our interviewees calculated
what their career might have been if they had ‘chosen’ differently: “I could
have prioritized having fewer children and aimed for a higher position.
I think I could have had that if I wanted, but I made a different choice”(Bente, 40s). Another interviewee explained:‘If you ask what barriers there are for me to be working more, thenthat [family] is it. If I had made other priorities, I could have beena professor. If you want to climb, you have to work more than one
hundred per cent. I refrain from many things because I have a family
and want to be with them, and that prevents me from climbing in thesystem.’ (Karen, 40s)
These women’s version of work-​life ‘balance’ disguises the cost of prioritizing
family over career-​driving activities, costs that have notable and long-​term
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consequences for their careers, such as not getting a PhD and not becoming
a professor. In the long run these costs become visible in the gender gap
in pay and pension. The rhetoric of ‘choice’ of our interviewees reflected
the gender practices of the two-​track parenthood model, where women
generally take on more care responsibilities. It contributed to covering up the
feeling of opting out. Thus, our findings support Sørensen’s suggestion thatthe rhetoric of choice might reproduce traditional gender roles by defining
motherhood according to a maternal presence in the family (Sørensen, 2017).

Discussion
While work-​life balance policies take for granted that flexibility at work
implies working less during office hours in order to spend time with family,
the women in our study that spoke about this mostly described working
more, with longer days, working odd hours and more travelling. Flexibility
in greedy work cultures is not just a simple adjustment of work time andplace. Rather, flexibility institutes working more than full-​time as the norm.
This conflicts with family responsibilities even if women do not ‘prioritize’family. In contrast to literature suggesting that the discourse of work-​life
balance contributes to women’s self-​investment in both career and mothering(Rottenberg, 2018), the women in our study described a work patternthat indicates work invading private space and where ensuring a work-​life
balance was an individual responsibility (Gregory and Milner, 2009), relying
on resources from the private sphere.
The co-​production of work and family –​evident in our interviewees’
claims of prioritizing family while engaged in full-​time work –​indicatesthat working ‘only’ full-​time was seen as limiting one’s career development.
This resonates with research showing that women in ICT feel the need toadopt a work style and long working hours that are said to be associatedwith men (Watts, 2009). It also indicates a greedy work culture with intenseachievement targets and expectations of constant availability (Brandth andKvande, 2005).
The work-​life balance discourse’s focus on time management and choiceseems too narrow to precisely capture women’s negotiation between
work and family. As Biese and Choroszewicz (2019) point out, the issueof opting out has often been associated with women who leave the workforce altogether. However, our participants’ feeling of having to ‘opt out’
indicates that success in their work environments requires more than full-​time commitment.
Hakim suggests that part-​time working mothers are in danger of losing thecompetition with full-​time workers due to the momentum of knowledge andexperience full-​time workers obtain (2006). However, Hakim’s dividing line
between part-​time and full-​time work is too optimistic for women working
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“IF IT HAD BEEN ONLY ME”

in fields of ICT. Instead, our findings support Watts’ (2009) study, whichhighlights that women feel long working hours are required to develop a
successful career in male-​dominated fields.
Despite two-​track parenthood being the main gender norm that is meant
to help create a work-​life balance in Norway (Ellingsæter, 2006), with equallyshared parenting as the ideal (Pedersen and Egeland, 2020), in reality only
private support enables the continuation of a two-​track parenthood model.
Here gender norms of care are re-​done when men take more responsibility
for children and family along the lines of the traditional female role. Not only
the stay-​at-​home dad, but also partners with more flexible and predictable
work hours were key to solving the work-​life time squeeze and giving
priority to women’s careers. This might indicate changes in how couples
negotiate and find arrangements for work and family, allowing women todevelop a career. However, the re-​gendering of two-​track parenthood does
not challenge the greedy work style that Padavic et al (2019) identify as themain obstacle to gender equality in working life, especially in ICT work.

Conclusion
Norway is often seen as having one of the world’s most family-​friendly
policies (Seierstad and Kirton, 2015). Our study illustrates that even in
Norway, the available public childcare and work-​life balance solutions are
not sufficient to support women in greedy work cultures such as ICT. Froma work-​life balance policy perspective, using flexible working conditions
as a way to keep women in paid work has been a success. Our findings
support a growing acceptance of women developing their careers (Metz-​
Goeckel, 2018). However, most women experience that they are required
to work analogous to men’s career development to achieve a career. Our
study suggests an urgent need to reorient work-​life discussions more
towards career-​life policies and solutions that acknowledge the challenges
of greedy work styles.
As flexible working conditions are more often used by women working
in ICT than in other occupations (EIGE, 2018), we need to look beyond
the discourse of flexible working hours to truly understand what women’s
claims of prioritizing family in a greedy work culture really entail. Our
informants’ voices were united in describing how their career development
required private support. Indeed, a male partner’s predictable and less greedy
work pattern, not work-​life balance policies targeting women, was the main
factor enabling women to combine work and family responsibilities in
ICT research, development and innovation. The future of flexible working
conditions that can function in favour of women’s careers in the fields of
ICT depend on changes in attitudes towards traditional gender patterns ofwork-​family arrangements. This study’s participants suggest that this is in
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part happening. However, the negotiation necessary to achieve this is left
to individuals, and thus remains an issue of the private sphere.
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10

Co-​creative Platforms for Societal
Impact of Research on Gender
Issues: A Comparative Studyof The Gender Academy andGender Contact Point
Malin Lindberg, Ulf Mellström and Paula Wennberg

Introduction
Co-​creative platforms for developing new knowledge and measures are
increasingly common in Sweden and internationally, as part of a global
trend to improve the societal impact and the societal relevance of scienceand innovation (Mauser et al, 2013; Owen et al, 2013; Reypens et al, 2016).
Co-​creation here means that experts and stakeholders jointly identify, explore
and address societal and organizational challenges. The platforms may take theform of networks, partnerships, projects, events or labs, which involve actors
from multiple societal sectors, organizations and communities. Research onsocial innovation suggests that co-​creative platforms may reinforce the societal
impact of science and innovation by enhancing structural transformationin organizations and society (Haxeltine et al, 2017; Westley et al, 2017).
Public policy in the European Union promotes co-​creative platforms inscience and innovation as part of policy agendas for smart, sustainable andinclusive growth (European Union, 2016; The Knowledge Coalition, 2016).
The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) provides funding forsuch platforms in the member states. The fund has, for example, financed
the initiation of two platforms in Sweden called The Gender Academy
and Gender Contact Point. The purpose of these platforms is to improve
the societal impact and the societal relevance of research on gender andgender equality, through knowledge-​based gender equality measures,
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primarily in industrial companies. The platforms enable joint developmentof new knowledge and measures by researchers, managers, employees andother stakeholders.
In this chapter, the experiences from Gender Contact Point and The
Gender Academy are harnessed with the purpose of advancing knowledge
on how the societal impact and the societal relevance of research on genderissues may be reinforced by co-​creative platforms for academia-​society
cooperation. In exploring Swedish cases, this study adds to the researchstream on gender in regional innovation systems that was established by
Scandinavian scholars (cf. Andersson et al, 2012; Alsos et al, 2016). The
research questions addressed in the study are: i) how are these co-​creative
platforms organized and managed?; ii) what co-​creative forms and forums
are applied in the platforms?; and iii) what challenges and potentials areperceivable in the platforms’ efforts to reinforce the societal impact andthe societal relevance of research on gender issues? Previous research onsocial innovation helps address these questions, by pinpointing mechanisms
for societal and organizational transformation in co-​creative platforms (cf.
Westley et al, 2017; Howaldt et al, 2018).

Previous research
Co-​creation
The concept of co-​creation stems from the design field, where it refers to
the joint development of new insights and solutions by experts, users andother stakeholders (Sanders and Stappers, 2008). It shifts the focus of design
studies and practices from products and technology to human experiences
and social needs. The interest in co-​creation rose among scholars in the
1970s, in regard to customer-​involvement in the product development ofAmerican companies, as well as employee-​involvement in the renewal ofindustrial workplaces in Scandinavian countries. Co-​creation has thereafter
increasingly been understood and applied as a strategy for organizational andsocietal development by researchers and practitioners in various fields andsectors. It has recently become part of a global trend of improving the societal
impact and the societal relevance of science and innovation, manifested in
the establishment of co-​creative platforms for joint development of new
knowledge and measures (cf. Dutilleul et al, 2010; Beunen et al, 2012;
Mauser et al, 2013; Nevens et al, 2013; Owen et al, 2013; Baraldi et al,
2016; Reypens et al, 2016).
Co-​creative platforms take the form of networks, partnerships, projects,
events, labs, among others (Dutilleul et al, 2010; Beunen et al, 2012;
Mauser et al, 2013; Nevens et al, 2013; Owen et al, 2013; Baraldi et al,
2016; Reypens et al, 2016). The platforms can either be permanent inspecific locations, ambulate between different locations or be omnipresent
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by means of digital technology. The physical configuration of the platforms
often enhances creativity and interaction in the form of open areas, flexible
furnishing and art materials. The social configuration of the platforms
draws on participatory and emancipatory traditions, where stakeholders are
empowered to impact on society and their own lives. Co-​creative forms, suchas workshops, dialogues and design thinking, are applied in the platforms
in order to enable experts and stakeholders to jointly identify, explore andaddress societal and organizational challenges. Multi-​actor and multi-​level
mobilization from various societal sectors, organizations and communities isa key component of co-​creative platforms (Mauser et al, 2013; Owen et al,2013; Reypens et al, 2016).

Social innovation
Studies in the field of social innovation have engaged quite extensively withthe role of co-​creative platforms for societal and organizational renewal (cf.
Haxeltine et al, 2017; Howaldt et al, 2018). Social innovation refers, on a
general level, to the development of new solutions to societal challenges,that intend to improve people’s lives in regard to health, education,
employment, housing, environment or other issues (Moulaert et al, 2013;
Nicholls et al, 2015). It can, for example, take the form of a new method
for matching unemployed youth or immigrants with potential employers,
a new service for health care provision in rural areas, or a new alliance of
citizens and professionals for building affordable housing. Social innovation
aspires specifically to life improvement among those who are disadvantaged
in regard to these issues due to age, origin, disability, gender, place or otherfactors. Empowerment and social inclusion are thus recurrent ambitions insocial innovation.
In order to match the complexity of the addressed challenges, social
innovation often engage stakeholders from various societal sectors,organizations and communities (Howaldt et al, 2018). It commonly involves
those citizens who are negatively affected by the addressed challenge andwhose lives may be improved by new solutions. Organizations from thecivil society are also frequently involved, based on their established roles asvoice-​bearers for disadvantaged groups of people and advocacy actors for
citizen interests. Municipalities, governmental agencies and other publicauthorities are also recurrently involved, based on their formal responsibilities
for providing policies and services related to the addressed issues. Commercial
businesses may be involved to some extent, based on their provision of
products, services and employment in relation to the issues in question.
Researchers, students and other academic professionals are least involved,
since citizens or other stakeholders tend to replace traditional experts insocial innovation.
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In social innovation, these stakeholders are engaged in joint identification,
exploration and solution of societal and organizational challenges (Moulaert
et al, 2013; Nicholls et al, 2015). This broad engagement intends to achievea better understanding of the underlying causations of the challenge inquestion, and to develop holistic and apt solutions for this challenge.
This helps, in turn, to achieve structural transformation, in the sense thatexisting understandings, solutions and institutions are challenged, changed
or replaced, on the individual, organizational and societal levels. Studies
show that such transformation is achieved through a complex interaction
between the societal institutions that set the rules of the game –​such aspolitics, regulations, resources, organizational models, roles and norms –​and the societal actors trying to change these institutions (Haxeltine et al,
2017; Westley et al, 2017). This generally takes a much longer time thanallowed for in time-​limited projects, making long-​term commitment andalliances among stakeholders crucial for achieving societal transformation
through social innovation (Edvik and Björk, 2016). Such alliances also
require successful mediation of conflicting interests among the involved
actors (Howaldt et al, 2018).

Gendered social innovation
The cited research on co-​creative platforms for social innovation servesin this chapter as a springboard for advancing our knowledge on how thesocietal impact and the societal relevance of research on gender issues may
be reinforced by such platforms. This chapter thereby contributes to theresearch stream of gender in regional innovation systems that investigates
gender-​related patterns and dynamics in platforms for industrial innovationin Scandinavian countries. Research in this area shows that a delimited rangeof actors, industries and innovations are usually involved in these forums,
with a distinct gendered pattern of segregation and hierarchy between
women and men (Andersson et al, 2012). The segregation is perceivable inthe male dominance of the networks, companies, industries and professions
that are most often involved in the studied innovation systems. A genderedhierarchy is perceivable in the higher value and relevance ascribed to male-​dominated settings and competences, as well as to technological innovation,in the platforms.
As a consequence, women are under-​represented in these innovation
systems, in the sense that the industries and sectors that employ most
women –​such as services industries and the public sector –​as well as thetypes of innovations most common in these industries –​such as service
innovations and social innovations –​are marginalized (Andersson et al,2012). This means that power and resources are often unevenly distributed
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gendered patterns in innovation systems may be challenged and changedby acknowledging and involving a broader spectrum of actors, industries
and innovations in these forums (Alsos et al, 2016). It is argued that such achallenge would improve the ability of these platforms to address complex
societal and organizational concerns, which require both technological andsocial innovativeness.
Based on the combined insights from studies on gender in innovationand social innovation, the concept of ‘gendered social innovation’ has been
elaborated in order to enhance the knowledge development regarding
gendered transformation in innovation systems (Lindberg et al, 2015;
Lindberg and Berglund, 2016). It refers to the identification of genderinequality as a societal and organizational challenge in regard to specificareas such as employment, education or entrepreneurship, as a basis fordeveloping innovative solutions that counteract segregating and hierarchicalpatterns of gender in these areas. It thus helps pinpoint and analyze initiatives
and mechanisms for the innovative transformation of gendered structuresin organizations and society.

Research design
The research design consists of a comparative case study of two co-​creative
platforms for academia-​society cooperation in Sweden: The Gender
Academy and Gender Contact Point. These are rewarding to study since they
provide valuable insights into the role of co-​creative platforms for enforcing
the societal impact and the societal relevance of research on gender issues.
The primary criterion for the selection of these cases is thus relevance,
rather than randomness, in line with recommendations for comparative
case studies (cf. Yin, 2009; Wiebe et al, 2010). The relevance of these
Swedish cases is based on their potential to add to the existing research on
gender in regional innovation systems (cf. Andersson et al, 2012; Alsos et al,2016). The comparative case study design makes it possible to gain in-​depth
insights into each case, while also distinguishing multi-​faceted patterns ofsimilarities and differences between them. This has helped identify similarities
and differences regarding the platforms’ aims, organization, strategies andchallenges described in the subsequent parts of this chapter.
The in-​depth and multi-​faceted data from the case studies were enhanced
by a participatory research approach, where researchers and stakeholders
jointly investigated the topic in question (cf. Aagaard Nielsen and Svensson,2006). This approach is inherent in the platforms, due to their purposeof enabling joint development of new knowledge and measures throughacademia-​society cooperation. Continuous interaction between researchersand stakeholders, described further later, has, consequently, taken placethroughout the entire process from the initial identification of relevant topics
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to study, to the planning and execution of activities, the processing of thedata and the presentation of the results. Literature on participatory research
conveys that this approach helps achieve new knowledge and measures thatare both scientifically and practically relevant and valid, through continuousreconciliation of expert and stakeholder views (Gunnarsson et al, 2015). In
order to enhance this further, the project managers of Gender Contact Point
and The Gender Academy were involved as co-​authors of this chapter. The
processing of the data was reconciled both with the project managers’ own
experiences and expertise, as well as with their insights into the stakeholders’views from their interactions with them.
The data collection for the study discussed here was carried out during
a three-​year period, 2018–​20, through a combination of participatory
observations of platform activities, individual and group interviews with theresearchers, facilitators and stakeholders involved in the platforms, as wellas document analyses of project plans, external communication, internal
meeting minutes and the digital tools developed in the platforms. In The
Gender Academy, participatory observations were carried out at ten regularmeetings of the university’s project team, documented in field notes. Eighteensemi-​structured qualitative interviews with individual researchers, facilitatorsand companies were conducted, documented in field notes. In addition,
two workshops were carried out with the university’s project team, where
the planning and progress of the platform were discussed for the sake of thisstudy, documented in field notes. In Gender Contact Point, participatory
observations were carried out at 17 regular meetings of the university’s
project team, documented in field notes. Participatory observations were
thereto carried out at three of the platform’s workshops with researchers andstakeholders, and documented in field notes. In addition, one joint workshop
was carried out with the project teams from both platforms, where theirorganization, management, stakeholder engagement, challenges and results
were discussed and compared for the purposes of this study. These were
documented in a transcribed recording. The collected data were analyzed
by means of a thematic analysis approach, where the character and variationsof the studied cases were distinguished regarding their aims, organization,
strategies and challenges (cf. Guest et al, 2012).
No ethics approval was required for this study, since it did not concern
any of the application areas regulated in the Swedish Law of Ethical
Review (2003: 460). It did, however, require some ethical considerations,as individuals were continuously involved in the research process, throughmeetings, interviews and participatory observations. In this, the study was
guided by the ethical guidelines provided by The Swedish Research Council(Vetenskapsrådet, 2017) as well as the extensive discussion on research ethics
in the literature on the applied participatory research approach (cf. Aagaard
Nielsen and Svensson, 2006). Informed consent was, for example, applied
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

in that the participants were verbally informed about the aim, methods
and voluntary participation in the study. They were also informed that
their participation would be anonymized in the results dissemination. The
participatory approach thereto implied that the participants were given
regular opportunities to take part in and discuss the preliminary results ofthe study.

The Gender Academy
Aim and organization
The Gender Academy1 was initiated in 2016 by Karlstad University –​situated in the region of Värmland in central Sweden –​in order to createa permanent platform for university-​society cooperation on knowledge-​
based gender equality practices. The platform is part of the Centre for
Gender Studies at Karlstad University and their research profile Action
for Organisational Change. It is also part of a regional declaration of
intent for university-​society cooperation on smart specialization, signedby the university and the regional county council. The establishment of
the platform was preceded by several individual projects on similar topics,
involving university researchers, industrial companies and public authorities.
During 2017–​20, it was managed by the university as part of an ERDF-​
funded project that aimed to improve the competitive advantage, innovation
capacity and gender equality among small and medium-​sized companies(SMEs) through knowledge-​based gender equality practices. The projectplan stated that this would be achieved through joint learning by university
researchers and company representatives, where they jointly manage genderequality measures in the companies, workshops with all companies formutual learning, as well as the development of a digital tool for guiding
gender equality measures in SMEs.
The Gender Academy involved managers and employees from eightcompanies, as well as representatives from the county council and businesspromoters in the region. The participating companies are mainly small andmedium-​sized, producing products and services primarily in male-​dominatedindustries such as ICT, transports, steels and foods, except for one company
that operates in the female-​dominated wellness industry. The main incentive
for the companies to engage with The Gender Academy was, according to
the project plan and interviews with four of them, to gain access to usefulknowledge and practical measures for improving their competitiveness andattractiveness through a more diverse workforce, a better work environmentand by better meeting market demands. As SMEs, they have limited internal
resources –​in the form of expertise, staff and funding –​to manage genderequality measures on their own and are thus in need of external support
and practical tools for guidance.
162

SOCIETAL IMPACT OF RESEARCH ON GENDER ISSUESThe Gender Academy was managed by a project team from the university,with researchers and facilitators with expertise in gender and gender equality
practices. One of the researchers was also the project manager. Their main
incentive to engage in The Gender Academy was, according to interviews
with them and participatory observations of their meetings, to develop new
knowledge on the preconditions and potentials among industrial SMEs inregard to gendered patterns and gendered transformation. The university’s
team met regularly in order to plan and evaluate the project activities.
For each of the involved companies, one researcher and one facilitator
partnered up to support their process. The university’s team conductedsurveys, interviews and participatory observations at the companies to map
their initial and evolving situation in regard to gendered patterns. They also
arranged workshops with each company, in order to present and discuss theongoing results with managers and employees, as well as workshops where
all companies partake to exchange experiences and be inspired by invited
expert speakers. The university’s team also managed the development of thedigital tool for guiding gender equality measures in SMEs.

Strategies and challenges
The limited internal resources among SMEs make it difficult for them toprioritize time-​consuming development processes. This has complicatedthe recruitment and participation of companies in The Gender Academy,
according to the interviews with the project team and the companies.
Extensive dialogues between the university’s team and company managements
have often been required to seal the deal. Since the companies differ in size,
industry and operations, which implies varying needs and preconditions, it
has been fruitful to identify each company’s specific needs and to tailor theprocess accordingly. The applied measures in The Gender Academy such as
surveys, interviews, observations and workshops, have consequently beencustomized to each company. The use of surveys has proven difficult in thesmallest companies, since the anonymity among the few employees is likely
to be compromised. For this reason alternative measures have been used
there, such as ‘norm tours’ where employees and the university’s team jointly
identified gendered norms in various parts of their workplaces.
The companies’ differences have also restricted their benefits of exchanging
experiences at the joint workshops and complicated the compilation andcommunication of results from The Gender Academy, according to theinterviews with the project team and participatory observations of their
meetings. The results have nevertheless formed the basis for developing a
digital tool –​named iGen2 –​that guides gender equality measures in various
types of SMEs and other organizations. The tool presents knowledge,measures and examples in an inspiring and interactive manner. It was163

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

developed in cooperation with a professional communication agency,
specialized in digital formats. It was also informed by professionals withpersonal experiences of developing similar tools. In relation to otherdigital tools for guiding gender equality measures, the project’s own tool
was perceived to offer added value by combining a solid knowledge-​basein research on gender issues and a tailored design to meet the needs andprerequisites of SMEs with limited internal resources.
A continuous challenge has been to advance the joint process because ofrecurrent changes in the stakeholders’ ability and willingness to prioritize
participation due to personnel turnover, re-​organization, ownership transfer
and market fluctuation, according to interviews with the project team andthe companies. The joint process has been further hampered by persistent
resistance towards advancements among some stakeholder participants,
expressed either as outright discredit of the applied measures and anticipatedresults or implicit refusal to scrutinize their operations or implement planned
measures. Some managers have, for example, reacted with disbelief when
receiving the results from surveys conducted among their employees. Others
have restricted the university team’s access to certain parts of their everyday
operations. Some initially expressed a positive and progressive approach togender equality in their companies, while preserving the status quo in practiceby prioritizing their everyday business. These challenges have been addressedby further tailoring the activities and interactions to the stakeholders’ needs
and preconditions, with varying degree of success.

Gender Contact Point
Aim and organization
Gender Contact Point3 was initiated in 2014 by Luleå University ofTechnology –​situated in the region of Norrbotten in northern Sweden –​in order to create a permanent platform for university-​society cooperation
on knowledge-​based gender equality practices. The platform is part of analliance of several departments at Luleå University of Technology. The
establishment of the platform was preceded by several individual projects on
similar topics, involving university researchers, industrial companies, publicauthorities and other stakeholders. During 2018–​20, it was managed by theuniversity as part of an ERDF-​funded project called Gender Smart Arena4
that aimed at smart, sustainable and inclusive growth through gender-​equalbusiness models in SMEs and other organizations. This was to be achieved
through joint learning by researchers, companies and municipalities in theform of workshops where a framework for gender-​equal business models is
jointly developed. The framework formed the basis for the development ofa digital tool for guiding gender equality measures in industrial SMEs andother organizations.
164

SOCIETAL IMPACT OF RESEARCH ON GENDER ISSUESThe Gender Smart Arena project involved managers and employees
from six companies and three municipalities in the regions of Norrbotten
and Västerbotten. The companies were mainly small and medium-​sized,
producing products and services in the male-​dominated ICT industry.
The main incentive for the companies and municipalities to engage in the
project was, according to the project plan and participatory observationsof the workshops, to access useful knowledge and practical measures for
improving their competitiveness and attractiveness through being a gender-​equal organization with gender-​equal operations. Most of the companies had
pre-​established relations with the university in ICT innovation development
but not with the university’s researchers in gender studies. As SMEs, theyalso had limited internal resources for managing gender equality measures on
their own. The municipalities lacked, in their turn, structures for continuous
cooperation with the university on the topic of gender equality.
Gender Smart Arena was managed by a project team from the university,with a project manager and researchers with expertise in gender and genderequality practices in relation to relevant fields, such as business models,design, ethics, entrepreneurship, innovation and ICT. Their main incentive
to engage in the project was, according to the project plan and participatory
observations of their meetings, to develop new knowledge on genderedpatterns and gendered transformation among SMEs and other organizations.
The university’s team met regularly in order to plan and evaluate theproject activities. They arranged workshops with participants from the ICT
companies and municipalities involved, as well as open seminars with abroader range of stakeholders, which involved inspirational talks by invited
speakers as well as presentations and discussions of preliminary project results.
The university’s team also managed the development of the digital tool for
guiding gender equality measures.

Strategies and challenges
Gender Smart Arena was preceded by another ERDF-​funded project, where
ICT companies and researchers jointly translated research results into practical
tools for guiding gender equality measures. This resulted in a tool for gender-​equal recruitment and a perceived potential to develop a practically usefulframework for gender-​equal business models, and motivated the initiationof the Gender Smart Arena project. In the latter project researchers andstakeholders jointly developed such a framework, which helps to analyze andadvance the stakeholders’ regular operations from a gender perspective. Thismeans that specific activities and areas in their operations and organizations
are pinpointed where gendered patterns are formed and reinforced. The
stakeholders found that this makes it easier for them to identify manageable
issues to address in their everyday work, instead of being overwhelmed by
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

the comprehensiveness of the gender equality agenda. It also helps themto scrutinize and reform their established ways of thinking and doing, in amanner that improves the quality of their everyday work.
In order to make practical use of the framework, a digital tool –​named
Richer Business5 –​was developed as part of the project. The tool helps guide
gender equality measures in SMEs and other organizations by presenting a
number of practical scenarios of gender inequality in various parts of theorganization, as well as reflective queries for relating each scenario to theuser’s own organization. It also provides links to measures, examples andliterature related to each scenario. The tool was developed in cooperation
with a professional communication agency, specialized in digital formats
with a gender equality perspective. It differs from pre-​existing tools in that
it offers a solid academic knowledge base and a design that matches theneeds and preconditions of SMEs and other organizations with limited
internal resources.
A continuous challenge has been to schedule joint meetings and workshops,
due to calendar mismatches and the participants’ prioritization of regular
operations, according to participatory observations of team meetings andstakeholder workshops. This has postponed several planned activities, whichmeans that the joint process has been slower and less participatory than
anticipated. The participation has been further delimited by difficulties toengage men and women to an equal extent, resulting in a female-​dominatedrepresentation from both the stakeholders and the university. This challenge
has been addressed by initiating cooperation with other industrial networks
and projects, where more men are involved. Another challenge has been
to reconcile the stakeholders’ main interest in improved competitivenessand attractiveness and the researchers’ main interest in improved insights
into gendered patterns and practices. When meeting, the participants havenevertheless appreciated the mutual exchange of knowledge and experiences,engendering continuous insights that they can apply in their everyday work.
In order to further extend this exchange, knowledge exchange and results
dissemination to a wider national and international audience has beenprioritized by the university’s team.

Analysis
Co-​creative forms and forums
Gender Contact Point and The Gender Academy share the ambition
to establish permanent platforms for academia-​society cooperation
on knowledge-​based gender equality practices, primarily in industrial
companies. Their involvement of researchers from the university as well as
managers and employees from companies and public organizations aligns
with the multi-​actor and multi-​level mobilization of various societal sectors,
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SOCIETAL IMPACT OF RESEARCH ON GENDER ISSUES

organizations and communities that is a key component of co-​creative
platforms (cf. Mauser et al, 2013; Owen et al, 2013; Reypens et al, 2016).
Their social configuration is also similar to other such platforms, witha variety of co-​creative measures for jointly identifying, exploring andsolving organizational and societal challenges. Another similarity is thatthe platform activities have ambulated between different locations, while
the platforms themselves have been formally located at the universities. The
physical configuration has not been a prominent feature of the platforms’
co-​creation, however, in contrast with similar platforms where open areas,
flexible furnishing and art materials are used to enhance creativity andinteraction. In regard to their organizational forms, the platforms have been
established and managed based on several individual, time-​limited projects
that have served as a springboard for joint networks, events and labs (called
workshops) that are common forms for co-​creative platforms (cf. Dutilleul
et al, 2010; Beunen et al, 2012; Mauser et al, 2013; Nevens et al, 2013;
Owen et al, 2013; Baraldi et al, 2016; Reypens et al, 2016).
Gender Contact Point and The Gender Academy also share similarities
with the co-​creative forums and forms highlighted in studies of social
innovation, where new solutions to societal and organizational challenges
are developed through and for social inclusion (cf. Moulaert et al, 2013;
Nicholls et al, 2015). Since the social inclusion in the platforms regards
gender-​focussed processes in regional networks of stakeholders, it is alsosimilar to previous research on gender in regional innovation systems (cf.
Andersson et al, 2012; Alsos et al, 2016). And since the platforms aim at
improved knowledge and practices on gender equality, they also reflect
previous research on ‘gendered social innovation’ (cf. Lindberg et al,2015; Lindberg and Berglund, 2016). Specific forms of social innovation,
perceivable in The Gender Academy and Gender Contact Point, are newcooperations in terms of researcher and stakeholder networks, new processes
in terms of the joint development of new knowledge and measures, newmethods in terms of knowledge-​based gender equality measures, as well as
new services in terms of digital tools for guiding gender equality measures(cf. Moulaert et al, 2013; Nicholls et al, 2015).

Mediating interests
In contrast to the most common co-​creative constellations in social
innovation –​ that include civil society organizations and publicauthorities –​The Gender Academy and Gender Contact Point primarily
involve universities and companies, and to some extent local and regional
authorities (cf. Howaldt et al, 2018). The platforms nevertheless differ fromeach other in their stakeholder involvement, since Gender Contact Point
involves the public sector actors more actively and The Gender Academy
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

involves the companies more in-​depth. Mediation of conflicting interests
among the involved actors has been required in both platforms, as is common
in social innovation (Howaldt et al, 2018). This has primarily concerned thestakeholders’ interest of gaining access to useful knowledge and measures
for improving their competitiveness and attractiveness through gender-​equal operations and organizations, on the one hand, and the researchers’interest of gaining access to useful data and critically reflecting on thepreconditions and potentials among the stakeholders in regard to genderedpatterns and gendered transformation, on the other. These differences in theprioritization of practical or theoretical advancement manifested themselvesin various ways, for example in mismatching calendar priorities, stakeholders’prioritization of regular operations and their resistance towards the applied
measures and anticipated results.
These conflicting interests were mediated in Gender Contact Point and
The Gender Academy by framing the academic scrutiny of the stakeholders’preconditions and potentials as a way to help improve the soundness andeffectiveness of the applied measures for gender equality, and thus improve
the stakeholders’ competitiveness and attractiveness. The need among
stakeholders for external support and practical tools to guide their genderequality measures –​especially among SMEs due to their limited internal
resources –​may have enhanced the mediation. The digital tools, developedin both The Gender Academy and Gender Contact Point, manifest thismediation by compiling and communicating the developed knowledge,measures and examples in a manner that is easily accessible and useful for
SMEs and other organizations. This mediation reflects the participatory
research approach applied in both platforms, which emphasizes the mutual
reinforcement of societal impact and societal relevance of science andinnovation, here in the form of research on knowledge-​based gender equality
measures (cf. Aagaard Nielsen and Svensson, 2006; Gunnarsson et al, 2015).

Societal impact and relevance of research on gender issues
Gender Contact Point and The Gender Academy both aspire to improve
the societal impact and the societal relevance of science and innovation,by establishing permanent platforms for university-​society cooperation
on knowledge-​based gender equality practices. Previous studies of social
innovation help distinguish the platforms’ potentials and challenges forstructural transformation in organizations and society (cf. Haxeltine et al,
2017; Westley et al, 2017). The joint development of new knowledge andmeasures in the platforms, through co-​creative forms and forums, has thepotential to challenge, change or replace existing understandings, solutions
and institutions among the involved actors, in line with previous findings on
how to achieve structural transformation (cf. Haxeltine et al, 2017; Westley
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SOCIETAL IMPACT OF RESEARCH ON GENDER ISSUES

et al, 2017). This is most evidently achieved through the joint managementof gender equality measures by researchers and stakeholders in The Gender
Academy and the joint development of a framework for gender-​equalbusiness models by researchers and stakeholders in Gender Contact Point.
It may be further reinforced by the development of digital tools in both
platforms, in order to guide knowledge-​based gender equality measures inindustrial SMEs and other types of organizations.
The transformative potential of The Gender Academy and GenderContact Point share similarities with the previously discussed potential ofgendered transformation in regional innovation systems (cf. Andersson
et al, 2012; Alsos et al, 2016). The similarities primarily regard the potential
to expand the range of actors, industries and innovations involved in co-​creative platforms for societal impact and societal relevance of science andinnovation, in a way that challenges, changes or replaces prevalent genderedpatterns of segregation and hierarchy between women and men. There arealso similarities with the previously highlighted potential of ‘gendered social
innovation’ to develop innovative solutions that counteract segregating andhierarchical patterns of gender in various areas (cf. Lindberg et al, 2015;
Lindberg and Berglund, 2016). The realization of these transformative
potentials of Gender Contact Point and The Gender Academy is, according
to studies of social innovation, dependent on simultaneous changes on
the individual, organizational and societal levels (cf. Haxeltine et al, 2017;
Westley et al, 2017).
On the individual level, transformative potential in The Gender
Academy and Gender Contact Point might be distinguished in the form of
increased use of academic knowledge on gendered patterns and genderedtransformation among stakeholder employees, on the one hand, and increased
know-​how among researchers on how to collect, compile and communicate
insights on these patterns and potentials, on the other. On the organizational
level, a similar potential might be distinguished in the form of long-​term
commitment among the universities, companies and public authorities topromote and participate in the platforms and their co-​creative processes,
as well as improved gender equality in the stakeholders’ organizations as aresult of their participation. On the societal level, such potential might bedistinguished in the form of an improved ability of these and other regionalinnovation systems to address complex societal and organizational challenges,
by reinforcing the societal impact and the societal relevance of researchon gender issues. There are, however, currently no plans for continued
measurement of the platforms’ long-​term impact on these levels.
These multi-​level potentials of Gender Contact Point and The Gender
Academy are, in the light of social innovation studies, determined by complex
interactions between the societal institutions that frame and regulate forms
and forums for societal impact and relevance of science and innovation,
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

and the societal actors trying to change these institutions (cf. Haxeltine
et al, 2017; Westley et al, 2017). The time-​limited project format used
for developing and establishing the platforms contrasts, for example, withthe extensive time required to achieve structural transformation in social
innovation, according to previous studies (cf. Edvik and Björk, 2016). Evenif both The Gender Academy and Gender Contact Point have hitherto
succeeded in financing a string of individual projects on similar topics, theirambition to establish permanent platforms for university-​society cooperation
may require more resilient forms and forums in order to ensure long-​term
commitment and stakeholder alliances. This might be enhanced by theexisting alliance between several university departments in Gender Contact
Point and the regional declaration for university-​society cooperation in The
Gender Academy.
Taken together, the comparative case study of The Gender Academy andGender Contact Point presented in this chapter shows that they largely
align with the tradition of co-​creation in the design field and other fields,
where new insights and solutions are jointly developed by experts, users andother stakeholders for innovative transformation of gendered structures inorganizations and society (cf. Sanders and Stappers, 2008). By establishingco-​creative platforms, they have the potential to reinforce the societal impact
and the societal relevance of research on gender issues, based on their similar
and different aims, organization, strategies and challenges. This is in linewith the highlighted trend of using such platforms to improve the societal
impact and relevance of science and innovation in general (cf. Mauser et al,2013; Owen et al, 2013; Reypens et al, 2016).
Acknowledgements
The research presented in this chapter was funded by The European
Regional Development Fund and the subject of Design at Luleå Universityof Technology, Sweden.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5

www.kau.se/​genusakademinwww.kau.se/​genusakademinwww.ltu.se/​centres/​cdt/​Gender-​Contact-​Point
www.ltu.se/c​ entres/​cdt/​Gender-​Contact-​Point/​Projekt/​Gender-​Smart-​Arena-​1.183822
https://​r icherbusiness.eu/​

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11

The Discourse of Rurality
in Women’s Professional-​life
Narratives: Gender and ICTin Rural Norway
Hilde G. Corneliussen, Gilda Seddighi and Carol Azungi Dralega

Introduction
This chapter explores how women experience ICT work in a particular ruralcontext in Norway. While the global trend of digitalization is recognized asa driver for transforming working life and for supporting the developmentof more competitive economies, women are still under-​represented in ICT
education and work in Europe and in Norway (Eurostat, 2019; Barbieri et al,2020). Women in ICT work more than women in many other occupations(EIGE, 2018), reflecting a feeling of pressure to submit to a ‘greedy’ male-​dominated work culture of long hours (Watts, 2009). Similar tendencies havebeen found in Norway; women in ICT work full-​time or more, depending oncare responsibilities and support from partners (Seddighi and Corneliussen,
2021; see Chapter 9, this volume). While national gender equality norms
and regulations are widely recognized and accepted, initiatives to achieve
gender equality are left to each employer and organization, making theresulting gender structures of ICT highly dependent on the organizational
culture (Corneliussen and Seddighi, 2020) and local enactments of gender(Pristed Nielsen et al, 2020: 14). Here we add another factor to the analysis
of women’s experiences in ICT work: rurality.
Rural communities have frequently been associated with traditional andconservative gender norms, as opposed to progressive urban areas (Little,
2002). The often static image of the rural emanating from these polarized
narratives contributes to a notion of gender as universal and stable in rural
areas (Little, 2014). Gender relations and gender roles are, however, constantly
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

negotiated and changing, including in rural communities (Pristed Nielsen
et al, 2020). Although details of ‘rurality’ include different features globally,
the rural region in focus here, western Norway, shares some general featuresof western rural communities such as low density in population, small
settlements and long internal regional distances. The region is recognized
for its impressive alpine outdoor opportunities, but also for a typical ruralorganizational thinness with few and small private businesses, however, withthe public sector as a major player as the largest employer in Norway (Larsen
and Nesse, 2017). Although the region does not score very highly in termsof research and innovation, the development of ICT services and the ICT
industry has been extensive; ICT workplaces have quadrupled since 2000
(Vareide et al, 2019: 12).
Within this context we explore how experiences of rurality are entangled
in the professional-​life narratives of 25 women working in ICT in thisregion. The analysis is based on a notion of gender as a social constructionand entangled with ICT, work and rurality, combined with a perspectiveemphasizing the importance of material as well as immaterial factors forunderstanding development in rural regions (Bryden and Hart, 2004; Pristed
Nielsen et al, 2020).

Literature review
Rurality has often been described in dualistic terms, associated with astrong gender divide in primary industries (Brandth, 2016) and traditionaland ‘patriarchal’ gender norms (Forsberg, 2001), different from urban
communities associated with more progressive gender norms (Pristed Nielsen
et al, 2020). Rurality is, however, not a uniform concept, and diversificationof livelihoods can be found in advanced rural regions (Vidickienė, 2017).
Large geographic areas with low population density characterize Norway,
Sweden and Finland as different from other European countries (NOU,
2020: 15). ICT and digitalization are considered important catalysts forinnovation and economic growth in such regions, often tied to an assumptionthat increased use of ICT will reduce the significance of geography (Grip,
2020). Rural regions in Norway have high out-​migration (Heleniak andGassen, 2020) reflecting the ‘mobility imperative for rural youth’ (Farrugia,
2016: 836): young people’s rural to urban migration in search of education
and work opportunities (Pristed Nielsen et al, 2020). In some places, young
women leave at a higher rate than men. Although this might suggest that a
predominance of traditional, male-​dominated workplaces makes the rurallabour market challenging for young women, it has also been interpreted asreflecting the higher educational ambition of women (Pristed Nielsen et al,2020). Women’s higher out-​migration from rural regions has also been seen
as an escape from a society characterized by a traditional gender contract
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GENDER AND ICT IN RURAL NORWAY(Forsberg, 2001), different from an urban ‘modern gender contract’ of moregender-​equal practices in labour and politics (Grimsrud, 2011: 6). Gender
patterns of working life affect in-​migration too (Walsh and Gerrard, 2018),
for instance making it less likely for women and men with a gender atypicaleducation to return to rural regions (Haley, 2018). Mobility both in andout of rural regions can, however, represent a kind of empowerment: theability to pursue interesting work opportunities (Hanson, 2010). As wewill show here, the increase of ICT workplaces in the region of our study
has provided opportunities for women to find less traditional work when
deciding to return to the region.
An important aspect for understanding rural communities is the senseof belonging as ‘place-​belongingness’, reflecting a ‘personal, intimate,feeling of being “at home” in a place’ (Antonsich, 2010: 645). ‘Being
rooted’ in and feeling belonging for a place has been associated withempowerment because it gives access to social resources and networks(Pristed Nielsen et al, 2020: 18). This points to the importance of not
only looking at labour and economic activities when studying women’s
experience of ICT work in a rural region, but also being aware of how
other factors affect their work experience (Bryden and Hart, 2004; Pristed
Nielsen et al, 2020).
Rurality is not only perceived as an opposite to urbanity, but also entails
internal contradictions. Cruickshank et al suggest that there has been acompetition between ‘rural values as intrinsic’, emphasizing the value of
traditional rural culture, and the rural as an important site for national
economic growth (2009: 73). The latter discourse has gained importancewith intensified globalization and the growth of neoliberalism (Cruickshanket al, 2009), evident for instance in the increase of ICT workplaces in therural region analyzed here (Vareide et al, 2019). The discourse of rural values
includes images of rurality as idyllic, often associated with nature and family
values. The assumptions that rural areas are a good place for children togrow up in (Grimsrud, 2011) and that living in the countryside produces
a better quality of life have made in-​migration into rural areas a life phasestrategy related to expanding families (Villa, 2000). For some, nature as a
prized asset has transformed rural ‘remoteness’ from being seen as a weakness
to making its ‘outstanding environmental quality’ increase its attractiveness(Vidickienė, 2017: 176). Rural nature has, however, also been described asa masculine domain rooted in traditional gender structures, handled by men
with large machines (Little and Panelli, 2003).
Research in Nordic rural areas indicates that local gender arrangements
are affected by rural conditions: they are ‘contingent upon and evolve frompractices in space and place’ (Pristed Nielsen et al, 2020: 15). However,different from assumptions of static gender patterns in rural areas, Pristed
Nielsen et al reject the idea of a sharp dichotomy of gender roles as expressed
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

in a traditional rural vs. a progressive urban version. Rather, they find many
coexisting varieties of femininities and masculinities in their studies of remotecommunities in the Nordic countries (Pristed Nielsen et al, 2020). Making
space for such diversity is vital for the success of the European policy goal of
making rural regions attractive for women, as young women’s higher out-​
migration rate threatens rural regions’ viability and sustainability (Shortall
and Bock, 2015). Our study adds important insights to this literature byanalyzing the entanglements of the global trend of digitalization with thelocally enacted structures of gendered working and living in a rural regionof western Norway.

Theoretical framework
An underlying premise for this study is that social development, includingof the gender structures of work and family life in rural regions, can beunderstood as changeable rather than fixed (Little, 2014; Pristed Nielsen
et al, 2020). Our analysis builds on Bryden and Hart’s (2004) theory
emphasizing that the dynamics in rural regions rely not only on economic
relations, but on a wider spectrum of material as well as immaterial andintangible factors such as traditions, values, beliefs, attitudes and more.
The rural itself has been identified as an actor adding meaning to life
in such regions, for instance through ‘place-​belongingness’ (Antonsich,2010: 645). In contrast to perspectives suggesting that the rural produces
a specific social order including in gender relations (Forsberg, 2001),
our analysis takes as a starting point that gender is a co-​construction ofwork and rurality. Gender is developed in social situations and culturalcontexts (West and Zimmerman, 1987) and is, for instance, reflected in
the Norwegian labour market through horizontal and vertical gendersegregation (Statistics Norway, 2018). These gender patterns of work areparticularly notable in fields of ICT. However, when ICT work appears
in new contexts, like new workplaces developed through increased
digitalization in rural regions, this might also affect the gendering of
ICT work. Our theoretical framework therefore aims to explore how
the rural setting enters into women’s experiences of working in ICT ina rural context. In previous studies we have shown that national gendernorms promoting gender equality are widely accepted in the region(Corneliussen and Seddighi, 2020), but also that local enactments of gender
represented by women working in ICT rely on employers’ attitudes andprivate resources such as supportive partners and family, as much as family-​
friendly policies (Seddighi and Corneliussen, 2021; see Chapter 9 in thisvolume). Our analysis thus aims to identify how gender, ICT work andrurality are entangled and co-​constructed as they structure the meaningof the women’s work experiences.
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GENDER AND ICT IN RURAL NORWAY

Methodology
Interviews
The sample in this chapter consists of 25 women aged 24 to 59 who worked
and lived in the rural region of western Norway at the time of the interviews
in 2017–​18. The women were recruited through research and innovation
institutions and funders, ICT companies, and networks for women working
with technology. About half the group had a university degree in computing.
The others had degrees in non-​technological disciplines, including fields
such as social science, health care, law and economics. However, they
worked with ICT and digialization. Some of the women in this latter group
had also returned to university for a course or degree in ICT, while others
had received formal or informal training in ICT through their work (seeChapter 4, this volume). Their workplaces were spread across the public
and private sector, reflecting the global trend towards digitalization that isincreasing the need for ICT experts far beyond traditional ICT industries(Ekeland et al, 2015). Their jobs included tasks ranging from hands-​on
programming to designing, building and implementing new technology.
The women’s different relations to the region affected their experiences,as 16 of the women grew up in the region, three came from other parts of
Norway, while six had an immigrant background.
The individual interviews lasted approximately one hour and followed aprofessional-​life history perspective, including questions about education andoccupational history as well as an invitation to reflect more widely (Kvale
and Brinkmann, 2009) on experiences related to ICT work, family lifeand rural living. All informants were anonymized and are identified with acapital letter from A to J following direct quotes. The study was approvedby the Norwegian Centre for Research Data.

Analytical methods
The interview transcripts were initially analyzed using a grounded theory
approach in order to allow for new perspectives to emerge (Strauss andCorbin, 1998). After reading and coding the transcripts, codes wereextracted and organized in groups before categories were developed
through writing memos, following Charmaz’s guidelines (2006). Categories
that were further developed for this chapter include the ‘moving back’-​storyline and ‘our people’, pointing to a ‘place-​belongingness’, andthe ‘rural idyllic’ images of nature and quality of life. We also draw on
Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory and their notion of meaning
understood as a social process. Discourses consist of a web of signs that areplaced into a specific relation to other signs and thereby create meaning(Winther Jørgensen and Phillips, 1999). In addition to ICT and gender
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discourses expounded in the theoretical framework, the analysis explores
how narratives of the rural as a place of living and working involve several
signs that together and through their specific constellations constructdiscourses about rurality.

Rurality in women’s experiences of ICT work
The rural region of western Norway has developed beyond traditional
rural economic activities, visible in the notable growth in the ICT industry(Vareide et al, 2019). We start by exploring the types of ICT workplaces thewomen found and the characteristics of working life in the region, before
exploring ‘place-​belongingness’ (Antonsich, 2010) and ‘idyllic rurality’(Little, 2014).

Gendering of ICT work
Nearly half the women had been working in a city before deciding to moveback home to the rural region. Many of the women had been looking for
appropriate jobs for a while, indicating a shortage of ICT jobs relevant tothem in the region. One of them had nearly given up hope: “I was thinking
that ‘well, then I just have to settle for a position in IT operations’, give
authorization, add new users, update Windows, and stuff like that, right.
Which is a very important job as well, but you don’t need a degree in civilengineering to do that” (F). Finally she had found a job in the region ina non-​tech company expanding its ICT department to keep up with therequirements for digitalizing their services. This trend was notable for all
the women in our sample, suggesting that the ongoing digitalization acrosssectors has opened up a particular type of ICT work opportunity that attracts
women. This contributes to a new gendering of ICT work: first, the nine
women in academic positions did not work in ICT departments, but rather
in other and less male-​dominated disciplines. Second, the public sector isa female-​dominated workplace in Norway (Statistics Norway, 2018). The
six women working with ICT in the public sector described their work
experience as combining ICT as a masculine field with more gender-​equal,
even female-​dominated, work environments such as health care services.
Third, the rest of the group worked in the private sector, but none of themhad positions as ICT experts in a private ICT company. Instead, they had
found ICT jobs in organizations where ICT was secondary, but increasingly
important due to the digitalization of systems, services and work processes.
This suggests that increased digitalization opens up new opportunities forworking with ICT in less male-​dominated workplaces, and in organizations
and industries where ICT expertise is not already occupied by men or
images of masculinity.
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The women’s stories were not free from gender discrimination, for instancebeing belittled as a ‘clever little girl’ rather than a competent ICT expert, andother types of discrimination recognized from other studies of women in
ICT work (Corneliussen et al, 2019: 385). However, other aspects of theirwork experiences appeared to be directly related to issues of rurality, suchas the low population density, organizational thinness and a trend towards
small businesses (Larsen and Nesse, 2017): “Perhaps you become a bit more
visible and get more responsibility at a smaller workplace, because there are
not many here with the same background as me, in fact almost no one, so
you are sort of unique” (F). Several of the women had experienced highvisibility in typically small companies with “one-​person ICT departments”.
On the one hand, there were “fewer people to compete with” (C), but on
the other, each employee might have to serve many different roles: “You get
more interesting tasks because they need to use what they have” (E). One of
the women who served in such a small company described her responsibility
as literally everything to do with the company’s ICT system; from design toimplementing as well as training the users. The low density of people also
affected how the employers cared for the employees: “They can’t just throw
you out and put someone else in. And that means that people are being
taken care of in a very different way” (E). These experiences differed fromthe women’s urban work experiences where there was higher competition.
The scarcity of human resources in the rural region encouraged an attitudeof taking care of and supporting employees: “I have had opportunities andchallenges that I probably would not have had if there were more available
candidates” (H). Managers above her had acted as mentors and pushed her
into promotions including taking on a leader role in a process of digital
innovation. Other women told similar stories of varied and interesting
work tasks in the fields of ICT and digitalization, promotions and career
opportunities coming their way, partly due to the shortage of humanresources in the region. The flip side of the rich variety of opportunities
within one company was the limited number of employers to choose fromfor ICT experts:‘There are perhaps two companies where you can work, and if you
don’t want to work in any of them you have to commute, … so that iswhat I’ve done; first I worked in one company, then I was commuting,and then I worked in the other company. If it doesn’t work out here …
it means going back to number one or starting to commute again.’ (B)The women’s narratives suggest that the rural context added certain
dimensions to their work experiences in fields of ICT and digitalization bymaking them visible and opening up career opportunities that they did notthink they would have found in urban ICT workplaces.
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Place-​belongingness
The opportunities and support that the women found in ICT jobs, however,
co-​existed with a shortage of relevant jobs and companies to choose from.
The importance of interesting work made many of the women willingto commute to work because living in the region also had a special value
for them due to their ‘place-​belongingness’ (Antonsich, 2010). This was
highlighted in the narratives of 12 women who shared a ‘moving back’-​storyline: they had grown up in the region, moved out to undertake higher
education, stayed away for work reasons, before finding a relevant job andmoving back to the region. It was their original place-​belongingness thatmade them search for work in the region. However, many had waited along time before finding a relevant job as an ICT expert: “I have lived awaysince I started at university. I have been in [the city] the last 20-​something
years. I moved back home because an exciting job opportunity turned up.
That does not happen every day, so that was not a difficult decision” (E).
Finding a relevant job was the trigger that made them return: “The main
reason that I moved back was work. I have a very interesting and exciting
job here, and it is obvious that I wouldn’t have moved back home if I hadn’t
found a job that was at least as good as the one that I already had” (D). Thisjustification for moving back and for staying in the region illustrates theentanglements of working and living in the rural region where differences
between the urban and the rural also come into view. One of the women
remembered her daily commute to the city, at least one hour each way, andthe huge difference not having to do this made after she and her partner
both found work as ICT experts in the region:‘It was mostly working and sleeping, and that’s all you got to do. Thus,
we didn’t really see each other much. By moving here, we save a lotof time, we have shorter days and more flexible solutions. … Thereis a very good social network for outdoor activities here, for walking,biking, Alpine skiing, and more. We don’t have to spend the weekends
travelling far away. Now we can just spend an evening; have a short
day at work and get out there. We have much more time for our own
interests and for the children.’ (J)The ‘moving back’-​storyline highlights how rural life has certain qualities
of life, and the idea of the rural idyll includes material and immaterial values(Bryden and Hart, 2004): “I think that some of the values we have here arevalues that you probably won’t find in the big cities; that has to do with afeeling of unity, having good friends and to be close to family” (G). Importantvalues refer to friends and family, suggesting that the women’s return tothe region also included a life phase strategy related to children (Grimsrud,
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GENDER AND ICT IN RURAL NORWAY2011): “I want to live in a place with good conditions for bringing up mychildren, where I can have an exciting, demanding job, and I can have goodexperiences with nature in my everyday life without having to spend a lotof time moving from A to B” (H).
Furthermore, the ‘moving back’-​storyline describes the entanglementsof place with work and life, illustrated by this lengthy quote from a woman
who had experienced someone dying in her social circles:‘then he died, and that put my life into perspective. Suddenly I started
thinking, “What are we doing all the way here in the eastern partof Norway with all our family so far away? This is so far away fromour people”. … Moving back was not about getting a babysitter, likemany people think. It was about growing the real relationships, inparticular between our parents and our children. That was what drew
us. And I really love [the rural area]. I missed nature, and the various
advantages were not difficult to think of. For instance, cottages that
we can borrow [from our parents]; things we didn’t have access to in
the eastern part of Norway.’ (F)This woman’s list of rural values and qualities was long, starting with “ourpeople” and place-​belongingness that both she and her partner felt for theregion. While a condition for moving back was finding a relevant ICT job, thejustification for moving was also tied to family bonds, social relations and nature.

The rural idyll and its threats
The western region of Norway is recognized for its spectacular natureincluding high mountains and deep fjords, two of which have even been
added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. This nature which makes
the region a target for outdoor activities holds a special place in the ‘moving
back’-​storyline: “I enjoy being outside, like outdoor activities and nature,and perhaps the main reason for moving back home was that I missed themountains. Proper mountains” (D). While many of the values relating toplace-​belongingness were shared only by the women originating from theregion, the values of nature and other aspects of the rural idyll were also
expressed by women with a weaker sense of place-​belongingness, including
this immigrant woman:‘I walk to work in 15 minutes. It’s a pleasure to walk and already thatshort time, twice a day, helps you to get a clean brain, get loose. … The
biggest advantage of working as a researcher in [place] is that you savea lot of time that you waste in big cities in transport and organizationof your work.’ (I)181

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Logistics and transport are quite different in sparsely populated regions
compared to urban traffic. This can produce an impression of time efficiency
if one lives close to one’s work in a rural area and does not have to rely on
public transport, illustrating the inseparable character of working and living.
The image of the rural idyll was, however, also threatened, for instance by anurban-​rural power structure including what the women experienced as urban
ignorance, as this outburst by a female leader in digital innovation illustrates:‘It is not like we are a random group of peasants sitting here, trying
to produce something. We have competences that are no less than in
any other place. I’m so sick and tired of having to prove that we canmanage things in this region … and that attitude where we have toprove ourselves. Twice.’ (C)Women working in ICT in the rural region, she suggested, not only had
to prove themselves within a male-​dominated occupation, but also against
an urban elitist attitude.
A more problematic threat for the region considering the importance ofmaking people want to live and work there, was the double-​edged effect ofplace-​belongingness. The ‘moving back’-​storyline illustrates that many ruralvalues are tied to place-​belongingness which was more available to womenwith family roots in the region. Even the women who had returned after
living away for a long time benefited from their old social networks, oldfriends and people whom they recognized from school. For many, this typeof network was important, not only on a private level, but also for support
and confidence at work. But for the women who did not share this type ofplace-​belongingness, the exact same values that were celebrated in the ‘moving
back’-​storyline could become barriers. One of the youngest women in our
sample, for instance, had moved to the region with her boyfriend, and at thetime of the interview she was contemplating moving out again because she
did not have a social network. This was even more tricky for women who
were also immigrants to Norway, for whom both language and local traditions
could become barriers for their social inclusion. One of these women described
how she felt ignored and left out of small talk among her peers because she
did not share their relation to nature: “Then I realized that I am not a skiing
buddy” (A), reflecting the importance that outdoor sports activities can havefor work relations in a region where such activities are highly valued.

Discussion
The analysis of women’s experiences of ICT work in the rural context ofwestern Norway does not support the notion of rurality as entailing staticand traditional gender structures, but rather indicates a labour market in
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transition, partly as a result of digitalization across sectors. A previous study
found that rural ICT employers still relied on gender stereotypical notions of
ICT competence when recruiting to ICT jobs, and that few women applied
for these jobs (Corneliussen and Seddighi, 2020). The patterns uncovered
here indicate that women find workplaces responding to new processes ofdigitalization that are situated in less male-​dominated organizations more
attractive –​perhaps also more available –​than jobs in the private and highly
male-​dominated ICT industry. While previous research found that it is lesslikely for women with an atypical education to return to rural regions (Haley,2018), the atypical female ICT experts in our sample disprove this trend.
However, simultaneously it is the more gender-​typical workplaces such as
the female-​dominated public sector that trigger their return to the rural
region. Many of these women returned to the region after spending up to
20 years away. Thus, while young women might still be under the spell ofthe ‘mobility imperative’ (Farrugia, 2016: 836), this group of middle-​aged
women wishing to return or move to the rural region could be a potential
target group for ICT employers seeking to recruit. However, so far it seems
that only certain sectors are successful in this.
The women’s constructions of rurality often included a comparison tourban environments. In-​migration narratives intensified this as the womenemphasized how the rural shaped their work and career. Thus, the sparsely
populated region with its attendant effects on the labour market madethem stand out, become visible as resources and therefore have interesting
career opportunities. They were encouraged to take new responsibilities,
but were also supported by employers who realized that they needed totake care of the existing human resources. Previous research suggests that
support is particularly important for women engaging in occupational fields
associated with men (Holtzblatt and Marsden, 2018). Thus, the support
that the women identified as a quality of the rural region might have beenhighly valuable for making women feel more welcome in ICT jobs. The
downside of being in a rural area was the thinness of organizations: the few
relevant employers made job switching more difficult. In the end it was thestrength of place-​belongingness that affected many of the women’s decision
to stay or leave if the current job did not work out.
Place-​belongingness also had a flip side, making the region attractive forsome while producing challenges for others. In the ‘moving back’-​storyline
it was finding a relevant job that was the main trigger for making women
return to the region. However, it was their place-​belongingness and thediscourse of the idyllic rurality that justified the move. This rural idyll
included values associated with closeness to nature, quality of life and moretime for children, closeness to supportive grandparents, and more. Many
women with family struggle to find a balance between time for work andfamily, including in this rural context (see Chapter 9, this volume). The
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GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

values and qualities of the rural region emphasized by the women illustrate
how place took an active role as the women negotiated their balance between
work and family: most found it is easier to retain a good balance in the rural
region rather than in the city. An important aspect of this was their sense of
belonging as reflected in family and social relations.
But the same features that provided advantages for women with rootsin the region created disadvantages for those without such roots. That theentanglement of working and living offered both prospects and challenges
is a critical point to note: the rural as a good place for children is a selling
point only for women with children; closeness to family only counts for
those with roots in the region, and having access to social networks does
not come automatically for newcomers. Nature was a major attraction for
many, but not everybody became a “skiing buddy”. Immigrant women
were the majority of those who did not draw on the discourse of the rural
idyll, especially in relation to family and social relations. Thus, although
digitalization and the growth of ICT workplaces attracted the female ICT
experts to jobs less traditional in a rural setting, the narratives of rurality
were still tightly connected to making sense of ‘a traditional way of life’ andbelonging (Grimsrud, 2011).

Conclusion
In this chapter we have shown how the discourse of the rural appears andis represented in narratives about living and working in the rural regionof western Norway among women working with ICT. Digitalization has
been launched as a solution securing a sustainable future across industries
and sectors, and also as important for rural regions (Ekeland et al, 2015).
Making remote rural regions attractive for young women is vital forsustainable population development in these areas (Vidickienė, 2017).
Identifying how the rural enters women’s work experiences, our findings
suggest that a combination of a rural idyll discourse and the discourse of
the rural as an actor in economic growth (Cruickshank et al, 2009) can beutilized to make the rural appear attractive to women. It is also necessary torecognize that women are not a uniform group, and we have shown how
place-​belongingness (Antonsich, 2010) is limited to women with roots in theregion, while other rural values such as nature and quality of life make theregion attractive for a more diverse group of women. We also recognize thatthe women contributed to discourses of rurality in at least two ways. First,
they emphasized differences between the rural and the urban and promoted
discourses of the rural idyll, quality of life and place-​belongingness. Second,
they also emphasized similarities, demonstrating the rural as a place of highcompetence in ICT development and innovation and claiming their equal
worth compared to their urban collaborators. The rural as a place for digital
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innovation was, after all, the door opener for these women to enter the still
highly male-​dominated field of ICT research and innovation. Their choiceof workplaces suggests a new co-​construction of gender and ICT in which
women not only participate, but also experience a work environment thatis less male-​dominated than women in the more traditional ICT industries
have reported (Watts, 2009).
Support and networks are important for women in male-​dominatedfields (Holtzblatt and Marsden, 2018). Our findings suggest that further
improvements can be made to women’s experience of ICT work byrecognizing that different groups of women have different senses of being
included and excluded from social and professional networks in ICT andin rural regions. While certain gender structures appear to be more stable
than others, our study contributes to the critique of seeing rural gender
structures as unchangeable (Little, 2014) by providing a more nuanced imageof women’s work experiences entangled with rurality. More empirical studies
are needed to further develop our knowledge about how the genderingof different workplaces and industries develops in rural regions, and more
importantly, to learn how the private ICT sector and female ICT experts
can become better aligned for the future.
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IndexA
Aarseth, H. 119
ability belief 60, 68–​9, 70, 71
abroad, working 50, 51, 83, 84, 86, 133
academia-​industry cooperation 39, 83, 88,
162–​4, 165
academia-​society cooperation 160, 162,
169–​70
academic credit 83
academic entrepreneurship 47–​50, 53
academic skills 87
see also grant applications, writing
Academy of Finland 78, 80, 81, 82, 83,
85, 87accelerated working 46
Adam, B. 42
adaptation 23
administrative posts, women moving into 35
affirmative action policies 94, 97–​8
Agency for Innovation (Finland) 78, 80, 81,
82, 83–​4, 85, 87–​8
agility 35
Ahmed, S. 79, 110, 113, 115, 118
all-​consuming nature of work 46, 50
see also greedy work cultures; long-​
hours working
ambition discourses 126, 129, 131
Antonsich, M. 175, 176, 180, 184
applications for grants 83, 85, 86
applications for professorships 110–​20
aptitudes 29
Arnott, R.D. 26
arts, combining subjects 29
assertiveness 109
assessment
based on stereotypes 96
metrics-​based performance assessments 39
performance assessment 39, 40, 96, 150
preliminary evaluations for
professorships 110–​20
associate professors 109–​23, 126
assumed work standards 134
austerity 78–​9, 88
autonomy 39, 43, 135, 144

B
Bacchi, C.L. 94
Bahktin, M. 128
Balance project (UiA) 110–​11, 114–​19, 120‘being seen’ 115, 130
belongingness 9, 60, 69–​72, 175–​6, 180–​4
Benschop, Y. 40, 53, 77, 82, 83, 87, 118, 126
Berger, L. 87
Berglund, K.-​E. 160, 167, 169
Biese, I. 150
binary of winners and losers 39, 118
biotechnology 39–​55
Blackmore, J. 87, 88
Blass, E. 22
boasting 126
border closures 9
Boschini, A. 6
boundaryless careers 45
boundary-​less work cultures 141, 143boys’ networks 27, 31, 83–​4, 88
Bryden, J.M. 176, 180‘bubbles in academe’ 26
bullying 26
Burns, K.E.A. 78
Business Finland 80
business sector, female researchers in 6
Business Studies 84
business-​orientation 43
Ccapitalism 2, 9
see also economic growth; neoliberalism
care for others (emotional orientation) 113
career choices 129, 131, 142
career goals, setting 116
career moves
academia-​industry 46
choosing career moves 66–​7
leaving academia 41, 50–​2, 53, 84, 85, 134
safe platforms 69
unconventional routes into ICT 56–​75
career progressions
associate professor to full professor 109–​23
career imaginaries 39–​55, 124–​39

188

Indexdiversity of career paths 29, 34, 93
fathers’ take preference over mothers’ 142
hybrid work profiles 58, 70, 71, 72
late-​entry to careers 56, 58, 72
male norms 26, 151
natural progression versus active
choice 66–​7
standardized academic 40, 45, 52, 83
see also professorships; promotions
careerism 117, 119case study design 160–​1
casualization 30
cave technology 32–​3
Cheryan, S. 59, 72
childcare 140–​1, 142, 146–​50
children see family
children, having
leaving academia 51
not wanting to move because of 133
at PhD stage 83, 85
planning the timing of 133
significance of the reproductive body 87
time as a scarce resource 132
two-​track parenthood 144
choice of career 129, 131, 142
choice to have children 149
choices of educational routes 29, 57–​8,
59–​60choosing career moves 66–​7
Choroszewicz, M. 150
class, inequality on the grounds of 111
Clavero, S. 76, 78Clegg, S. 53
climate change 9
closing down of roles 26, 27
coaching 96
Cockburn, C. 68
co-​construction 59, 176, 185
co-​creation research 157–​8
co-​creative platforms 156–​72
collaboration 21, 24, 77, 88
Collins, F.S. 2, 3
commercialization 43, 46, 84
commuting 179, 180, 181–​2
comparative case study methods 160–​1
competence, importance of 31, 57–​8, 62–​8,
69–​70, 126, 182
competition for jobs/​posts 40, 46–​7, 53, 118
competitive funding 30, 33–​4, 50, 76–​92
conferences 133
see also travel
consciousness-​raising 120
conservativism 26, 27
Corneliussen, H.G. 56, 58, 71, 173, 176,
179, 183
corridor talk 77
costs of study 71
COVID-​19 9
Cruickshank, J. 175, 184

culturesboundary-​less work cultures 141, 143
cultural intermediaries 66
cultural stereotypes 60, 68
gendered work cultures 141
gendering of technology 59
greedy work cultures 34, 52, 141, 143,
146, 148, 150, 151, 173
revising organizational 94, 98, 110, 118,
141, 143
workplace 43, 44
D
de Cheveigné, S. 76, 78
De Vries, J.A. 120
decoupling of policies from organizational
goals 97
deficit-​based views of women 96, 118
delayed entry into education 62, 63–​5
democratic parity 4–​5
Denmark
equality measures in universities 94
EU (European Union) 4
gender wage gap 6
parental leave 7
proportion of female researchers in
precarious working contracts 7
proportion of female scientists
and engineers 4
proportion of women doctoral graduates by
field of study 5
researchers in government/​
business sectors 6
dialogical narrative analysis 128
Digital Humanities
defined 21
as an emerging discipline 29
interdisciplinarity 27–​30
in Nordic countries generally 21–​2
as R&I in academe 22–​3
requirement for technologicalinfrastructure 32–​3
digital pioneers 68
digitalization 62, 65–​7, 140, 173, 174,
178, 184
diversity committees 97, 101, 103, 104
diversity measures 95–​8
see also gender equality (GE) measures
diversity of career paths 29, 34, 93
diversity policies 94, 97
diversity training 97, 102
Dobbin, Frank 94, 95, 96, 99
doctoral graduates, statistics on 5
domestic help 147
dual-​earner households 144–​5, 146, 148E
early-​career researchers 45, 94, 124–​39
earmarking funding 98, 103, 104

189

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Eccles, J. 59–​60, 71
economic (gender) equity 4–​5
economic growth 22–​3, 42, 142, 174,
175, 184
educational choices 57–​8, 59–​60
EEA/​EFTA 4
Efforti project 2
Egeland, C. 143, 146, 147
e-​health 66
EIGE 140, 141, 151, 173
Ellemers, N. 12, 77, 78
emotional impacts 48, 110, 113, 115–​16, 118
emotional politics 110, 113
emulation 23, 26
entrepreneurial activities 47–​50, 76
epistemic diversity 119
epistemic uncertainty 43
equality legislation 97, 101
equality perspectives, encouraging 110
see also gender equality (GE) measuresequipment 32–​3
Escobar, A. 53
Etzkowitz, H. 23, 26, 30
European Commission 77, 93
European Court of Justice 98
European Regional Development Fund(ERDF) 156, 162, 164, 165
European Union (EU)co-​creative platforms 156
Denmark 4
equality legislation 94
gender equality (GE) measures 2, 95, 119
proportion of women doctoral graduates by
field of study 5
R&I intensity 80
Eurostat 77, 80
evaluation/​assessment 96, 110–​20
Evans, M. 77
excellence industry 119
exchange values 53, 113
expectancy-​value theory 60, 71
expendable positions 30
expert groups 78
exploitation 23, 35
eye-​movement tracking equipment 32
F
Fagenson, E.A. 95, 96
familyand ability to move around 132–​3, 136
balancing work with family 140–​55
in career planning 51
and decisions to leave academia 51
dual-​earner households 144–​5, 146, 148
flexible working and family life 143
household and care tasks 5, 132, 141
male norms 140
men and caring responsibilities 133, 136,
142, 147–​8

prioritization of 51, 134, 149, 150
and professorships 131
quality of life 180–​1
taking time out for 35
two-​track parenthood 144, 147, 148–​9,150, 151
see also children“family first” strategies 51, 134, 149, 150
family-​friendly policies 140, 142, 146–​7
fast-​paced work 42–​3, 46, 116–​17
fathers 7, 133, 136, 142, 148
Felstead, A. 142
female-​dominated industries 1, 69
feminism, repurposing 118–​19, 120
Feminist Technology Studies (FTS) 57, 59,
68, 144
Finlandbiotechnology 39–​55
EU (European Union) 4
funding 78
gender equality in STEM-​oriented
universities 93, 102–​3
gender wage gap 6
parental leave 7
proportion of female researchers in
precarious working contracts 7
proportion of female scientists
and engineers 4
proportion of women doctoral graduates by
field of study 5
R&I funding 79–​80
R&I intensity 77, 80
researchers in government/​
business sectors 6
STEM-​oriented universities 99, 100–​1
work-​life balance 143–​4
Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation 80
Finnish National Agency for Innovation 88
Finnish National Research Council 78
fixed-​term contracts 48, 77, 85, 87‘fixing’ women 96, 118, 120
flexible working conditions 141, 143, 148,
150, 151
Fochler, M. 43
Forsberg, G. 174, 175, 176
funding
Balance Programme 110
competitive funding 30, 33–​4, 50, 76–​92
decline in 43, 80, 81, 88
for Digital Humanities 33
earmarking funding 98, 103, 104
gender equality (GE) measures 98,
102–​3, 126
gender in funding decisions 78
and the intensification of genderinequalities 76–​92
international funding 80, 83
leaving academia because of lack of 51
and personal networks 31

190

Index

precariousness 30–​4
private funding 79–​80, 85
and publication 46
from supranational entities 77
writing grant applications 83, 85, 86
funding consortia 83
fund-​raising responsibilities 47, 51, 83,
85, 86G
gatekeeping roles 78, 96
Gender Academy (Sweden) 156–​7, 160, 161,
162–​4, 166–​70
gender bias
consciousness-​raising 120
in a context of declining funding 81
in funding decisions 78
in meritocratic processes 53
in tenure track assessments 39
Gender Contact Point (Sweden) 164–​70
gender equality/​inequality
Balance Programme 110
beyond body counts 111–​13, 118
in competitive R&I funding 78–​9, 82–​8
gender equality committees 101, 103, 104
gender equality (GE) measures 93–​105,
162–​4gender equality measurement tools 163–​4,
166, 167
intensification of inequalities 76–​92
knowledge-​based gender equality
practices 156, 162, 164, 166, 167,
168, 169
legislation 94
in Nordic countries generally 1, 3
planning 76
in STEM-​oriented universities 93–​105
gender in regional innovation
systems 157, 159
gender in technology 59
gender neutrality 81, 96, 98, 119
gender norms
gendered academic ideals 117–​18
gendered career trajectories 125–​7
gendered perceptions of the self 126
re-​doing 144, 148, 151
in rural areas 173, 174, 175
gender pay gap 5, 6, 141
Gender Smart Arena 164
gender stereotypes 58, 69, 71–​2, 93, 113,
141, 169
gendered global knowledge economy 119
Gendered Innovations project, Stanford 2
gendered social innovation 159–​60, 167
geographical factors 8
global knowledge economy 119
globalization 9, 175
government funding 80
government sector, female researchers in 6

grade A positions 94–​5, 98–​9, 100–​1, 104
see also professorships
grandparents 148, 181, 183
grant applications, writing 83, 85, 86
grant funding 33, 35, 78, 83
greedy work cultures 34, 52, 141, 143, 146,
148, 150, 151, 173
Griffin, G. 8, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 76, 88
grounded theory 61, 146, 177–​8
Groves, N. 42
Gunnarsson, K. 6
H
Hakim, C. 142, 150
Hart, K. 176, 180‘having it all’ 143, 144
Haxeltine, A. 156, 158, 159, 168, 169, 170
Hayward, P. 22
health problems 116
Health Technology 77
healthcare digitalization 66, 71
Heikkinen, S. 144
hierarchies 43, 44, 46, 52, 160, 169
higher education
academia-​industry cooperation 39, 83, 88,
162–​4, 165
academia-​society cooperation 160, 162,
169–​70
digitalization of 22–​3
funding (generally) 22, 23
growth in postdoc positions 125
precarization 23
R&I funding 80
high-​speed working 46, 116
hiring/​recruitmentbulk recruitment versus gradual 85–​6
gender equality in 94
gender inequalities 82–​3
and gender stereotypes 96
to ICT 57, 70–​1
monodisciplinarity 28
preferential treatment equality measures 98
search-​and-​find committees 110
horizontal progress 45
household and care tasks 5, 132, 141
household help 147
Humanities, technology in 32–​3
Husu, L. 76, 77, 78, 83
hybrid work profiles 58, 70, 71, 72
hyper-​productivity 46
see also long-​hours working
I
Iceland 4
ICTbalancing work with family 140–​55
gender and ICT in rural areas in
Norway 173–​87
gendering of 59, 176, 178–​82

191

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

masculine-​coding of ICT 57–​8, 69, 71, 72,
141, 144, 178, 183
unconventional routes into ICT 56–​75
women’s entry points 57–​9
ideal academic/​ideal worker norms 93, 96,110, 117–​18, 140–​4
iGen 163–​4
imposter syndrome 115
independent research centres 41, 43
individualism 47, 53, 117, 119, 120,
141, 149
industry, collaboration with 39, 83,
162–​4, 165
inequality
sexuality, class and race 111
Tilly’s inequality mechanisms 23
see also gender equality/​inequality
institutional ethnography 81, 112
institutional policy measures 93–​105
institutional recognition 27, 44
interdisciplinarity 27–​30, 34–​5, 44
interest, as driver 60, 69, 70, 71, 129, 130
intermediary roles 66
international funding 80, 83
international networks 77
international research 83
international students in Nordic
countries 127
international working 50, 51, 83, 84, 86, 133intervention strategies 96
interview methods 24–​5, 41, 60, 77, 80–​1,
99, 113–​14, 127, 141, 145, 177
investments (in careers) 117, 132, 134–​5
invitation procedures 98, 103
Ireland 76, 80
Jjob descriptions 24–​5
K
Kalev, Alexandra 95, 96, 97, 98, 99
Karlstad University 162
Kautto, M. 4
Kemelgor, C. 23, 26, 30
kindergarten 142
Kirton, G. 143
knowledge domains, new 34–​5
knowledge economies 2
knowledge loss 35
knowledge-​based gender equality
practices 156, 162, 164, 166, 167,
168, 169
Korvajärvi, P. 77, 81
L‘lack of fit’ 72
lack of interest as barrier 69
Laclau, E. 177
late-​entry to careers 56, 58, 72
leaders in research environments 26

leadership programmes 96
leaky pipeline 93‘leaning in’ 109
leaving academia 41, 50–​2, 53, 84, 85, 134
leaving posts 44
leaving the workforce entirely 150
leisure pursuits
gendered distinctions 65, 67
ICT as (for men) 65, 67, 70
Leyesdorff, L. 23
life history methods 61
Lindberg, M. 160, 167, 169
linguistic affinities 8
localization 9‘lone scholar’ tradition 21
long-​hours working 46, 50, 51, 143, 146–​7,
150, 151, 173
longitudinal studies 94
loyalty 30
Luleå University 164–​6
Lund, R.W.B. 109, 110, 111, 115, 118,
119, 126
M
Magnussen, M.-​L. 111, 113, 115, 118, 119‘making it’ 116, 119
male networks 27, 31, 83–​4, 88
male-​dominated industries 1, 56, 57, 93
managerial positions 67, 95, 96‘mangle of practice’ 27
masculine-​coded interests 57
Master, A. 60, 69, 70, 71, 72
Masters study 64, 65, 66, 82, 85, 147
maternity leave see parental leave
mathematics requirements 64
media 42
Meltzoff, A.N. 60, 69, 70, 71, 72
men
discrimination against 98
ICT 59, 176, 178–​82, 183
ideal academic/​ideal worker norms 93, 96,110, 117–​18, 140–​4
male networks 27, 31, 83–​4, 88, 93
male-​dominated industries 1, 56, 57, 93
mentoring 31, 32, 96, 118, 135–​6
mergers, departmental 41, 43, 52
meritocracy 53, 126
micro-​politics 47
microwaves 59
migration 174, 178, 180, 181, 183
mobility 94, 132–​4, 136, 174–​5, 183
see also abroad, working; travel
monodisciplinarity 28, 34
Moratti, S. 94, 98
Morley, L. 115, 118
Moscowitz, D. 78, 79
motivational theory 59–​60
motivations, career 129, 134, 135
Mouffe, C. 177

192

Indexmultidisciplinary fields 80, 83
Murgia, A. 39, 46, 48, 77, 124, 135
Musselin, C. 40
Nneoliberalism
and feminism 144
individualized ideology of choice 149
internalized as affective states 118‘neuroliberalism’ 115
in Nordic countries generally 4, 10
and the precariat 23
and R&I 2, 76–​7, 78–​9, 88
and rural areas 175
science policies 76, 87
neo-​nationalism 9
networking 96
networks
closing ranks when funding is scarce 83,
84
male networks 27, 31, 83–​4, 88, 93
personal networks 31
women’s networks 182, 185
neuroliberalism 115
Nichols, David 35
Nielsen, M.W. 94
no, saying 109, 119
Nokia 80
Nordic Centre of Excellence 95
Nordic Council of Ministers 8
Nordic countries, definition of 3–​4
Nordic exceptionalism 4
Nordic gender equality 4
Nordic gender paradox 1
Nordic Statistics 1, 2
Nordic welfare state 4
NORDICORE 95, 99
Nordwit 9, 60
Norwayacademic career trajectories 126
associate professors 109–​23
balancing work with family 140–​55
earmarking funding 103, 104
EEA/​EFTA 4family-​friendly policies 140–​1, 142, 151
gender and ICT in rural areas 173–​87
gender equality generally 142
gender equality in STEM-​oriented
universities 93, 94, 102–​3
gender wage gap 6
parental leave 7
preferential treatment equality measures 98
proportion of female professors 124
proportion of female researchers in
precarious working contracts 7
proportion of female scientists
and engineers 4
proportion of women doctoral graduates by
field of study 5

researchers in government/​
business sectors 6
STEM-​oriented universities 99, 100–​1
unconventional routes into ICT 56–​75
Norwegian Research Council 110, 111
Norwegian University of Science andTechnology (NTNU) 127
O
OECD 2, 21, 30, 80, 142
on-​the-​job learning 68
opportunity hoarding 23, 27, 31, 35
organizational responsibility measures ingender equality 97, 102–​3, 104‘other,’ women functioning as 25
overqualified, being 115
overwork 136, 143
see also long-​hours working
P
Padavic, I. 151
parental leave 7, 83–​7, 88, 142, 144participatory research 161, 168
partners 51, 133, 143–​4, 147, 148, 150, 151
see also family
part-​time working 141, 142, 143, 149, 150
pastoral work 118
paternal quota leave 142
Pecis, L. 87
Pedersen, E. 143, 146, 147
peer solidarity 136
Pekkola, E. 40, 52
Pelkonen, A. 84
penalty round 71
Pereira, Maria do Mar 76, 77, 79, 88
performance assessment 39, 40, 96, 150
permanent positions 30, 40, 45–​7, 126,
131, 135
PhD students 83, 85, 86, 98, 125
Pickering, A. 27
Pietilä, M. 40, 46, 52
place-​belongingness 9, 175, 176, 180–​2,
183–​4
Poggio, B. 39, 46, 48, 77, 124, 135
policiesfamily-​friendly policies 140, 142, 146–​7
gender equality in STEM-​oriented
universities 93–​105
institutional policy measures 93–​105
R&I (Reasearch and Innovation) 77
sexual harassment policies 97, 102, 103
population sizes 6, 8
populism 9
Poropudas, O. 86, 87
postdoc positions 30, 32, 83, 124–​39
precarious working contracts
after parental leave 86
and competitive funding 88
difference across Nordic countries 7

193

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Digital Humanities 21–​38
and families 126
intensification of inequalities 77
more women in 87
postdoc positions 125
project work 31
predictable hours 148
preferential treatment equality measures
97–​8, 103, 104pregnancy 87
preliminary evaluations 110–​20
present future 42
pressure to bring in funding 30
prestige 47, 116
Pristed Nielsen, H. 173, 174, 175–​6
private funding 79–​80, 85
professional identity 68, 69, 71, 131
professorship promotion seminars 111
professorships
advertisements for 83
as all-​consuming 136
assumed goal of academic career 129, 136
career imaginaries 40, 43–​4, 45–​7, 50, 52
female associate professors and career
progression 109–​23
funding for equality measures 110
gender equality (GE) measures 94–​105
invitation procedures 98, 103preliminary evaluations for
professorships 114–​17
probabilities of progressing to 126
and R&I intensity 88
reluctance to aim for 131
tenure track system 40, 45–​7, 48–​9,
52–​3, 126
see also grade A positions
project work 30–​4‘promise dispositif ’ 134
promotions
gender equality in 94
into ICT 67
preferential treatment equality
measures 97–​8
promotion seminars 115, 119seminars aimed at women 111
psychology and motivation 60
publication profiles 26, 46, 132Q
quality of life 180–​1
see also work-​life balance
queer phenomenology 110, 113
R
R&I (Reasearch and Innovation)
and COVID-​19 9
defined 2
differences between Nordic countries 3–​4
Digital Humanities as 22–​3

embedded gender inequalities 77–​8
expenditure as % of GDP 9–​10
funding 76–​92
genderization of 2–​3
intensity 77, 80
as percentage of GDP 4
race, inequality on the grounds of 111
recruitment/​hiring
bulk recruitment versus gradual 85–​6
gender equality in 94
gender inequalities 82–​3
and gender stereotypes 96
to ICT 57, 70–​1
monodisciplinarity 28
preferential treatment equality measures 98
search-​and-​find committees 110
redundancies 33
reproductive body 87
research centres 23, 84
research councils 33, 78
research excellence 119
research groups 83, 86, 88
researchers in government/​business sectors 6
responsibilization of individuals 118
restructuring 41, 43
see also mergers, departmental
reviewing for journals 118
Richer Business 166
right-​wing politics 9
Rodrigo, R. 76, 78
role models 93
Rottenberg, G. 144, 149, 150
ruling relations 110, 112, 117, 119–​20
rural areas 173–​87
S
sacrifice 132, 134, 136safe platforms 69, 71
salary levels 48
Sawers, N. 87, 88
search-​and-​find committees 110
second-​time careers 58
Seddighi, G. 173, 176, 183
Seierstad, C. 143
self-​confidence 132
self-​evaluations 115
self-​perception 126
self-​promotion 115, 118
senior researcher posts 83
sense of belonging 60, 69–​72, 175,
176, 180–​4
sexual harassment 77, 81, 97
sexual harassment policies 97, 102, 103
sexuality, inequality on the grounds of 111
Shahjahan, R. 113
SHE Figures 5, 16, 76, 86
short-​term funding 33–​4
shut-​up-​and-​write seminars 111, 119
Siekkinen, T. 77, 85, 87

194

IndexSigl, L. 43
Skjeie, H. 4–​5
small and medium-​sized companies(SMEs) 162, 163, 165
smart growth 164
Smith, D.E. 81, 110, 112, 117
social constructivism 59, 68–​9
social democratic welfare state 8, 142
social exclusion 8–​9
social inclusion 167
social innovation 156, 158–​9, 167, 168,169
social justice 93
social relations 43, 112
social sciences 64–​5, 71, 86, 127
social theory 135
Sørensen, S. 126, 127, 134, 142–​3, 147, 150
Standing, Guy 23
start-​ups 103
status and titles 116
SteinÞórsdóttir, F.S. 76, 78
STEM-​oriented universities 93–​105, 127stereotypes
cultural stereotypes 60, 68
disciplinary 57
and educational choices 60
gender stereotypes 58, 69, 71–​2, 93,
144, 169
heteronormativity 134
rural areas 175, 181–​2
strategic career moves 116–​17
strategic funding priorities 33, 80
structural changes 126
structure-​oriented diversity measures 97, 104“stuck at home” 132–​4
subject selection (early) 29
superhuman performance 46, 50
supervisors 130
support structures
early-​career researchers 130, 135
family as 146
family-​based 142, 144, 148–​9
networks 185
from superiors 32
uncertain support 25–​7
universities 25–​7
survey data 99
sustainability 164, 184
Swedenco-​creative platforms 156–​72
competitive funding 80
earmarking funding 103, 104
EU (European Union) 4
gender equality in STEM-​oriented
universities 93, 102–​3
gender wage gap 6
parental leave 7
proportion of female researchers in
precarious working contracts 7

proportion of female scientists
and engineers 4
R&I (Reasearch and Innovation) 5
researchers in government/​
business sectors 6
STEM-​oriented universities 99, 100–​1
Swedish Innovation Funding Agency 88
Swedish Research Council 161
Ttalent loss 93
targeted gender equality measures 96,
102, 104
teaching positions 126
technicians 25, 33
technology
digitalization 62, 65–​7, 140, 173, 174,
178, 184
gender in technology 59
practical applications of 63–​4
technological infrastructure 32–​3, 35
as a tool 68
teenagers, interests of 57–​8
Teigen, M. 4–​5
temporality 41–​2, 46
temporary contracts 30–​1, 47, 48, 134
tenure track system 40, 45–​7, 48–​9, 52–​3,
126
Terras, M. 25
thematic analysis 81, 127–​8
Tieteen tila 80
Tilly, Charles 3, 22, 23–​4, 26, 27, 31, 35
time as a scarce resource 132
Timmers, T.M. 95
tournament model of career building 40
training 86, 96–​7, 102, 104, 147, 149
translocal coordination patterns 81‘trap of promise’ 134
travel 133, 147, 148, 149
see also abroad, working; mobility
Treussard, J. 26
Twidale, Michael 35
two-​track parenthood 144, 147, 148–​9,150, 151
U
uncertain support 25–​7
unemployment periods 85
uniformity, production of 111–​13, 120
universities see higher education
University of Agder 109–​23
unsettledness 23–​4, 28, 30, 30–​5
upskilling 143, 147
upward advancement, expectations of 48, 52
USaffirmative action policies 98
diversity measures 99
grant funding 78
use-​value 113

195

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

V
vacancies 32
Valantine, H.A. 2, 3
van den Brink, M. 40, 53, 77, 82, 83, 87, 97,
118, 120
Van der Lee, R. 77, 78
Vehviläinen, M. 5, 8, 24, 76, 88
Veugelers, R. 22
W
Watts, J.H. 144, 151, 173, 185
Weber, Max 97

welcoming, making disciplines feel 70
well-​being at work 117
winners and losers binary 39, 118
woman-​friendly states 10
work knowledge 81, 82
work-​life balance 51, 126, 131, 140–​55,
180–​1, 183–​4
World Bank 4
World Health Organization 9
YYlijoki, O.-​H. 41, 46, 76, 77, 80, 136

196

Clem Herman, The Open University

Gabriele Griffin is Professorof Gender Research at
Uppsala University andExtraordinary Professor at theCentre for Gender and African
Studies, Free State University.

The Nordic countries are regarded as
frontrunners in promoting equality, yet
women’s experiences on the ground arein many ways at odds with this rhetoric.
Putting the spotlight on the lived
experiences of women working in
tech-driven research and innovation
areas in the Nordic countries, thisvolume explores why, despite numerous
programmes, women continue toconstitute a minority in these sectors.
Contributors flesh out the differences
and similarities across different Nordic
countries and explore how the shifts inlabour market conditions have impacted
on women in research and innovation.

ePDF and ePUB available Open Accessunder CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

G AB RIELE GR IFF IN

This is an invaluable contribution to
global debates around the mechanismsthat maintain gendered structures in
research and innovation, from academia
to biotechnology and IT.

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TECH-DRIVEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION“Why do women continue to be largely absent
from technology research and innovation despite
decades of gender equality initiatives? This hugely
engaging and timely book delves deep into theso-called Nordic gender paradox. A must-read.”

ISBN 978-1-5292-1947-0

9 781529 219470

B R I S TO L

@BrisUniPress
BristolUniversityPress
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GENDERINEQUALITIESIN TECH-DRIVENRESEARCH AND
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