Challenges

Gender equality plans would beneficiate from a diagnosis on time uses and representations, as a great part of challenges involving gender inequality at academy and higher education settings links to time scarcity. Academic publics – researchers, teachers, and non-academic staff, as well as students are experiencing contexts of high competition.

Parental duties were considered as the main barrier for career development of female employees. This was described as problematic for academic staff, where the competition between researchers can be directly measured (e.g. in term of publications within a certain period of time).

Since academic careers in Germany are associated with high workload and the culture of long working hours on the one hand and insecure working conditions (temporary contracts) on the other hand, men and women who have children or would like to have children tend to be disadvantaged.

Students who become parents have a need to combine learning with childcare. Young professors and non-academic also face a similar problem. They must choose between career and childcare. Especially it concerns women​. If a woman does not receive an education and an opportunity for career growth today she will face a risk to become socially unprotected in future How to solve this problem at the university level?​

Females are usually minority in IS/ICT-fields and thus they may fell lack of togetherness. This may be a bigger problem in the universities where there is no mandatory lecture participation. Then it is easier to stay away form lectures and this actually make situation worse as then there are less females to make contact.

There is a gender imbalance in the ICT field. It manifests at different levels. For example, the most of the students are guys among students in the computer science and information technology specialty. The same gender imbalance is revealed among postgraduates. Also, the most of IT professionals are male in IT companies.  How to overcome this gender imbalance?

A modern life requires to have a clear vision of everything: personal life, career, future and so on. Especially, it is important to have a clear vision when it comes to career. It is noticed, that a majority of women working in technology field have no clear vision of what they want to do with their career while their male co-workers have a clear career plan.

Gender Equality actions may be seen as a feministic approach as most of women get involved in this kind of action. Women fight for equal rights at work and at home. They try to prove that women are equal to men but these actions are fruitless without involvement of men. However, most of the times, men are left besides the actions, they are not invited to take a part and feel responsible for the change. 

It seems that it is politically correct in gender equality discourse to focus only on challenges that females faces and bypass the male perspective. This does not mean that we should not look the problem that females faces but we should drive towards real equality instead of the juxtaposition of males and females (not forgetting the other gender).

The university lacks resources (monetary and effort) to further foster gender equality and conduct further positive affirmative action. The gender commission has no funds to sponsor projects. Substantial resources do not exist (e.g. a full-time gender office or position) and most attempts for gender mainstreaming are being done by individuals that see the need and therefore pursue actions in their free time.

The internal gender audit at the Department of Information Systems (IS) has revealed that international students tend to feel excluded by local students from group work. In case groups can be formed by students, German students tend to form groups with other German students.

Quantitative analisys conducted during the project gender audit revealed that is quite hard to get data disaggregated by gender and compare them with data provided by different offices. Each office stores and manages data with different information systems and with different procedures, hence it is not easy to gather the data and make deeper analysis and comparisons.

In many cases, dedicated committees on Gender Equality or Equal Opportunities exist at research institutions and universities. However, sometimes these committees do not have enough available resources in terms of time, human and financial availability.

The reason why so less girls study Information Technologies and other Technological Sciences might lay under the lack of knowledge. Various initiatives for girls to study the Information Technology were promoted. However, there is still a lack of knowledge what girls actually can work in that field because women are not represented as IT specialist.

Language plays a key role in how we interpret the society and our place in the socium. Word choices often reflect unconscious assumptions about values, gender roles and the abilities of women and men. Thus, gender insensitive language is the cornerstone in development gender culture and tolerance. Which ways do you see to use the gender-sensitive language in the University?

The feedback session at the University has revealed that much effort has been made previously to enhance gender equality and HR and the gender commission are working proactively in this direction. However, it seems that many achievements are not sufficiently communicated inside the organisation and thus the perception arises that the university is lacking state-of-the-act actions and means.

Lithuanian women, unlike their male peers, often have a more difficult way to go when building a career in ICT world. The reasons for such situation are various: starting from self-criticism and ending with social environment.

The stereotypes about the role, appearance, and behaviour of women and men still exist in the German society and are also present at the University on Muenster. The conducted internal gender audit has revealed that some lecturers call female students “Fräulein” (old-fashioned for “miss” in German) instead of their names, because they are the only female students. Although it is not meant in a negative way, it makes the addressed female students feeling uncomfortable.

Apart from the HR office and individuals already actively pursuing gender equality, the awareness of current gender imbalances or issues as well as the need for gender mainstreaming and affirmative actions is generally low. This was reported to be present in academic and non-academic staff, all career levels, and in men and women alike. The lack of awareness also stretches to opportunities that already exist, but which are not well-advertised across the university (e.g.

All the workshops carried out during the internal gender audit revealed a low level of awareness and understanding about gender equality dimensions among the main components of the university (student population, academic and non academic staff).

• Females are clearly under-represented in higher academic ranks and other management positions across the university, while in general the percentage of females at the university is equal. This is the classic challenge of vertical gender segregation.

The analysis of gender disaggregated data about the academic members show that the female presence significantly decreases passing from the category of junior/senior researchers to the highest level positions of associate and full professors, indicating the existence of the so called 'glass ceiling' or vertical gender segregation.