Gender bias in academic recruitment and promotion
Gender bias in academic recruitment and promotion. Recognizing and overcoming it.
- 29 October 2020
Time
- 14.00 - 15.15 cest (Brussels time)
Learning objectives
- Sensitise about the benefits of recruiting diverse talents
- Highlight how bias is often embedded in recruitment processes, tools, and lexicon (i.e. pre-determined candidate profiles, the different value attributed to same psychological traits/attitudes of men and women, etc.)
- Familiarise with existing promising practices
Who is it for?
- Decision-makers (Heads of institutes/departments)
- HR managers
- Administrative staff
Speakers
Heidi Mertens is the coordinator of the KU Leuven Diversity Policy Office. In close collaboration with her team, the Vice-rector of Diversity Policy, the Diversity Council and a network of Diversity teams she coordinates KU Leuven’s diversity policy. The KU Leuven diversity policy focusses on two overarching goals: creating an inclusive culture as a basic condition for successful learning and career development for students and staff of all backgrounds, and promoting diverse recruitment and retention of students and staff by means of specific actions. Next to that, she is also responsible for the KU Leuven harassment desk.
Jadranka Gvozdanović is a linguistics professor at Heidelberg University and a gender expert. In both fields, her research focuses on change processes, on how and why change begins, and which factors contribute to adoption of change or resistance to it. Concerning gender, she focuses on modification of structural factors involving all the levels of an institution, and the importance of communication. She holds leading positions in scholarly associations and is currently Chair of the LERU Group on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Within LERU, she contributed to position statements about gender equality and (co-)authored the following papers: “The European Research Area: Priorities for Research Universities`` (2011); “” Women, research and universities: excellence without gender bias (2012), “Implicit bias in academia: A challenge to the meritocratic principle and to women’s careers – and what to do about it” (2018).
Andrea Bardyn is a policy advisor at KU Leuven’s Diversity Policy Office, with a focus on HR, gender and diversity. Her policy work focusses on recruitment, inclusion and wellbeing of academic and non-academic staff. Among others, she supports the Gender Vanguards of KU Leuven, who prevent gender bias in assessment committees and constitute a core measure in KU Leuven’s gender policy. She also manages a project to improve gender equality among academic staff in STEM-faculties at KU Leuven
Agenda
