WISER Festival in Maastricht: It’s time to get Wiser!
Although the fancy custom-made chocolates were sweet enough to satiate everyone’s appetite, organisers of the two-day WISER Festival on 4-5 October 2007 in Maastricht will only declare themselves fully satisfied the day when women obtain equal positions as men in society.
Almost 500 professors, researchers and students gathered in the area around Centre Céramique to examine the role of women in Science, Education and Research through debates, demonstrations, performances, workshops and more informal parties.
Funded by the European Social Fund’s EQUAL programme - which was established in 2001 to seek new ways to end discrimination and inequality at the workplace or in the job market - the WISER festival was organised by Maastricht University’s Centre for Gender and Diversity and conference bureau Cultuurfabriek.
Annelies van der Horst, EQUAL project manager at the Centre for Gender and Diversity, explained that the event was called “festival”, instead of conference or congress because “we wanted to celebrate and connect people instead of having a conference which is always more or less the same, ” adding with conviction that “the issues of women in science will only be solved when everybody comes together: not only men in the board room, not only women, but everyone together!”
Wiser in Europe, the Netherlands and Maastricht
The level of female participation in academic fields varies in Europe but still lags behind male participation. In the Netherlands, the situation is worse than the European average. Women in this country are still under-represented in higher academic positions.
The reasons for this are unclear, but there seems to be a so-called glass-ceiling. Although women represent half of the Dutch student population and fill 40 percent of all doctoral positions, only around 10 percent of university professors are female. Although the number of female professors has doubled since the end of the 1990s, the Netherlands is still scores lower than the European average. It looks unlikely that the Netherlands will be able to achieve the Lisbon-objective to reach a percentage of 25 percent of female professors by 2010. Instead of opting for an unrealistic short-term drastic change, the Dutch Ministry for Education, Culture and Science (OC&W) has now set its own objective at 15 percent for 2010.
Why shouldn’t we be Wiser? Passing the microphone from a Dutch minister to a Bollywood dancer
The WISER festival opened on Thursday morning, 4 October, at Maastricht’s St. Janskerk, a 13th-century church on the Vrijthof square.
Several keynote figures talked about the current situation regarding gender equality in the Netherlands. Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch Minister of Education, stated that the government intends to focus on a continued increase of female professors, and to try its best to improve the position of women in science. Plasterk also assured to include more women in his own ministry, in an effort to be a role model for different levels of society.
Minister Plasterk and Maastricht University chairman Jo Ritzen both stressed the need to stimulate Dutch universities to attract more female researchers as well as raise the number of women in university boards.
Referring to Maastricht University’s new slogan, Jo Ritzen said that he intended to apply the concepts of “leading and learning” to the subject of gender equality by giving Maastricht University a leading role to further women emancipation in society. Ritzen, himself a former Education Minister, explained that issues related to the autonomy of universities and their insistence on hiring quality personnel had severely limited the debate on gender equality between the government and universities back in the 1990s, but that the atmosphere was changing nowadays and that universities were becoming more open to new ideas.
Colourful debate
After the opening speeches, the audience was invited to actively participate in an original debate.
Four eminent female professors presented their views on women emancipation in universities, with each one of them displaying a different card colour (red, yellow, blue and green).
The first speaker, Professor Janneke Gerards advised universities to implement a quota of 40 percent of women on their staff. She strongly argued that any real discussion about women in universities could only be held once this quota was achieved.
The following speaker was Professor Renate Loll, who stressed the importance of raising women’s expectations and ambitions. Women must realise that “the sky is the limit”.
Professor Mineke Bosch then claimed that the academic world was still dominated by male imagery. She proposed the implementation of gender proof symbolism to make it easier for women to envision a future in academia. Showing a picture of a female scientist and her son in a science laboratory, Bosch argued that imagery has the power to determine women’s social status.
Finally Professor Yvonne Benschop pleaded for the creation of a national committee to ensure women emancipation and equality in science.
After the fourth statement, the audience was invited to raise their own coloured card to indicate which colour they supported the most. At the first count of votes, Professor Gerards’ red card seemed to be the most popular. Yet after a heated debate among participants, the other statements also started to gain support. Eventually, the audience agreed that all four propositions dealt with important aspects of the subject.
The Best of JIVE-UKRC
On Friday, 5 October, British partnership and research institute JIVE/UKRC shared some of its success stories with the public. Gender inequality in the area of Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) is still a matter of concern in the UK, where about 50,000 women with degrees in SET are currently not working in their respective areas of expertise. JIVE/UKRC encourages qualified women to enter the fields of SET which have traditionally been male dominated.
“As a whole, there is a small number of women working in the areas of engineering and IT”, said Lies Fergy, a moderator for the Best of JIVE/UKRC session. She told the audience that in the UK, only four percent of women work in engineering and 16 percent in IT.
JIVE/UKRC provides practical services such as one-on-one consultations to women through regional offices and campaigns like “Return” which help highly qualified women to resume their career in SET. “The projects of JIVE have been successful in supporting women by providing them with flexible or part-time work in SET fields”, said Fergy who runs the Wales-based centre.
One example of a successful woman was embodied by space-scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who stated that “science is not just for boys”. The ambitious young British scientist of Nigerian origin started to dream about becoming an astronaut when she saw a moon-landing on television as a child. Beyond her own expectations, Aderin-Pocock now works as a senior project manager, Space Science at Sira Limited. “I think everyone should have some experience in science, because it is just fantastic, and women bring specific aspects to it”, said Aderin-Pocock. Her next project, James Webb Space Telescope, is a joint collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
Bollywood Dancing
WISER festival also offered a wide variety of entertaining workshops. In “Bollywood dancing” for example, researcher and dancer Gwenda van der Steene enthusiastically talked about her PhD-research in Globalisation and Dance at the University of Ghent. As part of her research, she travelled to Senegal to study the phenomenon of “Bollywood dancing”, a widely popular form of entertainment throughout the world. Bollywood cinema started in India and Pakistan in the 1950s and soon became very popular in the rest of Asia and in Africa. Bollywood dancing specifically refers to the Indian dances featured in Bollywood movies and characterised by a lot of singing and dancing.
The popularity of Bollywood movies in Senegal gave rise to so-called Soirées Hindu, where local girls perform Bollywood style dances.
Gwenda van der Steene not only demonstrated but also gave a short workshop about Bollywood dancing at Derlon theatre, showing everyone present that research can be fun. Her testimony helped female students realise that they can do research by studying the subjects that they find interesting, and that it is their own enthusiasm that will ensure the success of their research.
Did you get any Wiser?
The majority of the professors at the festival seemed to be passionate advocates of gender equality: “We cannot afford as a global society to use only 50 percent of human capacity,” said a professor from Leiden University. “We need to use the full 100 percent. Not only for economic reasons but also for the cultural development of our society.”
But a university professor from Antwerp, Belgium had a different perspective: “I am pessimistic because in 1968, female university students were saying the same thing about gender equality… and we’ve had events like this WISER festival since the 70s until now….”
Rietje van Dam, a professor of Natural Science noted that it is time to change our perception: “We need to recognise that men and women are not the same, and that the best way to go forward is to make use of this diversity. It is more enriching to use two perspectives than just one.”
Magda Michielsens, a professor of Women’s Studies argued that women also need to change their mentality and be more ambitious. “I see my young colleagues who say they only want to work 36 hours a week because that is what feminists put forward. But you cannot just work 36 hours. You have to be prepared to work 60 or 80 hours.”
Many female PhD students who participated in the festival emphasised the importance of having this kind of event. “We are really curious to find out what it is like to become a professor!” said one Dutch student. The Wiser festival certainly made this possible: during private “speed-dating” sessions, future female researchers were witnessed passionately conversing with experienced lady professors.
By Rina Tsubaki, Daniel Paone and Yassin Amartib
Rina Tsubaki is a European Studies student at Maastricht University. Rina is currently doing an internship at the European Journalism Centre. With a Japanese passport, she has now been living in the Netherlands for three years and consider herself as a citizen of the world.
Short interviews with some of the participants at the WISER festival in Maastricht, 4-5 October 2007 (produced by the European Journalism Centre)
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