Technical University Of Denmark Envisions Towards Diverse University

Since 2015, DTU has had a special focus on working towards becoming a diverse university that values equality and inclusiveness highly. In the spring of 2021, when DTU’s DE&I plan was presented, Rasmus Larsen, Executive Vice President, Provost, said:

“At DTU, we strive to ensure everyone has equal access and opportunities to study, research, and work. As a university and as individuals, we have blind spots and prejudices that can get in the way of that ambition if we’re not aware of them. With the new plan, diversity and inclusion are considered in everything from recruitment, management, research and teaching, learning environments, and working environments. And we’ll also measure the effects of the efforts on an ongoing basis.”

Deniz Atan will help make Rasmus Larsen’s words a reality.

What is DE&I in your words?
Let me use the metaphor of a party: Diversity is about being invited to the party. Inclusion is about how nice it is to be at the party. Equality is about how much of a voice you have at this party.

The first question in a DE&I analysis thus becomes, “who is at the party, and who haven’t we invited?” This question is often translated into a binary gender issue, where we examine the distribution of men and women. But DE&I deals with more than gender, and it’s crucial to establish this when clarifying what DE&I means as a concept. When assessing diversity in a workplace, we mustn’t forget that several identity markers define everyone. This can be gender, class, nationality, sexuality, physical ability, ethnicity, or other identity markers.

If we overlook this complexity, it can be difficult to shed light on the issues that exist in an organization. At the same time, we should be careful not to relativize the gender issue or put someone outside the majority group by giving them a particular label. It’s a delicate balancing act. And creating a diverse workplace isn’t an end in itself. The inclusiveness frees up and activates the wealth of competencies and perspectives that our diversity gives us.

It’s complicated and challenging to create diversity, equality, and inclusion. But groundbreaking advances can arise when prejudices are examined and inclusion is fostered. That is an important point I try to make when I talk to centres and departments at DTU.

What are DTU’s biggest challenges in this area?
It’s important to realize DTU’s ambition and strategy for DE&I because it’s vital to ensuring a good talent pool, a wealth of ideas, and high-quality research at the University. For example, when we look at the academic staff at DTU, female professors are underrepresented. This fundamental challenge points to several underlying issues that we must address to maintain our position as an elite university.

For example, we must consider whether we’re creating structurally exclusive environments for women. The drop-out rate of women at higher academic career levels is often explained by the fact that women replace their research work with care work when they have children, which puts them at a disadvantage when they return to the workplace. But the problem isn’t that women start families—which men do too. It’s the structural challenges around maternity leave, career, and salary. We should recognize this difference so we don’t problematize women but rather the socially created structures and standards.

Why does DTU need a DE&I consultant?
Fortunately, Danish universities are aware of the importance of DE&I. They know that working with DE&I is key to attracting world-class researchers. Inclusive environments are a competitive parameter when recruiting and retaining students, researchers, and other employees.

The people who manage students in a classroom, a research team, or an administrative unit must have the knowledge to promote inclusive leadership or teaching. My job is to help them understand how a sustainable and inclusive environment can be created.

How can you help promote DE&I throughout the organization?
DE&I is not just an HR issue! Everyone needs to be actively on board with our DE&I efforts.

As an employee, it’s about being curious about the knowledge DTU already has in this area and talking about how it can be put into day-to-day practice. My role will be to support departments, centres, and administrative units in this work.

For example, we can look at ‘academic housekeeping,’ where women and younger employees take on more community-oriented tasks, which don’t carry very high academic value since academic assessments typically reward individual tasks. The men need to take responsibility to ensure that it’s not the women or the younger employee who are tasked with taking notes, teaching, socializing, cleaning up, coordinating, etc.

We often see an unequal division of labour for which men don’t have an eye. It’s rarely with ill will or bad intentions. This is typically due to privilege blindness and a lack of understanding of the situations in which certain biases can take effect. As a man, you should be aware of your privileges and the bias mechanisms that can arise in different work situations.

I am consciously speaking to men because we men shouldn’t place the responsibility for equal division of labour on women alone. Several universities are starting to change their accreditation practices so that community-oriented tasks have a higher value, as they are also crucial for running a healthy and productive research environment.

Is DTU affected by a particular bias?
In Denmark, we tend to see ourselves as ‘world leaders. This can lead us to create homogeneous research groups that mainly hire and work with people who are similar to us. But studies show that the quality of the research decreases if you don’t have a diverse research group in terms of nationality, gender, and age. These studies are important because they show that focusing on diversity is business-critical. For instance, if the people who need to use a particular technology aren’t represented in the research, we won’t develop useable technologies.

In general, monoculture will always be a problem. By monoculture, I mean a culture consisting of a uniform composition of gender, ethnicity, perspectives, and competencies.

When will the DE&I efforts be successful for DTU?
When will we be done counting how much money we make? Never. When will we finish measuring our CO2 footprint? Never. In the same way, we should never be satisfied with a certain degree of diversity. There’s always a risk that monocultures can arise, regardless of the employees’ composition, so we should continuously take stock of the DE&I situation.

For example, if our diversity report shows that there aren’t enough women in research, it’s not enough to do an extensive recruitment campaign. It’s also important to make an effort to ensure that women experience that they’re included and heard once they’re part of DTU. This is where our work on inclusion and equal treatment becomes paramount. And hopefully, we can avoid creating a revolving door effect among employees.

The fact that DE&I is part of DTU’s sustainability report clearly signals that DTU sees the area as an element on an equal footing with, for example, our resource consumption.

Where does your interest in DE&I come from?
I don’t feel comfortable when there are structures we’re not allowed to tamper with. Growing up, I experienced being part of and apart from the community. I’ve experienced how well-meaning inclusiveness could feel more alienating than inclusive.

I suppose I’ve always been on the side of the underprivileged, and I find it easy to put myself outside a situation and see it from a larger perspective.