Diversity and Gender Equality

The committee currently consists of nine members, and we expect to expand a little soon, as the number of sections in the department increases. We are a diverse group of people, originating from four continents and being at different career stages, although somewhat gender imbalanced, as more of us are women.

Our primary responsibilities include contributing to action plans on equality; identifying, analyzing and discussing diversity and equality issues within the department; developing DEI (Diversity Equality and Inclusion) action plans at different time scales; and organizing events for the department to raise awareness and foster solutions related to DEI issues. One of our members, Emmanuel Arthur, is also representing AGRO on the TECH Faculty’s novel Diversity Committee.

 We will have met together four times by the time you read this; the minutes of our meetings are available on the intranet. We have spent a lot of time discussing what are the issues – or not – related to diversity and inclusion in the department, and what are the expectations/experiences of staff in relation to their work environment and to career progression. These are not always easy things to discuss, but it is important that we start the conversation – also across the entire department.

One of the ways we have done this is through the Diversity and Inclusion survey, which many of you completed. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to complete the survey. We will share the key findings with you soon. We conducted this survey together with ANIVET, as part of our ‘Living Lab’ with the IS IT A BIRD organization (You can read more about it here). This initiative is supported by Villum Fonden and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, aimed at developing concrete strategies to promote diversity within STEM research environments. Members of our committee have attended Living Lab meetings with people from other Universities and enjoyed ‘sparring’ with IS IT A BIRD to come up with actionable solutions.

We have also contributed to AGRO’s strategy action plan in relation to diversity and gender equality. The full action plan document is here https://agro.medarbejdere.au.dk/fileadmin/DJF/Agro/BiWeekly/Final_Action_plan_2023-2024.pdf with our activities listed on the last page. These are:

1. Set specific targets and associated measures for increasing gender diversity at all levels of academic and leadership positions.
2. Implement measures for advocating equality, diversity and inclusion to improve respectful interactions among staff groups.
3. Increase recruitment of female scientific staff at senior positions through identifying and removing barriers for attracting and retaining female candidates.
4. Increase visibility of the department as an attractive working place for people of different cultural backgrounds and genders

You can also read details on how we will achieve these goals. Importantly, we have already seen some progress, with more women being appointed as professors and leaders recently., This is encouraging and motivating for this task of addressing our DEI challenges in the department. 

We invite you to initiate conversations on these topics with your colleagues, and we look forward to engaging with you during the ‘World café’ session at the AGRO Days next month.