Wednesday, December 12, 2007

RU in the Guardian Education

Colin Stirling pointed out this article in the Guardian Education to me yesterday. This article is going to generate a little publicity for my current institution (Reykjavík University) and we can certainly do with that! It is also certainly true that Icelandic (academic) institutions feature more women in leading positions than elsewhere, and that their wages are comparable to those of equally qualified male colleagues. However, I am not so sure that Iceland is a particularly good example of a country that attracts good numbers of female students and members of staff in science and technology. We still have far too few women enrolling in computer science degrees, for instance, and my department employs one female professor and two female assistant professors. (Yes, we now have English web pages!) We will need to work very hard to try and change this situation, and this is one of our tasks for the future as far as recruiting is concerned both at student and staff level.

But enough grumping, let's enjoy our five minutes of fame in the British media, even though, as my rector Svafa Groenfeldt wrote to me,

"The interview was ok but as always the journalists take a bit of an artistic license when they quote what we said :-)"

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