Hello there, Maria Elmquist, Deputy President responsible for leadership and equality. Today, Chalmers is inaugurating an Equality Office, or DEI Office, at a ceremony attended by, among others, Paulina Brandberg, the Swedish Minister for Gender Equality.
What do you aim to achieve with this initiative?
– Through the new strategy, Chalmers is raising its ambitions to reach the top academic level in Europe. At the same time, we are raising our ambitions regarding the work environment. We have been working for a long time to increase equality, including the Genie initiative, and we are starting to see results. Now we are introducing the new function to coordinate all the ongoing work, work more systematically with the issues, and also broaden the work based on other grounds of discrimination.
The Genie initiative has been around for a long time, why is a new function needed?
– There is simply more to do, as in most organisations. Chalmers has mainly worked on gender equality between women and men, but we want to broaden the work based on other grounds of discrimination. We need a work environment that gives all employees good conditions to do their best, without being hindered by irrelevant factors such as gender, age, origin, and so on. Unfortunately, this is not always the case today.
What do you think is the most important thing to address now?
– We know that there are challenges with vulnerability, especially for young female doctoral students and researchers, which often leads them to leave academia. But there are also other factors that can contribute to obstacles and vulnerability: disabilities of various kinds, ethnic origin, sexual orientation. We do not think we offer a good work environment if we do not address the challenges we know exist. Working with active measures against discrimination is also a legal requirement.
What will the work at the Equality Office contribute concretely?
– By coordinating, we can exchange experiences, increase the collective competence, and work more systematically. The DEI Office will have an advisory function towards departments, companies, and others at Chalmers who want to carry out some form of equality work. And the digital hub that the DEI Office constitutes also contains a knowledge bank with current research in the field of equality, diversity, and inclusion.
DEI initiatives are sometimes considered controversial. What is your view on this?
– Those who consider it controversial probably associate the term with American politics, where DEI is linked to affirmative action, among other things. We talk about diversity, equality, and inclusion from a Swedish perspective, and it is about working so that all employees and students at Chalmers feel welcome and do not have different conditions based on who they are.
Regardless of how the outside world perceives it, we need to address the shortcomings in our work environment. The goal is an excellent work environment, and that is what we want to act on. In the end, it is about researchers and teachers wanting to be at Chalmers and also wanting to apply for positions here. We adhere to Swedish legislation and national political goals.
Finally - what should it be called?
– Chalmers is an international environment with a large proportion of foreign researchers. Since we want to work for diversity, equality and inclusion, it makes sense to use DEI as an abbreviation instead of inventing something new. However, considering that DEI is associated with what has happened and is happening in the USA, there may be reason to reconsider whether we should use the abbreviation DEI. I can also mention that we have chosen the term Equality at Chalmers. For us, it is about focusing on equality as a broader concept, where the goal is an environment where our employees are judged based on what they do and how they do it, not on who they are as individuals.
Inauguration of Chalmers' new DEI Office
Chalmers is starting a new way of working with Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. We want to highlight and celebrate this together with you. Welcome to the inauguration of the DEI Office!