Chalmers is starting a helpdesk for university teachers, to support integrating gender equality into the content of the courses. "It's about improving the innovation capacity of our future engineers," says researcher Anna Grzelec, who runs the initiative.
Within higher education, there are increasing demands for gender equality from authorities and industry as well as society in general. The teachers at Chalmers now have access to a newly established helpdesk, to guide in the concrete work of integrating gender equality into the content of the education.
Anna Grzelec is fronting the initiative, a Ph.D. in Management and organization and M.Sc. in Engineering at the division of Science, Technology and Society at the Department of Technology Management and Economics. She believes that the issue is of the utmost importance both for Chalmers and society:
“There are several reasons. There are increased demands from different parts of society on sustainability, which is what this is ultimately about. By making use of the perspectives and experiences of different groups, we can create industries and innovations in society that are able to take on the challenges we have. So, it's about the innovativeness of our future engineers.”
A more short-term perspective is that there are demands from UKÄ, the Swedish Higher Education Authority. Chalmers has an approved quality system – and now it is time to put these ideas into practice. The helpdesk initiative is part of that work, to ensure that the university has gender equality in the content and implementation of the education.
“It is important to think about the technology that our engineers will create in the future, or the cities that the architects are participating in developing. How does it affect stereotypes, gender roles and distribution of power? Today we know a lot about this. We've researched it, we understand these things, and now it's going into university courses. It is time to ‘mainstream’ this in teaching.”
The result: An updated syllabus
Anna Grzelec can give many examples of technology that is not equal. Crash test dummies that only simulate male bodies, or AI algorithms that discriminate by bringing in "dirty" data – even after trying to clean out gender aspects. Or mobile phones that are so large that they cannot be handled with just one hand. The problems are found in all technical and scientific fields.
“Sometimes teachers believe that ‘but humans are not involved in the content of this course’. Like in math or physics. But there is always a human somewhere. Even if you are working on a molecule, you are doing it for a reason – perhaps to create a cancer drug. And then there is a doctor, a patient, there is a family of the patient, a family of the doctor, and so on.”
The new helpdesk aims to help the teachers see things they may not have seen before, and to try to find solutions together. The result may be an updated syllabus. Or it can be a completely new module, such as a lecture and a home assignment. It can also be to reformulate some assignments or add some requirements to a home assignment or a lab.
If you are a teacher at Chalmers and interested in booking the helpdesk, see info on the intranet.
About the research project
The helpdesk initiative is carried out within the framework of the research project "Future engineers - future society? Equality work in the engineering profession" managed by Anna Grzelec and Lisa Lindén at the Science, Technology and Society division. The purpose of the project is to obtain knowledge about engineering teachers' perceptions, meaning-making and ideas about gender in the engineering profession and engineering education. This knowledge should be used to identify how gender and technology research, such as discriminatory consequences of technology, can be integrated into engineering education. The project is financed by the Genie program.
About Genie
Since 2019, Chalmers has invested in gender equality issues through the record-breaking program Genie, Gender Initiative for Excellence. The project covers a total of SEK 300 million over a ten-year period. This involves, among other things, increasing the proportion of women in the faculty and creating more equal career paths. The ambition is also to improve both research and education through increased diversity and inclusion. Read more about Genie
- Associate Professor, Science, Technology and Society, Technology Management and Economics
