There is a significant gender imbalance at the top of the academic career ladder. Professor Karin Lykke-Hartmann is well aware of this. Yet, though the odds are stacked against her, the imbalance has not affected her much on her way to the professorship. She does not want affirmative action and insists on relying on her own academic results.

2021.10.07 | Simon Byrial Fischel

 

Five professors sit around her in a semi-circle. All are men. She is at a job interview and her unborn daughter is rummaging around in her stomach underneath the loosely-fitting blouse. She is five months pregnant. At stake is an associate professorship that would be an important step-up on Karin-Lykke Hartmann's academic career. The interview goes well. The five professors are impressed, and two days later she is offered the job. No one had noticed her stomach. But would it have played a role if they had?

"Afterwards, I thought to myself that if there had been just one woman on the appointment committee, then they would have spotted that I was pregnant," says Karin Lykke-Hartmann.

No one made an issue out of it when the department head found out that she was about to take maternity leave shortly after beginning in her new position. Nonetheless, Karin Lykke-Hartmann has often reflected on whether she would have been given the job if they had noticed she was pregnant.

Fast forward fourteen years.

Once again, Karin Lykke-Hartmann is at a job interview. This time for a professorship, and now the appointment committee comprises twelve people, five of whom are women.

"Something has definitely happened here in terms of open calls for professorships, and there being more women on the appointment committees," says Karin Lykke-Hartmann.

"This is a plus and all things being equal, it means better conditions for women."

But she is still taken aback during the interview for this article when presented with an overview showing the gender distribution for academic positions at Health:

“That’s crazy! Four times as many male professors as female?!"

Do you think there’s a problem here?

“Yes. There’s a problem here.”

How do we solve it?

“That’s the question. I simply don’t know.”                 

Ended up in the field by chance

It is roughly two months since Karin Lykke-Hartmann took up the position as professor of reproductive medicine at the Department of Biomedicine, and she has followed a long and convoluted path to get here. 

As a young Master’s degree student at the University of Copenhagen, any idea about working in the field of female fertility was very distant. She was working in developmental biology in plants and was finishing her MSc with a thesis on protein chemistry, when she set foot in the laboratory for the first time.

"I quickly discovered laboratory work was totally right for me. I was completely hooked by being able to ask questions about molecules and then find an answer."

She wanted to do research. There was no doubt in her mind. Already a year before finishing her thesis, she sent a PhD application complete with a project description to Yale University in Connecticut. The application was accepted, but when Karin Lykke-Hartmann arrived the following year to begin the PhD project, she got a surprise that was to be pivotal for her future career.

"When I landed at Yale, my PhD project had simply been taken. A postdoc was in full swing working on it. That’s just how it is. Research can't wait, and it was a good project, so they had already moved on it,” says the professor.

However, a researcher from the team had another project for her. They had recently discovered a type of protein in humans and animals that was similar to the those that Karin Lykke-Hartmann had studied in plants. They had just received a new grant and they were undermanned in the laboratory.

"So there I am. I’d found an apartment and everything, and perhaps it really wasn’t so important whether I was working with plants or animals. It was always the underlying mechanisms that really interested me," explains Karin Lykke Hartmann.

She was sent straight to the laboratory to do her first 'knock-out' mice – i.e. mice where specific genes are made inactive. In this case to see how it affected mice embryos during pregnancy.

Karin Lykke-Hartmann had never done 'knock-out' mice before, but she is the type of person who will gladly take a swing at something new to her. She found the laboratory animal facilities and got started.

"It's just different in the United States. You don’t do a lot of arguing with your group leader, you just get on with it," she says.

She does not doubt that this is the mentality, which has made her successful in the world of research: "Never give up! That’s my mantra, and it's also inculcated in all my students after they’ve been in our lab."

After completing her PhD at Yale, Karin Lykke-Hartmann joined a research group at Cambridge University, spending four years there before returning to Denmark as assistant professor to start her own research group at AU.

No to affirmative action

Karin Lykke-Hartmann is in favour of self-determination and a level playing field. She is aware that women are lagging behind in the world of research, and sees it as an obstacle. Although personally speaking she does not think she has ever been subjected to discrimination because of her gender.

"I don't think that my gender has held me back. If anything, it’s more my background as a MSc. In health science research, things would’ve been easier if I’d come from medicine," she says.

Even though this makes her a minority of a minority in her field, she has never been in favour of affirmative action. Conditions should be the same for everyone.

"I don't like those women-specific calls. I don't want a position or grant because I'm a woman. I want it because my research is the best, because I'm the most skilled," says the professor.

She does not like the idea of excluding one gender from applying for a certain fund or position, but is nonetheless open to the idea of a quota system to ensure that research positions are distributed equally to men and women. 

She is certainly not blind to the differences in conditions for men and women. As a researcher in female reproduction and a mother of three, she has a certain level of expertise when it comes to pregnancies and maternity leave. She knows that having children can be a limiting factor for women's careers, yet she is not in favour of certain structural initiatives. This includes earmarked paternity leave:

"It's not something you should force down people’s throats. They can decide for themselves how best to allocate it," she emphasises. On the whole, Karin Lykke-Hartmann is not very keen on people restricting her scope for action. She believes in freedom with responsibility, which she also practises with her team of employees and students in her laboratory.

"Putting on a gold chain"

Karin Lykke-Hartmann knows that being a mother, a professor and head of a research group also makes her a role model.  Not least to the young female researchers with whom she crosses paths. However, her fundamental message is the same whether mentoring female or male students: Making it as a researcher takes self-confidence.  

Stand tall. Not only when things go well, but also when an article is scrapped or a funding application is rejected. You have to teach yourself to get back in the saddle and keep believing in your research. This is what Karin Lykke-Hartmann calls putting on a gold chain.

Quite often, she has come upon the assumption that men are particularly good at this. During her career, she has even had male superiors praise her for being 'a bit boyish' – which in her own words means 'difficult to bring down’ – as she rarely lets adversity and criticism affect her. 

According to the professor, a research career is in many ways a lifestyle you choose.

“Of course that doesn’t mean that you can’t lead a fulfilling personal life at the same time, but you need to be flexible – especially when coming up on deadlines. This requires that you are structured as a person,” she underlines. 

Karin Lykke-Hartmann is herself a family person who values and prioritizes spending time with her three daughters. “To me it is all about planning. For example, every Wednesday afternoon is blocked in my calendar, because that’s when my youngest has her weekly troop meeting with the girl scouts. Making time for things like that while seeing to your career is no problem as long as you know how to manage your time properly,” she says.

No consequences = no action

The newly appointed professor is not an activist. Far from it. Nonetheless, she still sees a need for action, if we are actually to create equal conditions for women and men. Talking alone will not suffice.

However, to Karin Lykke-Hartmann many issues of gender equality should not be solved at a structural level. Some things need to be handled by each of us in our own manners. 

“Find your own way, or you won’t find any at all. No two careers are the same in the world of research,” she says.

She is the type who will simply walk by the office of the head of department and talk to them directly if she has a specific request or a problem, which needs discussing. That works for her. 

She does not doubt the benefits of e.g. requiring gender equality in appointment committees, but on a personal level, she experiences how such initiatives can also have negative repercussions for women. The phone often rings when male colleagues need a woman for a committee post or as a co-applicant. Two weeks into her professorship, she was in her first appointment committee.  

"My experience is, that people go and find a woman when they have to. But I often have to be tough and decline. I just don't have time to sit on all these committees if I am also to concentrate on my teaching and my lab work. I say yes to just few each semester, and otherwise focus on my research. All that extra work is bound to bring you down otherwise.”

In Karin Lykke-Hartmann’s view, progress has been made on gender equality during the course of her own career, but it bothers her that so few women ever reach the professorship.

"If you really want to change things at leadership level, then you have to make specific demands, set a timeline, and there has to be consequences. If there aren’t any consequences, then nothing is going to happen," concludes Karin Lykke-Hartmann. 

 

About Karin Lykke-Hartmann

Awarded a MSc by the University of Copenhagen in 1998.

PhD from Yale University in 2002.

Professor of reproductive medicine at the Department of Biomedicine, head of the Laboratory of Reproductive Biology.

Former AIAS Associate.

Founder and CEO at iNotify.

Has a 20 per cent employment at the Department of Clinical Genetics at Aarhus University Hospital.

Lives in Skæring outside Aarhus.

Has three daughters aged 9, 11 and 13.

 

Contact

Professor Karin Lykke-Hartmann
Department of Biomedicine – Research and Education, The Skou Building
Email: kly@biomed.au.dk
Mobile: (+45) 2939 0558

 

Read the other articles in the series “Woman and Elite Researcher”:

Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen – Following your dream comes at a price

Ida Vogel - There are so many good reasons why women should do research

Bente Nyvad – I probably wouldn’t have become a researcher today

 

Gender distribution at Health – by job categories and departments pr. 31 August 2021

	Clinical medicine		Biomedicine		Public Health		Dentistry and Oral Health		Forensic Medicine
	♀	♂	♀	♂	♀	♂	♀	♂	♀	♂
Professors*	36 (22%)	124 (78%)	6 (18%)	27 (82%)	11 (44%)	14 (56%)	5 (50%)	5 (50%)	1 (50%)	1 (50%)
Associate professors**	143 (42%)	199 (58%)	31 (40%)	46 (60%)	19 (57%)	14 (43%)	7 (39%)	11 (61%)	2 (29%)	5 (71%)
Assistant professors***	10 (37%)	17 (73%)	20 (59%)	14 (41%)	5 (50%)	5 (50%)	1 (50%)	1 (50%)	2 (50%)	2 (50%)
PhD students****	175 (62%)	109 (38%)	40 (64%)	22 (36%)	20 (59%)	14 (41%)	9 (82%)	2 (18%)	5 (62%)	3 (38%)

*Incl. professor MSO, clinical professor and state-appointed forensic pathologist, ** Incl. senior researcher, clinical associate professor and deputy state-appointed forensic pathologist, *** Incl. tenure track, **** Covers only salaried PhD students as of 31 August 2021. The number of enrolled PhD students may be higher. Source: Health HR.