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Forget the strict checklist when we employ people and focus instead on potential and ideas. That is what leads to more creative research and more woman among the applicants, according to Professor Bente Nyvad.
2021.08.12 |
Professor of Kariology Bente Nyvad believes that the scientific job advertisement can almost disqualify women in advance. Photo: Simon Fischel, AU Health.
”I can’t identify with the term ‘elite researcher’.”
Why not?
”Because I’ve just done my duty and lived up to the university’s mission: to carry out research and teaching and to make a contribution to society.”
You are the fourth-most cited researcher in the world in the field of cariology.
“Yes.”
Is it because you’re a woman that you don’t want to be called an elite researcher?
“Maybe. But that’s secondary. I’ve delivered what could be expected of me as a researcher.”
And that is how Bente Nyvad begins the interview for this article. She is professor at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health and is not completely happy with the headline of the series of articles; ‘Woman and elite researcher’. As if there should be an inherent contradiction or that gender should play a special role.
“Gender hasn’t been a consideration during my career. I’ve never experienced it as a factor in odontology research circles, where we already have many women in leading positions. I think it’s demeaning to get preferential treatment or affirmative action because we’re women. We want to be employed based on our qualifications and to be honoured for the results we’ve achieved,” says Bente Nyvad, who is well aware of the unequal gender balance at the university and in particular at professor level. We will return to the causes and solution later.
Educational discussions around the dinner table
Bente Nyvad has just celebrated fifty years at the university – the first five years as a odontology student and the next 45 as an employee. Despite the many years spent in the world of academia, becoming a researcher was not on the cards. And certainly not that she should end up as one the leading researchers in her field of caries and oral ecology.
The first steps towards a career as a researcher were likely taken at home in the town of Vejen, where her father was a dentist and an encyclopaedia was often consulted when doubts arose during the many discussions in the talkative family.
“I’ve been raised to be inquisitive and to ask questions, but always under the condition that you knew what you were talking about. This has meant that I’ve made an effort, not been afraid to poke my nose in and allowed myself to doubt the consensus explanation long before I became a researcher. My critical approach to consensus was further stimulated by my supervisors while I was a PhD student, and I think this approach has taken me far professionally,” says Bente Nyvad, who has been professor since 2009.
Do the job advertisements take men into account?
Nonetheless, 71-year-old Bente Nyvad has her doubts about whether she would be professor if she were to begin her career today. She understands why women are either not selected for or simply do not apply to academic positions. It is not the individual woman’s fault. Rather, she directs her criticism towards the job advertisements which can almost disqualify women in advance.
“The problem is these job advertisements. Today, you’re placed in a box with many very specific requirements. You’ve got to almost be a full-blooded researcher who can document that you’ve studied abroad, had successful funding applications, collaborated with business and industry and have an entrepreneurial mindset, already before you as a junior researcher can even qualify for an assistant professorship. It’s completely unreasonable,” says Bente Nyvad, adding that junior researchers should first and foremost be trained in research.
She admits that these requirements are no different for men, but points out that the framing and wording in the job advertisements appeal to men, and that this contributes to a fundamental imbalance and also a uniformity in the appointment process.
“Perhaps overstating things a little, I would say that men want to be great surgeons while woman want to improve public health. The job advertisements lay the groundwork for favouring applicants who can talk big and promise quick results and economic benefits. I think men find it easier to describe themselves in that template and to highlight their own excellence,” she says.
She thinks many of the job advertisements and the requirements they contain should be less specific, so that more applicants with competences outside a given research field could come with their ideas and perspectives. This would not only lead to a more diverse field of applicants, but also provide fertile ground for more dedicated research.
Leave the research factory behind
All in all, Bente Nyvad argues strongly for freeing research from the many formal requirements. Leave the research factory and salami publication behind. There must be time to read, think and reflect. Make mistakes, puzzle over things and allow new ideas to grow. This was what Bente Nyvad experienced early in her own career.
During her PhD degree, she studied the formation of bacteria on the surface of teeth. But the bacteria did not fit any of the patterns that had at that time been described. Her PhD supervisor wondered whether she could have contaminated the bacteria in the laboratory and asked her to do the analyses again. Twice. With the same results. Doing so delayed her PhD project and Bente Nyvad ended up submitting the dissertation without naming all of the bacteria. The dissertation later led to a new classification of oral streptococci and her second most cited article comes from her PhD.
“You can’t design your career in advance. There’s not any direct road from PhD degree to professorship. If you want to go far with your research, then of course you need to be academically talented, but you also need to be open so you can spot new paths along the way – and dare to follow them,” says Bente Nyvad. She does not hide her concern at the one-size-fits-all career model which the university with its set criteria appears to encourage, and which junior researchers are expected to follow. According to Bente Nyvad, the significant focus on collaboration with business and industry may lead to some woman and men losing interest in a career as a researcher.
The biological barrier
Bente Nyvad tells of her six months studying abroad at Iowa University College of Dentistry in USA in 1972, where she was the only female odontology student. The stay was an eye-opener that expanded both her academic and cultural horizon.
“It was an important time abroad. I was intellectually stimulated and saw that there were other Gods and other ways of doing things than those I knew from Aarhus. I’m a strong proponent of going abroad to study, but the system shouldn’t decide when you place your study abroad period,” says Bente Nyvad with reference to the requirement for an international study abroad period during the PhD degree programme.
She has been supervisor for a female PhD student who was forced to balance clinical trials and travel activity at the same time as having an infant child. A situation that Bente Nyvad describes as almost hopeless, although the ambitious PhD student managed to successfully balance everything.
“Even though you do everything in your power to plan and share the workload, there will be times where a child limits when and how much you can do research-wise,” says Bente Nyvad and continues: ”Regardless of how much diversity and gender equality we include in declarations of intent and strategic action plans, there is still a biological barrier in that women are the ones who give birth to children. Happily, more and more men are taking a greater share of the parental leave, but all things being equal, if we maintain structural frameworks which are too fixed then we ensure unequal conditions for women,” says Bente Nyvad, who does not herself have children.
Neither is she a supporter of the massive focus on gender promotion, which looks to promote women up the career ladder at any price. For this reason, gender quotas and affirmative action are not Bente Nyvad’s cup of tea, and she is puzzled by the discrepancy that there seems to be between a desire for more diversity at the universities and, at the same time, always having a checklist of results and qualifications which everyone must fit into.
”I think it’s contradictory that we have a diversity policy at AU but nonetheless find it necessary to include phrases such as ‘woman are encouraged to apply’ in job advertisements. That type of gender nudging has the completely opposite effect on me and no doubt also on many other women. I believe that women make conscious career decisions,” she says. And she is therefore not seriously worried on behalf of women in general.
”Women are in the majority on both the medical and odontology degree programmes. We’ve got a big generation of talented and determined female PhD students who will naturally find a path to the top of the research world over the next 10-15 years,” she says before adding:
”My starting point is basic research into oral micro-biology and here one of the fundamental principles is that diversity in the bacterial flora gives more stable ecosystems. Diverse environments are more resilient to external threats, they’re more productive and more creative. I think we can readily transfer that mindset to society in general and to the university sector. We can’t and shouldn’t all be the same. Our differences enrich all of us – also when it comes to career paths.”
Professor & Head of Section Bente Nyvad
Aarhus University, Section for Oral Ecology and Caries Control
Mobile: (+45) 2464 3511
Email: nyvad@dent.au.dk