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Professor Ida Vogel wants to inspire other women to have a research career - and she fights for equal conditions in academia, although it does not always feel strategically smart to be the one pointing out the injustices.
2021.05.06 |
The deep, professional community and the opportunity to push new research into patients' reality are two of the great benefits of life as a researcher, says Professor Ida Vogel. Photo: Jann Thiele Zeiss
When asked on the phone whether she would take part in an interview series under the theme "Woman and elite researcher", Ida Vogel initially replies that she is not certain she belongs in the category.
Immediately, she corrects herself and says: "How typical is it for a woman to answer like that!"
She is happy to take part in the interview.
Professor Ida Vogel is very aware of the structural, institutional and cultural reasons that mean we still do not have gender equality in Denmark or among elite researchers at Aarhus University. She has been prominent enough in the debate for most people to immediately think of her and a handful of other female researchers when gender equality in research at Health comes up.
But she prefers not to talk about barriers in the beginning of this interview - she will get back to that later. The 54-year-old professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine (AU) and the Department of Clinical Genetics (AUH) would much rather talk about why women should pursue a career in research.
If they go after a professorship for the same reason as Ida Vogel, then they do so because it is incredibly exciting. Because making a difference for specific patient groups is especially satisfying. Because you join a knowledge-sharing community that crosses national borders. And because you can be a pioneer in a field that you are passionate about, and thereby leave your own small mark on the world.
Ida Vogel is a medical doctor who has trained in the field of clinical genetics. She has always been fascinated by pregnancy and diagnostics, but around 2010 a particular experience altered her approach to research.
An unborn child was diagnosed with a heart defect and its parents wanted to find out whether the heart defect was caused by an underlying syndrome.
Like other clinical researchers in the field, Ida Vogel was standing on the threshold of a diagnostic leap forward, in which entirely new opportunities were opening up. She knew how she could utilise the chromosome microarray method to examine the foetus and detect serious developmental or congenital defects. But she made do with offering the parents the diagnostics that were available in the existing guidelines.
Shortly after the birth, Ida Vogel met the couple again.
"The boy had a syndrome, and I would have seen that if I had used the diagnostics that I had access to through my research. I could have used the method, but I didn't. I experienced the parents' reproach and my own dismay that I hadn’t given the family access to the knowledge they wanted. It was a transformative experience for me," she explains.
"I learned something about the importance of new diagnostics – and about not being afraid to use them. That’s what all my research has revolved around ever since: How can we facilitate the patients and they possibilities they have?"
Since 2015, Ida Vogel has been research director at the Centre for Prenatal Diagnostics, which is a knowledge- and research centre rooted in prenatal medicine, anthropology and genetics. Among other things, the centre focuses on chromosomal diseases and defects and documents detection rates in different ultrasound and genetic techniques, while also developing a new non-invasive test option (cell-based NIPT) together with a smaller Danish biotech company. The centre also examines how patients experience the new knowledge.
Ida Vogel describes prenatal diagnosis as an exciting, dangerous, innovative, misconceived, unpopular and transformative area. Although around 97 per cent of pregnant women accept the offer of prenatal diagnosis, technological developments can pose ethical, professional and information-related challenges.
She discusses the difficult questions with colleagues all over the world.
"My work has led to me having close relations with researchers in countries such as Israel, the United States, South Africa and Australia. These are people I am close to and who have become my personal friends. When I go for a walk at the beach with my friend from South Africa, who is a Muslim in full-body clothing, both of us in our rubber boots, we discuss the exact same clinical reality. We see the same types of patients, and we can work intellectually and with our professional skills in exactly the same way. That’s what’s so special for me – that we share in collecting and applying the same knowledge," she says.
The professional sense of community is another great part of being a scientist, and for Ida Vogel it is perhaps even stronger, because there is a feeling of vulnerability when you work with prenatal diagnosis. The topic arouses a lot of emotion, and Ida Vogel has – in particular following a research appointment at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US – herself received emails with photos of foetal parts and impassioned messages.
"Abortion is under pressure in most of the world. I don’t glorify abortion, but I wholeheartedly support the knowledge- and information society, even though it sometimes lands us in dilemmas about how we use the knowledge we’ve gained," she explains.
Ida Vogel does not choose the easy path – either in her choice of research field or her work in the DANWISE organisation and the Line X initiative, where she works to ensure that women have the same conditions for a research career as men.
"It is very well-documented in the academic world that it’s more difficult for women to reach the top of the research ladder on all fronts. They are assigned more teaching assignments and are members of more committees which perhaps don’t benefit their careers. They spend more time than their male colleagues on academic service tasks that are associated with low prestige. It’s not because they volunteer – they’re asked to do these tasks and don’t say no," says Ida Vogel.
"It’s been proven that women have fewer external research grants, and that overall they secure less funding through external grants. But if you take a curriculum and randomly assign a male or female name to it, then both men and women would rather appoint the man – and they will give him a higher salary. I want to make it easier for women because we need them. But the way things are today, they have to do more, it’s harder for them, and they become disillusioned both at the university and the hospitals,” says the 54-year-old professor, who often encounters a certain way of speaking about women who work with gender equality.
"I mean, I’m often referred to as annoying or difficult. But instead, you could also call me passionate or committed. Gender equality is a commitment that is not very smart for me strategically. I would do better by being a bit more mellow and not making so much noise – but both the hospital and the university need us to discuss gender equality more."
Being the mother of three daughters has not put a damper on her desire to work for women's rights.
"I see the sexism and hear about the unseemly things that are shouted at my daughters, and about being groped on the bus. I see that I will receive a smaller monthly pension than my husband despite paying the same amount in – damn it, it’s everywhere! It can be difficult to talk about the injustice, for example at the university we would rather discuss how the biggest gender equality issue is that we’re missing out on talent in our research. But it is unfair – women simply face more opposition," she says.
"I see women who continue to be rebuffed on the career path. What’s stopping them is that they can’t see that they too are victims of problems with gender equality. They can’t see that it’s systemic – that they’re never invited to join the right networks, that they have to do more and are not promoted as much. This means that they don’t feel they’re personally successful and drop their dream to be a researcher. The individual interpretation means that they feel too alone.”
However, she does see a much greater understanding of the debate than just a few years ago.
"While there was a shrug of the shoulders before, now there’s recognition that there is an issue. I meet a completely different respect and interest in gender equality among the different management levels at Aarhus University – it’s just that they don’t really know what to do about the problem."
A starting point in the discussion could focus on time and tasks.
"Of course you need to have academic citizenship. But if women are to be represented on all committees, and only twenty per cent of professors at AU are women, then we need to get moving. What is more important? That I help my own career as a researcher, or that I help the university to remove that bottleneck? This is where I’d really like to see the university take a discussion about how to solve this. That they ask us whether they can take other tasks off our hands, so we can contribute where it’s most needed."
The message from the Line X group that Ida Vogel has founded together with four other female researchers at the Department of Clinical Medicine is that it is never too late for women to do research.
"You don't have to go directly from a PhD – you can also come when the children are older and you have more time. You can always have good ideas, it’s not just something that only happens at a certain age. That's why we call it Line X – we want to create new buses so that more people can get back on the research track," she says.
She was herself a head consultant for six years but resigned so she could return to research. Today, she spends half of the week working on research and the other half in the clinic.
"My husband is also a professor – so you could ask how we’ve both succeeded in getting here? We’ve utilised the flexibility which research has also given our family life. Typically, one of us has picked up the children early but then also sat and done research in the evening," she says.
"We’ve given each other space if there was something research-intensive that one of us had to do, so that the other took over at home. We’ve often sat and done research side-by-side in the evening and we share an understanding that it can be just as exciting and meaningful to talk about research as watch a film. My husband has even taken paternity leave, and I’ve got an internal alarm that goes off as soon as I’ve done 51 per cent of the tasks at home."
That being said, one item on Ida Vogel’s agenda is also that the narrative about life as an elite researcher should not be one of a sixty hour working week.
"We were childless for many years, so we’ve really cherished and enjoyed parenthood. We have set aside time for it and gone to football with the girls and the like. Family is a shared project if you’re both going to succeed."
This is also why she agreed to take part in this interview.
"I have to take on the task of being a role model. I have to help rewrite the narrative. Some of the junior doctors can still be surprised that I’m so much of a mother – that I rush off from work when my daughter has fallen off her bike, even though she is now an adult. I want to tell them that being a researcher can easily be combined with an active life with family and leisure interests. Of course you have to work if you want to reach the top, but you have to do that in all sectors. For me, the reward has always been that my research is meaningful for the next patients I see."
Clinical medicine | Biomedicine | Public Health | Dentistry and Oral Health | Forensic Medicine | ||||||
♀ | ♂ | ♀ | ♂ | ♀ | ♂ | ♀ | ♂ | ♀ | ♂ | |
Professors* | 34 | 121 | 5 | 26 | 10 | 14 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
Associate professors** | 146 | 198 | 32 | 45 | 20 | 14 | 7 | 11 | 2 | 5 |
Assistant professors*** | 6 | 21 | 14 | 13 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
PhD students**** | 169 | 102 | 38 | 23 | 20 | 11 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
*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 March 2021. The number of enrolled PhD students may be higher. Source: Health HR.
Professor Ida Vogel
Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and Department of Clinical Genetics, Aarhus University Hospital
iv@clin.au.dk
(+45) 3152 3156
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Gender equality and diversity are again one of Health's most important focus areas this year. But despite management focus and many years of discussions, there are still only a few women in elite research, also at Health. Over the course of the spring and summer, a number of the faculty's female researchers will be talking about their career path. About obstacles and suggestions for improvements in the form of experience-based and specific initiatives.