Faculties and departments do not have the same challenges when it comes gender balance and equality. Measures must be adapted to local conditions. In addition to institution-wide instruments, faculties and departments must tailor action plans to meet their local challenges and opportunities. Below we give examples of gender balance and equality challenges attached, and how one has worked to solve them.

Situational example 1: ‘Leaking pipeline’

Department X has a good gender balance at the PhD and postdoctoral levels (50/50), however, women are clearly under-represented at the associate professor and professor levels (80/20). This phenomenon of a declining number of women in senior positions is often described as a leaking pipeline. The department therefore took action in two ways to improve the situation. Firstly, it worked on strengthening the recruitment basis for permanent scientific positions. This was done by mapping the reason why many women left the department, it reduced the length of temporariness for temporary employees and supported women in long-term career planning. Secondly, the department committed itself to improving the appointment process for permanent scientific employees. This included discussions around gender prejudices during appointment processes and ensuring that women candidates were always invited to interviews.The department has four appointments for permanent scientific positions in its human resources plan for the next two years. The goal is that at least two women will be appointed. Changes in the percentage of women among associate professor and professors are chosen as evaluation criteria.

Situational example 2: Poor recruitment basis

The gender balance in department Y is poor in all positions and among the students. The department's management team implemented a number of measures focusing on recruitment, appointment processes, promotion of the study programme and internal organisation. In order to improve recruitment, the department used the services of the equality adviser to review job announcement texts, search committees, invited women applicants through its own network, instructed external committees to refrain from ranking highly qualified candidates, postponed appointments in cases when there were no women candidates who could be called in for an interview and used moderate gender quotas. In addition, they worked on increasing the interest among students to apply for research positions by making role models visible in teaching and involving students in research activities. The department also committed to changing the profiling of the discipline to make it more appealing to diverse groups and strengthening specialties that are normally more appealing to women. The goal is to increase the percentage of women at all levels. The measures will be assessed through regular questionnaires among the students and employees about their interest in and perception of the study/working environment, increase in gender balance among study programme applicants and positions, as well improved gender balance among those appointed.

Situational example 3: Excluding culture

Department Z had been working on improving gender balance for a long time and achieved good results among temporary (80/20 to 65/35) and permanent employees (90/10 to 75/25). After a while, however, women started leaving the department. During conversations with those who left, it was revealed that many of them found that the department had a hostile culture, and several were discontent and felt excluded. Some felt they were overloaded with assignments and were not acknowledged. The department therefore implemented measures to improve the working environment, among others, by having discussions with research group leaders about the distribution of merited assignments and sanctioning of gender stereotyping when distributing work. The department also organised seminars for all employees where several themes were discussed, for example, forms of socialisation, offensive humour and practices related to co-publishing and cooperation. The head of department also made it very clear that all employees should report to him immediately if a conflict arose and that such reports would be taken seriously and treated confidentially. The goal of the department was therefore to create an inclusive culture. The measures are evaluated through work environment surveys, open discussions with employees at seminars and at management meetings, through employee meetings for career planning and interviews with those leaving the department.

Situational example 4: Gender imbalance across research groups

The gender balance in department W was relatively good, however, at the research group level there were substantial differences. Some groups almost had only men employees and others only women. The department’s management team and research groups implemented measures to create academic cooperation across the groups through new projects and academic seminars. They also set the goal of there being at least two representatives for the under-represented gender in each research group. This was a priority during recruitment and new appointments. The goal was therefore to improve the gender balance in the research groups and to create more cooperation across the groups. Changes in the percentage of under-represented groups in the research groups were chosen as the basis for evaluation, in addition to the number of projects that facilitated interdisciplinary cooperation across women and man-dominated groups. Plans were also made for potential re-organisation of the research groups.

Situational example 5: Permanent gender imbalance at the faculty level

Faculty V struggled with poor gender balance in most of its departments. A considerable amount of work had already been done on improving gender balance during student recruitment via campaigns and gender points on admission. They had also implemented many measures for improving the recruitment of women among both temporary and permanent scientific employees. To strengthen its gender equality work, the faculty decided to focus on manager training. It employed consultants who worked with heads of departments throughout the faculty for a prolonged period of time. In this way, the managers received training on managing gender balance and equality, and were supported in investigating the challenges in their own departments and implementing measures. Afterwards, the heads of departments shared their experiences with each other and thereby contributed to a collective learning process. The goal was therefore to improve the gender balance throughout the faculty and strengthen the competency of manager for gender equality work. The results will be evaluated based on whether there is an increased percentage of women applicants and appointments, and implementation of measures for gender balance at the department level.