Snow queens

At Reykjavik University, 95% of staff are happy at work and each year the finances get healthier. Could that be because of all the women in top jobs? Anthea Lipsett reports

Tuesday December 11, 2007

EducationGuardian.co.uk

With a population of 300,000 and nine universities, Iceland is hardly a heavyweight in international higher education. Nor has it been held up as an exemplary Nordic model, in the way British politicians have recently done with Sweden's education system.

Perhaps it should be. When it comes to making higher education more equal for women, it has valuable lessons to offer.

Svafa Gronfeldt is one of the many women in key positions in Icelandic academia. The rector of Reykjavik University arrived a year ago from a large pharmaceutical company and has since made strategic changes, not least, introducing equal pay for men and women.

Her management team has spent the past year going through salary levels and eliminating any unexplained differences between men and women's pay. "That was a challenge," she says. Iceland has the same sort of built-in gender bias as other western countries.

While women are scarce in Icelandic boardrooms, Gronfeldt says the company she worked for was "lucky enough to have a chief executive who didn't see any difference between men and women".

She has brought that gender-blind approach to the university. The mixture of men and women on her board helps to make university decisions more balanced, she feels. "With a management team that's both men and women, you get different dialogue and perspectives," she says. "The solutions [women] come up with are often surprising and different."

Changes to the way the university is run and structured are not all to do with its gender dynamics, but they certainly help, Gronfeldt adds. "What we see here is that innovation in teaching is different. The way we approach student services is different. And decisions around strategy and what we should emphasise are totally different."

Academic silos are being broken down and work is more inter-disciplinary. The university is building a new campus based around the ideologies of interactive working and communication - generally seen as more "feminine" approaches to learning.

Gronfeldt believes having women in positions of power reaps not only intellectual rewards, but also economic ones. "The result turns out to be better profit. Every single year, the bottom line of the university is up - and I attribute that to this team."

A study of 353 Fortune 500 companies - the top US public corporations measured by gross revenue - shows that women in leadership positions provide higher long-term financial return. The survey, done in January this year by the research company Catalyst, shows that having three or more women board members produces an increase in profits of up to 35%.

According to research by Barclays and the Economist, women own 48% of savings in the UK, and 60% of billionaires are expected to be women by 2025. The Goldman Sachs Women 30 Index measures which companies will turn the highest profits by benefiting from women's increased financial strength. Over the past 10 years, it has increased at three times the rate of the world stock markets.

The culture of Reykjavik University also benefi ts from having more women around. Dr Margret Jonsdottir, its director of international affairs, says having women in senior higher education positions has become the norm in Iceland, and it makes for a less stuffy system. "We have created this fabulous dynamic culture. It has been voted the best place to work in Iceland twice over the last five years," she says. This year, an independent staff satisfaction survey showed 95% were happy in their jobs.

"Communication is open and transparent. Authority and responsibility go together, and that's so important," says Jonsdottir. "Men and women work wonderfully well here as a united group and there's no division. Lots of people praise the culture and atmosphere."

Are women better at creating this kind of culture? Jonsdottir hesitates to say so. "The rector is a specialist in strategy and happens to be great at this, but it's dangerous to generalise. But it is a different mindset."

According to Jonsdottir, things are changing in Iceland generally, "although there's still a pay gap. And you would normally still see men selected to represent institutions." She says women in positions of authority are often asked if they got their jobs because they were women. "They have to say: 'No, I'm just very competent."Jonsdottir stresses: "Reykjavik is a university where both men and women have the same opportunity for promotion."

After years of effort to change the dynamics in UK higher education, the number of women in senior positions in universities is creeping up. There are now 19 female vice-chancellors. But the Higher Education Statistics Agency reported this summer that though the number of women lecturers and researchers is rising, few are breaking through to senior and professorial posts.

Academic staff numbers increased by 2.6% in 2005-6, with a total of 164,875 academic staff employed, up from 160,655 in 2004-5. At the grade of "senior lecturers and researchers", women ma ke up 30.8% of full-time staff , but only 16.5% of professors, fewer than one in six, are female.

The Higher Education Council for England is about to release more up-to-date figures for England that will show improvement. But those holding rank in British academia's higher echelons are still, for the most part, men.

And men are still paid more than women in UK higher education. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics last month put women lecturers' average gross weekly pay at £150 per week behind that of their male colleagues. Female full-time teaching professionals' pay is 17.2% less than that of male colleagues in higher education, and 11.1% in further education.

In contrast, both Reykjavik University and the older, larger University of Iceland, pay all staff equally. The majority of Iceland University's deans and governing council members are women.

Its rector, Kristin Ingolfsdottir, says: "The healthiest situation is an equal mix, and it's very important for women to put themselves forward, for them as individuals and for the students who look to them as role models." Women make up the majority of the student population in Iceland, as in the UK.

"It's remarkable that we have so many female deans, because women professors make up only 20% of the professors in the university. But they are trusted and elected by their peers."

However, outside of universities, there is still a large pool of talented women who aren't reaching the top, Ingolfsdottir warns - even though the education minister, Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, has helped in terms of being a good role model for women and reforming Iceland's education system to improve quality.

Legislation that allows women and men to share nine months' leave after the birth of a child and good quality, free childcare make it much easier for Icelandic women to return to work. Gronfeldt sees that as the "single most important legislative intervention", and one that makes hiring staff a much fairer process in Iceland. "We don't have to think 'she might go off and have a baby'. It doesn't matter, because men are going on paternity leave, too."

It's a breakthrough, she says, that has meant Icelandic women have fewer barriers to professional success. The top-level management at Reykjavik University is testament to that.

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