Aarhus Universitet - en strategi for ligestilling: Når morale gøres til styring: En Kandidatafhandling om Aarhus Universitets interne arbejde med forbedring af organisationens ligestilling

Abstract

The world of research has historically emerged as a strongly male - dominated field, where even today, the vast majority of all allocations of all professorships are to men and only 24% of professors at European level are women. In general, the number of Danish male professors is almost three times as high as female with only 21% female professors in Denmark, even though the number of completed Ph.D. Education is evenly distributed between men and women. An ongoing development in the danish higher education system is, is that currently most of the students at the Danish universities are women, and that there is a strong overrepresentation of women, especially in the humanities. Then why is it difficult for universities to keep their female students. The Danish University of Aarhus has in the past years worked with an equality strategy to level this imbalance. This paper wishes to examine the equality strategy at Aarhus University. The main theory used in this paper, is Luhmanns system theory. The theory was chosen because of its many aspects of understanding organizations and communication, and because of it second order observation method. The analysis section is in 2 parts, first an analysis of how Aarhus University observes equality, and throw which distinctions the communication is drawn. The second analysis will use the finding from the first analysis and examine the relationship between inclusion and exclusion which is used in Aarhus University’s communication. The goal of the second analysis is to examine which differentiation there is being used in the organization. The Findings in this paper shows, there are certain challenges in the way in which Aarhus University creates their gender construction. It is difficult for the individual to observe negative observations which the organization can observe statistically. It is necessary to create change that the individual is self-reflective about whether the individual is on the marked or unmarked side, of the desired. Although this kind of 2nd order management has certain positive effects in relation to the general management of the organization, but it does not create much opportunity for change, as individuals generally do not perceive themselves as negative, or unmarked. On the other hand, individuals will to a greater extent see themselves in what is desired, even though they may act or think in relation to what would be characterized as undesirable. The way in which Aarhus University has structured their organization and their strategy for gender equality also has some consequences and challenges that make real change in the organization difficult.