Undoing Gender in Academia: Personal Reflections on Equal Opportunity Schemes

Abstract

I have always considered myself privileged to be working for my university, an institution bustling with innovativeness and committed to gender equality and diversity. The past years strained this feeling of privilege as I grew aware of the immense discrepancy between the university's gender equality policy on paper, and my actual experiences at work. This discrepancy is not a purely subjective experience, as countless reports and figures show. But being a fellow of an equal opportunity program, the prestigious EU‐funded Rosalind Franklin Fellowship program (RFF) of the University of Groningen, I think that sharing my subjective experiences might offer some surprising answers to the question of why strong commitment to gender equality does not necessarily translate into the expected progress.