Gender Imbalance in SET Organizations The Problem of Practice: a Research Project

Although all over Europe much effort has been put in the attempt to increase the number of female researchers in SET (Science, Engineering and Technology), only little success was achieved in terms of numbers. This work identifies reasons for this slow change process especially in the SET context by looking at both formally imposed measures addressing gender change in organizations and its informal implementation into organizations practices. Sustainable gender equality in organizations has been shown to be a difficult undertake. Research identifies implementation problems in various ways, e.g. in terms of lack of power and resources, lack of understanding and significance, as well as lack of legitimation of the change process. However there is still little research shedding light on how those aspects work together, both at the formal as well as informal level of the organization in successful and/or unsuccessful ways. The aim of this research was to get a better understanding of how existing politically and legally legitimated programmes and policies supposed to increase the number of female scientists in SET are translated into daily organizational practice. It is assumed that formally imposed regulations only will have a sustainable gender impact if they can be translated and hence get embedded into organizational daily routine and practice.