“Diversity contributes to quality”

Barbara Lischetti was equal opportunities officer and a pioneer of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (IZFG) at the University of Bern. On the 20th anniversary of her death, Andrea Zimmermann talks about her legacy and the IZFG today.

Interview: Lilian Fankhauser and Muriel Scholl / Photography: Daniel Rihs

Read the original uniAKTUELL article here. (in German)

What part did Barbara Lischetti play in founding the IZFG in 2001?

Barbara Lischetti played a decisive role in financing the IZFG. Around 30 years ago, the University of Bern received so-called per capita bonuses for appointing women to professorships and, like most universities, used this money to promote gender equality. Lischetti, however, believed that these funds should also be invested in women’s and gender studies. With the support of several female professors, she was able to convince the University’s Executive Board in 2001 to finance a research centre with them: the IZFG.

Where does the IZFG stand today, 20 years later?

With around 40 staff from a wide range of disciplines, a great deal of expertise comes together at the IZFG. It is a centre of excellence of national and international importance. Our main areas of activity are basic and commissioned research – in particular for various federal offices and other higher education institutions – teaching, and knowledge transfer and cooperation projects. The IZFG is therefore of social significance and responds to current needs with innovative projects and relevant research, such as a project on women’s health carried out this year on behalf of the Federal Office of Public Health.

In her honour, the IZFG has been awarding the Barbara Lischetti Prize since 2014. What does this award recognise?

Every two years, this prize honours outstanding doctoral theses that deal with a topic in gender studies or a current research approach in this field. I find this award very remarkable because it continues Lischetti’s commitment to the targeted promotion of gender studies and because it highlights the interface between equal opportunities work and gender studies. Research on current gender relations, for example, is often a basis for taking effective measures towards greater gender equality: how exactly certain mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion work, and which gender norms still block or pave the way for whom, and in which context.

At the memorial event for Barbara Lischetti (in German) on 21 September, you will give a talk entitled “Transforming gender relations, criticising hegemonic masculinity”. What is it about?

It is based on a project in which, in a five-year cooperation with a Switzerland-wide research focus, we investigated why so few women hold leadership positions at universities in subjects such as biochemistry and chemistry. Why do so many women leave academia after their doctorate? In this context, the focus is usually on how young female researchers can be given targeted support. According to our findings, however, it is just as important to question the prevailing norms that are implicitly associated with masculinity: the image of the brilliant scientist who is always available, mobile, free of all ties and lives exclusively for his research is highly problematic.

Why?

These ideas underlie many conscious and unconscious exclusions. However, dissatisfaction with such a way of life is growing among young researchers overall. My input is not only about the obstacles, but also about approaches to overcoming or removing them, and how we can implement these approaches together with people working in equal opportunities. These are many necessary steps towards making the field of science more inclusive.

Monitoring, i.e. the systematic observation of data, is an important element of your research. Could you explain this in more detail?

Our monitoring is about continuously collecting gender- and diversity-specific data in order to better analyse who has what scope for action. From this, we can derive measures for a fairer distribution, track developments and check whether the measures taken are having the desired effect. For example, we are currently developing gender and diversity monitoring for cultural institutions. We have been studying their gender relations for some time, so we can now take concrete steps with the first institutions towards systematic and continuous data collection.

Diversity monitoring, however, is much more complex because it involves collecting and securely managing sensitive data. When an actress or a dancer is engaged by a cultural institution, no information about their ethnic and social background is recorded. In order to collect and analyse these aspects, we still need to develop a number of tools. Our aim is also to make multiple forms of discrimination visible, and thus areas where action on equality is particularly needed.

Complex topics such as gender and diversity need to be considered together. What do you recommend for addressing them structurally at universities?

First of all, it is particularly important to me to emphasise that diversity and greater inclusion do not mean the opposite of quality. In research in particular, better-quality results can be achieved when a phenomenon is analysed from different perspectives. This has been demonstrated in numerous studies.

Not only in Switzerland is the university an institution that is predominantly white and therefore runs the risk of not taking sufficient account of certain perspectives. Universities must therefore ask themselves not only how they can support women, but also how they can build more diverse teams in order to become more accessible and inclusive as an institution in many ways. How can we conduct research together from different perspectives and with diverse knowledge? The self-reflection of those in charge is important here, because the past has shown that important aspects are overlooked when a homogeneous group of people works on a question – for example in the case of heart attacks, which manifest differently in men and women, or crash test dummies, which were long based on the standard dimensions of a male body. That is why research centres such as the IZFG, with its diverse expertise, are so relevant. They cover a very broad field and examine a topic from different perspectives.