The
Boomerang March 2020
Emancipation at UCU? It’s about time! by Rosa Soeterbroek
Five for the men, zero for the women. That’s the current tally for deanship at University College Utrecht. Is it time for a change at this progressive liberal arts college?
Illustration © Doenja van der Veen
The head of this liberal arts college is a man, Dean Prof. dr. James Kennedy. His management team consists, including himself, of two men and one woman, with the reverse among the heads of department. Pretty equal it seems, as interim Head of Social Sciences, dr. Christel Lutz, agrees. “It’s no longer that extraordinary for women to become bette---r-represented in higher positions of leadership at UCU.” Times have changed since 2003, when Lutz started working at UCU. A year into her teaching career in Utrecht, Lutz became a fellow and she was only one of two women who were awarded this title. “To congratulate us, we were all given a tie,” she says incredulously. Since then, four male deans have come and gone, with the first foreign dean instated in 2015. The status quo of gender representation at the college “has not changed as much as I may have liked.” Since its founding in 1998, the college has been under the leadership of only white men. UCU falls short in diverse leadership. Lutz: “I find this problematic.” Arjen Vredenberg, head of the Science Department, is enthusiastic for change. “I would applaud it if we had a female dean or dean from another gender.”
" To congratulate us, we were all given a tie" The institution of UCU falls under the Utrecht University regulations, whose organisation has made gradual progress in levelling the gender ratio among its academic staff. Their Taskforce for Diversity and Inclusion, planned to finish in 2020, has set up a threefold plan to counter the strong gender imbalance in the academic field. Even though the head of Utrecht University is also male, positions held by women are increasing, according to a Taskforce publication of 2019. The history of male leadership at the
university is not mentioned. Comparing UCU to similar institutions in the Netherlands, it is clear UCU is falling behind. Of the nine UC’s in the Netherlands, including the Utrecht institution, five have male deans. Leiden and Tilburg have a female dean, and Twente has a vacancy for the position. Since January, EUC in Rotterdam has been led by a female dean as well. In other words, two-thirds of the liberal arts college deanships are held by men in the Netherlands before 2020. LUC has the most ‘emancipated’ management team of all, with women gracing the three highest positions at the college. “Leiden, Twente
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and Tilburg are younger colleges,” notes Arjen. He continues by mentioning that Utrecht, like other older UC’s have been founded in a more traditional time. This begs the question; do more established colleges have a stronger old boys’ network in place? Overall, organisational and academic jobs are shared quite equally by men and women at the various university colleges in this country. In Utrecht, establishing equal representation remains difficult. “Whenever committees are appointed, it is often the case that, looking at the list of people selected for that committee, they are all male,” says Lutz. u This article continues on page 3
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