Newly hired Nellie Konijnendijk will implement the equality plan of the VUB together with her colleagues of the equality team. A policy based on equality and inclusion is key. A week before Genderweek and International Women’s Day she talks about her ambitions on this theme.
Welcome at the vub, Nellie! Can you tell us a bit more about your background?
I originally come from the field of science and have gained my master’s degree in evolutionary biology at the University of Amsterdam. After that, I started my PhD at KU Leuven. There, I became more and more aware of the problems and obstacles female scientists face during their career. At one point, I decided to join the work group Woman & University, the organisation which stands up for the interests of female academics at KU Leuven. In no time, I became the coordinator, together with Anya Topolski and Sarah Bracke (later succeeded by Anneleen Kenis). That time really impacted me. I saw the effect our work had: we wrote propositions of policy, organised lectures, brought people together and made sure we actually had an influence on the policy.
In the end, I did not finish my PhD, but the passion I felt for the subject never went away. I then worked at Technopolis for a while, as team leader of the education team, to bring my enthusiasm for this research to the new generation as well. It was a wonderful time in which I have learned a lot, for example how quickly children pick up the idea that STEM courses (Science – Technology – Engineering – Mathematics) are only for boys. But when KU Leuven asked me to come back to examine how we could improve gender balance at the Science & Technology faculties, I got that itch again. I missed the work, helping to make a change, and I decided to go back. In a couple of months, we were able to do a lot, like an amazing collaboration with the young academics and workshops about implicit bias, but in the meantime I had been living in Brussels for a while and I wanted to focus on more than female representation alone.
Women are definitely not the only under-represented group and are not the only ones who face obstacles during their career. The VUB pays attention to different groups and the crossroads between groups and the obstacles they experience. A good example is the success of the expertise centre RHEA, which shows you as an outsider: they are experts and they adopt a critical attitude towards these subjects, I have come to the right place to achieve something. It clearly is a spearhead and the theme is being supported from above, which all really drew me to this job.
Why did the VUB create the job of HR advisor Equality?
Because there is so much work to do. The equality action plan lists ten items, so it may not seem very difficult, but if you look at everything that’s behind items like recruiting in a more diverse way, adding more women to the shortlist of independent academic positions, and expanding training and expertise concerning implicit bias, then it makes sense that you need someone who can set things in motion and who can ensure those items will actually be implemented and established. Far too often, those kind of plans are checklists with no any actual change as a result. But if you really want to tackle the problems, you need expertise as well as a cultural change. That does not happen automatically and I cannot do that alone. To accomplish that, I work together with a lot of people from inside and outside the VUB. While working at M&O (department People & Organisation), I am close to the heart; I know which training sessions are organised and what the challenges are when we are recruiting, because my colleagues tell me. Via them, I learn a lot about how things work in actual practice and what the opportunities are to implement the action items.
What are your most important tasks/goals in this position?
Put very briefly: I see to it that the equality action plan is implemented together with my colleagues of the equality team. Next to that, we are already thinking about the next equality plan and I see to it that if new things come up concerning equality and inclusion for staff, I can advise or make policy propositions.
What would you like to achieve in the short and long term?
In the short term I want to make sure there is attention for implicit bias in training sessions for everyone who recruits and promotes people and I want to ensure that we recruit more diverse talents to fill the positions which are open, for example by adjusting our vacancy texts and recruiting channels. I also want us to measure how many employees have a migration background, so we can follow that more closely and the information about pregnancy and parenthood becomes more clear and accessible to all employees. During gender week, there will be a training session for employees and students about how to react to sexually inappropriate behaviour as a bystander. That might seem like a small action, but in Belgium, we are the first university to organise this and that makes me proud. Those kind of training sessions ensure we are all alert to behaviour that is unacceptable and help us to react in an adequate way. It contributes to a safe working environment for everyone. In the long term I obviously want to achieve that we become more inclusive as an organisation, so everyone feels part of the group and can be his/her/their unique sel(f)(ves) within the VUB.
To achieve that, on the one hand, we want to include more under-represented groups in our plans, for example people with a working disability and people from the transgender community (if there are people from those groups who would like to think along, then please let me know!). On the other hand, we do not only want to look at the inflow, but also at the vertical flow within and the outflow of employees in our organisation. Because you can focus on recruiting more diversity, but you can only be successful if individuals from under-represented groups also feel at home, can join the conversation about the university’s future, stay and make a career for themselves within the VUB.
What are the challenges you face at the moment concerning equality at the VUB?
The same challenges most organisations face: making sure everyone knows about the effects of implicit bias, the unintentional and unconscious stereotypes we all hold, because we grew up in a society that reinforces seemingly innocent conceptions and patterns. That can unintentionally have serious consequences for the opportunities people are granted and for the well-being and flow to higher positions of under-represented groups. When I talk to people at the VUB, I notice there is a lot of goodwill and people have good intentions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no improvements to make. I believe I can convince (almost) everyone of the importance of diversity in our organisation: for the quality of the work, the excellence of the team and the gaining of funding. There are so many studies about it, I could go on about it for hours, science has definitely proven it. But that does not mean we are done. Now procedures have to be adjusted and be made “biasproof”, we have to think about what it means to us to be an inclusive organisation and how we can help everyone to really feel at home here. I think the VUB is open to that, but sometimes feels like we are already there and unfortunately that is not the case.
What goals does the VUB Equality action plan focus on at the moment?
Four themes are central: HR policy (recruitment, training etc), because it is the most effective way to bring diversity to the organisation; the curriculum (in the form of the curriculum scan), which is being discussed with a lot of education representatives from the faculties so we can diversify our courses when it comes to gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation; data monitoring, because we cannot know whether we are moving forward without measuring our progress (on 13 March, we organise a food for thought to present and discuss the data we collect concerning gender); and visibility & events, among which a new opening event lasting the whole evening in association with the AB (Ancienne Belgique) and Vice for the Belgian Pride Brussels, a new website and a clear vision text and code of behaviour in which the VUB indicates what it stands for.
There is a project employee who will monitor the diversity in the curriculum and formulate recommendations. How do your jobs relate to one another?
True, that is Christil Asamoah, she co-ordinates this pilot project. Christil is a researcher who will look at how we can improve the curricula as regards content, as mentioned above. She will focus on this action item, because it takes a lot of work. My tasks are not focused on (the content of) education, but rather on things concerning HR and employees. I don’t do research anymore, I mostly focus on spreading expertise, advice and policy. That is what makes us such a strong team, we complement each other really well!
What message would you like to pass on to students/staff in view of GenderWeek?
I think people are often afraid that when I tell them we will be working on diversity or inclusion, quality will have to make way for it. Fortunately, that is not the case at all. The beautiful part is that when, for example, you work on ensuring your recruitment procedures are “biasproof”, you also work on the professionalization and the objectivity of your recruitment and evaluation policy, which leads to you keeping the best candidates in the end, and more often people from under-represented groups like women. Actually, it is a win-win situation. I would also like to mention that they can always reach me via e-mail (gelijkheid@vub.be) if they experience problems or have great ideas, or if they want to contribute to this theme, because this work is never done alone, it always requires effort from the entire community, which is what makes it so interesting!