Female role models are desperately needed with the exact subjects, says this professor

Raised in Italy in the 70s, the German-Italian physicist Petra Rudolf had no idea that math, chemistry and physics were considered ‘boys’ subjects’ a few countries. In her high school there were female physics teachers in front of the class, at the university in Rome she saw as many men around her. So when she left for the United States in 1980 for an internship and was surrounded by men, she came up with a « strange feeling. »

Later in the Netherlands it turned out to be its field A Mans World. When she took office as a professor of experimental physics at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials at the University of Groningen in 2003, she was the first female professor of physics there. There were three in the Netherlands at that time. Now that she waves goodbye to the same university 22 years later, she leaves 27 female professors at the Science & Engineering faculty. The place « breathes a different atmosphere, » she says the day after her farewell speech in the Academy Building of the University of Groningen. There Rudolf made a fiery plea for more women on faculties exact sciences. « People with different backgrounds are interested in different research questions. So university research becomes better if the researchers are more diverse. »

You think that more girls should be made enthusiastic for exact subjects, but how?

« It all comes down to the question of who your role models are. You Cannot Dream What You Cannot See. In general, more academics from the exact corner should opt for a job as a teacher, because the average age of physics teachers increases every year. But certainly female teachers can make the difference. In the Netherlands, girls are still too often told, also from home, that an exact study is ‘very difficult’. In Italy it is cool if you choose physics as a girl. Many Italian women then choose a job as a teacher, because it is easier to combine with a family life than the academic world. This gives girls the idea that physics is also for them.  »

One on the three physics students is now a woman, why is the percentage of female professors a lot lower?

“Girls enthusiasts for the study is step one, but the share of women in the higher academic positions is still decreasing sharply per step on the career ladder. Since five years our faculty has been asking members of the application committee to bear responsibility for a diversity of applicants. I have sometimes been working on our own. We also actively teach them to encourage them to encourage them to actively encourage them to encourage them to encourage them to actively encourage them to encourage them to encourage them to encourage our own. Implicable assumptions in the application process.

Are you in favor of quotas?

« No, absolutely not. We have to encourage women to apply, but the best wins! »

What helps?

“Being diverse is not going on by itself. So heavy efforts help, and formal procedures also set. I have experienced a faculty without women, that is like a snake that bites in its own tail: if there are no women, they don’t want to work. No woman in a place where only men are. That is just not so fun. Let the Female PhD students grow as a professor, the faculty has only been heard. Percentage of female PhD students in the Netherlands when I chose an applicant from abroad, she said: I thought Groningen is good.

Yet you often give female researchers in your field the advice: choose your partner wisely. Why?

« A career at the top of the Academy is tough. You need a partner who wants to and can make room for your career, and sometimes wants to take a step aside for that. That applies to men and women. I was able to follow this path because my partner has always put my career on one.

« In that respect, I still find Dutch people quite conservative. Many candidates we put on from our Fellowship after a while again, because their partner got a good job abroad. At many American universities it is quite normal to offer the partner a job. Our technical faculties score fantastic at international level, but we have no money for this kind of programs. »

At what points is more work to be done in terms of?

“I am worried about misconduct and intimidation in the academy, as is also apparent from research From the national network female professors. A system in which you are dependent on others to grow by definition is vayable to abuse of power.

« If there is something that I have learned in recent years, that is the importance of training for scientists in managerial positions. How do you have conversations about this? I was the head of a research group in the position in which I had to protect a female PhD student in an unsafe situation. If I had not received any training on how to do such discussions, I would not have been madly wrong. »

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