Follow-up on Gender Discrimination

The meeting with Karol Vieker, the Equality and Diversity Manager at SSE, was enriching and we discussed inequality in the education as well as in the student association.

Karol wants all students to know that she is hired to point out inequalities in the school, both in the education and in the student association, and to solve them. She is very open to input from students and encourages students to contact her when noticing discrimination. Her e-mail address is karol [dot] vieker [at] hhs [dot] se.

Summary of the meeting
We discussed:
- The answers from the survey on gender discrimination
- Course content, course literature and how teachers interact with students
- Creating a better feedback system for courses
- Women-only events in SASSE
- Inequality among students and how students interact with each other

Summary of the survey
1. Discrimination in the education

The courses listed were: 192 Management II, 210 Marketing I, 211 Marketing II, 317 Introduction to Business Law, 611 Management Consulting, 621 Consumer Marketing (guest lecture), 4324 Value Investing, 5302 Advanced Microeconomics.

The answers from the survey concern:
- Feelings of being less worth than the other gender
- Objectification
- Discouragement of female students who considered working in male-dominated industries
- Teacher who consistently calls out male students over female in a course where 50% of the grade is based on participation
- Students feeling that women are not welcome at SSE
- Students wondering why sexism is accepted in the education while for example racism is unacceptable
- Lack of female professors, teachers and guest lecturers
- Lack of female leaders used as examples

2. Discrimination in SASSE
- Women-only events that exclude a large part of students and give fewer opportunities for networking
Karol is currently giving all faculty mandatory norm-critical education. We wish that we could give a concrete action plan against discrimination, but Karol said that this kind of work takes time and some professors are reluctant to change, so the effects of her work will probably not be visible until after we have graduated. To make sure that the process is going forward, it is therefore important that students themselves stand up against discrimination. When doing so, you are backed by the boards of SSE and SASSE.

Published 2015-10-19 10:19 by Rebecca Aflaki for The SASSE Board