EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

108 Equality Guide
ever since 1994 women represent only 10% of the professors at the highest step of the
academic ladder at UGent.
In the second phase, a gender screening of the different leave arrangements at UGent
was carried out. The results showed that these differ depending on the various statutes.
Another important finding from this screening was the fact that not all staff members
can be replaced during their pregnancy leave.
The gender statistics were presented to all faculty board members 121 of UGent. Many
reactions reflected a high degree of gender blindness: there appeared to be a lot of
ignorance about and resistance towards a solid equal opportunities policy. Men appeared
to be unaware of the existence of gender-related problems at UGent. According
to most men the project researchers spoke to during this faculty tour, the restricted
promotion of women is due to the choices women make themselves. Men often refer to
the (difficult) combination of work and family life. According to the women the researchers
spoke to however, their restricted promotion is ! among other things ! due
to the university culture and the informal ‘old boys networks’.
4.3.2. The development of the Survey UGender
The survey ‘Careers of Men and Women at Ghent University’ (in short: Survey UGender),
was the last research phase in the UGender project. The aim of the UGender
Survey was twofold. Firstly, to examine the existence of gender differences in the careers
of men and women at this university. Secondly, to examine whether or not staff
members perceive and experience gender-related problems.
4.3.2.1. Choice of methodology
By means of an online survey the entire population of UGent was reached. An online
survey offers a lot of advantages, of which the following were crucial to this study:
! Faster and cheaper than sending out paper versions of a survey.
! By means of ‘branching’ respondents who answer differently are routed to different
pages (without awareness of the respondent).
! By means of ‘required questions’ responses to the essential questions are received:
if the respondent does not answer this question, he/she can not continue the survey.
! It is user-friendly for the respondent as well as for the researcher: the answers no
longer have to be entered in a database manually. The analysis can start immediately:
responses can be downloaded in a database of choice (in our case: SPSS
fully labelled).
121 The 11 faculties at Ghent University are governed by faculty boards, chaired by the deans. Because of
their rank, full professors are automatically members of this board, together with elected representatives
of the (senior) lecturers, assistants, the administrative and technical staff and the students. The faculty
boards are responsible for the organisation and coordination of the teaching and scientific study carried
out in the various departments that come under its authority.