EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

Chapter 2 ! Career paths: recruitment ! promotion ! dismissal 93
2.5.3. Transferability to other organizations and settings
This survey can also be used in other universities. The group of respondents can easily
be expanded to the students in all the years, instead of taking only the final-year students.
Moreover, the survey can be presented to students in secondary education in
order to study the way in which young people on the verge of further education think
about researchers and an academic career. In this case it will be necessary however to
give added information about the working definitions used in the current survey.
3. Inflow/through-flow: vacancies
Sigried Lievens
3.1. Introduction
In the last decades, more and more women have entered the academic world. Moreover,
women are increasingly interested in exact sciences and have become visible in
the faculties that were previously characterized by a preponderance of male researchers.
This evolution is also noticeable on the labour market in general. A consequence
of the growing female presence in ‘typically male professions’ and vice versa could be
that the job titles of these professions have been adapted to the new social context.
However, this does not appear to be the case in Flanders. After all, various studies
have established that vacancies often contain a (subconscious) gender connotation; a
lot of Dutch job titles are exclusively male or have an undeniably male overtone.
The survey among final-year students has shown that both male and female students
believe that the best way to start an academic career is to respond to vacancies. Hence,
the logical next step in the study on the inflow, through-flow and outflow at Ghent
University is to develop a checklist that enables people to screen (academic) vacancies
on potential gender connotations.
3.2. Literature study
Whereas gender discrimination in vacancies has been forbidden by Belgian law since
1978, an increasing interest in the grammatical and social aspects of job ads has only
been noticeable since the mid-nineties. Most research has demonstrated that Dutch job
titles are often characterized by horizontal and vertical segregation. In typically male
sectors, gender indications are rarely used, thus enhancing the idea that those job ads
focus solely or primarily on male employees (e.g. timmerman [carpenter], meubelmaker
[cabinetmaker], stukadoor [plasterer]). When female job titles are used explicitly, it