Positioning Women for Research Professorship (POWER)

As is common in the institute sector in Norway, PRIO has an extreme gender imbalance at the research professor level with women making up only 14% of those with professor competence. Preliminary research shows that many women at PRIO feel that professorship is unattainable or irrelevant for them. The POWER project is a menu of interventions targeted at female researchers at PRIO who have completed a PhD but not yet reached professor status. The overarching aim is to make promotion to professorship a more attractive and attainable goal by addressing obstacles at both the individual and institutional level; building competence in scholarly publications and leadership; creating opportunities to publish and lead projects; and increasing motivation. After an initial retreat where participants will discuss writing, leadership, and what professorship entails, participants will be free to take part in any of the other initiatives offered by the project. Initiatives include the following: Mock evaluations, where participants submit their CVs to external evaluation to assess their "readiness" for promotion and to plan their publication strategies for the next period; intensive writing groups and writing retreats; mentoring and networking building; leadership development courses; and writing stipends. The participants will be interviewed each year to re-evaluate the researcher's publication strategies and leadership development -- as well as the POWER project itself. The specific initiatives will be adjusted underway in response to lessons learned. The project will synergize with an ongoing doctoral project that will use a critical ethnographic approach to study both changes in attitudes of the participants and the development of the project itself. Practical lessons learned will be made available to all interested parties.