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Progress and stagnation of gender equity: contradictory trends within mathematics research and education in Sweden

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Abstract

During the last decade women in Sweden have reduced men’s lead in participation in mathematics education and in professional careers as mathematicians. However, the development is uneven and slow overall. In some areas and at the highest levels women have increased their participation only marginally. Why, one may ask, is progress so slow after almost 20 years of active work from the Women and Mathematics movement in Sweden and within a society in which gender equity is highly valued at the societal and political levels? The development is described in quantitative measures going back 20 years. Several concrete and successful initiatives from the last decade intended to “de-gender” mathematics and to involve women and men alike in mathematics are described. In contrast a gender-blind position or a view of women as problems in mathematics seems to reign within some influential bodies.

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Notes

  1. The main subject areas of research education are pharmacy, humanities/religion, mathematics, medicine, science, odontology, legal science, social science, agriculture/forestery, engineering, veterinary, other.

  2. The first woman to acquire a doctoral degree in mathematics in Sweden was Louise Petrén in 1911.

  3. Full professors, senior lecturers and post-doctoral researchers. The latter position is a 4-year appointment for qualifying after the PhD.

  4. Ingegerd Palmér was head of the mathematics department at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, during a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gudrun Brattström was head of the mathematics department at Stockholm University during some years in the 1990s.

  5. According to the homepage http://www.chalmers.se/math/SV/samverkan/sonja-kovalevsky-dagarna/sonja-kovalevsky-dagarna/programkommitte and protocols for the program committee for the Sonja Kovalevsky-days the main organiser was a woman in 2001 and 2002. The head of the program committee has been a woman in 2000–2007.

  6. According to an interview with Gunnar Sparr, responsible and initiator of the program.

  7. The mathematics departments at Stockholm, Göteborg, Lund and Uppsala university.

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  1. Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Lund University, Box 118, 221 00, Lund, Sweden

    Gerd Brandell

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Brandell, G. Progress and stagnation of gender equity: contradictory trends within mathematics research and education in Sweden. ZDM Mathematics Education 40, 659–672 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-008-0127-7

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