NORNDIP, the Annual Conference of the Nordic Network for Diversity in Physics, took place at the University of Bergen, Norway, in May 2024. See:  https://indico.cern.ch/event/1384666/overview

These conferences typically have a balanced mixture of invited physics talks and gender talks. Gender talks cover gender-balance reports from Nordic Countries. Each conference has a special leading theme, in 2024 the theme was "Microaggression", the leading  theme of the 2025 conference will be "Diverse trajectories - Challenging the norms in physics research and culture”.

Below, a short report from the leading themes of gender-talks. Adrienne Taxler reported on quantitative studies of barriers to diversity in physics in academia, quoting sexual harassment, hostile climate, microaggressions as often quoted problems. Randi Gressgård reported on her studies of microaggressions in academic institutions, noting that people of color and women are often subtly marked as intruders even by  persons with good intentions.

According to studies, women and minority people are assumed to be inferior or more junior in rank than they actually are, through little encounters signalling lack of competence, skill or intelligence. Every female professor I know was asked at least once "Are you a student here?" during her professorship career, and not because of her young looks. It is because only ‘When you look like what they expect a professor to be, you are treated like a professor’. Siri Øyslebø Sørensen  and Eva Amundsdotter reported on the project GenderAct, an institutional project running at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Bergen, Norway.

The gender (in) balance at  the Faculty is stable for the last 20 years. The project had as a first part a task to understand the complicated causes of gender imbalance in this specific environment,  then mobilize for change and transform patterns as the last step. During this process it was learned that resistance towards the topic of gender as such is  common in academic institutions. This resistance takes forms of gender hostility - discomfort associated with becoming aware/ conscious and gender blindness - strong belief in meritocracy as neutral. There is a resistance to change and transform gendered patterns that takes forms of undermining, distracting attention, pretending,  sabotage,  avoidance,  disclaiming. The practical forms of resistance observed for this particular project  in interaction with leaders of the departments were:  no open reactions, just ‘whispering in the hallways’, action plan is approved, but not followed up on, open critique in plenary meeting.

The next phase of the GenderAct project will study the resistance to change, and how to deal with it. The most optimistic report was by Maria Saline, a coordinator of Gender Initiative for Excellence, GENIE at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. The project seems to be on a good way to reverse barriers to female faculty hiring and retention by investing in excellent hires.