Post-Corona Education and Research Initiatives

　1.Outline of the proposed tool

We have proposed a new “specialised platform for issue-solving”, which goes beyond existing online systems such as UTAS and ITC-LMS, that members of the University of Tokyo can access via the internet.

This online tool will allow researchers at the University of Tokyo to share their experiences and difficulties, and will provide quickly accessible information on systems which may be helpful to solve them. Users can freely browse and refer to these experiences. In addition, by interacting with a wide range of experiences, it is expected that many people will increase their awareness of the challenges faced by diverse individuals on campus.

The tool may also incorporate a system that allows those in need to consult individually with on-campus mentors. The aim is to make it easier to consult with people who have experienced similar problems, and to provide help for individual circumstances that are not covered by the existing system.

This was a brief overview of the tool as we envisioned it at the time of the proposal. In order to identify the highest priority functions for the tool, we have conducted a large-scale survey on the most urgent problems facing researchers at the University of Tokyo. Currently, our team is analysing the results. The results will be available on our website in the near future.

2. Background of the proposal

Our project started over one year before the Post-Corona Symposium, in March 2019, with the question: “Why does the ratio of female researchers at the University of Tokyo decrease as researchers progress from being graduate students to professors?” All of our team members are students who are currently or soon-to-be enrolled in a doctoral program, and who are considering a career in research. Therefore, this question emerged from our own personal interaction with our everyday environment.

In order to get some hints about the answer, last year we interviewed several researchers at the University of Tokyo (more details on our website and in our conference paper). In summary, we learnt the following three main points:

1. The University of Tokyo already has many systems and initiatives to support female researchers.

2. However, those systems are not well known.

3. Even if they are known, there are cases where the conditions of use act as hurdles.

This year, our goal is to address some of the issues that we identified last year. One of our proposed solutions is an online tool, which we put forward at the Post-Corona Symposium. “Our goal is to take advantage of the rapid online-isation of the university due to the coronavirus, to develop new online tools to reinforce efforts towards gender equality on campus.” This is our motivation statement at the heart of this proposal.

As we develop the tool, our team is careful to avoid strong assertions, such as: “That should be like this”. Further, we acknowledge that it would be outdated to divide the concept of “gender” into two groups (male and female). We hope to construct a tool which caters to all individuals at the university, including minorities as well as the majority. Our goal is to create a tool which can provide support to those in need, including minorities not covered by the current system, as well as to connect the majority with a diverse range of individual experiences at UTokyo.

Why is the tool not only for minorities, but also for the majority? The reason is that due to unconscious bias, good intentions, both from minorities and from the majority, do not always lead to positive outcomes. Achieving a comfortable environment for everyone is contingent on developing an in-depth mutual understanding, through patient and respectful interaction and discussion.

For example, let's consider the case of a late official meeting on campus. Let's say a female researcher who has young children is at such a meeting. Would it be reasonable for a colleague to think: "She must have things to do at home, so let's try to finish the meeting by 6pm"?

On the other hand, if the woman has a partner, perhaps she has an agreement with that person to share responsibilities at home. Considering a different case, if all the meeting participants were men, would everyone welcome having a late-night meeting? Perhaps some of the men also have to go home early, and have responsibilities at home. In fact, maybe everyone wants to go home early, even if they don't have responsibilities at home.

The point is that the situation depends on the individual circumstances of the meeting participants. Looking beyond this specific example, the same is also true of other processes and systems at the university. The problem is that if you try to generalise each situation to fit generic "men and women", it is easy for stereotypes to creep in, and to create negative outcomes for everyone, even if that is not the intention.

The destination of this unconscious bias could be women, but also men, international faculty members, etc. Of course, when creating a system or service, some generalisation is needed: designing a system based on one individual's characteristics would make it of limited use. The tool we propose aims to fill this gap between the ideal – university systems and practices personalised for each individual – and the current reality – systems and practices which do not always consider diverse individual needs.

After receiving various opinions at the Post-Corona Symposium, we learnt that there is a need for our proposed tool. In addition, after distributing a questionnaire survey with the support of faculty members and staff, we were able to gather the opinions of nearly 300 people on our proposed tool.

In the survey, we received valuable feedback, sometimes supportive and sometimes harsh. We felt a high level of interest in our proposed tool, and once again we were reminded of the delicacy of the topic of gender equality. In the near future, we plan to narrow down the target functions of the tool, and then move on to design.

3. Our other initiatives

Finally, we would like to briefly introduce our team’s progress on other initiatives related to gender equality.

This year, in addition to developing online tools via the Post-Corona Symposium, our group is also making short documentaries featuring female doctoral students. The purpose of the series, called "Her UTokyo", is to provide a window onto the lives of current female researchers, which may be important for other female students who have not yet decided their careers. The documentaries will be accessible via our website and Instagram page. Furthermore, in order to expand our group and maintain momentum, we recently registered as a UTokyo student circle called "Toward Diversity". Please get in touch via email if you would like to join us and our ongoing activities!

Conclusion

Although in this article we refer to our proposed online tools as a “specialised platform for issue-solving”, we are aware that they will not solve all issues experienced by all members of the university. However, we hope that they will allow as many people as possible to get to know each other’s diverse ways of being, and to make them think about what a more comfortable environment for everyone could look like.