By Peter Friis Jeppesen, Communication Consultant, Aalborg University Hospital. Translated by LeeAnn Iovanni, AAU Communication and Public Affairs

Ulla Møller Weinreich, Professor at The Faculty of Medicine, is the initiator of the new "club" of female professors.

- I was on a visit to the Hamburger Kunsthalle where I saw Max Liebermann's painting "Der Hamburgische ProfessorenKonvent" from 1906 that depicts a group of men sitting around a table looking very serious, says Ulla Møller Weinreich.

She left the museum thinking it might be fun to recreate the picture – with just female professors.

- I thought, wow, that looks so boring! Fortunately, today's professors are much more than men dressed in black who are good at putting their faces in serious creases, so I wrote to my female professor colleagues and asked if they would be interested in creating a modern counterpart to the image. People were up for it, and we agreed to wear the most colourful clothes we had as a contrast to the boring men, says Ulla Møller Weinreich.

More than a picture

With the picture complete, and with the magic of modern technology, digital brush strokes resulted in an image that resembled Max Liebermann's classic work – but with significantly more colours and women instead of men. But the picture was also the starting point for "Der ProfessorinnenKonvent" – a small "club" for the university hospital's female professors.

- The purpose of our gathering is first and foremost a meeting forum where we can exchange ideas and establish research collaborations across our very different areas of expertise. But hopefully it is also an opportunity for us to change the norms and values in the way research is conducted, says Ulla Møller Weinreich.

She says that it is important to have a healthy work-life balance when it comes to research. This may mean a break with the long-standing view of research as a calling that often takes precedence over private life:

- As a researcher, I believe that it makes sense to work for new ways of looking at and doing things. The research world is still rooted in old "masculine" values, and I would like us to work toward a more modern approach to how you can organize your work life to harmonize with private life. When you enter a research career, you usually do so because you are passionate about it – and if you want to avoid burn out, your work life and private life must be in balance, says Ulla Møller Weinreich.

She believes that it is important to be aware of whether there are structures that can make women worse off in research environments:

- It can be focusing on how we organize our working life so that it becomes more inclusive of the individual's life situation, and generally focusing on the rhetoric surrounding our work. It's not about women working less or getting special consideration, says Ulla Møller Weinreich. 

Need to focus on gender equity in studies

Ulla Møller Weinreich also hopes that the new "Professorinnenkonvent" can also help focus on the fact that women are underrepresented in many studies:

- Many of the old large cohort studies are done on men or are largely dominated by male participants. In animal research, 85% of the mice used in experiments are male. We also see a clear underrepresentation of women in Danish foundations, which may mean bias in the distribution of research funds. We need to change this kind of thing to ensure gender equity in research so that one gender is not favoured over another, or in the worst case scenario the findings are misleading for women, says Ulla Møller Weinreich.

As a female professor at the university hospital, you are automatically a member of "Der ProfessorinnenKonvent" – if you so desire, emphasizes Ulla Møller Weinreich. The group meets at regular intervals and has appointed My Svensson, Professor in the Department of Renal Medicine, as chair.

 This article first appeared on the University Hospital's website (in Danish)