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Dear colleagues, students,
I would like to start this newsletter by recalling 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. It was often the faculties of arts where women achieved their first habilitations or professorships in the past and where the first signals of change in the traditionally male domain of science and university teaching came from. Within our faculty, let us recall the habilitation of Ludmila Kováříková in 1946 in the field of psychology or the approval (but not formally granted for political reasons) of the professorship of Sáša Dušková in the field of auxiliary historical sciences in 1969.
Despite these historical aspects of the subject, it appears that science and university teaching is still largely a male domain - equality of opportunity for both sexes has still not been achieved. An audit carried out last year showed that women are still struggling to reach senior academic positions and positions in the management of institutes and research teams. The often subtle mechanisms of research and personnel policy are not adapted to the specificities of different career paths, the compatibility of work and family commitments, or the diversity of interpretations of the world and one's own position in it. It is not only women and their talents that can easily go to waste in such conditions. It is about the position of parents, about balancing male and female world views without various ideological biases, so that knowledge is expanded and used for the benefit of humanity.
The HR Award agenda not only brings many new impulses, sometimes intense and vigorous debates, to the faculty but also brings changes gradually. The aim is to create comfortable conditions for different groups of researchers who have perhaps been somewhat overlooked until now. The specifics of the position of women are among the most important, together with the issue of parenthood. The MU management has undertaken, among other things, under pressure from faculty demand, to put into operation in the near future a childcare facility for the preschool children of our university employees in the city center. The agenda of reducing working hours with regard to parental responsibilities, the possibility of working from home, etc. is already working well at the MU Faculty of Arts. The HR Award Action Plan adopted in 2021 defines a number of progressive steps towards achieving gender equality, including specifications in the sensitive area of sexual harassment. Let us, therefore, not only in the context of Women in Science Day, wish that through our joint efforts the aforementioned things succeed and our faculty becomes a place where all its members feel comfortable.
Lukáš Fasora
Vice Dean for Research and Development
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