28 Aug 2013

EWM Denmark 2011-2013

The Danish Mathematical Society has no women in mathematics committee, and no other women in mathematics activities.

There are no top-down initiatives in Denmark to encourage women to pursue a career in mathematics. Copenhagen University has the Freja-fellowships in science, which are 2- year, tenure track postdoctoral fellowships given to areas where the underrepresented sex represent less than 25% of the faculty. In all of science, the underrepresented sex is female. As far as I know, only one of them has been given to a mathematician, in the department of computer science.

The only bottom-up organisation or initiatives are the ones organised through EWM. The first Danish EWM meeting for women in mathematics was held on the 6th and 7th of October 2010. 22 master students, PhD students, postdocs and professors attended the meeting. The invitation was in Danish, but the meeting was held in English, since several of the postdocs and PhD students were non-Danish speakers. The meeting was financed by the Danish Mathematical Society. At the meeting it was decided to set up a website for women in mathematics in Denmark, and to have a second similar meeting in 2012. We have not managed to set up a website, but we did manage to organise the second Danish EWM meeting for women in mathematics. It took place at the 4th and 5th of October, 2012. Fifteen PhD students, postdocs and professors attended the meeting. To ensure the continuation of these meetings, a coordinating group of three tenured female mathematicians from three different universities in Denmark (Lisbeth Fajstrup, Ã…lborg University; Viviane Baladi, Copenhagen University; Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen, Roskilde University) was formed.

There are still only a very few women mathematicians in Denmark. Membership fees are no longer collected. It has been decided that Danish members of EWM pay directly to EWM.

The number of active members of EWM in Denmark is below 20, maybe even below 10.