Mission & Vision
In 2020 the FFNT made a new strategy plan. The vision of FFNT was defined: FFNT embraces diversity and promotes female academic leadership. The objective is to increase impact of FFNT for its stakeholders and members. The following goals were defined as focus points:
- Contribute to FFNT members' professional development
- Increase attractiveness of FFNT
- Contribute to the UT as an inclusive organisation
Background
Academic workplaces and academic careers are supposed to be gender-neutral. However, even today, less than 20% of female researchers are promoted to professors in Dutch academic institutions. At the same time, the number of female doctoral candidates in different faculties, as well as female postdocs, is quite comparable to the numbers of male colleagues. The leaky pipeline is an alarming reality in Dutch academia. If talent walks away, in the long run, this often translates into sub-optimally used opportunities for growth and for innovation. An inclusive work environment is a key factor to retaining and leveraging female researchers’ talent and assuring long-term benefits and growth. To address the ‘leaky pipeline’ issue at the University of Twente, a number of enthusiastic female academic established the FFNT in 2005. Since then, this organization has grown to 431 members at all academic levels. It engages with and for its members, with UT managers and administrators to keep up the dialogue about equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. We are actively involved in building the business case for gender diversity at various levels of the university, in human resources departments, as well as in teaching and research. FFNT also offers a lot of training sessions to train its members in professional academic skills and leadership qualities, effectively tuned for women.
FFNT collaborates with other UT organizations, such as OBP-VN, the UT’s Human Resources Department, the UT’s Ambassadors Network, PNUT, the Twente Graduate School, and Studium Generale.