The workshop “Reclaiming expertise – What is your Turf?” by Frauendomäne was held on June, 9th at TU Wien Kontaktraum. The overall motivation for such an activity is to work towards closing the gap between the number of female experts out there versus the difficulty in finding one. The reason behind it is that women often have a challenging time to self-identify as an expert – even when they are.
In that sense, this workshop was an opportunity to gather women from the Faculty of Technical Chemistry and discuss what is our concept of terms like “expertise” and “expert” as well as the unconscious biases associated to them. Because of what comes to people’s mind, including women, when thinking about an “expert” is the male stereotype, we often do not recognize ourselves as one. Also, because of how society has been structured, women are much more apprehensive on claiming themselves as suitable for a professional opportunity, such as a job or a talk.
However, to acknowledge another woman expertise seems to be a much easier task. That is why working on this social puzzle in such a group dynamic is so beneficial. After some fruitful exchanges at this workshop, we could say that at least a bit more than when we first arrived, we reclaimed our expertise!