As the first university in Norway, the University of Oslo conducted a gender equality assessment of its budgets. In this process, the degree to which a gender perspective has been integrated into the university’s budgets was assessed in order to determine whether ordinary priorities and activities have had unintended, gender-biased consequences. The three areas of UiO’s budgets that underwent this assessment were: 1) local wage negotiations, 2) allocation of employment packages to researchers, and 3) researcher stays abroad by employees at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

The findings from this assessment indicate that there are no significant gender differences when each activity is viewed in isolation. For instance, differences in pay are small for men and women in the same position category, but the range of pay rates is greater for men than for women. During local wage negotiations, men receive a smaller share of the total payroll budget than their proportion of the number of positions would suggest, but the men who do receive pay increases get more per increase than the women who receive pay increases, and it is still men who receive the largest pay increases. With regard to the employment package scheme, men comprise 67 % of the target group and women account for 33 % of the target group. The assessment shows that 78 % of the funding for employment packages and 72 % of the total number of employment packages have gone to men. Women, on the other hand, have received 28 % of the employment packages and only 22 % of the funding for employment packages. It appears that the overall outcome of the employment package scheme tends to favour men over women. The same negative tendency for women is also seen with regard to sabbaticals at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences: Women comprise 16.5 % of the target group, but only 11 % of women sought funding for research stays abroad, and women have received only 12 % of the funding.

This indicates that the effects of gender-neutral measures benefit men more than women. If the goal is to achieve lasting gender equality, it is not enough to implement special measures to increase the proportion of women. Gender equality must be integrated into all aspects of an institution’s activities, and assessments must be made to determine whether guidelines and regulations are designed in a way that benefits one group more than another. This will require special efforts to raise the level of expertise and bring about change, but the alternative is to lose even more expertise as women continue to leave academia in large numbers.