Barrier breaker

When she started her studies there, the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) was a male bastion. She herself has gone from being the first female student in the Graduate Programme in Economics to become the school's first female professor. Siri P Strandenes has had some barriers to break.

15.02.2010 - Text: Knut André Karlstad Photo: Eivind Senneset

The article was originally published in Norwegian in NHH Bulletin nr 2, 2009. This version is from a newly published English edition of NHH Bulletin.

In the autumn of 1969, a group of 228 young and promising students started their academic careers at NHH.

Seventeen of them were girls - which was in fact an unusually high female percentage for that time. Siri was one of them.

'There were so few of us girls. The students shared one common shower in the basement. We applied to the Students' Association (NHHS) for permission to lock the door at certain times so that the girls could shower. They replied that we could lock the door every Thursday between half past seven and half past eight, while the association's meetings were being held, and the boys wouldn't be using the showers then anyway!'

'Things were very different then. The NHH building was almost new and there were Saturday lectures in elective subjects. NHH only had one woman lecturer, Aina Uhde, who taught the macro course in the first semester. She later became a professor at the University of Bergen.'

'Students were a tad more political then than they are today. I had Torstein Dahle (editor's note: now leader of the radical leftwing "Red" party) as my mentor. He was jovial and a good mentor, and not too serious. Warm and with a twinkle in his eye,' Professor Strandenes recalls.

And, as Dahle before her, she was elected onto the executive board of the Student Association. She beat Per Ivar Gjærum, who later became rector of NHH, in the election for secretary to the board, together with a crowd who called themselves the Festlig Front (Party Front).

'We stood for election against the 'Faglig Front' (a leftwing group) and the board spanned the whole political spectrum, from reddest of the red to darkest blue.'

In addition to this, she became involved in a joint committee with university students that welcomed and helped foreign students arriving in Bergen.

She was a member of the NHHS 17th May (national day) committee and helped to organise a big Nordic student conference at NHH.

'Otherwise, I was a normal enough student. I generally attended lectures and studied fairly assiduously, but also participated in a number of extracurricular activities.'

With shipping in sight

Siri Strandenes allowed herself an extra six months to complete her studies. She used the 'year off' to read supplementary literature and generally assimilate a great deal of the interesting study material available in the NHH library.

Then she did something that not everyone knows about. She took a job as senior secretary in the school's administration before re-embarking on her academic career. In other words, she is probably the very first person to have risen from a job in the administration to the position of professor at NHH.

Before this, however, she was the first woman to enrol in the Graduate Programme in Economics and the second ever to take the graduate programme at all. The first was Kristin Dale, who specialised in finance and management science.

'I started on the Graduate Programme at NHH in 1975. I took a two-year course, building on my business economics (siviløkonom) degree, something like today's ECO (economic analysis) profile.'

'At the time I had a job as research assistant at the Institute for Shipping Research. That was when I started to take an interest in shipping. After that I started to work at what is now the Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF), where I was the first researcher. Einar Hope was the director. But it didn't take long before more researchers started.'

Shipping has been her main field for many years. She is, however, also interested in international trade, aviation, and transport and communications in general, the latter being a field that has long suffered from major underinvestment.

'We underestimate the importance of transport and communications to competitiveness. Having such poor roads around and between our cities impedes punctuality and costs us a lot.'

`You may not always need to get somewhere fast, but you do need to know when you will arrive. In Bergen, it takes no more than a single vehicle blocking the tunnel through Mount Fløyen to bring much of the road traffic, both private and commercial, to a standstill. If children in the same family attended the same kindergarten or the same school, it would reduce the amount of driving.'

`My point is that we need to see things in context. Few people will disagree with that, but we still do nothing about it,' she says.

Professor Strandenes has always emphasised the importance of building up an international network and is now jointly responsible for the annual IAME conference, which is being organized this year in Copenhagen by the University of Southern Denmark, the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law, and NHH.

'IAME stands for the International Association for Maritime Economists. I have benefited greatly from international contacts. For example, I've spent periods doing research in Berlin, Antwerp and London, where I am visiting professor at the CASS Business School,' she tells us.

In her spare time, she is an active amateur photographer and has deliberately chosen to live right next to the Grieg Hall concert venue. Literature and classical music are high on her list of interests.

'I live so close to the Grieg Hall that, if there's a bar queue during the intermission, I can go home and have a drink and then return for the rest of the concert. And I've actually done that,' she adds.

Useful directorships

Professor Siri Pettersen Strandenes.

Foto: Eivind Senneset

Professor Strandenes has held several directorships over the years. She achieved a high profile early on through her dissent in connection with the NOU (Norwegian official report) on competitiveness in the shipping industry in the early 1980s.

'My dissent and the hullabaloo about it attracted attention and gave me a high profile. That presumably was one of the reasons for my being offered my first directorship - on the board of the Guarantee Institute for Export Credits (GIEK) in 1985.'

Over the years, the professor has sat on a number of boards in the fields of finance and shipping. One of the directorships she currently holds is with the bank DnB NOR ASA.

'The work is demanding and interesting. Directorships have given me a lot, including challenges I would never have encountered as a researcher,' explains Siri Strandenes, who is one of the NHH researchers who is most sought-after by external boards.

'I lectured on international financial markets during the currency crisis in 1992. My experience as a decisionmaker and board member gave me broader insight into the practical issues as a supplement to the theory. When you have to make a decision on an uncertain basis and with incomplete information, what do you do in practice?' she asks.

In 1989 she took up a temporary appointment as assistant professor at NHH, and in 1992 she was appointed to a permanent position as associate professor.

For several years she was director of the MIB programme, which was established by the school in 1986.

Milestone

The 11th of April 2002 is a red-letter day in the history of NHH. It is the day on which Siri Pettersen Strandenes became the school's first woman professor.

'It was pretty special - as it presumably is for anyone who achieves this goal. But my appointment attracted more than the usual attention. There was a barrier to break.'

' In 1996 I realised that, as one of far too few female members of the research staff, I could easily find myself drowning in elected and other offices and administrative tasks. I laid a plan for qualifying, and asked to be released from the office of director of the MIB programme. That alone took a year and a half. I also attempted, with varying success, to avoid other timeconsuming offices.'

The appointment was probably a great relief to NHH. The media had pointed out often enough that there was a conspicuous absence of female rolemodels among its academic staff.

Today, there are nine women professors at NHH.

'On my way home the same evening,' Siri Strandenes remembers, 'I was stopped by a man who asked, "Aren't you the new woman professor at NHH? It was about time!"

I don't know who he was, but it was both nice and thoughtprovoking.'

Role models are important. She herself mentions Arnljot Strømme Svendsen and Victor D Norman as sources of inspiration and mentors in the NHH group. All have the same field of interest in shipping.

She uses the following episode to highlight the importance of female role models among the academic staff:

'When I was a research fellow, we had introduced group tuition for microeconomics students. At that time just over 30 per cent of the students were girls. When I taught my first group, 80 per cent of those attending were girls. They had presumably come to see another girl lecture.'

'I think that was a clear signal from the students. They voted with their feet,' she concludes.