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UNIVERSITY

Female students win discrimination case

In a closely watched affirmative action case, a Swedish court ruled on Monday that men should not have been offered spots in a veterinary school programme ahead of women with equivalent qualifications.

Published: 30 March 2009 16:43 CEST
Female students win discrimination case

The case involves 44 women who were rejected from the veterinary medicine programme at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet – SLU) between 2006 and 2007.

Although the women had the exact same qualifications as the men with diplomas from Sweden’s folk high schools (folkhögskolebetyg), only men were accepted to the veterinary programme.

The men received additional weight in the selection process because men were seen as an “underrepresented gender” in the veterinary school programme.

But the District Court in Uppsala has ruled against SLU’s affirmative action strategy and ordered the state to pay the women 35,000 kronor ($4,200) each, which is significantly less than the 100,000 kronor they had sought.

The state must also pay for the costs of the trial.

The women were “disadvantaged by being treated worse than male applicants. The unfair treatment consisted of the male applicants, through a weighted lottery, receiving a significantly greater chance of being offered a spot in the programme,” wrote the court in its ruling.

The acceptance of the men over the women was seen as violating discrimination prohibitions in laws guaranteeing the equal treatment of candidates seeking higher education in Sweden, as well as a European Union (EU) directive on equal treatment.

“The point of the weighted lottery has been to benefit applicants of a certain gender and therefore disadvantage applicants of the other gender,” wrote the court.

Gunnar Strömmer, a lawyer with the Centre for Justice (Centrum för rättvisa) which represented the women in the case, expects the university to appeal the ruling.

The ruling may be significant for others who feel they’ve been discriminated against during their bid for acceptance to Sweden’s colleges and universities.

According to the Centre for Justice, approximately 8,000 college applicants were subjected to discrimination between 2006 and 2008.

Two thirds of Sweden’s institutes of higher education rely on acceptance criteria which discriminate on the basis of gender which adversely affect female applicants in nine out of ten cases.

The discrimination is most prevalent in popular programmes such as medicine, psychology, and veterinary medicine, and usually affects applicants with degrees from Sweden’s folk high schools.

RENTING

Danish police warn students against housing scams

Police in Denmark have advised new students to be alert to scams when looking for rented accommodation.

Published: 31 July 2024 11:09 CEST
Danish police warn students against housing scams

The special police unit for economic crime, NSK, has warned students over bad actors in the rental housing sector as they look for somewhere to live prior to commencing their studies.

Thousands of students were last week offered places at Danish universities, meaning that rental housing in university towns is set to be in high demand.

But scammers take advantage of an affordable housing shortage in cities like Copenhagen, police said as they warned students over the matter.

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“Every year we have housing scammers who cheat people into paying a deposit or advance rent for an apartment that doesn’t exist,” Kresten Munksgaard, head of section for Prevention and Analysis with NSK, told the Ritzau newswire.

Munksgaard said that a good rule of thumb is that if an offer sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

“If you see a mega-cheap, three-room apartment in Copenhagen at a very low price, then you should be be extra careful because unfortunately, those don’t grow on the trees,” he said.

Police recommend would-be tenants always go out and see the apartment in person and always ask the landlord to show ID. That enables them check whether the person is the real owner of the home using public records (tinglysningen in Danish).

“If you are transferring money, use an electronic money transfer so there is a money trail to follow if you are unlucky enough to be scammed,” Munksgaard also said.

Police received 201 reports last year of rental housing scams, according to NSK.

The majority of those affected live in the Copenhagen police district.

The housing shortage also impacts international students in Copenhagen, who often struggle to find affordable housing.

As recently reported by The Local, international students – already at the disadvantage of navigating a new country and system – can be pushed so far on to the fringes of the rental market that they end up living at informal tenancies and registering their addresses elsewhere, putting themselves in a vulnerable legal grey area.

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