Meet the Young CAS PI: Maria Ingrid Teresa Olsson

How do we truly know whether societies are becoming more gender equal? And are the tools we rely on capturing the realities of modern work and life? These questions lie at the heart of a new Young CAS project led by social psychologist Maria Olsson, who aims to rethink the very foundations of how gender equality is measured.

Building a Better Lens on Gender Equality

Global indices such as the well-known Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) are widely used by policymakers, media, and researchers. They inform international rankings, guide political debates, and serve as benchmarks for progress. But for Olsson, these instruments have clear limitations.

“Existing gender equality indices do not fully reflect challenges faced by women and men in modern (work) life in all countries and are thus far from ideal tools for use in the tracking of progress (or lack thereof),” she says.

Her Young CAS project, “Towards a New and Culturally Sensitive Understanding of Gender Inequality: Women and Men in Modern (Work) Life,” takes aim at exactly this problem. Together with her research team, she plans to conduct a critical review of current indices and develop a more nuanced, culturally informed alternative. The ambition is to produce a new European gender equality index—one that captures a broader range of real-world dynamics affecting both women and men.

The project is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: societies change, and our tools must change with them.

From Clinical Aspirations to Cross-Cultural Research

Olsson’s path into this field was anything but linear. Born and raised in Sweden, she moved to England in her early twenties intending to pursue a career in clinical psychology. But during her studies at the University of Sussex, she felt drawn in a different direction.

“I fell head over heels in love with social psychological research as part of my bachelor’s and master’s degree,” she recalls.

This fascination led her north to UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, where she completed a PhD under the supervision of Professor Sarah Martiny. Her doctoral dissertation, Causes and Consequences of Gender Roles, included a large-scale data collection across 49 countries aimed at better understanding men’s underrepresentation in care-oriented professions. The scope and ambition of that project hinted at the direction her work would later take.

After her PhD, she joined the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences as an associate professor and now leads the research group OASIS—short for Organisasjon, arbeid, sosialpsykologi i samfunnet. Her interests bridge social, political, and cross-cultural psychology, with a particular focus on how sociocultural contexts shape human behaviour. This interdisciplinary perspective is central to the upcoming Young CAS project.

A Dream Project with a Dream Team

When the Young CAS call for proposals opened, Olsson didn’t hesitate. The programme’s focus on curiosity-driven, fundamental research appealed directly to her ambitions.

“To be able to outline my dream project with my dream team is a unique opportunity for an early career researcher like myself, so I could not stop myself from applying!” she says.

The project will bring together scholars from multiple disciplines to examine how gender equality is defined and measured across societies. Their goal is not only to identify blind spots in existing indices but also to build a more representative and culturally sensitive tool for understanding (in)equality in modern work life.

Olsson believes the setting at CAS will make a real difference:

The Centre for Advanced Study provides me and my collaborators with a unique opportunity to focus, and collaborate in close proximity, on a project over a sustained period of time. This seems to me like the best way to conduct research and I cannot wait to get started!

Why This Work Matters

Gender equality metrics influence real decisions—from how governments allocate resources to how researchers interpret global trends. Yet if these tools are built on narrow or outdated assumptions, they risk obscuring the very issues they aim to illuminate. Olsson’s project seeks to remedy this by grounding measurement in modern realities and European sociocultural contexts.

As societies continue to evolve, having reliable tools that reflect lived experiences becomes ever more important. Olsson’s Young CAS project takes a significant step toward ensuring that the way we measure progress keeps pace with the world it seeks to describe.