Source: sciencemag.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Dutch engineering university is taking radical action to increase \nits share of female academics by opening job vacancies to women only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting on 1 July, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) in \nthe Netherlands will not allow men to apply for permanent academic jobs \nfor the first 6 months of the recruitment process under a new fellowship\n program. If no suitable applicant has been found within that time, men \ncan then apply, but the selection committee will still have to nominate \nat least one candidate of each gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have been talking about [gender balance] for ages,\u201d says \nTUE President Robert-Jan Smits. \u201cAll kinds of soft measures are taken \nand lip service is paid to it. But the stats still look awful.\u201d \nCurrently, 29% of TUE\u2019s assistant professors are women; at the associate\n and full professor level, about 15% are women. With this program, \nTUE wants to reach 50% of women for assistant and associate professors, \nand 35% for full professors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plan was\u00a0announced today\u00a0and is already attracting controversy. \u201cPeople say it\u2019s illegal; they say we will lower standards. That\u2019s a load of baloney,\u201d Smits says. Some critics say the program discriminates against men. \u201cYes, absolutely,\u201d Smits says. \u201cFor years, men have been discriminating against women, and women haven\u2019t been paid the same as men for the same jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program offers 5-year tenure track positions with a \u20ac100,000 \nstartup package to set up labs, along with a mentoring program and \ncareer opportunities for spouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dutch and EU laws allow policies to recruit underrepresented groups, \nTUE says. But across science, a gender gap persists: In 2011, women \naccounted for just one-third of all EU researchers, and, at the highest \nlevel of the academic career ladder, just 21% were women in 2013, \naccording to the European Commission\u2019s She Figures 2015<\/em> report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biologist Isabelle Vernos, a group leader at the Centre for Genomic \nRegulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain, prefers that jobs be open to \neveryone whenever possible. \u201cBut depending on the discipline, I \nunderstand that sometimes you need high-impact action to change a \npattern,\u201d adds Vernos, who is a member of CRG\u2019s gender balance committee\n and chairs the European Research Council\u2019s working group on the same \ntopic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She worries TUE\u2019s program could place a burden on female recruits, \nwho may face suspicion about their abilities and anger about the \nprocess. CRG, she says, has tried a softer approach: No group leader is \nrecruited until enough top female candidates are shortlisted. The number\n of group leaders who are women has doubled in the 2.5 years since this \nrule was introduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smits likens the new policy to Plan S, a radical mandate by a group \nof research funders to require immediate open access to scientific \npublications, which he co-created in his previous job as the \ncommission\u2019s director-general for research and innovation. \u201cIf you don\u2019t\n take bold action, things will not improve,\u201d he says, adding that he \nhopes the program will have a snowball effect on other university \nrecruitment policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TUE now has about 500 staff members and 150 permanent jobs will be up\n for grabs in the next 5 years. After 18 months, the university will \nreview what percentage of vacancies will fall under this program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The program is named after Ir\u00e8ne Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie \nSk\u0142odowska-Curie, who received a joint Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: sciencemag.org A Dutch engineering university is taking radical action to increase its share of female academics by opening job…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[858,857,766,760,855,859,470,856],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university","tag-academics","tag-apply","tag-engineering","tag-jobs","tag-open","tag-tue","tag-university","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gurukulgalaxy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}