Improving gender diversity in your department
A short recap of the DEWIS lunch lecture by Gunther Cornelissen, Professor of Mathematics at Utrecht University, and winner of the Westerdijk Award.
To visualize the problem: instead of graphing the total percentage of men and women, make a graph only with the gender of the people who are just hired per year. This also nicely shows years in which a ‘women fellowship’ is available, and in some cases the reaction on that, i.e. that in the next year more men are hired to ‘compensate’.
People tend to think: we've got a policy now. Box checked. Done.
How to get more women hired
Use ‘women’s fellowships’, like for example the ‘Westerdijk fellowship’. The Westerdijk fellowships were meant to hire only women, with a start-up package. Apparently people were afraid for a stigma, but it seems that at some point people tend to forget how you're hired.
When there is a job available, use the 'separate strategy'. Rank men and women independently. Of those top ranked: all top women are discussed, the top men only if strongly defended by someone. The result: they interviewed 80% female applicants. A side note is that the committee meetings were less harmonious than during other hiring processes.
The step-by-step plan
Gunther Cornelissen invented a step-by-step plan, also to be read on the website of the University of Utrecht, to increase the percentage of female academics in his department:
- Prove existence of good female scientist, increase their visibility, actively search and create a pool of suitable candidates at the different levels and when opportunities arise, encourage this pool to apply for grants and/or positions.
- Aim to always select the best and work towards unbiased recruitments. Also take a look at the Implicit Harvard bias test. Men and women are both biased. Make sure to have a policy in place to the cancel job opening if not enough female candidates apply. Always discuss implicit bias! When there is a position open, make sure to fix the criteria for the candidate beforehand, together with the committee. Also agree it is not allowed to add extra criteria and avoid non-existing criteria. Apply minority only hiring. And set higher target goals than you want in your department: if you want 20% of females, set the target on 30%.
- Be aware of the aftercare diversity implies. There are now people with different opinions, and who dress and speak differently.
View the full presentation of Prof. Gunther Cornelissen here.