Signing for gender equality in physics research
To advance recruitment and career progression of female physicists and engineers, the directors of the four NWO physics research institutes the Netherlands, AMOLF, ARCNL, DIFFER and Nikhef, have signed Gender Equality Plans. The official ceremony took place on January 22nd, 2018 at the start of the large Physics@Veldhoven conference in front of the physics community in the Netherlands. It kicked off a systematic approach to accelerate improving the gender balance in the national physics research institutes, leading to structural changes. By publicly signing the plans, the four institute directors emphasised their commitment to and the legitimacy of the agreed actions and measures for gender equality.
Four institutes, four plans
Supported by Sandra Hesping, implementation officer at NWO-I, each of the four physics institutes designed a customised plan for gender equality with measures and targets adapted to their institute. For this, they made a thorough evaluation of the status quo of the gender balance in their institutes. The quantitative analyses showed that, although percentages of women among the senior scientists vary between the institutes, they are lower for all institutes than expected from the percentage of female PhD students and postdocs. Elimination of this difference, in particular for leadership positions, became the spear head in the plans and targets were included: “AMOLF aims to have 25% of its scientific group leaders to be female in 2022”, says director Huib Bakker. DIFFER director Richard van de Sanden has similar goals: “We propose to have 20% of our scientific staff to be women within four years.”
To meet these targets, the gender equality plans include specific measures to remove barriers in recruitment and career development of female scientists. In particular, much attention is given to raise the awareness of unconscious bias when assessing achievements and functioning of women and other groups that are a minority in the physics community in the Netherlands. This is not only important during recruitment and selection procedures, but also for the supervision of PhD students and postdocs and generally for an inclusive working environment at the institutes.
At each of the institutes, dedicated teams will follow the implementation of the gender equality plans and monitor whether the measures taken are contributing to meeting the targets.
GENERA
The customised measures being implemented are the results of an evaluation by an external gender expert institute (Joanneum Research, Austria) and the recommendations formulated at the Gender in Physics Day in the Netherlands in November 2016. Both activities took place in the framework of GENERA, a European H2020 project that aims at a common approach towards an improved gender balance in the European physics research organisations. NWO-I is partner in the GENERA project. The four NWO physics institutes developed the Gender Equality Plans using the toolbox and guidelines of the GENERA project.
