Via Christian Munthe on Twitter, I came across this report by Curt Rice, the Pro-Rector for Research & Development of the University of Tromsø in Norway (the northernmost university in the world, they claim) on the results of their program to increase the percentage of female full professors. (The Feminist Philosophers were faster and already have a post up on the report.) The results are stunning:
The Board of the University has articulated a goal of having 30% of our highest academic positions occupied by women by the end of 2013. Our progress has been steady and salient. In 2007, 18.3% of our professors were women. In 2008, it was 20.1%. At the end of 2009, we had reached 22.4% and last year we were at 24.6%. Today, we have reached 27.4%!
As I mentioned before, my own institution, the University of Groningen, also has a program to increase the percentage of female full professors, the Rosalind Franklin Fellowships – more info here and here. (I am proud to be one of the RF fellows myself.) The Netherlands has one of the lowest percentages of female full professors in the whole of Europe; at least until a few years ago, it was around 10%. I couldn’t find the exact data for Groningen since the program has been launched, but when I do, I’ll update this post.
Let me add that just last Monday I went to my first RF fellows dinner, and was very impressed by the extremely talented and driven RF fellows I met there; clearly, the program has been very successful in attracting international top talent to the the northernmost university of the country.
These programs and the results suggest that, with appropriate measures, the glass ceiling that Brit discussed in a recent post can be broken. It is to be hoped that other universities will follow the example of Tromsø, Groningen and other places which have been actively working on the problem (MIT also comes to mind), as clearly it is much less difficult to break the glass ceiling that one might have thought. (Details on the precise measures adopted in Tromsø can be found in Curt Rice's report.)
UPDATE: In comments below, Curt Rice provides the link to another interesting blog post of his, discussing the argument that he refers to as THAW:
Their hope reveals an argument I call THAW — Time Heals All Wounds. If we just wait, according to THAW, the large numbers of women entering medical school will lead to greater numbers of women professors and greater numbers of women in leadership positions. This thaw is inevitable as today’s students advance in their careers. Unfortunately, THAW is a flawed argument. Three recent research results highlight the problems with THAW.
Indeed, indeed... As is well known also for other historically oppressed groups (e.g. descendents of slaves, people with disabilities), time alone just takes too long. Affirmative action is simply a matter of basic social justice.
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