Are radical measures a good idea to attract more women to your organisation? The technology university in the Dutch city of Eindhoven thinks so. In 2019 it decided to open all academic job vacancies exclusively to women. If, after half a year, no suitable female applicant was found, men could apply.
The Netherlands lags seriously behind most EU countries when it comes to the percentage of female professors. And for a long time Eindhoven University of Technology lagged behind even other Dutch institutions. The figures were startling: 12% of full professors and 16% of associate professors were women in 2017.
The university tried to change this in several ways: setting goals, making application committees more diverse, providing unconscious bias training for application committee members. It made little difference: in 2019, the number of female full professors had only grown to 18%, and the number of female associate professors hadn’t grown at all.
And so the university turned to a more radical approach: making all vacancies for academic staff open only to women for six months, after which, men would be welcome to apply too. A fellowship was also created. The newly accepted scientists were given a mentor and €100,000 to set up a lab.
The new policy caused quite a stir. The largest newspaper in the Netherlands, the rightwing De Telegraaf, called it a “men’s boycott” and featured an indignant computer science professor – a man, unsurprisingly – who called it “grotesque”.
Reactions within the university varied: some employees were proud; others accused the president of the executive board of discriminating against men. To which he replied drily: “Yes, absolutely.”
It’s fascinating that centuries of systematic exclusion of women from universities has never led to any male eyebrow raising, but when men have to wait a mere six months for their turn – in order to reduce said exclusion of women – it provokes downright anger. More than 50 people, from within and without the university, were so outraged they filed complaints. They claimed the policy was illegal.
An independent monitoring body looked into the case and slapped the university on the wrist. The policy was contrary to European legislation on equal treatment, the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights judged, while noting the case law its decision was from almost 20 years ago, and could be seen as outdated.
The university took a step back and the policy now applies to only 30 to 50% of the academic job vacancies instead of all of them. Only departments with less than 30% female academic staff now open their vacancies exclusively to female applicants for half a year.
Hiring women in top positions is not just a matter of fairness; it’s good for business. Numerous studies have shown that in organisations where the majority of staff are male there is generally more competition and less cooperation, whereas a better gender balance stimulates openness, creativity and innovation. In a technical university, this is the kind of working atmosphere you are looking for.
In Eindhoven, the university management understood that very well. And its radical policy had spectacular results. In five years, the percentage of newly hired female academic staff grew from 30% to 50%. The number of female permanent academic staff increased from 22% to 29%. An evaluation also showed that employees had started to attach more importance to diversity. It was clear that having fair representation did not make the sky fall in.
In a very short time, Eindhoven changed from an institution that was lagging behind when it came to hiring female academics into a shining example for other universities.
“It’s the engineer approach,” says Evangelia Demerouti, the chief diversity officer in Eindhoven and spiritual mother of the policy – explaining that actually doing the hiring, rather than just talking about it, as she says happens in many other universities, works a lot better.
Given this success, you would think other institutions with low numbers of female professors – of which there are plenty in the Netherlands – would rush to copy the policy. But thus far Eindhoven has remained unique. Unfortunately, for many Dutch universities, the engineer approach is still a bridge too far.
Renate van der Zee is a Dutch writer and journalist
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