Quotas are questionable

摘要

In Europe, only 36% of mid-ranking professors, and 18% of full professors, are women, despite equal proportions of men and women at the undergraduate level. To address the problem of gender imbalance, the European Commission (EC) has committed to reaching 40% female participation in its advisory structures for Horizon 2020, the European Unions research-funding programme for 2014-20. The EC has also proposed a mandatory quota of 40% for women on non-executive boards of public companies. But statistics collected by the European Research Council (ERC) suggest that quotas are no magic wand to bring about gender equality in research and academia (despite tentative successes elsewhere, such as for company boards in Norway). Quotas might even make matters worse by overworking already-stretched female scientists. Instead, a range of bottom-up and top-down measures are needed to effect lasting change in the structures and culture of science.