Policies to Promote the Participation of Women.

 

Around the world, governments, universities, and international organizations have been designing and implementing policies to overcome the barriers mentioned in Section 2 and to promote women’s participation in scientific and technological fields. While many of these policies are targeted to solve problems related to a particular career stage, several of those actions affect more than one stage at a time. In Europe, most of the countries have undertaken efforts to incorporate gender equality in STEM. In fact, the majority of EU member countries have implemented policies related to women and science, committing to gender mainstreaming, creating National Committees on Women and Science, publishing sex-disaggregated statistics, and promoting gender studies and research. However, the implementation of more specific policies varies widely across the region (see Table 2)

A first group of programs centers on increasing women’s participation in tertiary science education, including mentoring programs which link Ph.D. students, post-docs and senior members (Norway and Germany), and motivational meetings for female school leavers. Some policies attempt to make scientific fields more appealing for women. These policies aim to overcome gender differences in teaching and enhance the image of STEM careers. Box 1 presents some of these experiences in the United States and EU. The general result of this type of programs is that they encourage women in their career aspirations. Women gain self-confidence, network with colleagues in similar situations and acquire a deeper understanding of university and research organizations and structures.

Countries have been implementing policies, programs, and strategies to encourage and support women’s participation in science and technology fields, especially in those which they have been historically underrepresented, such as engineering and physics. Following are some of these initiatives:

A second line of policies aims at promoting women’s careers and increasing theirscientific productivity. Interventions include policies related to access to research funding and information, adapting advertising language to make it more woman-friendly, offering funds for women in research (Germany), awarding additional points in the evaluation to projects that include gender balance (Spain and Greece), providing economic incentives to gender-balanced research departments, and facilitating networking among women. 

In order to provide hiring incentives, several countries have been implementing policies, such as institutional awards for gender issues (Switzerland and Norway) or, in an attempt to balance family and work responsibilities, they have supported subsidized childcare and maternal leave or more flexible work schedules (Slovenia, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and Norway). Mentoring programs, search committees to identify qualified female candidates for senior positions (Germany and Norway), regulation and legislation, and targets and quotas are instruments and programs that have been implemented in recent decades. 

It is important to know how effective these policies have been in promoting gender equality. To this end, several of them, including the ADVANCE Fellows Program, the Aspasia Program of the Netherlands, and the G&D-Rockfeller and the Borlaug Fellowship Programs, were evaluated to determine whether they have had a positive impact on women’s careers. In general, these initiatives were found successful although they presented some issues at the design and implementation stages.

 Results of the evaluation of the ADVANCE Program are summarized in Box 3, while those of the G&D-Rockfeller and the Borlaug Fellowship Programs are presented in Box 4. Summarizing the literature, Müller et al indicates that scholarships, grants and stipends are an invaluable instrument or reaching the next qualification stage, but they fail to guarantee integration into the scientific community or to impact the organizational level of research institutes or universities. In fact, providing women with temporary positions do not often lead them to fixed positions, making preferable the financial support through the creation of concrete positions.