Promising Programs: A Cross-National Exploration of Women in Science, Education to Workforce

Abstract

A “program” is an organized effort to improve delivery of a practice or service to a population. In the context of this volume, the central goal of programs is the participation of women (and girls) in a series of planned activities, which taken together, place or keep them on a path toward a science-based degree or career. To be sustained over time, a program must have financial support, consistent leadership, a visibility that attracts participants, exposes them to essential experiences, and facilitates the acquisition of skills and technical (disciplinary, occupational) culture.

Appendices

Vignette 9.1 We’ve Only Just Begun: What Worked and What Has Not Worked Well So Far for the Promotion of Women Scientists in Japan

• Sanae M. M. Iguchi-Ariga 

1. Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, N9 W9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-8589, Japan

   Sanae M. M. Iguchi-Ariga

Japan remains at the bottom of OECD countries, to our deep regret, in regard to the percentage of women researchers. In concert with the Third Basic Plan for Science and Technology (2006–2010), in which numerical targets for female recruiting levels were shown for the first time, the Japanese government initiated multifaceted programs in 2006 to promote women’s involvement in the research workforce nationwide, namely funding for institutions to create model programs (taking after the ADVANCE program of the NSF in the United States), re-entry support for women returning to research after taking family leave (special postdoctoral quota), and outreach programs to attract high school girls into science disciplines. More than 90 universities and national institutes have adopted the ADVANCE-like programs to date; Hokkaido University was one of the initial ten universities to do so.

Hokkaido University is a national flagship research university of about 2,000 faculty members with more than 11,000 undergraduate and 6,000 graduate students. The support office for Female Researchers in Hokkaido University (FResHU) has been managing various programs to promote representation of women in academic science and technology and to support their careers (including family support), aimed at the near-term goal of reaching 20% overall female faculty by the year 2020. To boost, but not force, appointments of qualified women scientists as faculty members, extra budgets for salaries from university overhead have been offered as incentives to the faculties recruiting women as members. Women were only 7.0% of the faculty when that unique affirmative action program started in 2006, and in 2013, after 7 years, the level had risen to 12.5% by welcoming more than 100 brilliant women researchers. The affirmative action program at Hokkaido University now has been applied to a national project to increase women in science, agriculture, and engineering fields, which show the smallest participation of women both in proportion and absolute numbers. A project has also been implemented at Hokkaido University in which 27 women, including 14 foreigners, have been recruited, increasing diversity in the research and education workforce in 5 years.

Establishing in-campus day-care centers for children and providing human support to laboratories have been successful not only for helping young “mom-scientists” to stay active, but also for improving the institutional climate by showing that women are not “risky” colleagues who would work less critically because of pregnancy and child care.

Another big issue is the two-body or dual career problem. About 10% of male researchers’ partners/spouses are also researchers, while more than 50%, even 70–80% in life science fields, of female researchers have researchers as partners/spouses. Support for researcher couples is, therefore, a big concern in the promotion of women in science. Young researchers show a strong tendency to look for positions either in the Tokyo metropolitan area or in the Kyoto-Osaka area, where they might have more possibilities for finding two research posts for “two in science,” given a variety of numerous universities and research institutes. Hokkaido University and others located far from the above areas and somewhat isolated from other research institutes should take this issue seriously in regard to securing qualified young researchers. Much related discussion is about fairness in having more opportunities for researcher partners, but the university would also benefit from recruiting suitable pairs of researchers. Of course, evaluation systems must be considered: both partners must be qualified individually and should fulfill faculty needs. Space for laboratories and offices is another concern. Recent developments in information technologies, such as mobile telephones, e-mail, and Skype, can provide some help to remote couples. However, while it might be less problematic as long as it remains a “two-body” problem, the situation becomes far more complicated and serious when they face a “three-body” or “four-body” situation including children or elderly parents. An entire employment system of researchers must be reconsidered in order to maximize the activities of scientists, from junior to senior and regardless of gender, as well as to cope with the declining birth rate which is marked especially among women scientists.

Also, despite programmatic efforts, the percentage of women assuming leadership positions involved in decision-making processes remains disappointingly low, as in the whole of Japan. The promotion of women in science should be far-sighted policy: it requires time and effort to normalize the long and continuous gender imbalance in the research workforce. Promotion activities as well as women’s careers should be sustainable. Evaluation of promotion programs and activities, however, often lays too much weight on “numeric values” showing the increase of female researchers. Numbers are, of course, important; we need more women in the research workforce indeed, but we should never overlook working conditions and the quality of the workplace. Female junior faculty and postdoctoral researchers are thus provided various opportunities and training to become empowered and more “visible,” such as seminars and workshops on leadership and presentation skills; childcare also is provided as a priority for encouraging and enabling the participation of mom-scientists. Taking pride as a front-runner, the FResHU office organizes such efforts and welcomes female researchers, and motivates other universities and institutes as well. In addition, it has formed a network in which women researchers help, inspire, and mentor one another, and networked women function as cores for transdisciplinary research collaboration. Also including “understanding” male colleagues, the network will help women to break through the glass ceiling.

9.7

Vignette 9.2 Initiatives Promoting Women in Science at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

• Anne Pépin 

1. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS, 3 Rue Michel-Ange, Paris, 75794, Cedex 16, France

   Anne Pépin

The National Center for Scientific Research abbreviated as CNRS (from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) is the largest public research organization in France and the largest basic research agency in Europe. CNRS covers all fields of knowledge through its ten Institutes, 33,700 employees—including 25,500 tenured researchers, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff, i.e. civil servants—and 1,000 laboratories located all over the country, and some abroad, most of them joint laboratories with universities or other national research organizations and key industrial partners. Founded in 1939, CNRS plays a central role in the design, funding, execution, and evaluation of research programs at the national level, and is a leader at the international level, boasting 20 Nobel Prizes and 12 Fields Medal Laureates, and ranking first in the world in 2012 in terms of publications (CNRS 2014).

In July 2001, shortly after two laws promoting gender equality had been passed in France¹⁸ and in an effort to respond to European recommendations on gender equality in research and higher education,¹⁹ CNRS spearheaded national efforts by creating its Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS (MPDF-CNRS), a governance-level operational unit dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and improving the status of women within the organization. A few months later, the French Ministry in charge of research would follow and create its Mission pour la parité (renamed Mission pour la parité et la lutte contre les discriminations since 2009).

Many actions were initiated over the years by MPDF-CNRS to foster women’s advancement in science. Among key initiatives, the Mission has produced a number of qualitative studies on the factors hindering the progression of women in research careers, as well as research and educational tools promoting French women scientists as role models. These tools include, for example, a volume on the role of women in the history of CNRS, traveling exhibitions and DVDs, a mentoring forum for young female Ph.D. students in mathematics in collaboration with the Femmes et Mathématiques professional association) and since 2009, MPDF-CNRS yearly publishes a comprehensive, sex-disaggregated statistical booklet recognized by CNRS as a necessary complement to its annual Social Report and a tool for improving its HR management and organizational practices, which serves as a model for the national academic community (CNRS 2013a).

In 2009, CNRS officially committed to the development of a gender action plan in its “Contract of Objectives” with the French State, and a series of national actions have since been put into place, among which tailored awareness-raising and capacity-building trainings on gender equality in research, were developed since 2011 to target all levels of HR and scientific decision-making at CNRS and thus foster systemic change.

As a means to support this commitment, MPDF-CNRS—along with a focused consortium of European institutions—answered and won the first call for proposals on structural change in research institutions launched by the European Commission through its 2010 7th Framework Program Science-in-Society work program—a call strongly inspired from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Program, which was renewed in the followed three EC FP7-SiS campaigns and will carry on in HORIZON 2020, the next framework program (2014–2020). Project INTEGER (for “INstitutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality in Research”) was launched in 2011 for a 4-year duration. Coordinated by MPDF-CNRS, it involves two other gender action plan-implementing institutions—Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and Siauliai University, Lithuania—as well as a German organization, GESIS, in charge of evaluating progress within each institution, and is supported by an international group of expert advisors among which are former ADVANCE officers and grantees (CNRS 2013c; Trinity College Dublin 2013) At CNRS, INTEGER more specifically targets the two CNRS Institutes with the lowest female representation, i.e. physics and mathematics.

MPDF-CNRS has played a leading role at the national level in the development and recognition of gender studies. Recently, it initiated a national inventory of researchers working on gender and/or women, and supported the creation in 2010 of a CNRS pluri-disciplinary thematic network (RTP) on gender studies to explore the integration of the gender dimension in fields outside the humanities and social sciences. In 2012, this successful initiative led the newly created CNRS Mission for Inter-disciplinarity to elect gender as one of CNRS’s great interdisciplinary research challenges for the coming years. The Gender Challenge Program (Défi Genre CNRS 2013b), co-led by MPDF-CNRS, funds exploratory projects from interdisciplinary research teams developing a gender perspective in different scientific fields, e.g. biology, environmental science, engineering, and computer science.

MPDF-CNRS is also on the Management Committee of a pilot targeted network on gender, science, technology, and environment launched in 2012 and funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST, genderSTE 2013), and a member of the Gender and Diversity Task Force (now standing Working Group) created in 2013 within Science Europe, the organization representing research-performing and research-funding organizations in Europe.

A major collaborative effort, the GENDER-NET ERA-NET (GENDER-NET 2014) project, a pioneering FP7-funded networking initiative which is led by MPDF-CNRS, was launched in October 2013 for a 3-year duration. This ERA-NET scheme seeks to coordinate national policies and programs promoting gender equality in research institutions and/or the integration of the gender dimension in research contents. Partners, among which are some of the most advanced national program owners in Europe (from e.g., Norway, Ireland, UK, Spain, Switzerland, France) as well as key North-American players such as the US National Academies and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, are joining forces for the implementation of strategic joint activities, building on a systematic exchange of information, innovative assessment and knowledge-transfer methods, and the definition of common indicators. GENDER-NET is a pilot transnational policy initiative which will allow for a global vision of the best practices and conditions for success for fostering gender equality in research.

3.1 References

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). 2013a. La parité dans les métiers du CNRS, http://bilansocial.dsi.cnrs.fr/page/editoparite (accessed July 2013).

_____. 2013b. Défi Genre (Gender Challenge Program), http://www.cnrs.fr/mi/spip.php?article267 (accessed July 2013).

_____. 2013c. Integer, http://www.cnrs.fr/mission-femmes/integer (accessed July 2013).

_____. 2014. Key Figures, http://www.cnrs.fr/en/ (accessed 29 March 2014).

ETAN (European Technology Assessment Network). 2000. Science Policies in the European Union. Promoting Excellence Through Mainstreaming Gender Equality. A Report from the ETAN Network on Women and Science. Brussels: European Commission, Research Directorate-General.

GENDER-NET. 2014. The GENDER-NET European Research Area Network, http://www.gender-net.eu (accessed October 2014).

genderSTE. 2013. Key Steps to Structural Change, http://www.genderste.eu/ (accessed July 2013).

Trinity College Dublin. 2013. INTEGER: Institutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality in Research, http://www.tcd.ie/wiser/integer/ (accessed July 2013).

Wenneräs, Christine and Wold, Agnes. 1997. Nepotism and Sexism in Peer-Review. Nature 387:341–343.

Vignette 9.3 Building the Mathematics Capacity in the Developing World: The United States Participation in the Volunteer Lecturer Program

• Ana Ferreras 

1. National Academy of Sciences, 500 5th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20001, USA

   Ana Ferreras

The Volunteer Lecturer Program (VLP) in mathematics is organized and sponsored by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) with the goal of building capacity in mathematics and mathematics education in developing countries. Under this program, mathematicians from developed countries deliver intensive short courses in advanced mathematics for degree programs at universities in the developing world. One of the countries from which the program draws volunteers is the United States (US), which has a large pool of mathematicians who have indicated their willingness to participate, essentially pro bono, in the VLP. The program offers 3–4 week mathematics lecture courses on topics at the advanced undergraduate level, with the idea of building capacity and increasing interaction between the US mathematical community and the vast, mostly untapped reservoir of mathematical talent in the developing world. Their participation was managed by the US National Committee for Mathematics (USNC/M) at the National Academy of Sciences, and the program was sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant (DMS-0937225).

4.1 9.8 The Experience of the First Woman Lecturer

Dr. Helene Tyler, associate professor at Manhattan College, taught Ordinary Differential Equations in 2009 at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She became the first woman volunteer in the IMU program, and it was the first time that she had lectured in a developing country. Upon her return, Dr. Tyler said, “When I returned to the States and people asked how was it, I responded that I’ve never worked so hard in my life and I can’t wait to do it again!”

4.2 9.9 The First VLP Student in the United States: Following the Mathematics Dream

Dr. Tyler returned to RUPP in 2010 and the highlight of her second visit was meeting Ms. Kimsy Tor, a student who had recently graduated from high school and attained the highest score in the Grade 12 National Exam. While Kimsy excelled at all subjects, her particular talent was mathematics. She audited Dr. Tyler’s class where she ranked 8th among the 21 students, all of whom had at least 4 more years of education than she did.

When Dr. Tyler returned to the United States, she contacted the leadership of her institution. Kimsy was admitted to Manhattan College, which provided her with a scholarship to pursue a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a minor in computer science. In 2011, Kimsy became the first VLP student pursuing her studies in the United States. In 2013, she completed her second academic year with an outstanding overall GPA of 3.97/4.0.

4.3 9.10 US Graduate Students Serving as Teaching Assistants in the Developing World

Dr. Angel Pineda, associate professor at California State University, Fullerton, taught Numerical Analysis II at RUPP in 2009 and 2010. Due to the intense volunteers’ workload, Dr. Pineda proposed to the USNC/MI that he bring along one of his graduate students to assist him. As a pilot project, Emily Bice became the first US graduate student to serve as a VLP teaching assistant (TA) in 2010. She assisted with grading homework, laboratory assignments, and examinations; was able to give selected lectures; and administered several computer laboratory assignments. She also held office hours, where she assisted students with their homework and theses.

Emily led the development of laboratories using Octave, a free version of MATLAB^©, which complemented the material presented during lectures. Dr. Pineda noted that “Emily’s work will be extremely useful for future lecturers covering Numerical Analysis, since it is critically important for the developing world to use open-source software such as Octave^© and MiKTeX. Having a graduate student helping to teach the course significantly increases the impact of a lecturer and provides a learning opportunity for the student and a mentoring opportunity for the lecturer.” Emily stated, “I had a wonderful experience. Dr. Pineda’s mentoring was an integral part of my positive experience.”

After evaluating the impact of this initiative and building upon its great success, Martha Byrne, a graduate student of Dr. Michale Nakamaye at the University of New Mexico became the second VLP TA. Martha assisted Dr. Nakamaye teaching Symmetry, Calculus, and Functional Analysis at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria in 2010. Dr. Nakamaye noted, “Having the chance to share the time with my graduate student Martha was a terrific experience and it helped me greatly.” Martha commented, “I love that I got to be a part of the VLP, travel to Nigeria, and had such a wonderful experience there. I’m a better teacher as a result of our time there and getting to collaborate on such a project.”

4.4 9.11 Science Diplomacy: VLP Reception at the US Embassy in Cambodia

In 2012, the USNC/M held a reception at the US Ambassador’s Residence (William E. Todd) in Phnom Penh to honor VLP’s work in Cambodia promoting mathematics. At that time, the VLP has worked with Cambodia for over 6 years. Dr. Tyler gave a welcoming address at the reception, saying that “to say that my time in Cambodia has changed my life, both professionally and personally, may be trite and cliché, but it also is entirely true. I have learned so much from my interactions with the Cambodian mathematics community. The students have been the hardest working and hungriest that I have ever taught, and it is possible that I have learned even more from them. At home, my students have become almost too familiar; I am rarely asked a question that I have not been previously asked. But here my students come to the material with different sets of skills, some even stronger than my students at home. I feel more present during my lectures here than I often do in the United States. I am more sharply focused on how the students react to the material and to how I present it. I am certain that the experience has made me a better teacher, both here and at home.”

The event was attended by local policy makers, university leaders, VLP alumni, and current students. The purpose of the reception was to increase the visibility of the program and empower local leaders to take ownership in building mathematics capacity in Cambodia. As a result of this reception, RUPP leadership provided space to the Mathematics Department to build the first mathematics laboratory in the country.

The U.S. participation in the VLP is now managed by the IMU. While the NSF grant that supported this effort has ended, the U.S. VLP is now fully funded by the IMU. For more information, see the US VLP website.²⁰