TU Eindhoven favors women too much
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU / e) is going too far in its aim to recruit more female scientists, the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights has ruled. The chance that men will also be appointed at TU / e is now too small.
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TU / e is struggling with an underrepresentation of female scientists. To improve the balance, she established the Irène Curie Fellowship program last year. All scientific vacancies are only open to women for six months. Only when no suitable candidate is found can men apply. The program will run for five years and the aim is that by then 30 percent of the academic staff will be female.
Discrimination hotline Radar, which received dozens of complaints and reports, engaged the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights. This judges that no gender distinction may be made in recruitment and selection, unless there is a preferential policy that meets strict requirements. That is insufficiently the case at TU / e.
The interests of men affected by the measure have been insufficiently weighed
Negligible
The interests of men affected by the measure have not been sufficiently weighed up, says the Commission. For example, the program applies to all academic positions at all nine faculties of the TU / e. According to the Commission, the chance that men will obtain a scientific position in the next five years is “virtually negligible”.
In addition, not all nine faculties are facing the same backlog and the differences between men and women are not the same for all positions.
Less wide
In 2012, the Commission was still positive about TU Delft's preferential policy. The latter reserved ten extra vacancies temporarily for women, while all other vacancies were open to men. That preferential policy was therefore less broad and extensive than that of TU / e now.
The TU / e board will study the (non-binding) verdict of the human rights college. It is assumed that there is still enough room for maneuver to achieve the objectives.
