Exclusion of women from prestigious university appointments reignites battle of the sexes

By Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun -May 28, 2010, p. A1

The appointment of 19 men — and not a single woman — to prestigious research positions at Canadian universities earlier this month has re-ignited a debate about whether gender equality will ever be a reality on campus.

Although the number of female students attending universities has exceeded the number of male students for two decades, some insist the old-boys’ club continues to hold sway in advanced education’s upper echelons. Of the more than one million students attending Canadian universities, some 57 per cent are women; but, according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, only a third of faculty are female.

The selection of 19 men from the United States, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom for the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) program is more evidence that women are overlooked for top positions, critics argue.

“That this sort of thing can still happen is an embarrassment for Canada and profoundly demoralizing for the women scientists in this country,” said Prof. Lynne Quarmby of the molecular biology and biochemistry department at Simon Fraser University.

“It’s still very much a man’s world.”

The appointments have prompted a call for a national strategy to ensure equal gender representation in top university posts.

“I don’t think that there is active discrimination,” said Mona Nemer, the University of Ottawa’s vice-president of research. But there may be “conditions that are not very suitable to the retention and progression of women at universities and we need to tackle them,” she added.

The CERC program was created in 2008, an extension of the Canada Research Chairs, to attract world-class talent to Canadian universities as part of a federal strategy to promote expertise in science and technology. From a total CERC budget of almost $200 million, the government has promised each of the 13 host universities up to $10 million over seven years to support the chairholders and their research teams.

The only B.C. appointment is Matthew Farrer, a scientist from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. He will join researchers at the University of B.C.’s faculty of medicine in studying the origins of brain diseases and identifying early-detection strategies and improved treatments for Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, the university says in a release.

“The arrival of these globally respected researchers will have multiple benefits for Canada,” Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and chair of the tri-agency CERC steering committee, stated at the time of the announcement.

“Research chairs of this calibre working together with other researchers, students and post-doctoral fellows already in Canada will create meaningful new opportunities.”

But some aren’t so sure the money will be well spent.

In the days following the CERC announcement, questions are being asked — not only about the absence of women but also about the CERC focus on technological genius and the expenditure of millions of dollars on scientists who already had research funding in other countries.

“A focus on technology is going to find fewer women because those fields don’t have as many women,” said Prof. Bruce Brandhorst, chair of the SFU molecular biology and biochemistry department.

He said the program might have had a better gender balance if it had targeted “the very best” researchers rather than restricting applicants to four areas: environmental sciences and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, and information and communications technologies.

Furthermore, he suggested investing similar amounts of money in homegrown research would likely produce more benefits.

“There are a lot of highly qualified people who are very limited because of the quite restricted funding that’s been available in Canada.”

Quarmby said the CERC announcement was made while she was in Ottawa on a panel that was reviewing 47 applications for research grants. More than half deserved funding, but there was only enough money for eight, she said.

Her dismay over having to reject 39 “outstanding” applications was compounded by the CERC announcement, she said, adding that the CERC program is about superstars and ego-stroking.

“These people were doing their science elsewhere in the world. They were not at risk of that science not getting done. It doesn’t really make much difference in terms of world development if that science is done in Canada or somewhere else and yet a lot of homegrown Canadian science is being sacrificed for somebody’s ego.”

But the suggestion that women are disadvantaged on Canadian campuses has been challenged by UBC Prof. Andrew Irvine, who argues that university job searches are often biased in favour of women.

“Most departments allow men to apply, but almost always ‘give preference’ to women,” he writes in the Ottawa Citizen.

“For anyone who favours non-discriminatory hiring, even this is a shameful practice.”

Brandhorst said the state of gender equality varies among schools and disciplines. Overall, he said much has been accomplished “but in some fields there has been very little progress, and some of that is because not many women are interested in doing degree programs. If only five per cent of the PhDs are women, the number hired into faculty positions is going to be very restricted.”