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Radboud university medical center is aiming to increase their percentage of female professors. In 2019, 29.6% of the professors of Radboud University were women. Within the Netherlands, only the Vrije Universiteit and Maastricht University have higher percentages. By 2025, Radboud university aims to further increase this percentage to 36.0%. Within this goal, Radboudumc has appointed thirteen female professors this year, and will make inclusivity and diversity a more explicit part of upcoming recruitments.
Professor Baziel van Engelen led the recruitment committee: 'Our guiding principle was the code of the RU: You are needed. We know that there is a systematic error in our procedures that prevents women from being given equal opportunities, and we wanted to correct this. Unlike previous professor appointments, an open application process was used. Candidates could nominate themselves, or be nominated by someone else. That was very special. I heard that the open way of inviting applications and the personal chair were really appreciated by the candidates. We wanted to be inclusive, disruptive and innovative, and within the committee we had to pay close attention to each other. There was disagreement at times, we tried to make each other's biases clear. But that was necessary: the structure of the system had to change.
We started after CV selection with 39 applicants. After pitches, analyses of leadership qualities, personal performance reviews and looking at how embedded they were in Radboudumc, we had a final interview with 13 candidates. Although our initial goal was to appoint 10 candidates, their impressive excellence urged us to nominate all 13. Fortunately, the Board of Directors went along with this. I hope that in 10 years' time this will no longer be necessary, with not only more female professors, but also more women on appointment advisory committees.'
Below, rector magnificus Han van Krieken elaborates on the appointments and the vision of the university. After the May holidays, professors Ellen van den Bogaard and Romana Netea-Maier will introduce themselves.
Why is it so important that the percentage of female professors is increased?
That is an easy question. Essentially, I think that every talented person should have the same opportunities. Unfortunately, that is still not the case. As an organization, we have to make sure that these inequalities are removed. After all, every person should be recognized and rewarded for their talents, not only their intellectual talent, but also their managing or communication skills should matter.
Why do you think the current percentage of female professors is still too low?
The inequality has been a part of our culture for a long time, and we are only slowly transitioning away from it. Back in the day, women were legally obligated to stop working when their first child was born. Nowadays, inequality still persists: childcare during the corona-crisis appeared to be still primarily the women’s responsibility. A striking example that recently came out is that women in politics are more often interrupted than men. Prime minister Rutte said that he would pay more attention, but also that the debates would take much longer if women were not interrupted. What he did not know is that research showed that it was actually the men that were talking the longest during debates. So, the image that people have often does not match the reality. It is these relatively small things that cause women to still have an unequal position in comparison to men. There are both conscious and unconscious biases that keep this system in place. So, if you do nothing, this system maintains itself. However, I am optimistic. I think we have seen some very important changes in the past few years. But I still think it should go faster, these changes do not happen by themselves. Everyone should contribute towards a better system: individuals, but also organizations like Radboud University.
The first plans to recruit 10 female professors were made in 2019. Can you tell us more about the process behind the scenes?
When I studied medicine, we had just reached the tipping point of slightly more women studying medicine than men. So, before my time, it was not that strange that more men than women were in higher positions, it reflected the distribution of male to female students. Nowadays there are more female medicine students, and there have been for a while, but the number of female professors does still not reflect this. Especially in the medical field, where there is so much excellent female talent with excellent careers, it is very remarkable that there are not more female professors. We thought that Radboud’s faculty of medical sciences (Radboudumc) could make an extra effort, because we felt that women were being overlooked. This lead to the idea to recruit 10 female professors. This is a precarious process, of course, so they had to think for a while about how they were going to tackle this. At first, they requested department heads and directors to compile a list of possible candidates that would be suitable for the position of professor. However, professor Baziel van Engelen, who was in charge of the recruitments, wanted to do it differently. He came up with the idea to open up the position to every female researcher that was interested. There were around 60 women who applied for the positions. All were very good candidates, and they proposed the best ones.
With all chosen candidates we had an introductory meeting just before they were inaugurated. During this meeting I always asked whether they were afraid that they would be judged, because other people might think that they got the professorship just because they were women. It was indeed one of the considerations that they had before they applied, but, luckily, no one was afraid of this. Actually, they expressed that they were chosen from a group of 60 highly talented people, while other professors were simply asked to become a professor. So, they reasoned that they actually worked harder to get this position. I thought this was a very good answer and way of looking at it.
Are there lessons that you have learned from this procedure that you would like to apply to prospective appointments?
Yes, we noticed that a slightly different type of person applied to these open positions than we see when we use classical recruitment procedures. Not because they were women, as there are also female professors that were hired in the past via the classical procedures. During the introductory meetings we always asked what drove them, why they chose this field. And more often than average, they spoke of team science, working together as a team, and meaning something to other people. These people had a slightly different view of their role in science, teaching and healthcare. This made us face the facts that with the old hiring procedures, this category of talent is overlooked.
Radboud University does not have a quota in place to increase the number of female professors, but a target. The target states that 36% of the professors should be female by 2025. Why was this target chosen?
We see improvements every year. The current target is a feasible when we appoint 50/50 male and female candidates in the next years. We could be more ambitious, by setting the target at 40% for instance, but if you know that no-one is retiring in that time, there is no chance that this target will be met. We do not have a quota, because we think that the policy we have in place is working. If we still think progress is too slow, we can always change towards an even more assertive policy. What we see now, which is also an interesting phenomenon, is that now the percentages of female associate professors is too low.
Are there some other changes that the Radboud can implement to give female professionals a more equal position?
One thing that we implemented two years ago, is that we now count the time spent during of pregnancy or parental leave as part of the work experience. The consequence of parental leave, most of the time, is that your first year in an academic structure, as lecturer or researcher, starts later. If you have two children, this could easily mean one year later, and you have one year less of work experience: roughly the pay-gap between men and women. The new policy already equalizes the salaries a bit, but I think this practice should also be applied when looking at CVs.
The current plan is a precursor to the Hooglerarenplan of 2021-2024. Can you tell me what the future looks like?
We are thinking about how to implement the lessons learnt from this hiring procedure at other places within the university. What I also hope, is that now that we have reached this 30%, it will become normal that women are in these positions. A lot of my colleagues were the first women in their discipline, and what happened is that they were always asked for their opinion just because it was special that a woman was in this position, they always had to be the spokesperson of their specialty. I hope that now that we have reached this 30%, that will no longer be the case, and women fulfilling these positions will have become normal.
Interview by Nina Wubben and Eline van Hugte
