ISTOCK, JDAWNINKFor years, universities and funding organizations have attempted to address women’s underrepresentation among science faculty, whether by removing barriers to recruitment and retention or trying to dispel biases among employers and grant makers. Two newly announced programs take the less common, more contentious approach of affirmative action—offering positions or funding specifically for female investigators.
One program launched in 2017 in Australia, where the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) developed an initiative to fund more research by female scientists. Another is in Germany, where the Max Planck Society created a program to start in 2018 to increase the number of research groups led by women each year.
“The initiatives are very interesting—and bound to be controversial,” MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins writes in an email to The Scientist. “People will say there aren’t enough women who are as good as the great men of the Max Planck Institute. And for sure no one wants the institution to lower its standard—least of all would women want it to do so!”
But there are good women to fill more senior roles, ...
