SFI announce female only funding scheme

Woodward · 19-02-2014 7:35pm #1

http://www.sfi.ie/news-resources/press-releases/science-foundation-ireland-announce-new-funding-for-women-in-science.html

This is ridiculous. True they say that only 26% of postdocs in the country are female but it ignores the fact that women far outnumber male students at every other level of education. The lack of women postdocs is more than likely due to the fact that after PhD women are at the age to either have kids or risk never having them at all so they do not continue to postdoc research, talking to several female PhD's they agree with this. Given that there is so little funding in the country at the moment I think it is shocking that SFI are playing gender politics rather than funding the best applicants

ancapailldorcha · 19-02-2014 8:00pm

Someone needs to tell the Guardian, they'll have a field day.

On a more serious note, there doesn't seem to me to be any real gender gap in scientific research. Obviously that and the following are anecdotal and the summation of my personal experience. I work in biological research and have spent most of my career reporting to women. When I was working in Manchester, the 2 project leaders and the head scientist were all women. Most of the technicians were women as well. I did some work in the Immunology department at St. James' Hospital and it was the same story there. From my perspective, they were all more than capable of doing their jobs and I learned a huge amount from them over the years so I didn't have a problem with it. I've no reason to believe that they were hired for any reason other than they were either the best qualified for their positions or performed best at interview.
Again, the above is anecdotal and just the perspective of one person.

From what I know of the Technology and Engineering sectors, and this is very limited, there does seem to be a shortage to women. I'd say the same about computer science, again, my perspective. I would have thought that the best way around this would be to convince girls in school of the advantages offered by pursuing a career in these areas. Perhaps successful female engineers, researchers and technicians could talk to girls in schools. I don't see how depriving men of the chance to compete for these funding opportunities helps. It seems like tokenism to me. I would have thought that the best way forward would be to pick the best person for the job regardless or gender.

iptba · 19-02-2014 8:34pm

The place where in my opinion it could be most justified to have gender quotas is gender studies research, to ensure some sort of similar levels of analysis and input into issues. But we don't have them there.

donfers · 20-02-2014 2:18pm

In the local chamber of commerce here they are offering grants to female entrepreneurs....I started a business a few years agao and could really have done with their help but unfortunately I am not a woman so don't qualify for it, I really hate this kind of blatant socially acceptable discrimination and contacted them asking if they thought it was fair that I should be disqualified from applying for that grant - didn't get a reply!!

Sleepy · 20-02-2014 2:28pm

Sue them under equality legislation and use that funding for your business?

lazybones32 · 21-02-2014 1:07am

Unfortunately, this seems to be the Irish reaction to an American cause. It is discriminatory and sexist but since it favours women in supposedly 'patriarchial' fields, it is pursued.

I received an invitation to apply for a Research position at Humboldt University in Berlin about 6 months ago in one of the Scientific Programmes. I read through all the requirements and the last paragraph was the University's "ideal candidate" section. It essentially said, that a woman who had the basic accreditation for the position would be given preference because the University seeks to encourage female participation in Scientific disciplines. It then went on to say that they would like it if the applicant was of a minority background to show how the Uni respects all ethnicities and then made mention of disabled people being very welcome to apply also.
Maybe that aspect of the Advert didn't translate from German to English very well but they did an excellent job with the several paragraphs describing every other aspect of the position. It left me with a very strong impression that any woman who barely scraped the mark would get the position ahead of any male, regardless of qualifications....that is totally contradictory to the spirit of Science but it highlights feminism's obsession with power at any cost (to men).

SFI announce female only funding scheme

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