Radical women-only hiring policy improves diversity at Dutch university

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Dutch university’s controversial policy to close the gender gap by temporarily allowing only women to apply for certain roles appears to be paying off.

In 2019, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) announced that for the first 6 months of recruitment for permanent academic jobs, only women applicants would be considered. Now, the university—which specializes in engineering science—has found that in the first 5 years under the new policy, half of new recruits were women, compared with 30% previously.

The results, released earlier this month, are promising, says Yvonne Benschop, an organizational behavior researcher at Radboud University who specializes in workplace diversity. They “debunk old myths about women not being interested or qualified” for particular roles, she says.
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The new policy sparked strong reactions in 2019, with international media coverage as well as harsh criticism in the Dutch press. Complaints about the legality of the program reached the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, an independent monitoring body. The institute ruled that TUE was pursuing a legitimate goal but using too blunt an instrument. In response, the university adapted the plans in 2021 to apply only to departments and academic ranks where fewer than 30% of the faculty were women. It also reduced the number of women-only positions, which the university has named Irène Curie Fellowships, after Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s Nobel Prize–winning daughter.'