CANADA: Universities pick 19 good men

30 May 2010

When the Canadian government created a $200 million pot to attract up to 20 of the world's best researchers in four target areas, university administrators had no trouble finding 36 stars that they wanted to hire. Diversity was another matter, however, writes Kelli Whitlock Burton for Science Insider.

The list of 19 researchers was announced last week. The inaugural class of Canadian Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) have two things in common: they are all illustrious scientists. And they are all men. In fact, not a single woman was even nominated.

"The fact that only men's names were put forward indicates to me that our ideas about who can succeed in science and who we want to celebrate remain very gendered, and that it runs very deep," says Elana Brief, president of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology and a physicist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Full report on the Science site

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