Women-only hiring policy improves university’s diversity

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, writes Cathleen O’Grady for Science.

In 2019, the Eindhoven University of Technology announced that for the first six months of recruitment for permanent academic jobs, only women applicants would be considered. Now, the university – which specialises in engineering science – has found that in the first five 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 organisational behaviour researcher at Radboud University who specialises in workplace diversity. They “debunk old myths about women not being interested or qualified” for particular roles, she says.
Full report on the Science site