Newsletter

September 2000

How NSERC Justifies the ‘Women-Only’ Faculty Awards

Letter of Prof. John Yeomans, University of Toronto, to Dr. Thomas
Brzustowski, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council, and the reply.

January 8, 2000

Dear Dr. Brzustowski:

The reinstatement of “Women-Only-Need- Apply” faculty (UFA) fellowships
by NSERC is a giant leap backward. The enclosed letter by Prof. Doreen
Kimura shows that the theory of discrimination based on numbers hired is
misguided, and that the idea that women are somehow inadequate to complete
on their own merits is demanding.

Already there are many levels of blatant (Wilfrid Laurier U) or insidious
(U Toronto, Windsor, UBC or others) discrimination in favor of hiring women
scientists at most Canadian Universities (called affirmative action, or
whatever). Your program further tips the scales against men and weakens
the efforts to attain competitive scientific research programs in Canada.
This reminds me of the bad-old days when Jews were excluded from faculty
searches or professional schools.

Your UFA program shifts the search for brain power into a search limited
to one sex. NSERC should be ashamed to put its good name on sex-based fellowship.
Tell the politicians and social engineers that NSERC is about science not
sex. Put the money back into fair fellowship competitions.

John Yeomans

January 14, 2000

Dear Professor Yeomans:

Thank you for recent letter on our University Faculty Awards. Your comments
were very thoughtful and I would like to explain why we instituted this
program.

Let me begin with the question of the need for measures aimed at increasing
the number of female faculty in the natural sciences and engineering.

In recent years, we have seen a terrific growth in the number of female
undergraduates in these disciplines. Young women now make up something
like 37 per cent of the nation’s undergraduate scientists and engineers.
But this growth has so far not been matched at the doctoral level where
women are only 23 per cent of the population; and among faculty members
the gap is greater still – only 11 per cent are women. This situation is
most acute in engineering and applied sciences where just six percent of
faculty are female.

It may be that trends in undergraduate enrolments will eventually translate
into changes at the faculty level, but the progress is slow. At the current
rate it would take almost a century for female faculty to reach parity
with male faculty.

In our view, young women now studying in the NS & E at the undergraduate
level should not have to content themselves with thoughts of the eventual
successes of their great-grand-daughters. We believe Canada should do what
it can now to encourage these talented young people to continue in their
chosen fields.

Programs like UFA not only help qualified individual women, they also
provide role models for the rising generation of female scientists and
engineers.

I would like to stress the importance of that word “qualified”. NSERC
is committed to the highest standards of excellence in all of its programs,
including the UFA program. All UFA nominees are assessed against their
peers (both genders) when NSERC’s Grant Selection Committees (GSCs) evaluate
their research proposals and records of achievement. If a GSC does not
believe that an UFA nominee merits a research grant, in competition with
all other applicants with a similar career profile, then the nomination
is not approved. (In fact, comments from both the GSCs and University Faculty
Award Selection Committee indicate that those who get UFAs are often among
the very best of new applicants).

It is clear that holders of UFAs are fully qualified and that they are
making outstanding contributions to their fields, as well as helping to
open up their profession to the female half of Canada’s population.

I hope this clarifies our position, and, again, I appreciate your interest.

Thomas Brzustowski