My column of October 17th, 2024, received in ominous silence, was on the subject of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the university. I explained these programmes, at least in their current forms, are incompatible with academic freedom; a cornerstone of the university mission. I return to that theme today with specific illustrations of other problems posed by DEI in our universities.
Most scientific research is carried out in universities. Laboratory science is expensive and is dependent on funding from scientific grant awarding agencies, most of which are state agencies such as Nasa, the National Institutes of Health in the US and Research Ireland (formerly Science Foundation Ireland).
Scientists submit research proposals to these bodies outlining their research plans, detailing a budget necessary to support this research over several years and summarise their track record of research and their professional expertise. Awards have always been made on the basis of the scientific merit of the application.
But DEI regulations are now being introduced to ensure scientific grants are awarded strictly on a 50-50 gender basis, so the number of male and female awardees must be equal. This policy has already been implemented in Australia and it seems Canada will follow suit. Undoubtedly pressure will be applied to spread this model worldwide.
Gaza ceasefire deal: What has been agreed between Israel and Hamas?
Good-looking and practical: the best activity trackers on the market from €100 to almost €1,000
Robbie Henshaw enthusiastic about Jordie Barrett’s quick impact with Leinster
Dave Hannigan: Rudy Giuliani paying the price for his inglorious role in forgotten drama
The Investigator Grant Scheme is the largest funding scheme for Australia’s health and medical research force. In 2023, following application of the “gender equity” reforms described above, roughly equal numbers of awards were made to men and women with women receiving more funding overall than men – as outlined by National Health and Medical Research Council. The justification given for introducing the new scheme was that, before 2023, men were very significantly more successful in winning research grants than women – men received about 35 per cent more grants than women in the 2019-2022 period.
This new gender equity approach sacrifices both equality of opportunity and primacy of scientific excellence, traditional cornerstone criteria for awarding grants. An excellent application from a man, or a woman, may now fail to win an award in his/her gender category because the standards there are very high while he/she is ineligible to win an award in the other gender category even though his/her application has more scientific merit than some award-winning projects in that category. Equality of opportunity is sacrificed for equality of outcome.
But there is no need to make this ham-fisted change in the grant awarding criteria, as was explained by eminent theoretical physicist L Krauss in Quillette in December 2021. The lopsided gender distribution of research grants in Australia (2019–2022), for instance, is accounted for by the historically higher intake of men than women into science.
The 2019–2022 statistics show that, among younger scientists, more women than men won awards, but among senior scientists more men than women won larger awards mainly because senior women scientists were not applying for grants at the same rate as senior men. For historical reasons there are still far more senior men than senior women in science.
This historical factor is fast losing influence – the intake of women into science now equals the intake of men. The asymmetric distribution of research grants between men and women would soon disappear if the award-granting system was left alone, while maintaining the essential priority of ranking applications only on the basis of excellence.
Krauss also notes more than 10 per cent of the science funding awarded by the major US science agencies goes to funding DEI projects and not to supporting science.
There is, however, one area where women scientists undoubtedly deserve special consideration and this is when applying for career promotion, eg promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer in a university. History of publication of scientific papers is a vital part of one’s case for promotion. Many younger women scientists naturally want to have children and this necessitates taking nine to 12 months maternity leave from scientific work each time you have a child. Many young women will want to have two, perhaps three, children with two to three years spacing between births. This will significantly reduce scientific paper production compared to male colleagues.
Therefore, other factors being equal, younger women scientists who take maternity leave are at a disadvantage relative to their male colleagues for this reason. But the human race would die out if women stopped having children and, so, to penalise women in any way for continuing the race would be grossly unfair.
William Reville is an Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at UCC