The number of women in leading scientific roles is growing very slowly, if at all, even in fields where there have been more qualified women than men for some time, such as biomedicine.

Increasing the role of women in the system is an objective shared by numerous scientific institutions in Europe. The legal framework in Spain and in Catalonia encompasses a good many of the recommendations in place in Europe and the USA, but further efforts are still needed.

The CERCA equality committee has developed specific measures designed to eliminate the biases and barriers that prevent highly qualified human resources realising their full potential, in order to contribute to a better gender balance in research.

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The first of these measures is intended to prevent bias in recruitment.

A video has been created to educate the teaching staff, men and women, who sit on scientific advisory panels, about bias in recruitment. This bias, often un, particularly harms women, who find the assessment process somewhat hostile.

The content of the video was prepared with the support of the Women in Science programme of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Dr Hilde Janssens, a specialist in professional development for women researchers.

 

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