While they make up the majority during their studies, the proportion of women decreases as the academic career progresses. A consortium of European universities, including UCL, is studying this ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon. Here are some of their conclusions.
In Belgium, female university students outnumber male students. At UCL, for example, 55% of bachelor’s and master’s degree students are women. But beginning at the stage of the PhD thesis, their proportion declines. The proof is in the figures:
- 37% of associate professors;
- 27% of professors;
- 12% of full professors (Belgian average: 16%).
‘Women’s access to the highest academic positions also remains very limited’, adds Bernard Fusulier, a UCL professor of sociology and FNRS researcher. ‘Only two of the 14 Rectoral Council members are women. And UCL has never had a female rector. The higher the academic rank, the fewer the women. This phenomenon is called the “leaky pipeline”. It’s unique neither to our university nor to Belgium, it’s everywhere in Europe and the United States.’
A closer look at the grey area
Why are women under-represented in academia? How can this asymmetry be put right? These are the main questions addressed by a consortium of seven European universities,1 including UCL. The GARCIA2 project’s objectives are to comprehensively diagnose the situation, try to understand its causes and devise concrete solutions. ‘One of the distinctive characteristics of the GARCIA project is its focus on the postdoctoral grey area’, explains Prof. Fusulier, who is responsible for the project at UCL. ‘It’s an uncertain and very competitive transition period during which young doctors try to land a permanent post at a university or research centre.’ It’s precisely at this moment that women lose ground and that many of them abandon their academic careers. Why?
Family vs. career
Several reasons. The first, which isn’t unique to academia, is the difficulty of reconciling professional and family life. ‘Generally, doctors seeking a post are around 30 years old’, Prof. Fusulier says. ‘It’s an age when certain personal decisions must be taken, including having children. Men and women aren’t biological and social equals when it comes to parenting and the workload it entails. Some women constantly try to balance a research career and family life. But balance risks failure, because the competition is so intense and required qualifications are so specific.’
Contradictory demands
Like many universities, UCL recruits professors by assessing two sets of qualifications:
- their ability to produce quality work, as demonstrated by fairly standard indicators such as number and quality of publications, experience abroad and research grants.
- their ability to integrate within the university or research centre, based on proven reliability, trustworthiness, good teaching ability, cooperativeness, readiness to commit to the institution, etc.
‘In short,’ Prof. Fusulier observes, ‘we ask candidates to be simultaneously at the top internationally and involved internally. Parents and non-parents, men and women are not on equal footing to meet this dual demand.’
Mentoring: towards greater equality
Most young researchers at UCL don’t know exactly what it takes to meet this dual demand because its requirements aren’t explicit. Thus they throw themselves into a frantic race that can be long and discouraging.
To address this, the GARCIA project generated a report on mentoring, a programme that will be developed and systematised at UCL. ‘The idea is to make the rules of the game more transparent, and guide young researchers in a more equitable way. It’s all the more necessary for women, because they have fewer mentors and role models, including in science and technology, who can advise them and facilitate access to support networks.’
A social problem?
One question remains: Can academia alone rectify gender asymmetries? Shouldn’t society as a whole provide more support for women who want to pursue an academic career? ‘Universities can’t break completely with the social models they’re part of’, Prof. Fusulier concedes. ‘That said, they have room for manoeuvre to change the rules of the game. For example, when it comes to gender, Switzerland is quite a traditional society, but this doesn’t impede the University of Lausanne from developing a highly proactive gender policy and investing significantly in supporting women’s research careers.’ If they can’t change the world, universities can try to change themselves.
Candice Leblanc
(1) Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Slovenia. (2) ‘Gendering the Academy and Research: combating Career Instability and Asymmetries’: www.garciaproject.eu.
A glance at Bernard Fusulier's bio
1993 Master’s Degree in Sociology, UCL
1995-2001 Teaching Assistant, UCL
2000 PhD in Sociology, UCL
2001-2003 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Since 2003 FNRS Research Associate and Associate Professor, UCL
2004 European Re-Integration Grant
2005-2008 Manager, Anthropology and Sociology Unit, UCL
Since 2009 Secretary General then President of the Association belge francophone de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie (‘Belgian Francophone Association
of Sociology and Anthropology’)
Since 2011 Professor, UCL
Since 2016 FNRS Research Director
2016-2018 Chair, Femmes et Sciences (‘Women and Science’) Committee of the French Community of Belgium
Prof. Fusulier’s research has been funded mainly by the European Union, FNRS, Belgian Federal Science Policy and the French Community of Belgium.