Gender balance: All that glitters is not gold!

The recently announced nomination of deputies to Directors is the result of the administrative decision of the College of 30/09/2020 with the specific aim of reinforcing the gender balance in management positions.

Beyond the fact that the selections have been made in a rather non-transparent manner and other issues regarding the role, we at R&D Ispra are seriously questioning whether the gender balance policy throughout the entire hierarchy is being realised with the best possible tools and actions. We wonder if our female colleagues really think they are being valued by through appointments to inferior positions which have no real decisional power.

If we look at the statistics, it might appear that we are on the right track, since in the last two years many female colleagues have indeed acquired more management positions. However, if we look deeper we find ingenious inventions such as deputy Unit Head and deputy Director who have no formal management role! So we washed our consciences and our female colleagues should be joyful to have been made fun of! To paraphrase Il Gattopardo, "tutto deve cambiare affinchè tutto resti uguale" (everything has been changed in order not to change anything).

Please feel free to share your comments and according to your feedback we will decide on further appropriate actions.    

R&D Ispra Team