Does ETH need a quota for women in management positions?
Two ETH employees argue for and against a quota for women in management positions.
Pro
Annegret Kern, Office of the President employee
ETH and other Swiss universities have been striving to increase the percentage of women holding management positions at their institutions for many years now. But according to the annual Equality Monitoring report published by ETH, the percentage of women in professorships grew only slightly, from 16.3 to 18 percent, between 2020 and 2021. It is also true that the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon has remained constant for years: after women graduate, they make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the workforce on each rung of the career ladder. And this is despite the considerable efforts that have been made, such as the Gender Strategy 2021–2024, which was adopted by the ETH Board to improve access to equal opportunities.
It is still mostly men who are in key positions: they lead appraisal interviews, head up teams and hire new people – the majority of whom are men. This phenomenon is called homosocial reproduction. People who hire others will usually pick candidates who are similar to themselves. After all, similarity breeds trust and predictability. But at the same time, this phenomenon has a terribly restricting effect on potential and talent. It is also simply unfair.
“The quota will force us to put our trust not only in similarities but also in differences.”Annegret Kern
Introducing a quota for women gives us a real chance to cut through this cycle of unconscious prejudice and make a meaningful contribution to the work being done to improve access to equal opportunities. For one thing, having such a quota would give many qualified women the opportunity to prove themselves and unlock their full potential. And at the same time, it would create more female role models – who would in turn give other women the confidence to believe they could hold a management position.
Together with the other measures put in place by ETH to provide more equality of opportunity, by increasing the percentage of women at management level, we could lay the foundations for a real cultural shift. However, change is only possible if diverse groups are adequately represented and are open to the strengths and weaknesses of other groups. The quota will force us to put our trust not only in similarities but also in differences.
In the best-case scenario, by introducing a quota for women at ETH, we will increase the percentage of women and change the culture so much that, a few years down the line, we’ll no longer need a quota. Then we will all have achieved our goal.
Against
Stephanie Habicht, IT Services employee
Whenever someone asks me if we need more women in management positions, my answer is quite clear: yes. At ETH and more generally too. But we have to consider what is the best way to achieve this goal. A quota for women would perhaps solve the problem in terms of numbers, but it would cause new problems at the same time.
On the one hand, every woman in a management position would be faced with questions and distrust: is she there just because of her gender or is it really because of her ability? And with that, we lock in the preconception that women can’t (or don’t have to) actually do anything at all. It would also run counter to the goal of distributing roles and diversifying fairly, with no particular gender characteristic being given preference or pushed to the fore. I – as someone who presents as female – would rather be selected based on my ability than my gender. In the worst-case scenario, introducing a quota for women could lead an employer who had felt forced to hire someone against their will to take out their displeasure on that new manager.
“In the long term, we need to move away from this binary distinction between men and women. ”Stephanie Habicht
On the other hand, a quota would result in more women with weak leadership skills being placed in management roles simply to fulfil that quota, even if no suitable female candidates had applied. And as we all know, unfit leaders can have an enormously negative impact on the organisation as a whole and on their team members too.
Rather than having fixed quotas for women, it would therefore make more sense to exercise a preference for a female candidate if she had the same qualifications as her male peers. This, combined with the targeted promotion of women, could increase the number of women in key positions quickly. And over time, we would achieve the balance we are striving for.
In the long term, though, we need to move away from this binary distinction between men and women. A quota for women would not be a suitable way of being inclusive towards trans, intersex and non-binary people. How would we treat a trans woman, for example, who had been socialised as a man her whole life? Would we exclude trans men from the quota or even introduce a separate trans quota? It would be better to just search for suitable leaders from across the whole spectrum of diverse gender identities. Diversification would then be guaranteed from the bottom up and there would be no need to act in line with quotas.
This article appeared in the current ETH magazine "life".
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