CSIRO, Australia’s largest employer of researchers on Monday 11 April committed to remove barriers to the promotion of highly skilled women and to increase incentives to encourage women to return to the workforce after maternity leave.
These were two of many commitments made by research funders, leaders and employers who today came together for the first time at the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Summit in Parliament House, Canberra.
The Summit, attended by the Hon Kate Ellis, Minister for Employment Participation and Childcare and for the Status of Women, discussed how to keep women in science and encourage more young women into engineering in order to boost productivity and equity.
Importantly, the nation’s leading research funders, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Council, agreed to changes in how they assess research publications in the grant application of those with interrupted careers. The ARC committed to extending the period taken into account. The NHMRC this year will consider any nominated five years of an applicant’s career rather than the previous five years, and it has also agreed to monitor gender issues in general.
Read More about WiSE Summit communiqué: commitments to action 11 April 2011