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Fairness before finance
Warwick Anderson
Starting next year, institutions will have to show they have adequate gender equity policies to qualify for NHMRC funding.
Universities seeking National Health and Medical Research Council grant funding will now need to provide evidence that they have adequate gender equity staffing policies in place.
Under the new measure, announced in late March, research institutions will have until the end of 2015 to lodge their gender equity policies with the NHMRC for consideration against a range of nominated criteria.
Amongst the key areas to be assessed under the revised NHMRC Administering Institution Policy will be each research entity’ s strategy addressing“ the under-representation of women in senior positions in health and medical research”.
Other policies to be assessed include: mentoring and skills training strategies that promote and seek to increase women’ s participation; the provision of parental / maternity leave and carers leave and transitional support to encourage return to work; working arrangements that cater for individuals with caring responsibilities;
remuneration equity between men and women with the same responsibilities; employment strategies that encourage the recruitment, retention and progression of women in health and medical research; and strategies to address the need for the provision of support for childcare.
The NHMRC stated that submitted policies would be assessed in 2016 to ensure they are acceptable.
NHMRC chief executive professor Warwick Anderson said“ to solve the great health challenges facing us today, we need to retain and support all of our most talented researchers”.
“ It is not acceptable to see half of our talent go to waste,” he said.“ By and large, this sector is highly responsible and wants to do the right thing by their staff. But unfortunately when the statistics show that women are leaving research in numbers that increase drastically over the course of their careers, I think we can all acknowledge that we all need to do more.” n
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