Imagine a world were research
funding was dependent on diversity! If a science department had no tenured
women, for example, then (at least in this particular fantasy) it would not
qualify for $$ from NASA, NSF, DOD, NIH, etc. If a laboratory employed
no people of color, then it would have a lot of work to do before it could even
think about applying for grants. Proposals would be returned without review to
principle investigators from organizations where the gender and ethnic
breakdown of the scientific staff did not reflect that of the population at
large. Crazy, huh? It’s a pipedream, you say, a fantasy, a delusion, a hallucination.
This is just the kind of thing a person like me would dream about at night or fantasize
about in all my spare time.
But wait! Believe it or not, there
is an organization in Britain that is working to level the playing field for
women in the STEMM disciplines (includes medicine in addition to the US STEM
list). The organization is called Athena SWAN . The amazing thing about this
organization is that unless a university or department has at least a Silver
ranking with Athena SWAN, funding organizations such as the British National
Health Service will not consider the institutions eligible for research grants!
