Department Heads talk about gender diversity: an interview with Kofi Makinwa

What can we learn from our colleagues regarding the role of women in science? In a series of interviews our Department Heads share their views on gender diversity, equality and inclusion. What are their thoughts, ideas and actions on creating diverse and inclusive working environments? Today we are talking to Kofi Makinwa, Professor in Electronic Instrumentation, and head of the Microelectronics Department in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science.

Why is gender diversity at TU Delft important?

‘Roughly half of the world’s population is female. I believe in creating equal opportunities for everybody, regardless of gender. If you consciously or unconsciously create a situation in which you are not hiring women or the working environment is not attractive to women, something is wrong. So to increase intellectual diversity, grow and excel as a university, we should hire more women.'

How is the TU Delft doing at this moment?

‘I think the TU Delft is doing well. On a scale from one to ten, I would give our university an eight. The university has a diversity office with Prof. David Keyson as our Chief Diversity Officer¹. In addition, each faculty has its own Faculty Diversity Officer. The Executive Board supports diversity and inclusion² with policies and resources.

A key part of the universities strategy is the Delft Technology Fellowship. It shows the outside world that the TU Delft is a university that welcomes women scientists. The word about the fellowship is spreading gradually, especially especially now that new appointments are being made every year.'

However, if you look at the numbers we are not doing so well. In the last LNVH report, you can see that the TU Delft is at the bottom of the list. Can you explain this?

‘For a technical university, it can be quite challenging to attract female faculty. However, we are making progress. Every year, the amount of female faculty at the TU Delft rises, slowly, but surely. It is a process. The willingness is there, and attitudes have changed. I think that as a university, we are well aware of the benefits of diversity and know that we will miss out if we leave out half of the population. I am very optimistic about the future.'

The TU Delft has set a target of 25% female full professors in 2025. What is your ambition for your department?

‘Right now 20% of the faculty in my department is female. However, rather than expressing my ambition in terms of this percentage, I prefer to express it in terms of a hiring percentage. The reason for this is that vacancies in my department do not occur very often. Our retention is quite high (a good thing!) and so we do not have many vacancies, which, in turn, limits my ability to change the gender diversity of my department. In addition, we need to fill the pipeline. We will not have many full professors if only a small percentage of the associate or assistant professors are women. Therefore, my ambition is that 50% of all our new hires should be women. I am proud to say that of the nine new staff members we hired last year, five were women.'

That is wonderful news. What did you do differently this time?

‘We found out that the widely held belief that “highly qualified women cannot be found” is not true. Many of our new hires were funded via the ‘Sectorplan Beta en Techniek’, which also stipulated that at least 35% of them had to be women. This served as a useful ‘stok achter de deur³’. By looking harder and being more patient, we were able to meet the quota. We just needed the push.'

Can you explain how you found these excellent women?

‘We have learned it is not sufficient to just post the vacancy on Academic Transfer and wait to see what happens, because what then happens is not what we want: ten out of ten applicants will be men. Therefore, we started by scouting. We are using our networks, reaching out to various ‘women in engineering’ societies, promoting our vacancies and encouraging women to apply. We make personal phone calls and send personal emails. In this way, we significantly increased the number of female applicants. Secondly, after making the short list, we decided to interview the women first, to give them a fair chance in a pool of predominantly male candidates.'

What is the percentage of full professors in your department?

‘We have just two female full professors at the moment, while the percentage of women among our PhD students is around 25%. It would be nice to see that reflected in the academic staff.  However, I think that this is only a matter of time. As I said, our goal is to fill 50% of our pipeline with women. The result should be a steadily increasing percentage of women in senior positions.'

How would you describe the culture in your department? Are women staying?

'I think that we are on the right track. We are one of the top 20 Electrical Engineering departments in the world, which attracts highly qualified scientists. We encourage them to be independent and to create their own research groups. We really want them to step out of the shadows of the established PIs (Principal Investigators) and become PIs themselves. Most of our staff members are happy to stay. And yes, so do the women. In the last few years, only one woman left after receiving an offer that allowed her to return to her country of origin.'

What can the university do to support a healthy work-life balance?

'I think that the TU Delft should provide opportunities for both men and women, so they can combine care-taking responsibilities with work. This is already happening. Full support of maternity or paternity leave is available without consequences. The university also provides a day-care centre on the campus. Furthermore, we should assess people on the basis of their performance and achievements and not on the number of hours they work in a week.'

What is the male-female ratio among students? What can we do to attract more girls?

‘About 25% of our MSc intake consists of women, probably because we attract a high percentage of international students. But our BSc intake is local, and the low percentage of women (typically about 10%) is a source of concern. We are trying to change this by exposing them to female role models as much as possible, so that they may consider Electrical Engineering as a serious career choice and think: ‘Yes, I can do this!’.

Also read the interview⁴ we had with Martijn Warnier, Professor of Complex Systems Design, and head of the Multi-Actor Systems Department in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management.