Women in Italian academia encounter a?recruitment gender gap from the start of their professional careers, , prompting its author to urge policymakers to address not just the metaphorical ¡°glass ceiling¡±, but the first ¡°glass door¡± into the building.

Camilla Gaiaschi, a gender inequalities researcher at the University of Salento, told Times Higher Education, ¡°In the public imagination, we often think everything is OK for women until it¡¯s a question of reaching a position of power. But that¡¯s not true. Obstacles and disadvantages start from the very beginning.¡±

Gaiaschi, funded by a Marie Sk?odowska-Curie fellowship, analysed the impact of gender on the transition from postdoctoral scholar to assistant professor, employing anonymised recruitment data from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR).

Comparing women and men with ¡°equal characteristics and equal productivity¡±, she found that women faced a 3 to 4 per cent recruitment disadvantage in obtaining an assistant professor position.

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¡°It¡¯s smaller than penalties that women experience later in their careers,¡± Gaiaschi said. ¡°But it¡¯s a penalty, and penalties accumulate. If you¡¯re disadvantaged in this first career step, you will be more disadvantaged later in the following steps.¡±

¡°Looking at what happens at the very beginning [of a career] is just as important as looking at what happens at the end.¡±

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Gaiaschi further analysed the impact of scientific field on the gender recruitment gap, finding a maximum disadvantage of 10 per cent in physics and an almost non-existent disadvantage in the social sciences and humanities.

An ¡°unexpected result¡±, she said, was the greater overall disadvantage in the life sciences, such as medicine and biology, compared?with the so-called hard sciences, which often continue to be dominated by men.

¡°The penalty is even stronger¡± for women in the life sciences, Gaiaschi noted, despite the higher levels of women in the field. ¡°This result shows that having many women in the pipeline is not a guarantee of gender equality for their promotion to assistant professor.¡± To have the same recruitment opportunities as men, she said, women ¡°have to be better than their male colleagues¡±.

Women who successfully obtain assistant professor positions in the hard sciences, she speculated, are likely to have already ¡°survived discrimination during their studies and their PhD¡±. As a result, ¡°they have so many high competences that it¡¯s very hard to get rid of them when it comes to choosing assistant professors¡±.

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The study findings, Gaiaschi said, should prompt institutions to address the gender gap in the early stages of academic careers, employing policies to ¡°empower female postdocs¡± such as targeted grants or recruitment quotas.

Pointing to the Trump administration¡¯s ¡°war against diversity, equity and inclusion actions¡± in the United States, Gaiaschi said Europe must not become complacent about gender equality. ¡°It¡¯s time to push a bit further on the policy level, because the world isn¡¯t going in that direction,¡± she said.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com