They are all helpless. But I’m still going to these meetings. Because I somehow have the hope that I can learn something. All of them start with the exact same slide: the women’s quota in the Swiss academic landscape. Depressing. So what? Change something! These meetings want to encourage woman to stay in academia by promoting some kind of women’s quota.
Bullshit. It’s not necessarily by introducing women’s quota that more women are going to stay in academia. But rather by establishing day-childcare facilities, by convincing more and more people that women can actually do both, work and family, by changing the mind’s setting of people.
It’s like having a Ferrari while living in a country where speed limitations of 30km/h are the general rule. It’s useless. But it looks good.