Elisabeth Steyn Parvé prize for Wim van Saarloos and Els Goulmy
On Thursday 27 November University Medical Center Utrecht presented the Elisabeth Steyn Parvé-Prize to FOM Director Dr. Wim van Saarloos and former chair of the Dutch Network of Women Professors Els Goulmy. They have received this prize for their national initiative '20 in 2020'. With this initiative they want to ensure that 20% of top scientific positions are occupied by women in 2020. The prize was awarded during the symposium 'Talent to the Top' by Dr. Frank Miedema, dean and vice-chair of University Medical Center Utrecht. He handed each of the winners a bronze statuette.
20 in 2020
Wim van Saarloos and Els Goulmy have received the prize for the initiative '20 in 2020' that offers excellent women a career path leading to a professorship within a period of ten years. Van Saarloos and Goulmy, emeritus professor of transplantation biology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), launched this plan in April 2010. In it they stated that despite all of the good intentions, the position of women in Dutch science has been unacceptably poor for many years. The number of female professors is growing, but far too slowly. As a result even the adjusted and less high ambitions are not being achieved. Goulmy and Van Saarloos put forward an ambitious programme to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science to considerably accelerate the growth in the number of women occupying top positions in science. Their aim is that 20% of professors in 2020 are women. Therefore each year they are offering 30 talented female scientists a fellowship that will lead to a professorship in ten years time. Further information about the initiative '20 in 2020' can be found on the FOM website.
FOM and more women in Dutch physics
The FOM Foundation has also embraced the '20 in 2020' plan. Increasing the proportion of women working in Dutch physics is therefore an action point in the Strategic Plan FOM/N 2010/2015. The aim is that by 2020 at least 20% of the scientific staff is made up of women. At present that figure is scarcely 10%. For further information please download the Strategic Plan FOM/N 2010-2015 and read Chapter 4.5 on page 21.
The Elisabeth Steyn Parvé Prize
The biennial Elisabeth Steyn Parvé Prize is intended for a person who has made a special contribution to encouraging a better representation of women at the top of science. Steyn Parvé was the first female professor of physiological chemistry at Utrecht University Medical Centre. Two years ago Sybilla Dekker was the first person to receive the prize. She received it for her role as chair of the Stichting Talent to the Top. During the last symposium, Utrecht University Medical Center signed the Charter Talent to the Top, which this foundation set up.
University Medical Center Utrecht's ambitions
University Medical Centre Utrecht is one of the biggest public health care institutions in the Netherlands and its ambition is to be an internationally leading university medical centre. This can only be realised if the talents of all staff are optimally used and supervised: "A good lab is a lab with a lot of diversity: men and women, young and old." University Medical Center Utrecht therefore invests in female and young scientists because there is a lot of potential talent in both of these groups. At present 19% of professors are women. Our target is that by 2015, this figure is 25%. University Medical Center Utrecht is taking a wide range of measures to achieve this goal. For example there is the Elisabeth Steyn Parvé programme, a development programme for talented female scientists. We also run awareness workshops to make people aware of their unintentional prejudices and preferences and we pay considerable attention to the selection of new professors.
Further information
For further information please contact:
University Medical Center, Press Relations Department, telephone +31 (0)88 755 50 00.
FOM Foundation, Communication Department, telephone +31 (0)30 600 12 22.