International Workshop on "Women and Science / Technology" Network in Asia

The presentation is to review the two policy programs for women in science and technology fields by the Ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology (MEXT), and to discuss about the positive action projects by some institutions.
The first program is “Supporting activities for female researchers” which started on FY 2006 as one of special coordination fund for promoting science and technology. It has promoted the support projects for female researchers by 55 universities and research institutions, however was decided to finish on the end of FY2013 with the completion of the special coordination fund. As the projects, the institutions carried out setting the nurseries and counseling rooms, opening the office for the supporting female researchers and holding the symposium for enlightening the faculty members for three years.

This program exactly provided the better circumstances for the researchers on the campus. However the ratio of female researchers in these institutions did not increase at all. The University of Tokyo’s objective that the ratio of female researchers in new adoptions has reached 25% was not achieved by finishing the program. One of the biggest reasons could be the decrease of faculty positions since incorporation of national universities on 2004. Many institutions have been insisted on keeping the activities of education and research by the fixed-term professors and researchers who are employed using the project fund. The ratio of women in the fixed-term employees could be higher than in the regular ones.

The second program is “Supporting positive activities for female researchers” which was accepted the five years plans to adopt many female professors into faculties by 12 universities on FY2009 and 2010. The universities spend the fund for start-up research expenses of new adopted women and part of their salaries. Some Universities prepare faculty positions for women under the president’s decision, and other ones spare the departments which adopted female faculty members the extra fixed-term positions (one + one action). Under the program, over 300 female researchers will get new positions in those universities by FY2015.

Exactly, some female researchers told that they applied such positions because the recruitments were specified to women and could believe the possibility to adopt. In Japan, many researchers consider that the selection would not be fair in the faculties. That might be one of the biggest problems to encourage women in academia.

On the other hand, there could be such opinions that this program would aggravate the recruitment system in the scientific fields. As mentioned above, total academic stable research positions in Japan are gradually decreased, and younger excellences are losing the interests in success in the academia.