In the Centre’s first two years, FLEET’s recruitment had drawn from the existing physics pool, which (along with related fields such as engineering and material science) unfortunately features a relatively low percentage of women.
Women in FLEET Fellowships were conceived as a way to allow the Centre to begin to increase the percentage of women above the average in these fields.
The Fellowships also allow for improved flexibility in the location and type of position on offer.
All FLEET’s previous recruitment efforts had been highly-focused research roles with specific expertise criteria, which has resulted in maintaining ‘status quo’ in gender balance.
The new Fellowships target early-career researchers who identify as female and have research interests aligning with any research areas within FLEET, giving applicants the choice to nominate investigators they want to work with.
Our first Women in FLEET Fellows could be experimental or theoretical, and physicists, chemists or engineers, located at any of five universities. The flexibility of offering whichever field suits the best applicants available allows the widest choice of applicants, ensuring we will hire the best possible candidates.
This broader search will allow FLEET to find excellent researchers who may have been missed in previous, narrowly-targeted searches.
Although it sounds simple, these Fellowships faced significant challenges in order to work with equity and recruiting policies across all FLEET member universities.
The end result was three Women in FLEET Fellowships offered for appointment in early
2019.
FLEET received almost 70 applications – more women than we had been able reach with 14 previous, targeted searches together!
A very large selection committee (seven members) for a Research Fellow position ensured representation across all FLEET themes and nodes.