Puck van Putte does not support the diversity policy advocated in the call for diversity issued on 11 October. “Introducing quota for women is a worthless idea. Women don’t want to be hired for being women, but for their individual qualities.”
Against imposed quota for women
In the open letter, nearly 300 EUR staff members argue for increased action in the area of diversity and inclusiveness at Erasmus University. “We agree with the authors’ call to formulate a clearer definition of research quality, and to increase transparency in the University’s recruitment policy,” says Van Putte. “But we don’t subscribe to the introduction of a quota for women. We believe that lecturers should be hired because they are suited for the job – not because of their sex.”
Van Putte doesn’t think that the 11 percent share of full-time female professors at EUR can be attributed to a male culture in the appointment procedures. “If we were actually dealing with a male culture, this female contingent of 11 percent wouldn’t have been appointed either. There’s no need to push through demographic change with affirmative action via a quota for women: the percentage is already increasing, and will continue to rise of its own accord.”
Clear statement
The first people to sign the petition were all female members of JOVD Rijnmond. They took this step to make a clear statement: “We want to show that you can also find women who don’t subscribe to the contents of the ‘diversity letter’,” says Van Putte. If her petition manages to gain sufficient signatures from other supporters, Van Putte intends to enter into dialogue with EUR about its diversity policy.
It’s hard for me to support their initiative as an international student, when they only write the petition in Dutch…seems you may want to address the portion of the student body that are still students of Erasmus and not Dutch speaking. Makes it very difficult to take you seriously in a professional sense, even when I may agree with parts of your argument. Sadly, you only reinforced the professors’ opinion of student’s inability to deal with a diverse society by committing this error. Remember, less than 25 million people in the world speak Dutch vs 600 million who speak English as a primary or secondary language. I would think you want everyone at Erasmus to be able to read your opinion, if not more outside the university?
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