Saturday 23rd March 2013 - A Russell Group delegation, and EU officials: guess which had the better gender balance?

Those reading my blog regularly from within the University of Sheffield will know that the student newspaper, Forge Press, took exception to one paragraph of what I wrote on 26 February.   The theme of that blog was my desire to see women take senior roles as equals to men - such as the Presidency of the Students' Union.  The paper misunderstood what I was trying to get at and decided I was attacking the Women's Officer post.  That was far from my intention.

I am going to risk talking about gender again today.  Early this morning I got home from a day of meetings in Brussels.  I should have been back last night but with both the Snake and the Woodhead Passes closed by snow, the road journey via the M62 and M1 took three and a quarter hours so I didn't get home until a quarter to one (quarter to two Brussels time). 

I was in Brussels as part of a Russell Group delegation holding discussions with various European Union officials and others. The topics of discussion included the EU's future research budget, Erasmus exchange schemes, the EU's proposed financial support for Masters students studying outside their country of residence, the EU's attitude to on-line learning possibilities, and research capacity building in the countries that joined the Union most recently. 

There were only four women in our delegation of over 20 from the UK.  We had four meetings with high level officials, as well as round table discussions with representatives of research bodies from some of the A8 and the A2 (the accession 8 and the accession 2 - the new EU members).  Our meetings were with:
- The Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture, who hailed from Catalonia but who had studied in there other European countries and who was able to engage in sharp discussion with us on areas of disagreement as well as agreement. 
- The Deputy UK Permanent representative to the EU, amongst whose previous posts had been the role of ambassador to Argentina.  Here we met a civil servant and diplomat at the very height of all the powers of synthesis, clear presentation and political understanding that such individuals, at their very best, can command.
- The Chief Scientific Advisor to the EU, who reports direct to President Baroso and who has the authority - and clearly the understanding of scientific communication - to intervene in any EU policy debate where a scientific viewpoint would be of relevance.
- The EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.  This was the outstanding meeting of our visit - with an individual who was completely on top of the brief, prepared to be frank and open and to answer all the points we made, and who we left with the whole of our delegation commenting that the future of EU research policy couldn't be in better hands.

Only the Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture was a man: the others were all women.  I hope I was not the only one of our delegation to reflect, at the end of the day, on our own gender balance and compare it to that of the very powerful EU officials (and the delegations from the A8 and A2) that we had met. The more women who get elected or appointed to the most senior positions, the more role models there then are for others to follow.