After harsh criticism for gender imbalance in previous years' appointments, universities have nominated women as 35% of the holders of the latest batch of chairs in the billion-dollar (USD $838 million) Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program.

Between December 2000 and April of this year, only 18% of the 1164 chairs awarded at 73 Canadian universities had gone to women, despite the fact that 26% of all full-time faculty members in the country are female. The figures had prompted not only criticism in the media, but also a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in February 2003 by eight prominent female researchers from across the country.

René Durocher, the executive director of the chairs program, citing the fact that it is the universities that nominate candidates for the chairs, told the Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2004 that "the universities must change their approach. The figures are just not acceptable."

The universities were asked to submit revised Strategic Research Plans (SRPs) that, among other things, "identify how the university proposes to address the issue of gender representation in Canada Research Chairs nominations and to monitor its progress in addressing this issue." Every SRP is posted on the CRC Web site to provide transparency in the process.

Partly as a result of these initiatives, "we've been seeing an improving trend," Julia Dompierre, one of the CRC's senior program managers, told The Scientist this week. "In one recent nomination cycle, 38% of the nominations were for women. These are nominations, you understand, not active chairs, but we've never seen it that high before. Over [the last year], by keeping gender balance very much at the forefront, it is starting to pay off."

For example, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, which had one of the worst records for balance in filling its chairs—appointing just one woman in its first 21 chairs—saw four of its five chairs announced last week go to women.

One of the women who made the 2003 complaint to the Human Rights Commission, Wendy Robbins, told The Scientist: "I just wished that they'd done it at the beginning," said Robbins, from the University of New Brunswick. "It rather proves that they could have found [qualified women] at the beginning if they'd just looked." The original complaint is still pending.

"We are hopeful," said Dompierre. "But we have to maintain nominations [and appointments] at that level in order to re-establish balance in the program and make up some ground for the first half of the program. This can't be a blip."

Another opportunity will come next month, when universities start to submit requests for renewal, as the first so-called "Tier 2" chairs awarded come to the end of their initial cycle. These are 5-year, full-time appointments "for exceptional emerging researchers," and each carries with it annual funding of CDN $100,000 (USD $83,800).

"There's going to be a certain amount of movement," added Dompierre, "if some [holders] need to be replaced rather than renewed, so there's going to be an additional opportunity for universities to address the balance issue."