I am 100% pro equal rights for everybody, but this is just the opposite, and all it will achieve is to create tension, prejudice and anger towards women hired under this rules.
https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/17-06-2019-tue-vaca...
Where did you read about "18 months"? Sounds like "first 6 months" to me. In my experience searching for good academic staff, especially in fields with a lucrative industry takes ages, so I wouldn't be too sure that there will be a strong discriminatory effect when there are not that many women to recruit anyway.
I agree that this move is not the best one. It will end up sending the wrong signals again, which will just lead to backlash on women working in STEM fields. Attacking with opposite discrimination is certainly a bad temporal fix for an existing systematic bias and the tendency of men to downplay competent women.
However, this tendency costs society a lot. It is a fix at least. Someone listened.
I wouldn't expect that they want to make this permanent once things have equaled out a bit.
"If a vacancy fails to attract suitable candidates within six months, it will be opened up to men, and after 18 months the entire scheme will be revised, the university said on Tuesday."
The rule is: For the first 6 months of any recruitment process, only look at female CVs. After this time, also start inviting the men. After 18 months, evaluate the success of this rule and decide whether to follow through for the full 5 years.
So yes, in that article it does say “18 months”. It’s right in the part where it says “18” and “months”.
Also, the original source you cited clears says:
> For the next year and a half, this will apply to 100 percent of vacancies, after which the university will review the percentage covered by the scheme each year.
but frankly, I don't really understand what they mean by "in the first six months of recruitment".
The interview clearly says that the rule applies to "the first 6 months of recruitment", which in my understanding of the process means "after the job ad is posted".
Btw, imho Dutch people have a tendency for "certainly good enough" solutions because it keeps things moving (instead of perfectionist stagnation whenever confronted with complexity like us germans often do). This 6-month period of only looking at female applicants during recruitment looks like one of those. Nobody says that this will stay the rule forever. Also consider that they will get very few female applicants anyway, so there is still a lot of room for men.
But try to understand the thinking for a moment:
If no solution is applied at all because people are waiting for the perfect one, there will be continued discrimination against competence. This has costs too.
"Take no action" might not feel like a decision, but it is one and has ill effects.
Is this better than trying a fix for a short period of time that may be mediocre, but is at least effective?