Systemic discrimination and the Canada Research Chairs: diagnosis and treatment

If we are held more accountable for the appointment of women to the CRCs, if we take steps to ensure that nominations to the national CRCs committee are the result of a process that encourages applications directly from women candidates--and that includes a university-wide competition and peer review based on rigorous external assessment of candidates--and if we proactively and self-consciously seek to identify potential women candidates, we will have gone a long distance toward coupling equity and excellence in this program. If we add to these initiatives the training of search committees in successful strategies for identifying and recruiting women candidates, and the creation of employment conditions that acknowledge the reality of women's lives, including the reality of academic partners who need and merit academic positions, we will have gone an even greater distance toward success in appointing distinguished women to these prestigious Chairs. Moreover, we will have created practices that will serve us well in recruiting first-rate women to other academic appointments and that, in a virtuous circle, will improve the "pool" for future CRCs appointments.