Franklin fellows, from left: Charlotte Hemelrijk, Heide Gluesing-Leurssen, Petra van Koningsbruggen, Elisabetta Pallante and Beatriz Noheda. Credit: MICHEL DE GROOT

Sometimes you have to break the law to get things right. Germany's Research Centre Jülich pushed the boundaries with positive discrimination in 1999. Now the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has intentionally flouted anti-quota laws.

Last year, Groningen's natural-sciences faculty set up the Rosalind Franklin Fellowships, offering five women-only tenure-track positions — even though positive discrimination is illegal in the Netherlands.

Despite the legal transgression no one protested, says mathematician Ruth Curtain, chair of the search committee: “The academic world in the Netherlands is very embarrassed about gender discrimination.”

Requirements for the Franklin fellowships — named after the British X-ray crystallographer whose work contributed to the discovery of DNA structure — included postdoctoral experience abroad, publications in top journals and proof of international recognition.

The scheme drew 112 applications from around the world and the first fellows started work this autumn. After five years, if their evaluations are successful, they will be offered permanent professorships.

“We want to send a clear message that there are opportunities for talented women, beyond a string of temporary, postdoc appointments,” says Curtain. Women were attracted by the fellowships' broad and nonspecific range of research fields, she says.

“When you advertise positions for a specific field, you often have only a few women applying, because in many fields the imbalance starts from the lower levels,” Curtain says, adding that it is also important to let women set up their own lines of research.

The dean of the faculty, Douwe Wiersma, supported the programme, though many of his male colleagues disapproved. “The majority believe there is no discrimination in selection committees, and that gender inequality will redress itself naturally as more women enter the science field,” Wiersma says.

In reality, says Curtain, qualified women don't get short-listed for higher positions — despite the rising number of women PhDs during the past two decades.

“The usual answer is: 'We would like to appoint women, but they simply do not apply',” says Curtain. The response to the Rosalind Franklin programme disproves that notion, she points out.

In Germany, the Research Centre Jülich was also criticized by some when it advertised tenure-track positions for women (see Nature 398, 550; 199910.1038/19149).

“We offered only three positions a year so of course you can't change the statistics with that alone,” says Petra Bender, the centre's diversity manager. But the scheme had a knock-on effect, with numbers of women researchers at the institute doubling to 15% since 1998. “It has led to more women applying for other jobs because they now see us as an employer who may offer opportunities to young women,” she says.

Subsequently, the University of Munich proposed a scheme to increase universities' funding if they put more women in high positions. The Bavarian research ministry refused, saying that female presence in science must develop “naturally”.