For many women, finding the right work/life balance is not easy. However, women who have won the EMET Prize have found ways to have fulfilling and demanding careers without being held back by gender.
By MAAYAN HOFFMANEMET PRIZE director Ilana Ashkenazi, SHLOMIT BARNEA FARGO and PROF. ADI KIMCHI (photo credit: EMET PRIZE)
Prof. Batsheva Kerem is best known for her contribution to understanding the genetic mechanisms of common hereditary diseases, her vital role in identifying the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis and understanding the molecular basis of the disease, and for the promotion of human genome research in Israel.But at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where Kerem serves as a full professor in the Department of Genetics, she is also known for her gender.“As a woman, I am not an anomaly, but a minority,” Kerem told The Jerusalem Post.According to Kerem, the average percentage of women in the experimental sciences with high-ranking positions – assistant, associate or full professor – is below 20%. In some fields it is even lower; the percentage of women in physics or chemistry is closer to 10%.“The issue is worldwide, in Israel, and at Hebrew U,” said Kerem.The impact of this phenomenon can be seen outside the university. For example, just 20 of the 143 Emet Prizes awarded since 2002 have gone to women, or 14%. In 2008, Kerem won the Emet Prize in the Life Sciences category.“The pool is small,” said Prof. Adi Kimchi.“When you try to choose from a small pool, it is logical the number of winners will be small.”Kimchi, a professor in the Department of Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, and herself an Emet Prize winner in the Life Sciences category in 2012, is a pioneer in the field of programmed cell death. She discovered key factors that control a cell’s “decision” to live or die and novel signaling pathways that drive different forms of cell death. Most recently, she began work on developing prescreening platforms that can identify points of vulnerability in tumors in specific patients to be applied in personalized cancer therapy.Kimchi, a former Weizmann Institute president’s adviser for advancing women in science, said around 50% of PhDs in science are women.But their representation shrinks at the post-doctoral level and shrinks even more at the tenured professor level.In her estimate, the main reason is family.“To continue in a career in the exact sciences and life sciences in Israel, you must go abroad and do your post-doc for up to four or five years,” explained Kimchi. “This means your husband would have to resign from his work and come with you – it’s not an easy step.”Kerem said she often sees that a male partner will not support his wife in the decision to go abroad. Yet when it comes to male PhD students, his partner – usually a woman – will agree to go with him.A 2014 report published by Slate.com found male postdocs twice as likely as female postdocs to expect their spouses to make career sacrifices for them, and that female postdocs with children spent more time on childrearing duties than their male partners.“We are trying to change that dynamic,” Kerem said.The Weizmann Institute now offers an onsite day-care program. New post-doctorate awards for women in science who go abroad with their families help offset the economic burden. Most recently, Israeli institutions have begun promoting dual-location postdoctorates, allowing a postdoc fellow’s main research work to be done in Israel and requiring a shorter non-consecutive visit abroad, such as a semester or summer.Junior faculty who give birth during the fiveyear tenure-evaluation period are automatically granted an additional year in which to prove themselves.Emet Prize manager Ilana Ashkenazi said she too would like to see more women prize winners.Each year when Emet puts out the call for nominees, she noted, the committee tries to reach out to universities and other relevant organizations, encouraging them to nominate women so the country can join in celebrating women’s achievements.According to the Emet Prize bylaws, the selection committee can only choose winners from the nominees whose names have been provided.Shlomit Barnea Fargo, a member of the Emet Prize selection committee, said universities should take a long, hard look at why they are not nominating more women for the Emet and other prizes.She believes it is not only tied to the percentage of women in science, but to political and social reasons as well.“Maybe it is because men are the ones doing the nominating, because they are at the top [in universities],” she speculated.Fargo, who has been serving as the Prime Minister’s Office legal adviser since 2003, said government and society have recognized that stubbornly high gender inequality exists in Israel – in the labor market, corporate world and among the political echelon.The Education Ministry’s 2013 annual gender index showed that working women in Israel earn, on average, 68% of men’s earnings. In 2013, 48.3% of women in Israel had 13 or more years of schooling, compared to 45.4% of men. Yet only one out of every five Israeli professors is a woman.“The achievements of women are just the same as the men. We have to correct the inequality in the fields where it is most severe – it doesn’t happen by itself,” Fargo said.“We have to try really hard to achieve equality where there is inequality.I call on universities and other institutions to recommend more women [for the Emet Prize]. A healthy society has equality,” she concluded.Kerem said it is important for women like herself to win the Emet Prize for the encouragement it would give to female students thinking about their own career paths and adding confidence in deciding to enter the sciences.Kimchi, too, said she feels her winning the Emet and other prestigious prizes made her a positive role model for young women scientists.“But I don’t always think about being female. I am a scientist at the end of the day,” said Kimchi, who has two children and five grandchildren.“You can do both, you can raise a family very successfully and have a career – I lost nothing,” she said.This article was written in cooperation with the Emet Prize.
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