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WOMEN IN THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE
some who have four children and are great scholars, good leaders, they get by [...] I
cannot accept this opinion, that women don’t want this, it is just not true. (Subject
no. 7, natural sciences)
They have all added that women are equally capable of prevailing in any
And much later, just recently, when we got together for a girls’ day with other female
peers, it turned out that four out of five of us sitting there from the research centre,
who were already senior physicists, had initially started to study something else [...]
we thought it was not something for us [...] so most of us went to study chemistry.
(Subject no. 9, natural sciences)
A girl did not have enough self-esteem to simply jump headfirst into physics back
then. Out of the five of us there was only one girl who went to study physics regardless
of being a woman, but she said she was doing it only because even her physics teacher
told her not to go, that it’s not something for women, upon which she of course
responded “well I’ll show that I can indeed do it”. (Subject no. 9, natural sciences)
As it can clearly be seen, they are the ones who advocate for speedy change
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Im not saying we need positive discrimination for them to enter the Academy, but
there should at least not be negative discrimination. (Subject no. 6, natural sciences)
Because okay, I do accept it essentially that the career needs to be addressed, I
mean some assistance is needed for getting a career with programs, age limits and
such. But this will only bear some results in maybe 20 years at the Academy. And
something has to be achieved by then too, right? I know there are plenty of women
who would more than match the criteria, and are on par with the majority of male
academicians. So I have sworn to myself to nominate only women now too.”°° Because
Steele—Aronson: Stereotype threat.
The selection process of Academy members is based on nominations. “Member nominations
are done by the scientific departments of the Academy. Those who receive a sufficient number
of nominations from domestic academicians can become nominees”, see also Act 1994. / XL.
about the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: 1994. évi XL. törvény a Magyar Tudományos
Akadémidrél, https://net.jogtar.hu/jogszabaly?docid=99400040.tv (accessed 12 May 2021).
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