There are 5 female principal investigators involved in the project representing 18% of all PIs. Particularly important scientific management and research roles are played by Dr. Laure Bally-Cuif as the Team Leader of CNRS and Work Package Leader of WP2 and Prof. Corinne Houart and Prof. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard as the Team Leaders of KCL and MPG, respectively. The growing proportion of female researchers in this field is reflected in the percentages of female PhD students (over 50%) undergoing research training in the participating organisations.
We recognise the difficulties facing women researchers, particularly in reconciling family commitments with maintaining research careers. The loss of female researchers is a significant problem as it represents a major loss of scientific capacity. While the Consortium has no control over the employment policy of the partner organisations, we therefore propose the following measures: