Constitutional court insists hiring committees must be gender-balanced

French universities will have to install gender-balanced committees to oversee recruitment into tenured research positions, after the constitutional court rejected university leaders’ objection to the ruling.

The measure, intended to increase the persistently low proportion of senior female lecturers in France, was originally added to a 2013 higher education and research bill. The CPU, France’s association of university presidents, raised an objection to the Council of State in February 2015, which was then passed on to the constitutional court.

The CPU’s main objection centred on the fact that, if the law were passed, universities would have to remove elected committee members purely because they were men.