Transcript Science and Gender – Obstacles and Interventions Athene M Donald University of Cambridge UK.

Science and Gender –
Obstacles and Interventions
Athene M Donald
University of Cambridge
UK
Outline
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Context – where are we now?
Obstacles
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Family; Work life balance;
Isolation; Lack of mentoring; Lack of confidence; Lack of role
models; Lack of support networks
Unconscious bias; Stereotyping
Bullying and harassment
Interventions
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Monitoring
Institutional Self Scrutiny
Policies and Processes
Getting Girls into Science (particularly physical
sciences) beyond School
First degrees obtained by UKdomiciled students in selected
STEM subject areas by
gender, 1994/5 and
2004/5 (data from Higher
Education Statistics Agency)
• The ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) study
shows by the age of 15 there are very significant
differences in what boys and girls are interested in
across the international scene.
• With the exception of Medicine, there is a great disparity
in numbers for men and women, and if anything the gap
is getting greater over time.
The Leaky Pipeline
• Well known that women drop out at far faster rates than men.
• Example from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s report:
Overall Increase of Women with Time
(UK data)
Trend in gender profile in
Physics over the last decade by
percentage of women by
individual grade (HESA data
1996/7 to 2005/6)
20
% Female Biology Professors
% Female Chemistry Professors
% Female Physics Professors
200…
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0
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10
Across all disciplines,
the number of
professors is slowly
increasing.
Obstacles
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The list of potential obstacles is formidable:
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Family
Work life balance
Isolation
Lack of mentoring
Lack of confidence
Lack of role models
Lack of support networks
Unconscious bias acting against them
Stereotyping
Bullying and harassment
Different women will experience a different sub-set of
these and have different internal strategies to cope.
Some are societal, but others can be ameliorated by
far-sighted policy and individuals.
Family and Work-Life BalanceThe Long Hours Culture
• Many young women believe it is ‘impossible’ to combine a serious
science career and a family, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
• It appears that even with visible role models there is still a high level
of fear about trying to cope with what is seen as a high pressure job
and the demands of a family.
• Dual career issues seem more likely to affect women than men, with
women tending to follow their partners more than conversely.
• This reduction in flexibility obviously limits job opportunities.
• The frequent expectation that a postdoc is at their desk/bench for
very long hours works against families too, despite the fact that this
may not be a productive means of working.
• Who is the primary carer of children or parents?
Isolation, Mentoring, Role Models
• In some disciplines the absolute number of women is tiny, and that
is when isolation becomes a problem
• Who do you turn to for advice and support?
• Mentoring is an attractive option and often happens completely
informally but by having a structure in place to facilitate it, it should
mean no one gets missed.
• Mentors do not have to be female!
• What is important is that they are trusted, and are willing to invest
time in the individual.
• And that is often a sticking point since time is seen as so precious.
• For some women, having a senior role model in mind appears to be
helpful, but the evidence for this is sparse.
Confidence - the Impostor Syndrome
L Bonetta, Science Feb 12 2010, 889
The response of astronomy graduate
students to the statement:
“Sometimes I am afraid others will
discover how much knowledge or
ability I lack.”
• Women seem to be much
more fearful, and much more
inclined to feel that they are
somehow an impostor.
• The evidence is that this is
also true for senior women,
and not just grad students.
• This fearfulness makes it
harder for them to take risks,
or feel they have the
qualifications they need to
apply for a job.
• Thus they may settle for less
and not try to progress.
Support Networks
• If you haven’t got a mentor, support networks can be useful.
• Again these can be formal or informal; in the latter case it may be
simply a group of friends who have had similar experiences.
• Support networks can also be a source of specific information: who
to approach with a question, what experience you need to apply for
a more senior position etc.
• But where there are more personal issues – about bullying for
instance – they can also serve a very useful purpose since other
people/peers may have been through similar situations and found
coping strategies they can pass on.
Bullying and Harassment
• Mild bullying maybe can be dealt with unofficially and through peer
group support.
• However there comes a point where this is not sufficient.
• People need to familiarise themselves with their local procedures.
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Is mediation on offer?
Is there a woman’s officer to whom you can turn in the first instance?
Who do you report complaints to?
Is there someone to support you when you do so?
• The reality is that formal procedures are always horrible, even if your
case is fully justified. Informal processes should always be tried first.
• It is also the case that once formal procedures are implemented
strict confidentiality will be imposed, which can be curiously painful
as informal support is then difficult to obtain; only formal channels
should then be used.
• Formal complaints should definitely be seen as the place of last
resort.
Unconscious Bias and Stereotyping
• The problem with unconscious bias is that it is unconscious! But we
can all be alert to look out for it in ourselves.
• The tests at Project Implicit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ are a
healthy reminder that we all carry internal schema which are liable to
make us make assumptions about our colleagues.
• In job interviews, in interacting with people on a daily basis, these
schemata can get in the way of seeing people for who they really
are.
• The net effect for women trying to survive and progress in the world
of science this can be a major challenge.
• If your boss believes women are unreliable, can’t do maths or wire
up a plug there may be a problem!
Possible manifestations
• Letters of reference: how is the language couched?
– Evidence to suggest letters are written differently for men and women,
with fewer superlatives about the latter than the former.
• How is the CV evaluated?
– Blind tests with identical CV’s and different names indicate men’s CV’s
are viewed as more impressive, even when identical.
• Assumptions about absenteeism due to caring responsibilities or the
liklihood of becoming pregnant may also be made without being
made explicit.
• There may also be a general sense that someone may ‘not fit in’
without this necessarily even being recognized.
Finally – the daily grind
• One of the most powerful obstacles is the daily, trivial frustrations
and petty fights many women experience.
• This might include
– Being ignored/talked over at committee meetings
– Being expected to do tasks others won’t, and which probably won’t be
‘good’ for career progression
– Being ‘forgotten’ to be invited to after work drinks
– Having to listen to casually sexist remarks
– Seeming to be invisible
– Being accused of being emotional or ‘not able to take a joke’,
particularly when registering a complaint about someone else’s
behaviour.
• None of these are in themselves hugely serious, but day after day
they can lead to a general feeling of ‘what am I doing here?
Interventions
• I will talk from my own experience here, but there will be many other
steps that people can take to fit their own local circumstances.
• I have been overseeing initiatives both within my own university,
through our Women in Science, Engineering and Technology
Initiative (WiSETI) and nationally through the Athena Forum.
• Clearly different actions are appropriate within the two spheres.
• It is also encouraging that the visibility my completely unofficial role
in WiSETI has led to me becoming the University’s Gender Equality
Champion and a Deputy Vice Chancellor.
• This role, enables me to have a formal voice and to influence
strategy.
Athena Swan
The Athena Swan Charter to which an organisation commits, states:
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To address gender inequalities requires commitment and action from
everyone, at all levels of the organisation
To tackle the unequal representation of women in science requires
changing cultures and attitudes across the organisation
The absence of diversity at management and policy-making levels has
broad implications which the organisation will examine
The high loss rate of women in science is an urgent concern which the
organisation will address
The system of short-term contracts has particularly negative
consequences for the retention and progression of women in science, which
the organisation recognises
There are both personal and structural obstacles to women making the
transition from PhD into a sustainable academic career in science, which
require the active consideration of the organisation.
Athena Swan Awards
• The organisation (university) submits a description of how its
processes and structures furthers the aims of the Charter.
• Key to this is a process of examining what is happening, who is
taking responsibility for what, and where there are actions needed.
• This is done at the institutional level.
• If an award is made (48 universities in the UK currently signed up at
Bronze level), then individual departments can apply in their own
right for Silver and Gold awards.
• Currently only one department has a Gold!
• But there are 37 with Silver (including my own) and 5 with Bronze.
• Gaining an award is definitely acting as a benchmark in the UK.
Local Actions - bottom-up
(WiSETI, University of Cambridge)
• Concentrating primarily on early career researchers, to give them
tools and encouragement to keep going.
• Workshops – jointly with local industry.
– seminars addressing issues raised by participants including discussions
on leadership, managing personal and professional impact,
assertiveness and balancing career and family.
– skills based workshops e.g. ‘Speaking up and Saying No’, facilitated by
a professional trainer.
• ‘Cakes and Careers’ talks for PhD students and Postdocs
– Format consists of talks by young women only a few years into their
careers with a mix of speakers from different careers not just from
academia
• Annual Lecture
– sponsored by a local company. An inspirational senior woman scientist
comes to talk about her life and career. The lecture is open to all.
Local Actions continued
• CV mentoring – this is aimed at women considering applying for
promotion.
– Senior faculty, who have themselves had experience of the various
promotion panels, advise potential applicants on their state of
readiness, what they might need to do to improve chances of promotion,
and how to improve their CV’s.
• Project Juno and Athena Swan Silver – help in preparation of
material. The aim is to use this to produce a
• Toolkit which other departments will then be able to use to put their
own cases together; in this way we hope to disseminate best
practice across the University.
Institutional Self Scrutiny
• One of the key things about the Athena Swan awards is that they
require a degree of self-awareness and self scrutiny, as well as
monitoring.
• Only by using the hard facts of statistics will some people will
respond, however strong the anecdotal evidence is.
• But statistics alone are not enough: if success rates for promotion
for men and women are equal, but actually men get promoted much
earlier in their career, then intervention is needed.
• So analysis is always required to look beyond the statistics.
Gender Equality Champion Role –
Top down interventions
• I have recently taken on this role within the University at the request
of the VC – much broader than science.
• I interpret my brief as being able to ask awkward questions of senior
staff (academic and administrative) and to advocate change where
needed.
• As a visible and senior academic it makes it hard for them simply to
ignore me, and indeed so far I am finding people very supportive.
• I also chair the committee that is looking at the outcomes of the
equal pay review – again this enables me to challenge the findings.
• And I get sight of relevant strategy documents for my input at an
early stage e.g around promotion criteria.
• I believe this role therefore gives me some influence, and is not just
(as I had initially feared) a meaningless concession.
National Level - Athena Forum –
http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/
The committee is composed of representatives from key professional
Bodies so that they can act as intermediaries with these bodies.
Membership
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Professor Athene Donald (Chair)
Professor Ottoline Leyser (Deputy Chair)
Professor Howard Alper, Inter Academy Panel
Professor Julia Buckingham, Society of Biology
Professor Christine Davies, Institute of Physics
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Royal Academy
of Engineering
Professor Richard Nelmes, Royal Society
Professor Andrew Orr-Ewing, Royal Society of
Chemistry
Professor Gwyneth Stallard, London
Mathematical Society
Professor Moira Whyte, Academy of Medical
Sciences
• Observers
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Peter Cotgreave, Royal
Society
Bob Ditchfield, Royal
Academy of Engineering
Stephen Axford, DIUS
The Chair and Deputy
Chair are independent,
but are both chosen to
be FRS’s and the Royal
Society hosts the Forum
Builds on the Athena Project
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The Athena Project is the ‘owner’ of the Athena Swan Awards.
It ran from 1999-2007.
During this time it compiled a number of reports.
Some 80 UK universities (over 70% of those with any significant
science faculties) took part in one or more of Athena’s programmes.
• As with its successor, its primary goal is:
Identifying, Developing and Encouraging Good Practice
• We have essentially no money, so our effect has merely to be
through influence and leadership.
• But the make-up of the committee gives us direct influence into
other bodies – which may have money!
Identifying Good Practice: Gathering and Disseminating
Information
• Our first target was to gather information from the various
professional bodies about
– The ways societies organise their women and science activities, and
demonstrate
– their commitment to improving the participation, representation and progression
of women in science and in society activities
– The career development opportunities and programmes societies offer their
members, fellows, and academic scientists
– The societies’ interactions with university departments
• This led to the Report:
• Women’s Career Progression and Representation in Science,
Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine(STEMM) in
Higher Education
• http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/reports/Report1AthenaForumGPGfor
STEMM_styled.pdf
• We will shortly be revisiting this with the professional societies to
see what changes have occurred in the two years following the
report.
Interacting with Research Funders
• This summer we collected similar information and held a discussion
meeting with Research Funders.
• A report will be published soon on this.
• Bringing the different organisations together not only has allowed us
to see what they are doing, but also seems to have encouraged the
group of Research Councils to look into unifying their policies.
• This will be advantageous since currently subtle differences, e.g.
over maternity leave policies, can cause confusion within the
universities.
• We are keen to encourage more consistent monitoring of application
and success rate by gender.
Questions for Postdocs
We wanted to provide a quick guide for
Postdocs to facilitate them taking control of
their lives.
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We therefore designed a simple bookmark for
distribution after local ‘branding’. The 10 key
questions are:
• What are your
Are you on the right
strengths?
career path?
• What motivates you?
Are you ready for the
• What is your next
next step?
step?
How’s your life/work
• What skills and
balance?
experience do you
need?
Why do you enjoy
• How can you gain
what you do?
these?
What are your
• Where can you go for
strengths?
objective guidance?
Providing Information
• The last question - Where can you go for objective guidance? we
hoped could be addressed in two ways:
– By local sources of information, provided on the back of the
bookmark;
– By a document on the Athena Forum website
http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/forum%20bookmark%20web%20
text091222-1.pdf
• Postdocs need confidence to ask questions, but also they need to
know what the right questions to ask are.
• Within my own university we now give this bookmark out to all new
postdocs, and we would like other organisations to follow suit.
Reflections
• There are no simple answers!
• In the UK a large report has just been published by the Equality and
Human Rights Commission pointing out how substantial the gender
pay gap – across the board – is.
• But that is in some senses the least of the problems for women in
science.
• It is a combination of standing out ‘as different’, of being isolated, of
not having sufficient support – mentors, heads of department etc –
of being stereotyped and being offered or choosing to do tasks that
may not be the wisest in terms of career progression.
• It is the fear or the actual difficulty of finding a work-life balance that
works and that permits a personal (including family) life that is
satisfying.
• And just finding too many small irritations that can add up to a
feeling that it is all more than one can bear and that it isn’t worth
continuing.
Conclusions
• As senior women we have to work hard to speak out about our own
experiences, to persuade our male colleagues that there is still an endemic
cultural problem, and any individual woman making a complaint or raising an
issue is neither making an unreasonable fuss nor alone in her frustration at
the environment she finds herself in.
• In my experience, all women – even if they appear or claim never to have
suffered discrimination – recognize that the barriers are higher for women
than men.
• Have I ever personally suffered discrimination? – no, not in any overt
sense. Have I felt the odds stacked against me? – absolutely and
sometimes I still do.
• I have recently started a blog http://athenedonald.wordpress.com/, in part to
share my experiences with younger women, to indicate that bad things can
happen and you can (maybe) overcome them, and that things that happen to
them are not necessarily personal.
• 'I learned two particularly important lessons from this report and from
discussions while it was being crafted. First, I have always believed that
contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part
perception. True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part
of the balance. Second, I, like most of my male colleagues, believe that we
are highly supportive of our junior women faculty members. This also is true.'
Dr Charles Vest President of MIT at the time of the Report on the Status of
Women at MIT in 1999.