Transcript Gender Inequalities: How, Why, What? Professor Athene Donald University of Cambridge UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Background to my Diversity Work • Currently I am Director of WiSETI,

Gender Inequalities:
How, Why, What?
Professor Athene Donald
University of Cambridge
UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE
Background to my Diversity Work
• Currently I am Director of WiSETI, Cambridge University’s
Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative.
• I am the University’s Gender Equality Champion (extending
across all grades and all disciplines).
• I am Chair the Athena Forum, a national organisation hosted
by the Royal Society looking to disseminate best practice.
• Member of the Royal Society’s Equality and Diversity
Network.
• My University is an Athena Swan Bronze member and my
department is both Athena Swan Silver holder and a Juno
Champion.
Outline
• Why does it Matter?
– Can we afford to allow 50% of
the workforce to
underperform due to
circumstances?
– What talent are we losing and
at what point?
– Are we doing enough to make
physical sciences/engineering
attractive to girls in the first
place?
– (And biomedical sciences for
the boys?)
• What can be Done?
– Understand your own
department’s environment
– Identify sticking points
– Have a policy of zero
tolerance: for bullying,
harassment etc
– Seek out minorities actively
not be passive
– Provide appropriate support
mechanisms such as
networks and mentors
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.
2010 ECU Statistics for HE
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…
200…
200…
200…
200…
200…
200…
200…
199…
199…
199…
0
199…
10
Across all disciplines,
the number of
professors is slowly
increasing.
Obstacles
•
The list of potential obstacles is formidable:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
•
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 farsighted policy and individuals.
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 means this can be a major challenge.
• If your line manager believes women are unreliable, can’t do maths or
wire up a plug there may be a problem!
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.
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.
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?
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?’
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.
• Qualitative data as well as quantitative data needs to be accessed.
• Surveys / questionnaires can be useful to identify local issues.
• Important to analyse where opposition/support coming from.
• And evaluate where you already have good practice.
Self-Assessment Teams
• Buy-in from the top; maybe explicitly have head of
department involved
• People from all stages of progression
• Gender make-up should (at least approximately) reflect the
department make-up.
• Should also reflect familial responsibilities.
• Other possibilities might include
– External view
– Postgraduate view `
What can Departments Do?
1 Monitoring
If you don’t know what your numbers are at different stages, it may be
hard to identify where the problems lie.
Undergraduates
– Are there systematic differences in exam marks?
– Do women feel well integrated in practical classes, field trips or
other activities
– What is the social atmosphere?
Progression
– How do the percentages of women change at different stages of
the ladder (academic, academic-related and support staff)?
– Do you carry out exit questionnaires to find out why people
leave?
• ASSET 2010 provided data nationally under various headings, which
may help to identify likely problem areas.
Find Relevant Statistics and Benchmarks:
Example from the Royal Society’s work
Activity
% women
benchmark
Public visitors
52%
50%
Student visitors
53%
50%
University Research Fellows
33%
c.30%
Attendance at Frontiers of Science
meetings
44%
c.30%
Organisers/speakers at conferences
21%
c.30%
Fellows elected in last 10 years
10%
10%
What can Departments Do?
2 Inclusivity
• Induction
–
–
–
–
Is this routinely provided for all new departmental employees?
What written information is provided?
Do people know where to turn to if problems arise?
Does everyone get given a job description?
• Timing of seminars and meetings
– Are these family friendly?
– Does the whole department ever get together?
• Liaison committees eg for graduate students and postdocs
– Do the junior members feel they have a voice?
– Are there events held especially for these cohorts?
What can Departments Do?
3 Support
• Appraisal
– Does everyone get this automatically and how often?
• ASSET 2010 survey showed established academics more likely to be
appraised than contract staff, but the latter are likely to be the ones to
benefit most.
• Advice regarding promotion
– Do people get advice/encouragement as to when to apply or do they have
to ask?
– Do they get advice about the necessary paperwork?
• WiSETI has been running a CV mentoring scheme which is about to be
expanded to cover all disciplines
• Formal mentoring
– Is there a formal system?
• Social events
– Is support provided for isolated women to be able to get together and
share experiences?
• Workload model
– Who does what and is work fairly distributed?
What can Departments Do?
4 Preparing for Leadership
• Training
– Is encouragement given to go on courses to assist progression
generally ?
• Experience
– What leadership training is provided and who gets to go on it?
– Is thought given to informal training through appropriate committee
membership?
– How, in fact, is committee membership decided both within the
department and the wider university?
– Who nominates individuals for external roles?
• Acting up/Secondments
– For Non-academics in particular, are there opportunities for ‘acting
up’/secondments
What can Departments Do?
4 Recruitment
• Equality statements in advertisements
– Do job advertisements seek to make the opportunities look attractive
in ways beyond the academic?
– In particular for couples and/or those with families?
• Active search committees ie positive action
– When vacancies arise, how is the field of candidates identified?
– Is this a passive or active process, particularly for academic positions?
• Composition of appointments committees
– Do individuals undergo equality training before being permitted to be
members?
– What is the gender distribution on committees?
What can Departments Do?
5 Communication
• Is there a newsletter?
– Are successes celebrated?
– If so, is this true of everyone or just a few senior and possibly male
professors?
– Do people know about comings and goings or special events?
• Does the management make sure that people know in
advance of significant changes?
– Does everyone know, or again is there a sense that there is an ‘ingroup’ who get told and the rest who don’t?
– Do people have opportunities to have input?
• What happens when things go wrong?
– Are there clear – and well known – procedures if individuals feel they
are being bullied, not being line managed properly or otherwise things
are going wrong?
Where do Departments go Wrong?
• Assuming individuals understand how the system works
• Assuming people will ask for what they need
• Assuming the right people will apply for a position without
encouragement
• Assuming that all PI’s look after their research teams properly
• Assuming that there is no bullying/harassment
University Policies and Actions
• Visible commitment from the top is crucial – senior individuals
walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
– What structures are in place to make sure everyone knows the senior
management is committed
• Family friendly policies
– Are these well-known and widely available?
• Publicly celebrating the success of minorities
– Are good news stories widely disseminated?
• What support is there for those returning from long term
leave (maternity, paternity or other caring responsibilities)
– Is any money or other support (eg reduced teaching load) available to
help people get back on their feet after a break
• Share and disseminate good practice between departments
External – Sources for Support
Athena Forum: Builds on the original (1999) Athena Project
• 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 (now located on the
Athena Forum website).
• 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/Report1AthenaForumGPGforSTEMM
_styled.pdf
Interacting with Research Funders
• A year ago we collected similar information and held a discussion meeting
with Research Funders.
• http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/Research%20Funders101105%20final.pdf
• 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.
We therefore designed a simple bookmark for
distribution after local ‘branding’. The 10 key
questions are:
•
• Are you on the right
career path?
• Are you ready for the •
•
next step?
• How’s your life/work •
balance?
•
• Why do you enjoy what
•
you do?
What are your
strengths?
What motivates you?
What is your next step?
What skills and
experience do you need?
How can you gain these?
Where can you go for
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%20text
091222-1.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.
Useful Websites
• All Athena Swan members are meant to publish their submissions
online
– eg for Cambridge visit
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/equality/wiseti/swan/
• Athena Forum http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/
• Project Implicit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
• ASSET Survey National results
http://www.athenasurvey.org.uk/uk_results_2010.pdf
• ASSET Survey Summary Report
http://www.athenaforum.org.uk/pdf/DES2210_ASSET_report_Athen
a.pdf
• ECU statistics for academic year 2009/10 covering students and all
staff http://www.ecu.ac.uk/publications/equality-in-he-stats-11