Tackling the Intangible

A couple of weeks ago I attended a brief talk given by Baroness Ruth Deech at a careers evening for law students at Newnham College (all female). Her talk was followed by others from two recent graduates from the college who had moved into different branches of law. It was an interesting evening, not least to compare how the legal profession operates in comparison with science. Baroness Deech made many interesting remarks. For instance her view was one should always say yes to anything one was asked to do and apply for any opportunities going (to which I’d say yes, but within reason; sometimes saying no when asked to do yet one more task is the better response!). To illustrate her point she told us that she had actually become a Baroness because she had simply put in an application (I didn’t even know that such a process existed), although it took about five years for the application to bear fruit.

As she went through her life story she mentioned that she had produced a report  about the position of women in medicine (published in 2009) ‘Women doctors: making a difference’  at the request of the then Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson.  I took a quick look at this report. Law and medicine are often cited as examples of professions – in contrast to academic science – where the gender issue has been ‘solved’. I think this naïve view stems from the fact that the number of women entering these professions is comparable to (or even greater than) men (I wrote briefly about this for the BMJ blogs a while back). However, look at the top of the tree in either law or medicine and it is clear that senior women are still in short supply. So this Report was meant to consider why and what could be done.  In her introductory letter Deech states:

There have been several reports on the progress of women in medicine in recent years. We asked ourselves why the situation had not changed, why there was still discontent, and we have surmised that previous reports had focused on the desired outcomes rather than on the necessary levers of change to achieve them. So our report focuses very much on the implementation of change.

Her ‘cures’ for enabling women to stay in the profession are all concerned with practical actions around support for women (and men) who want to work flexibly, have a good work-life balance and so on. These are hugely important issues, but I note – at least in her list of recommendations; I must confess I haven’t read the full report – there is no attempt to identify, let alone tackle, cultural issues such as those around what contributes to success, the concept of patronage or the existence of a sexist workplace. Maybe I’m wrong in assuming that the medical profession is no more immune to these issues than other fields, or maybe she simply felt that it was better to tackle the tangible rather than the intangible obstacles, but certainly any discussion of women in science always seems to involve issues to do with workplace culture as well as the purely practical matters: I suspect the two are irrevocably intertwined.

Any time I go to a department or a university to talk about Equality issues, or if I simply get into a discussion with a bunch of researchers (men and women), similar topics always quickly bubble to the surface.  People bring up instances of bad behaviour that they have either suffered or seen others suffer. The selfish PI who gives insufficient credit (or even attention) to their team or who has favourites so that the rest get short-changed; the student or postdoc who bullies or intimidates other team members and no one does anything about it; the pressure to publish leading to dubious practices and the skimping of checking data; and the derogatory and/or sexist comments freely bandied around in casual conversation or even in group meetings that no one attempts to prevent.

In what I might term a ‘healthy’ department, people know who to turn to for advice and support when these sorts of problems arise. The problems will then not normally go on to become endemic and, where rogue behaviour occurs, it can be quickly stamped upon. In some cases, when I have participated in conversations like these, someone senior from the appropriate neck of the woods has heard the anxieties being expressed by the more junior members and leaped into action to attempt to bring them to an end, or at least attempted to explore the facts so that appropriate action can be taken. But, where such things go on and on, in the sort of place I recently heard described as a ‘Wild West’ department, anything goes, little gets done and the deeply unpleasant atmosphere persists. People may know what is going on and yet the leadership chooses either to look the other way or are themselves offenders.

It is of course always difficult to deal with such offending behaviour. If someone is out of line it is so much easier to pretend not to see what is going on than to confront it. If a senior professor is bringing in the cash, it is a rare (and confident) head of department or fellow professor who will attempt to bring the error of their ways into the open. But it should be done. I believe the only way to transform the workplace – for men and women – is to exercise zero tolerance. Let’s run courses for all the academics in errant departments so that they can be reminded of their responsibilities, their possible implicit prejudices and assumptions and, not least, the law. Let’s make sure the young PI’s are not allowed to ape any wayward seniors they’ve met along their way by developing an attitude of machismo, selfishness and the cutting of professional corners. I hope the leaders of tomorrow will not develop the wrong kind of soft skills. The kind that can lead to (as I heard tell) a head of department who was weak enough to allow themselves to be bullied into giving in to the he – and it was a he in this case– who shouted loudest; the HoD then attempted to deflect another professor’s wrath about this by starting the ensuing conversation with ‘how long would you like to rant for?’ rather than tackling the mess that had been created. Hardly a satisfactory response to an intolerable problem the head of department had created for himself.

I suspect the law, medicine and science all share comparable problems. Solving the practical ones, as the Deech Report attempted to (and it would be interesting to know with what success), is hugely important. But this must go hand in hand with stamping out selfishness, sexism and bullying in those whose only thought is the glittering prize of a Nature publication or an FRS and they don’t care how they get there or who gets trampled on en route.