It is always good to be stretched beyond one’s own comfort zone, even if by definition it is an uncomfortable thing to do. Recently, I found myself stepping up to the podium to talk following four successive philosophers, whose take on the policy questions under discussion, was inevitably going to be very distinct in language and form from my own approach. The occasion was the Royal Society’s Discussion meeting on Science as a Global Public Good. The philosophers approached the problem from a variety of different viewpoints – what is a ‘public good’ and how does it differ from the commons, legally what is enshrined in different UN charters and so on.
What about the importance of science diplomacy? This was discussed in the talk immediately before mine by Angela Liberatore, a colleague I’d known back in the days I served on the ERC Scientific Council, although she has since moved on from heading up their research team. We need every kind of diplomacy we can get in this uncertain world. There may be scope for links with the USA, as detailed in this recent piece by Hollie Chandler from the Russell Group, but many scientists of my acquaintance will not attempt to enter the USA for conferences right now. Who knows what might be lurking on their phone that officials take exception to? That will not be helping diplomacy. Nevertheless, I recall many years ago how the Royal Society was supporting links with North Korea in the area (if I remember rightly) of volcanology, at a time when there were essentially no other links between the UK and that country.
My own talk was, perhaps predictably, much more rooted in numbers and facts than legal niceties, looking at the subject of women entering the scientific pipeline. There are some striking numbers out there. According to UNICEF data, globally119 million girls are out of school (34 million of primary school age, 28 million of lower-secondary school age and 58 million of upper-secondary school age). Those are striking numbers, and nothing that is happening in the world right now makes me confident that the numbers are likely to be improving. But, around the world, we need all the talent we can get to move the agenda forward, not just in terms of obvious innovation opportunities, but in terms of maternal and neonatal health, nutrition and vaccination choices. These are all issues that women are the prime movers in and denying them an education means they are less well positioned to make decisions around them, or appropriate innovations.
The week before this conference I had been at another two-day event at the Royal Society, this one the culmination of the organisation’s year of celebration around the election of the first female fellows, with the theme of focussing on where we are now and where we need to go around Women In STEM. On the Royal Society’s website you can find new analysis of HESA data from JISC; a new film about Hertha Ayrton’s life and contributions (the first woman nominated for Fellowship, but rejected on the grounds she was a married woman and, under the laws of the time, was therefore a ‘non-person’); and a map on which anyone can enter information about a female scientist from the past at their location. On the site there is also a brief blogpost from me about women at the Royal Society.
During the conference there were strong views expressed about the status of women in AI and the dangers of their absence as AI is developed, algorithmic bias being the most obvious and visible one. Chair of the session Wendy Hall was particularly strong on this point, and outspoken in an interview with Rachel Sylvester published ahead of the conference. There she spells out her worries with regard to Silicon Valley:
“It’s all tech bros. It’s very aggressive. Silicon Valley is very difficult for women to work in, but we need women there”.
Currently, in England, the percentages of girls taking Computing at GCSE or A Level are dismally low, so little is likely to change without a radical rethink in our education system. It is to be hoped that the revised curriculum in the subject provoked by the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review will improve the situation, but only if the school environment itself doesn’t put girls off. I am a strong believer in the importance of teachers not inadvertently reinforcing gendered stereotypes, and the whole school environment ensuring the school’s culture does not deter girls from typical ‘male’ subjects. This is a topic close to the heart of the DSIT secretary of State who has convened a Women in Tech Taskforce. They have a consultation currently open – so now is a good moment to submit your views on how the situation at all levels can be improved.
There were many fascinating sessions at the Royal Society Conference, highlighting where things have improved and where, inevitably, work needs to be done. At a societal level I feel it is hugely important we don’t simply look at the fact that, on average, girls are outperforming boys at school and therefore not look at the detail of what that means. If white working-class boys are struggling in school, that is clearly a massive target for improvement and the situation for them needs to be remedied. But if girls are passing their exams and then walking away from many of the subjects that would, not only satisfy them as individuals, but allow them to progress to some of the higher paying jobs – due to the messaging they receive from the world around them – we have a different sort of equity problem. With so much attention paid to metrics of school performance, this problem is too easily overlooked. As Michele Dougherty said at this Women in STEM conference:
“‘we will know we have got equity when I no longer get asked if things were difficult for me.”
(Of course right now things are difficult for her, as Chair of STFC, but that’s a different problem.)
These past weeks of intense meetings have been simultaneously rewarding and exhausting. Sadly, the two meetings merely confirm that in this country and around the world, equity is still a long way off, in STEM and, still, at much more basic levels of education.
