Social Scientist for the Day?

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Athene Donald

This week I attended what was probably my first serious social sciences/STS (variously Science and Technology Studies or Science, Technology and Society) conference in my life. I was only able to attend the first day and I came away not quite sure what I felt about the experience. It was certainly interesting, but was I any the wiser? The conference (Circling the Square) was organised by the Nottingham STS Priority Group headed up by Reiner Grundmann. Its aims were stated as twofold:

  • To explore the opportunities and challenges involved with the development of policy-relevant evidence.
  • To foster a much-needed conversation between researchers, decision makers, journalists, and engaged citizens.

These are laudable if sweeping aims. I won’t discuss those parts I saw relevant to the first aim here since my own small part was to serve on a panel designed to fit into the second. (If you’re interested Philip Moriarty has discussed this part of the day here.) Under the banner of ‘A Good News Story from Science? Researchers facing the Media‘ I shared a platform with emeritus scientist and ace-blogger David Colquhoun, Felicity Mellor (who leads on the science communication course at Imperial)and science writer Jon Turney. Personally I took that session title at face value, wanting to stress the positives of interacting with the media, as well as some of the pitfalls. However our session was preceded by an excellent if somewhat downbeat keynote lecture on the state of science journalism from Andrew Williams which had something of a dampening effect on the debate with our panel. If I had been a young researcher wondering whether to dip my toe into the waters of science communication, I might well have felt discouraged (another attendee’s write up can be found here).

Andrew Williams has done some illuminating research on the triangle between individual researchers, an institution’s Press Office (however designated but the body that puts out an institutional press release) and the media, mainly as represented through print or mainstream TV/radio rather than simply an online presence. He identified a number of faults in this operation which can have the effect of leading to excessive hype verging on dishonesty or the exclusion of those caveats which the research warrants. Interestingly his findings demonstrate no correlation (he can’t comment on causation) either between exaggerated claims and the take-up of a story, or the inclusion of caveats and a corresponding lack of take-up. This, particularly if he can proceed to demonstrate causation as the next stage of his study aims to do, should reassure individuals drafting press releases to stick to what they can honestly say without either overegging their findings or avoiding the mention of any limitations or underlying assumptions.

Another facet of this researcher-media interface that Williams has been exploring was the process known as ‘churnalism’, the rehashing of press releases with little original input from the journalist concerned. In this way there is no external scrutiny or tensioning of any ‘spin’ the initiator of the story puts out. In large part he believed that this was down to the way the workload of journalists has increased and the consequent lack of time they have to reflect or investigate further any claims made. Certainly this is a view I have heard expressed with dismay by senior science journalists, in one case remarking that they feared his ilk were a dying breed (as exemplified in the loss of Susan Watts as science editor for Newsnight, for example).

What I thought was unfortunate was that the sum effect of all his interesting and informative studies meant that it was easy to take away the message that the system was broke and there was no way to fix it. I don’t think this was his intent, but he left us with no optimistic message that if we (at least the ‘we’ that are researchers; I can’t speak for journalists or press officers) recognized the failings we could do better. We could (and should) write our press releases so that they aren’t just sexy but also accurate and truthful. Of course much research will never be of the kind from which a press release will spring fully armed, but there are so many ways of communicating science that don’t simply stem from the publication of a paper in a glamour journal that most researchers should be able to communicate their science sometime, some place. That aspect didn’t get aired in Williams’ talk.

I tried to put this more optimistic view across when we got to the panel discussion, but not before David Colquhoun had had an opportunity to blast said glamour journals (I think he wanted to ‘ban’ both Nature Publishing Group and Elsevier – I think HEFCE too for all the distortions their emphasis on impact is causing, but as I wasn’t taking notes at this point I can’t be 100% sure on this front. I’m surprised he didn’t include Science, Cell and PNAS too but perhaps he didn’t want the list to be too destructive.) However it wasn’t just the glamour journals he wanted to damn, he was strongly of the view that researchers had only themselves to blame for signing off inaccurate, hyped up and incautious/injudicious press releases which they then found themselves having to defend. From his perspective, the buck stopped firmly at the researcher’s feet.

Felicity Mellor, focussing on her analysis of science reporting on the BBC, reinforced much of what Andrew Williams said only concentrating on the specifics of what her study found. Jon Turney reflected on how things have changed, and not always for the better, over his career. Again, I don’t believe it was his intention but by highlighting the disappearance of science journalists with the time to find their own stories not prompted by HEI’s press releases or challenge what these might say by finding counter opinions, the impression I was left with was of a rather poor state of affairs.

So, as I say, it was left to me to try to say that it isn’t all gloom and doom, there are lots of opportunities to communicate your science in ways of your choosing and, particularly if you seek out media training, to tell your stories in the way you want without getting doorstepped or misquoted. Declaring myself an interested party, I also spoke up for online opportunities to spread the word through blogs such as the Guardian Science blogs.To my mind places like these blogs provide great opportunities not just to avoid the fate of churnalism, but also to tell those continuing stories that aren’t arising from some fancy publication that week but reflect more on the interesting tales of ongoing science – this is still science that matters both to the public and the researcher. These also provide a chance to write about the process of doing science (or, as one of the questioners put it, to demonstrate that most scientific results are subsequently shown to be wrong, or at least inaccurate), thereby providing a way for those who don’t practice science get some feel for what we actually do day by day.

To be the optimist, despite being the amateur communicator amongst that bunch of professionals, felt a slightly strange place to be. It tended to confirm what one of the social scientists said to me, that there was a clear fault line between the social scientists and the scientists. To bridge that gulf was one of the aims of the meeting, and I suppose you can only do that when you have its measure. Day 1 of the conference perhaps exposed its magnitude. It would be nice to believe that by day 3 there was some skeletal structure able to reach from one side to the other. But I won’t be there to see it because I will be presenting at another and very different interdisciplinary meeting on women’s historical experiences in science, where historians, archivists and scientists will get together. Two conferences in one week so different from my normal fare: an embarras de richesses indeed.

Note added 25-5-14

Just to bring together the blogposts (that I know about) regarding this conference.

  • Philip Moriarty (one of the organisers) was first off the mark where a very interesting comment stream developed. He later followed up with this.
  • Also on OT Sylvia McLain has written of her frustration with some disparagement between the different communities.
  • Another of the organisers Brigitte Nerlich wrote of her own slightly puzzled response to some of the debates here. She has also written a summary of the various responses .
  • Some of the interactions have also been discussed here.
Posted in Communicating Science, Science Culture, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 20 Comments

What Can You Do in a Minute?

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Athene Donald

Responding to the simplest questions about life as an academic scientist seems to pose me serious problems. I have written before about the difficulty I have in answering the straightforward question ‘who inspired you?’ because I don’t feel as if anyone did. It was books far more than any famous face that got me interested in science. A more recent question I was asked that I felt completely thrown by was ‘describe a typical minute in your job‘. This was for a US site (The Digits) devoted to encouraging young girls to engage with maths, or math as they would have it. Interviews for a children’s audience are particularly challenging because I have to try to find ways of making sense of what I do in their own terms and the questions aren’t necessarily ones that an adult would think to ask, or want an answer for.

Nevertheless this one gave me food for thought. Trying to describe something that would be sufficiently accessible for an 11 year old and still contain adequate accuracy to be meaningful was far from trivial. Of course the reality is that most of my days are spent at my computer dealing with emails or sitting in committee meetings and I certainly didn’t want that to be my response: not the way to get anyone enthused about science.

In the end I thought back to those moments of excitement that would creep up on me when I still did my own experiments, that sense of exploring the unknown every time I put a new sample in the electron microscope and waited to see what secrets it might reveal. That may sound overdramatic but, for a number of years, that really was the sensation I recall in the years when my own hands-on research was at its most heady and rewarding.

Now I don’t mean to imply my life was full of Eureka moments when the light dawned on me in an instant of illumination. I don’t believe that much of science progresses that way and it certainly hasn’t in my case. Nevertheless there is a wonderful feeling of excitement in having a new sample to hand and impatiently waiting to get it into focus to see what it can reveal. So, for the minute in question, I took the view that it was just long enough (depending on the experiment that may or may not be accurate) to do the necessary focussing for the sample to begin to disclose its secrets.

Of course, one of the challenges about microscopy in general is that a single image can never be taken as ‘typical’. The dangers of artefacts are always lurking just round the corner. A key challenge for every aspiring microscopist is to acquire the skill of knowing what is real and what is suspect and one of my most important roles as a PhD supervisor of microscopy students is to point out what is clearly artefactual and what just might be a genuinely exciting finding. Dampening their enthusiasm when misled by a feature of clearly dubious origin is no fun but an essential part of the training.

For the school child though, that level of detail is irrelevant. There is no doubt that that period when my personal research bloomed, when every new sample could potentially yield some new finding or provide ammunition for our models on the failure of plastics – or, later, the organisation in liquid crystalline polymers – was the most thrilling part of my career. Overlaid by years of only doing research through other people’s hands, however clever these hands may have been, it is good to recall the first-hand excitement that once upon I was privileged to feel. Still, after all these years, I can remember that buzz. That feeling that just around the corner lay another part of the solution and if I kept going a little longer, preparing samples or peering down the microscope, all would be revealed. On one occasion (I am ashamed to admit) I even worked in two adjacent rooms on two microscopes simultaneously. In one case doing a rather slow and laborious process of zapping my thin polymer films with the electron beam to create controlled cracks from which further failure would be encouraged to develop, in the other looking at the results of that failure on previously-prepared samples.

That piece of information did not form part of my answer for the young girls. Such overenthusiasm/nerdiness I think was best suppressed. However, I suspect that if you never feel that ludicrous level of excitement, involvement and curiosity that can keep the candles burning at both ends at least in short bursts, perhaps a research career is not for you. It can’t happen often and it can’t happen for long but it is the most heady of experiences, offset by the challenges of piecing all the disparate bits of evidence into a coherent whole, writing it up to your satisfaction and, ultimately, to the satisfaction of an editor and set of referees. Those later stages are less likely to get the juices flowing although that moment of acceptance may also give a spike of pleasure.

Unfortunately school science is unlikely to give many opportunities for any child to feel the buzz I describe here. The removal of assessment of practical work  as part of the A level mark that is just being introduced is a step in the wrong direction. But the reality is school science can rarely provide proper investigative opportunities. The Royal Society’s Partnership Grants scheme, in which scientists and schools (primary or secondary) work together on extra-curricular studies provide one possible opportunity for schools to expose students to genuine enquiry. The excitement of satisfying curiosity forms such a crucial part of the joy of science that it is a shame so many children can never get a sense of it.

As ever a simple, almost naïve question has provoked some serious reflection. Being forced to contemplate what science might have looked like to my much younger self has reminded me of so much that, for me at least, can get buried in the everyday world of professorial life; that life which can now feel far distanced from the actual practice of science.

 

Posted in Communicating Science, Education | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Attacks on the Royal Society Miss the Point

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Athene Donald

This post was originally posted at ScienceGrrl.

Another year, another occasion to thump the Royal Society for the make-up of its new fellows. This time it was Nature that screamed ‘Royal Society still trails the US National Academy in female members’, thereby managing to convey shifty behaviour by the RS. In fact eight of this year’s new fellows (50 in total) are women. Read the article and it is clear that the Society is hardly sitting on its hands. This year, for instance, it has involved some of its early career University Research Fellows in helping to identify strong female candidates (amongst other categories under-represented in the fellowship). It also has a temporary nominating group consisting of fellows who work hard throughout the year to identify appropriate women and ensure they get nominated for election. I know, because I sit on this. Heads of departments and vice chancellors are regularly chased to try to get them to nominate women too.

Nevertheless, the reality is the pool of senior women in STEM remains stubbornly small. Elections are – allowing for fluctuations – in line with the numbers in the pool. The pool of senior women in the USA is slightly larger, so their NAS’s higher numbers are simply in line with having a larger cohort to work with. Again, the article did admit this, but the headline will have provided fodder for those who love to hate the Royal Society.

To be honest, I get irritated with this attitude. Year on year these attacks continue (this was my response 2 years ago, where you can learn much more about the election process itself). Yet, if the pool is the size it is, what do these journalists who annually pour out their scorn expect to be done – lower the bar? I find that a horrible thought and so does every female scientist I have asked. To be elected and then told that it was ‘only because you are a woman’, or even to suspect that that might be the reason, would hardly confer satisfaction let alone honour. And it would not bring any credit to the Society either.

When I expressed my annoyance about the piece’s headline over Twitter I received some very negative comments. What I find particularly disappointing is that, by focussing on an easy if irrelevant target, journalists fail to open up the debate to where the problems actually sit. It is rather like the recent Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Report implying that the low numbers of women in academic science is the fault of their institutions, instead of looking more broadly at the landscape in which they work. As I argued previously in the context of this report, I would like to suggest that the many STEM departments who are now engaged with Athena Swan are beginning to make inroads into the problem, albeit painfully slowly. My own department, recently and proudly awarded an Athena Swan Gold award http://www.cam.ac.uk/for-staff/news/first-gold-award-for-boosting-the-role-of-women-in-cambridge , knows that even that recognition means we are simply on the foothills of getting genuine equality for all. But we have an action plan and I believe we will hold to it.

However, there are other parts of the academic ecosystem which need scrutiny and which have perhaps escaped such investigation for too long. By this I mean the UK Research Councils. They have, it is true, collectively produced a statement http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/120117/ of what they expect from institutions they fund, which is no bad thing. But they have done far too little to explore the consequences of their own processes on those they fund. I am probably particularly sensitive to this now I am involved with the European Research Council, including sitting on its Gender Balance Working Group http://erc.europa.eu/about-erc/organisation-and-working-groups/working-groups/gender-balance . This group reports regularly to the whole council and statistics on success rate by gender, along with many other stats, are automatically scrutinised (I’ve discussed this here https://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2013/10/23/levelling-the-european-playing-field/ ). Do any of the UK’s Research Councils do the same? I am not aware of this being so. In fact, it is only recently that any statistics on female success rates were published. These were aggregated across the whole of the RCUK remit and made somewhat dismal reading http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/women-trail-men-in-securing-research-council-grants/2012026.article . So what will they be doing about this? I look forward to hearing their answers soon soon.

NERC has recently introduced unconscious bias training http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/news/bias.asp for its panels and I am told that at least one other research council plans on swiftly following suit. They all should. But even this only deals with panel members. There is another place in the process where (un)conscious bias may slip in and no one does anything about it: the referee reports. I have heard too many women say that referees’ comments amount to a thinly disguised version of ‘I am grand professor X and this is a young woman whom I’ve never met or heard of so I don’t believe she can do what she says’. I haven’t seen the reports, I can’t be sure that such an interpretation is correct, but it tallies too much with what one knows in other circumstances. If the kinds of distinctions are made in referees’ reports that turn up in letters of reference https://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2013/04/07/systematic-errors-of-judgement/ – and why wouldn’t they? – then the evidence panels make their decisions on can be inherently flawed and slanted to disadvantage women.

Unlike the institutions which are required to examine all their statistics about appointments, exams etc to look for evidence of gender bias as they apply for Athena Swan awards , research councils have not been checking, or at least publishing, success rates by gender. It would be very interesting to know whether grants are being awarded in proportion to those who apply. Unless you believe women are inherently thicker, they should be (assuming they are not being disadvantaged by lack of mentorship or support as they write their proposals of course. I accept there are many intertwined factors!). So, I challenge the Research Councils to do a better job of monitoring and, if there are significant differences, to try to work out why and to do something about it. The ERC may be trying but most certainly hasn’t got it cracked. This is not going to be easy but that’s no reason for RCUK collectively burying its head in the sand.

Why is any of this relevant to the Royal Society? Because, if women are being systematically disadvantaged when they apply for grants their progression to the top will be handicapped. The pool of senior women from which candidates can be nominated and elected will not grow as fast as it should if unconscious bias elsewhere is holding them back. I would urge journalists to think a little harder about where the pinch-points are in our systems and not simply go for an easy but irrelevant target.

 

 

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

Mentors: Does Age Matter?

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Athene Donald

Over the years I have benefitted significantly from mentors. Two in particular stand out: in Cambridge Sir Sam Edwards (whom I wrote about here) and, at that critical juncture when as a postdoc I quit the world of metals that had left me cold and started working on polymers, Ed Kramer. The latter was the man who metaphorically picked me up and inspired me (rather late on) with a true love of research, nurtured it and me and made sure that I got to think about the right questions and meet the right people. Sir Sam continued the process a couple of years later, throwing in some significant funding opportunities along the way. I owe them a great deal. I hope I also learned a lot from them about what a mentor is (and also perhaps what they aren’t).

Mentors, in my view and as these examples show, do not have to be the same sex (they weren’t) or your line manager (one was, one wasn’t) or formally assigned (they weren’t). They may be any of these things or circumstances may mean they are not. What matters is that they are willing to invest time in talking to you, taking you and your inexperience and/or naivety seriously. You may meet them regularly or just occasionally when the need arises or circumstances permit. For me, the other class of people I have turned to for wise words are those I have met infrequently at conferences but with whom I have ‘clicked’ to the extent that a chat in the bar can turn into serious advice, stuff to mull over at leisure and possibly subsequently follow up with discussion via email. People like this have also played an important part in my development as a scientist and facilitated my career progression.

It is that latter kind of mentor/friend I want to discuss here. I hope – indeed I know – that I too have fulfilled that role for both men and women whom I have met at meetings, be they purely scientific meetings or through committee work. Attending an annual conference last week, at which I have been a long term habitué, I was struck by one thing: those people I thought I might have served some useful role as mentor to were now, not mere raw young researchers, but fully paid-up professors and heads of department. We had all grown up. It no longer seemed appropriate to think that I could act as mentor to them now; I’d have to rebadge them as friends who might turn to me for advice (or maybe not, as I’ve never been a head of department myself). On the other hand the next generation of young researchers seem so far removed from me it is harder for me to imagine getting into a mentoring relationship with them in that casual way. Although I can imagine it could still happen in a departmental setting, at a conference bar I must merely seem like an impossibly-old fogey who anyhow no longer has the stamina to stay up setting the world to rights beyond midnight. So, although I’d be perfectly happy to make time for them or answer specific questions, I find it harder to imagine a situation arising where that ‘clicking’ moment might arise that would lead to a fruitful long-term interaction.

It makes me think that I have a personal classification for this class of mentor-mentee relationship that has an age component, or rather an age-differential aspect. Those whom I regard as mentors for me, those two named above, are at least 15 years older than me. Others, older than me but who are closer in age and who have given me sage advice over the years I consider as friends rather than mentors. Maybe initially that wasn’t so but by now the age difference seems irrelevant. Likewise, those who are a little younger than me but whom I’m more than happy to toss thoughts around with couldn’t possibly count as mentees but as friends. But that group who are relatively recently promoted to professors, who are probably in the 10-15+ year younger-than-me bracket are those I’d initially have considered as people I was potentially mentoring but suspect I need to reclassify. However, given that I can’t imagine rebranding my older mentors of that age-gap as friends, because it would seem cheeky and inappropriate, it is possible that the same applies to those younger than me and I will also permanently stand as mentor not friend to them, however old they may themselves be.

As I haven’t mentally articulated these thoughts before I’ve no idea if the distinctions I am making here are usual. Maybe it’s just semantics and irrelevant. What matters is that we all have people we trust to turn to when the going gets tough, the questions pressing and difficult or the choices that lie ahead make it hard to know which way to turn. Mentors, however found and however defined, serve a vital role for all of us. However senior we get to be, I believe we need people we can use as sounding boards occasionally, people who feel comfortable saying you’d be a fool to attempt some task or other because….you have no time, you have the wrong skill-set or maybe that it would take too much out of you. But being able to say that you’d be an idiot to try something is just as valuable a role as telling someone they’d be an idiot not to try. What matters is that objective advice is given kindly (even if the recipient chooses to ignore it). It takes time to develop that kind of trust, particularly if the individual is not your line manager and seeing you day to day, which is why so often the mentor relationship blurs into friendship without any loss of value.

Making sure that one establishes these relationships before one’s career hits turbulent waters or difficult decision times is important. What you call them less so.

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Do You Believe It’s All Your Fault?

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Athene Donald

Currently I spend far more time giving talks around gender issues than about my science. I don’t know what I feel about this. I am, after all, a physicist not a psychologist or social scientist but increasingly I seem to be treated as if I were a serious gender expert.  All I have to share is my experience: my experience both as a woman who has survived within the system and as someone who is attempting to effect change within my own institution and has some scope and influence to make such change happen. In that I am fortunate. Many women wish to see things change, can see actions large and small that might locally make a difference, but do not occupy a role in their organisation’s structures that make it easy to push such actions through.

When I give such talks – last week it was at the Genome Campus just outside Cambridge, with an audience from both the Sanger Institute and the EBI – I always learn a lot both from my hosts and the questions thrown at me by the audience. Often I am brought up short by a take on things I hadn’t thought through before: everyone’s experience and environment is different, thus leading to different perspectives. At one of these talks, and I can no longer remember which one, I was challenged that it was very dispiriting to hear about the difficulties and maybe for young women it was better not to know that the going could be tough. It is a viewpoint I have some sympathy with, particularly for the individual, but if these things aren’t discussed progress is unlikely to be made.

When I was a young researcher, I didn’t think about my gender at all. Whilst knowing that I might be in a tiny minority in the room – be it an undergraduate teaching lab or, at a later date, a conference hall – I didn’t feel that had any bearing on how I was treated. As I progressed I continued to feel uncomfortable at being so obviously visibly ‘different’, but still didn’t see a fundamental problem in how I was treated as a scientist. If my arguments weren’t listened to, or if people talked over me, I assumed it was because I wasn’t persuasive and that their views were ‘better’.  What changed my perception was reading the ground-breaking 1999 MIT Report on A Study on the Status of Women. I have written about this (and its 2011 companion study) previously so I won’t say much about the specifics. Sufficient to say that the statement in this early report

In contrast to junior women, many tenured women faculty feel marginalized and excluded from a significant role in their departments. Marginalization increases as women progress through their careers at MIT.

suddenly made me realise that my experiences were not necessarily my ‘fault’ but could be systemic. I was, after all, by this point already not only a professor but an FRS, externally taken seriously but apparently less so locally. Was this a problem with my working environment and not for instance (as Mary Beard has highlighted) because my voice was the wrong pitch? In the short term, reading the MIT report actually made me angry, but possibly in the longer term it gave me confidence. It spelled out that the fault might not lie in me and that, if I could step back from the personal (always so difficult to do) maybe I could identify not how to change myself fundamentally but how to work within the system. Not simply to try to shout louder (unlikely to succeed) but how to develop support systems and strategies that might involve going round the houses but could ultimately get me to the desired end. Probably up till then I had simply assumed that if what I thought was right, right would ultimately triumph and if not I should shut up. You will detect I am not talking about science per se, but about strategic or resourcing issues. I was not an overnight success at this changed approach, nor did the anger quickly fade but looking back hindsight tells me that I did make progress.

I think, regardless of the strategy any given individual might choose to adopt faced with a similar situation, there is another important message here.  I believe for many women (in academia and outside) it is mid-career that is most challenging: when one is seen as ‘alien’ by the majority (presumed to be male, certainly in a subject such as mine), possibly even a threat, albeit probably unconsciously. My experience – and discussions with other senior women supports this point of view – is that ultimately one’s situation improves again, so there is hope for those finding themselves in this dispiriting and painful mid-career trough. This pattern of progression is not often discussed but perhaps should be. And perhaps, as another batch of Athena Swan Awards are announced this week (including a Gold to my own department), institutions should factor this issue in their action plans.

So are you better off thinking it is all your fault? Or is it better to swallow the unpleasant pill that says our society is rife in unconscious bias (and certainly not just in science) and other shortcomings so that any difficulties that have to be faced are as likely to be systemic as down to your own failings? If issues are not discussed, if the fact that there are those who (consciously or not) trample on and patronise the women in their teams and departments  – even if it doesn’t amount quite to bullying or harassment – isn’t aired, what are we doing for those who come hereafter? I fear we will be sustaining an environment in which our daughters cannot thrive as well as our sons but merely be perpetuating the same system for another generation. All aspects of our working environment need to be scrutinised.

I believe it is only if we air the issues, face up to the limitations of what we have, of identifying who does what well and where the system lets individuals down, that we can move forward. It isn’t only down to the shocking behaviour, the truly horrible sexist remarks or blatant harassment, but the more subtle and therefore more invidious actions  –  the death by a thousand cuts that too many women face up to without even necessarily explicitly appreciating the problems they encounter daily – that we will genuinely be supporting the most talented. This is not an argument against men, this isn’t a zero sum game. It is in fact merely an attempt to create workplaces where the most talented thrive regardless of their sex, skin colour, religion or any other attribute, and a place where the status quo is constantly challenged to see if there is something better around the corner.

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments