Victims and Support Systems

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Athene Donald

In my recent post on dealing with (or failing to do so) inappropriate remarks, the importance of mentoring was raised by Jenny Koenig. She said

This is where mentoring is really important: to have someone else to listen and to reassure you that it’s not your fault.

I agree that mentors may be able to help here, but I think this touches on a wider issue of blame, victimisation and internalising situations which are, as she says, not your fault. So I’d like to expand on these ideas, using a very specific example of something that happened to me a number of years ago. At the time it made me realise how easy it is to get trapped into believing that someone else’s actions were legitimate – when they palpably weren’t – and why it is that some battered wives take upon themselves blame for the way they are treated, something that up till that point I had never really understood.

The situation occurred at a conference at which I had given an invited talk about my work on starch – from which you will deduce it wasn’t that early in my career – and took place after the conference dinner in the bar. I was relaxed, my talk had (I thought) gone well; at least people had been quite complimentary about it. A senior male attendee came up and started talking to me about it, someone definitely ahead of me in the scientific hierarchy, and very quickly he started getting obnoxious. He clearly thought it was witty to associate the work I did on the physics of starch with ‘domestic science’; he felt it was legitimate to make fun of my work, and me as a scientist, by demeaning serious physics as mere cookery, implying that that was the only sort of work I would be capable of doing as a woman. Mercifully, at this distance in time I forget the full details of his diatribe. Any attempt by me to counter what he was saying, by stressing the excitement and relevance of what I was doing as a serious physicist, was simply talked down. I then did something I can’t ever remember doing at any other time – I simply walked out of the bar, feeling most upset by the occurrence.

Luckily for me I was not alone in this conversation. My friend and former Cambridge colleague Richard Jones was also present and stayed behind with this bloke in the bar after I had left. Next morning I asked him about what had happened thereafter. It turned out the diatribe had continued, including comments such as

‘it must be awful to work with a woman like that’,

leading to Richard also eventually walking out.  But what was really helpful for me was the way Richard was able to put the conversation in context for me.

Already, within about 12 hours, I was starting to question what had happened. Had it been my fault? Had I done something that provoked the vitriol? Was I to blame? Maybe I was ‘guilty’ of something intangible so that there was a rational explanation for the vicious remarks. At that point I began to realise how easy it is to blame yourself for someone else’s shortcomings, to assume responsibility and so exonerate the genuinely guilty party – exactly how battered wives respond to much more serious abuse, physical and mental. Putting this to my friend was immensely reassuring. He had seen the way the whole conversation developed from the outset to my departure; had then himself been at the receiving end of continuing unpleasantness. He could tell me in no uncertain terms I was not to blame, and I mustn’t start seeing myself as at fault; the other person was indubitably the guilty party. Had I not had a witness, the damage done to my sense of self would have been much greater.

In this case, I don’t think a mentor would have been anything like as useful. Someone saying ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault’ when they hadn’t  heard the dialogue could not have carried so much weight as someone physically present during the whole affair.  Because, of course, this was all about context and verbal connotations not actions. A mentor can help when it comes to something more concrete, can provide advice for how to go forward with career planning, decisions about whether to attend one conference or another and how to present one’s CV. They cannot say with authority when they weren’t there, that one was not blameworthy when an unpleasant situation develops.
The bar at night is not always a good place to be, true for men as well as women when dealing with people who have drunk more than is good for them. Masks slip and the poison can leach out. It is of course – away from academic situations – where fights break out, though I don’t think I ever recall seeing people coming to blows at conferences! But it can be an uncomfortable place for the nervous and junior and, as I have discovered, for the not so junior. Drunks can be obnoxious the world over. I was lucky to have support to hand on this particular occasion.

Support comes in many forms and I feel rather strongly we should not assume that finding the right mentor is the overarching solution. Firstly, mentors often don’t come labelled as such. They may come in many forms ranging from peers just that little bit ahead of you on the career ladder – perhaps a grad student just a year ahead has the necessary pearls of wisdom you need at that particular juncture – to senior professors who are willing to spend time handing advice out to those at earlier stages (or indeed their contemporaries; one never ceases to need advice) in some particular situation. It doesn’t have to be in an ongoing role.  Secondly, if mentors are seen as the solution, then frustration may set in if your particular institution does not run a formal programme, rather than each person seeking out advice in disparate corners as appropriate. Finally, as in the situation I describe here, a mentor may not always provide the optimum support structure. This may be for all kinds of reasons including the fact that you may simply not click with a formally assigned mentor. What matters is that each individual can find appropriate networks of support in whatever shape or form works for them and their place of work.

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

For Women in Science (FWIS Fellowships)

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Athene Donald

Prizes for Women? Again? What more can I possibly have to say, having written twice (here and here) in different veins on this subject already.  Tomorrow I chair the jury to judge this year’s L’Oreal/UNESCO For Women in Science UK and Ireland Fellowships, and the truth is I think there is still much to say, both about the specifics of this prize and what it implies for the community and the women who will come out of tomorrow evening’s ceremony £15,000 the richer.  That anything needs to be said at all simply reflects the imbalance that persists in the number of women progressing up the scientific career ladder and the underlying reasons for this.  These prizes are about celebration, an opportunity to highlight successful women at an early stage in their careers and to create a network of visible role models and ambassadors.  The women whom we will be interviewing are all capable of being the leaders of tomorrow. We have narrowed the field down from 229 applicants, to a longlist of 21 and then further narrowed this list down to the shortlist of 8 we will meet in person.  Getting down to this final group was tough, because so many of the applications were really strong; women who had followed a multitude of paths, some with ease, some having to overcome major obstacles to reach their current positions.  It is a shame that so many necessarily are disappointed, but that is the case with any prize or in some senses it isn’t worth having.  So, when the winners are announced tomorrow I can say with certainty they will be exceptional women, and I sincerely hope they find the prizes facilitate their career progression.

So much for motherhood and apple pie statements, what more needs to be said? First of all, there are some dangers in what I have written above for the women who win. If we expect them to be ambassadors, as I’m sure they will be proud to be, we are putting a burden on them that standard awards do not impose. We should recognize that for what it is. When my own department was preparing for its Athena Swan application, it was noted that women (at all stages) do a disproportionately large amount of outreach activity. Anecdotally – or at least I cannot immediately produce firm evidence – across higher education women do more of the pastoral and tutoring side of things as well than men.  It could be argued that women do this voluntarily, that they don’t need to do it. But I wonder. Do we need to train women to say no, but also train the wider community that women saying no must be treated in exactly the same way as men saying no? As I described recently, women standing up for themselves don’t seem to prompt an identical reaction – in men or women – to men doing so.  Is it reasonable to ask women, because of the crying need for role models, to take on this additional ambassadorial task when they are still trying to establish their careers? On balance I think the answer is yes, not least because the enhanced visibility will help their careers, one hopes at least as much as the time taken away from their research may hinder. Furthermore, there will be many skills they will be picking up which will stand them in good stead for the years ahead: skills such as fending off probing questions during interviews, mentoring others and talking to school children – all things I would imagine will come their way in the months ahead. Taken in a positive spirit, just think how good the latter two will look on CV’s (incidentally, the last looks like ‘impact’ doesn’t it, if they choose to portray it that way), and how useful the first on that list will be when it comes to interviews for permanent positions.  Nevertheless, it has to be recognized that there is a loss in time, even if a gain in opportunity.

Secondly, I have indicated that we had a fantastic pool of applicants from which to select our final 8. You might think that means ‘problem solved’, we have got ourselves into a position where there is an excellent supply of first class women. So why am I still sounding off about the ‘problem’ when it no longer exists? Without wishing to make the simplistic assumption that the problem really is solved when we reach a 50:50 balance of men and women at every stage of the career ladder, I think it is clear we have not yet reached a situation where all women are able to fulfil their potential. If we had, I don’t think we would still be talking about the leaky pipeline, but the reality is the leaks remain manifest. It seems to me that a world in which in 2010, women made up less than 20% of the applications for Royal Society University Research Fellowships on the physical sciences side (charmingly known as the A-side within the Royal Society; no doubt there is some good historical reason for this nomenclature with which I have never caught up), has some way to go in terms of a level playing field.  I use this figure as a comparator because it corresponds to the approximate career stage of the women we are looking at for the FWIS prizes. Indeed it was very clear from our longlist that physical sciences were very much in the minority in our own applications, a fact that tallies with the significantly higher figure of 35% of URF applications on (yes, you guessed it) the B-side of the biological sciences.

However, there is an interesting corollary about the URF’s success rates which, on the statistically dubious basis of figures for the single year of 2010 which I have to hand, actually showed that women were more successful than men in obtaining a fellowship. There are a couple of obvious conclusions that might be drawn from this (and I have no idea if either of them actually apply, because more work would need to be done to test them). Firstly, that women interview better than men and so are more likely to be successful; or secondly, that the field of women who have persisted to this career stage have self-selected down to a much greater extent so that only the really brilliant and/or confident are applying for URF’s. The men, on the other hand, may be more inclined to stick around – as the recent RSC/IOP postdoctoral survey suggested – whether they have much hope of future success as independent researchers or not, but they are nevertheless willing to chance their arm with an application for a fellowhip. It will be interesting to see how these various numbers change over the coming years, and I know the Royal Society will be monitoring things closely.

So, I don’t for one moment think we have yet reached a point where women-only prizes have lost their importance and function. I am quite sure that tomorrow the jury will be impressed by the quality of the talks and interviews we will have with the shortlisted 8 in the FWIS competition this year. I am equally sure we will have a fiendishly difficult time coming up with the final winners. I hope the eight we meet find the experience rewarding and that the eventual winners relish the responsibilities that come with the awards – as well as the cash.

Given the title of this post, it might be worth drawing readers’ attention to an interview I did recently for the Browser, in which I was asked to select 5 books ‘for women in science’.

 

 

Posted in Communicating Science, Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

What Will the Future Look Like?

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Athene Donald

What follows is a book review I have written for the Times Higher Education Supplement (THE) published today.

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 By Michio Kaku Allen Lane, 416pp, £22.00 ISBN 9781846142680 Published 5 May 2011

 

Here is a book with a grandiose title, aiming to provide a sweeping panoramic view of the future. However, the title is not entirely accurate – it is not really about physics, but technology broadly defined – and the book itself lacks the requisite thoughtfulness to render it invaluable for the average bookshelf.

Michio Kaku, an American theoretical physicis, has previously written texts on related subjects, and he is also a familiar face from our TV screens. He has a significant reputation as a populariser of futuristic science. However, this book seems unlikely to add to his standing. If you like a gallop past gizmos of various types and some crystalball-gazing, then this book may appeal. On the other hand, if you want a thoughtful reflection about what our world is going to look like 100 years from now and which of the many possible developments that science might bring about will actually transpire, then look elsewhere.

There is remarkably little discussion, particularly early in the book, about what changes may be desirable let alone acceptable in social terms, reducing the book to conveying the excitement of a young child staring in amazement at the goodies on offer in some shop, rather than a mature scientist’s considered opinion of the reality of life in the future. I was disappointed.

Kaku’s approach to gathering the information he needed for this book was to go out and interview 300-plus scientists to produce what he hopes will be “the most authentic, authoritative look into the world of 2100”. Sometimes he gives little vignettes of these visits.

The introduction to his visit to the biologist Robert Lanza gives an indication of his writing style, to which I became increasingly allergic:

“I met him one day at a radio studio for an interview and was immediately impressed by his youth and boundless creativity. He was as usual rushing between experiments.”

Does this help the non-scientist understand how science is done? Frankly, I doubt it. All it does is to personalise the meeting. The  personal is very evident throughout the text, so that with remarkable (not to say boring) frequency we are told that Kaku once had a chance to try out, try on, sit on, look at or otherwise interact with some particularly fancy and expensive gadget (probably in preparation for some TV programme).

What about the science conveyed? It is possible that every invention he touches upon could come to pass, but that is very different from the fact that it will. For that Kaku cannot be blamed, but the lack of discussion of what is likely to be practically, socially, financially or otherwise acceptable is where I feel the primary weakness of the text lies.

Take the possibility of surrogates or “avatars”, familiar through the James Cameron film of the same name, in which the human body is in some sense merged with a robot, which Kaku discusses in a chapter on artificial intelligence. We are told “avatars are not possible today but may be possible in the future”, an unrebuttable and valueless statement. This remark should be read in tandem with a comment from the former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that “fifty years from now, we can expect to see radical alterations of human bodies through genetic modification”. But even if the science is viable, this remark raises the question of whether society at large will be comfortable with such enhancement: a huge issue with a by no means foregone conclusion.

Or, to give another example, Kaku cites inserting pattern recognition software into “internet glasses”, so that the biographies of a roomful of strangers can be summoned at will to appear on the contact lenses everyone will wear. I have two immediate worries about this: how is one supposed to read these mini-biographies fast enough to absorb them while avoiding crashing into the furniture, and how will privacy issues be dealt with? People have fought hard enough in this country to avoid identity cards, but having my identity and potted history made manifest to all and sundry would seem to raise some pretty substantial privacy issues. The future is not only about the science, and it does science and scientists no good to go gooeyeyed about technology in this uncritical way.

Strangely, the two chapters at the end of the book – on the future of wealth and the future of humanity – were by far the most thoughtful. I wished they had come earlier; maybe then I would have been more convinced by the remainder of the writing. As it stands, I fear the book will be most appreciated by teenagers used to science fiction rather than the mature interested reader, which is a pity.

 

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Scientific Breadth: The Good and the Bad

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Athene Donald

This week I am giving three different major talks; no, not just ‘different’, utterly and totally different. This is definitely a week of diversity in my powerpoint presentations, though none of them is actually about diversity. Linking in to a previous post about specialisation in nanoscience at different stages – undergraduate or postgraduate in that case  – it is worth considering when a multi-faceted career is a plus and when a minus. Are you better off knowing everything about rather little, or a little about a broad swathe of science?  And in what sense does ‘better’ apply anyhow?

I should state at the outset that I am definitely someone whose research fits into the second description; by now that is deliberate but probably this happened accidentally initially (like so much of my career as I’ve said before).   The three talks this week are (chronologically) the opening Key Note talk discussing Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy at a conference on Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine here in Cambridge which I gave today; a talk tomorrow on Physics at the Interface with Biology being given to Welsh schoolteachers of Physics in Bangor; and a talk on Increasing the Size of the STEM Cohort into Higher Education, wearing my Royal Society Education Committee Chair ‘hat’, at the upcoming Sunday Times Festival of Education. Clearly the last talk is discussing research/data gathering done within the Royal Society and its splendid and hard-working team, not my own, but I still have to master the brief, so I include it here.   However, if I were transported back to being an early career researcher, I certainly would not want to cover so much ground – or be capable of doing so.

My first thought about how I have tackled my research breadth was that I practice ‘serial monogamy’, i.e. I throw myself into a single topic at a time. But a moment’s reflection showed me this was entirely wrong; I have several ‘relationships’ on the go at the same time. I don’t shed one before taking up with a new one, though I would hate to describe myself as polygamous (or even polyandrist). What I actually do is let topics slowly die as new ones seize my interests. So, my work on the mechanical properties of synthetic polymers – where I started off in the world of polymers –  became transformed into mechanical properties of Cheesy Wotsits-lookalikes (without the flavour) and that ultimately morphed into analysis of starch granule structure working with plant breeders. I never said to myself ‘today I will stop working on the failure of polymers and start working on the internal hierarchical packing of starch granules’, but over time this is what happened.  Some number of years later I found myself feeling that studying all the plant breeders’ different mutants was starting to be rather boring: an offer of 100+ offers of mutant maizes to study via Small Angle X-ray Scattering was rather easy to decline, since it would have been a cataloguing exercise not a stimulating physics problem. And, slowly, I found I was throwing myself into another problem of ‘food physics’, that of protein aggregation, which has moved over the years towards biomedical problems such as Alzheimer’s Disease.  The work on starch just slowly faded out, almost without my noticing.

However, never mind my own personal path, the question must be, is there an optimum strategy for career progression? Let me take the example of that expanding Department of Paintballing, which was being constructed recently, where two thrusting young(ish) individuals are up for promotion. Should one favour the one who has spent 15 years studying the effect of nozzle size and shape on the efficacy of delivery of paint, constantly refining the underlying equations and carrying out simulations of nozzle shapes ranging from circular, through square and hexagonal to cloverleaf before constructing an over-arching equation of such complexity (but possibly also beauty) that it takes up ½ a page in their weighty monograph? Or the one who has studied the distribution of paint on textiles of different sorts upon impact, and the importance of pigment in the paint on accuracy of firing and the role of camouflage in successful team strategies? I suspect by the way I have written those last two sentences you can see where my vote would go, but then I would say that because it is the way I have lived and thrived. Nevertheless, in my role of sitting on the Faculty of War Games promotion panel, that is exactly the sort of decision I would be called upon to make.  And my experience of such promotion panels is that the world is actually fairly equally divided into those, like me, who favour breadth of experience and novelty over extremely elegant research on a narrower topic and those who would cast their vote the other way round.  In other words, there is no right answer, but ‘it depends’. (I wouldn’t want it thought that it frequently comes down to something so crude as breadth versus depth in the way I’ve described; I exaggerate to make the point.)

What must never be missing is originality, a first class publication record, excellent references and attention to detail in the paperwork so that the specific promotion criteria are actually addressed.  Whether you possess diverse interests or not, a crucial requirement is that you make some area your own, carve out a niche so that people can identify you with it. Being broad does not equate to being dilettante, rapidly moving on before making any significant contribution anywhere.   You need to make your mark in each field if it is to count when it comes to progression (though you may have occasional dead-ends of forays that failed; I know I do). Being deep doesn’t mean churning out variations on a theme with little originality beyond the first publication. Whatever the chosen path, your research needs to make a difference. Although I hesitate to use the dreaded impact word, it does need to have impact even if in a purely blue-skies-sort-of-way.

So, for me, I do not for one moment regret my breadth. I get a buzz out of talking to scientists of different colours and hues, now with a smattering of educators, policy makers and even politicians as well thrown into the mix.  I love the challenge of diving into new arenas and trying to get to grips with unfamiliar language. But that doesn’t mean that is the ‘right’ thing to do, and if that feels alien because you are a deep thinker who loves the subtlety of interrogating a particular problem from many directions, then stick with what you do best and specialise. But never, never do something that bores you – move on before that happens. And preferably, never do something that bores your audience either. I will find out later this week if my chameleon tactics of trying to blend into the different communities and keep them amused with my presentations has worked.

 

 

Posted in Interdisciplinary Science, Research, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

ASSET 2010 – A Metaphorical Call to Arms for HEI’s

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Athene Donald

There is a danger that the message that there is an uneven playing field for women in science (and indeed in many other fields) has been repeated so often that it is no longer heard. However, it is still true. Study after study has shown how women are, in ways that may be subtle or not so subtle, disadvantaged at every stage of their career trajectory. The reasons for this are myriad, ranging from cues from societal pressures and culture, as exemplified by the dreadful ‘I’m too pretty to do math t-shirts’ I’ve discussed before, to people’s preconceptions about what a scientist should be like at interview, to the challenges of combining the intense life of a bench scientist with having a family. The ASSET survey provides a longitudinal study of how men and women feel about their life as scientists in academia: the full report on the most recent survey, carried out in early 2010, has just been released. This survey asks individuals – men and women – to comment on how well they feel their careers have progressed, what they feel has made most difference to them, and how they believe they are perceived and fit in to their working environment. The report should be a call to arms for departments and institutions to sit down and consider how things really are for their employees. Institutions will have been sent their own local data to compare with national averages and analyse what their workforce are happy with and what less so. I would urge all PVC’s or HR managers to consider their strengths and weaknesses and act upon the findings – my own university will certainly be doing this. Then, maybe, when the next ASSET survey is carried out – as I hope it will be – there will be a marked reduction of the differences between men and women at all stages of the career ladder.

The data shows that still, women feel disadvantaged in many ways – and that the gaps between men’s and women’s perceptions are decreasing only very slowly. It is hard to make absolute comparisons between the years, because the questions are not always identical, but it is clear that things are still far from parity. When the raw data was first put out some months ago, I wrote about some of the key issues that I saw lurking in the data. Reiterating the message above that institutions should respond to the findings, I hope they will take note of some of the following.

Having read the report, one thing I find particularly dispiriting is the fact that even in things that one would have thought were driven purely by process there are differences, notably in how often individuals are appraised. Why should this be so? Why should women be less likely to be appraised? Now, not everyone finds appraisal useful but I would hazard a guess women would be actually more likely to respond positively than men because so often they seek and value external validation of how they are performing. But, leaving aside the gender angle, it is also clear from the results that the more senior you are the more likely you are to be appraised. This is simply illogical. If resources for carrying out appraisals are limited, the people who will derive most benefit are the early career researchers, not the established faculty. So, direct resources to where they can be of most assistance not waste them on those whose futures are already secured.

Rather like equal pay reviews, organisations should be asking themselves if their promotions’ procedures are fair and whether men and women fare equally well – and if not why not. But hiding behind this lurks the question of whether men and women are equally likely to apply for promotion. The ASSET survey shows, as it has on previous occasions, that women seem to be less familiar with the promotion criteria and processes than men. This is worrying. It means that they are less likely to feel confident in putting in an application in the first place, perhaps thinking they need to wait for someone to tap them on the shoulder saying it’s OK and/or wise to put their name forward. Furthermore, around a quarter of women feel they suffer from a lack of useful feedback and advice about their career trajectories and what they should be doing to further their prospects, whereas hardly any men responded in the same way. Maybe this is just another example of women being more diffident than men; not that the men were actually being given better advice but that they didn’t feel they needed it in the first place. Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: the women feel disadvantaged and organisations need to explore whether they genuinely are and if so what can be done to remove any differences, simultaneously with reassuring the women so that they feel more comfortable and confident.

It is interesting to see to what men and women attribute their success. I also find it instructive to compare the answers to this question with the earlier surveys: it seems that everyone feels they work much harder now than they used to, with almost everyone (upwards of 95% in 2010) attributing their success, at least in part, to hard work this time around; this is to be compared with figures of only 72% for male postdocs and 81% for male professors in 2006. Interesting that this has changed so markedly in the last 5 years. Beyond this factor, men are more likely to attribute some of their success to luck than women (as I have discussed before), women more likely to value their partners’ support.

This survey deals predominantly with perceptions and feelings, but a final striking conclusion is that women by and large feel less well integrated into their departments than men. Being a minority, as one suspects many of them will be, is rarely comfortable. Furthermore, men are more likely to report being encouraged to undertake activities viewed as valuable for career progression and this ties in with the earlier comments about promotion; they also reported being more likely to have been invited to apply for higher level posts and to receive support from senior colleagues. These may appear to be relatively little things, but nevertheless together they can add up to a substantial disadvantage for women over a lifetime.

To end on an optimistic note, it is heartening to see that in comparison with faculty, the responses from postdocs indicate a greater feeling of optimism among the women, and smaller differences with men. Let us hope this really does translate into an improving climate. However, such improvements will only happen with the goodwill, determination and explicit leadership by example of senior management across the higher education sector. It is more than time for action to remedy the problems that each successive survey has highlighted.

Hannah Devlin has written her own very interesting commentary on the report on the Times Eureka website.

Posted in Equality, Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments