{"id":4939,"date":"2016-03-28T09:01:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T08:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=4939"},"modified":"2016-03-28T09:01:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T08:01:41","slug":"manifesto-for-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2016\/03\/28\/manifesto-for-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Manifesto for Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Science needs women\u2019 proclaims the L\u2019Oreal\/UNESCO For Women in Science awards\u00a0tagline. For the last 18 years the pairing has been awarding five laureates to women from different geographical regions around the world each year to celebrate (and publicise) their success. With L\u2019Oreal\u2019s effective PR machine, they are able to reach mainstream media in a way that most \u2018women in science\u2019 organisations fail to do. I know this from first-hand experience having been one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/forwomeninscience\/videos\/127623294766\/\">2009 Laureates<\/a> who speedily found herself propelled into newspaper and radio interviews. This year\u2019s ceremony was on Thursday evening and, alongside the awards a so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fwis.fr\/?locale=en\">Manifesto For Women in Science <\/a>has also been launched. They are seeking a broad response supporting their six bullet points, although so far the number of signatories is disappointingly small.<\/p>\n<p>As a matter of process I suspect this time their publicity may have been less than perfect. Although I was called to do several interviews on the back of it (e.g. here on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p03nwfps?ocid=socialflow_twitter\">BBC World Service <\/a>where you can hear a couple of minutes of a rather longer interview done, inconveniently, at 11pm last week), as no doubt others were around the world, the Manifesto itself seemed to get lost. It is easy enough to talk about the issues facing women in science, but at the level of the World Service interview it struck me how generic the problems were. We can talk about the challenges <em>ad nauseam<\/em>, but structurally society does not seem to want to do anything to remove the basic obstacles.<\/p>\n<p>I heard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlotteproudman.com\/\">Charlotte Proudman<\/a> talk recently about the challenges for women in law. The specifics may be different from science but the basic problems are the same. You can read parallel description of the issues for women in the media, finance, medicine or, I suspect, any profession. The problems are obvious but collectively society (and not just the men) don\u2019t seem to be able to move beyond them. Here are just a few of them, all things I have read about in the mainstream press pretty recently:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/109\/41\/16474.abstract\">CVs are rated less highly<\/a> when identified with a female moniker than a male one;<\/li>\n<li>Women who press their claims are seen as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kathycaprino\/2015\/08\/25\/gender-bias-is-real-womens-perceived-competency-drops-significantly-when-judged-as-being-forceful\/#204127eb3b45\">behaving inappropriately<\/a> whereas a man is applauded for being forceful;<\/li>\n<li>The \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kathycaprino\/2015\/10\/20\/the-glass-cliff-phenomenon-that-senior-female-leaders-face-today-and-how-to-avoid-it\/#6e985e3080d5\">Glass Cliff<\/a>\u2019 effect means that women are more likely to be propelled into leadership roles in situations where they are most likely to fail;<\/li>\n<li>Getting pregnant still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/509500\/BIS-16-145-pregnancy-and-maternity-related-discrimination-and-disadvantage-summary.pdf\">frequently leads to discrimination<\/a> and the uptake of shared parental leave by fathers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2016\/mar\/27\/shared-parental-leave-johnny-davis\">has not yet taken off<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li>Senior roles are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.equalityhumanrights.com\/inquiry-warns-%E2%80%98inexcusable-and-unacceptable%E2%80%99-variation-progress-women-boards-ftse-companies\">often filled by discussions \u2018on the golf course\u2019 <\/a>rather than transparently.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could go on and produce a much longer list, but there is little point. We\u00a0 <u>know<\/u> \u2013\u00a0 men and women \u2013\u00a0 that there are problems. Yet the will (or ability)\u00a0 to change our society collectively seems weak. Science is just one specific place where the problems are obvious. Different science disciplines have slightly different flavours of issues, and at a specific level these may also differ from law or journalism. There are undoubtedly many things to be done. I sometimes think the sciences are ahead of the curve because \u2013 certainly in a subject like mine \u2013 the disparity in numbers is so grotesque from undergraduate level on that there is no hiding the fact. In Law or Medicine where numbers start out equal or even with a preponderance of women it is probably easier to pretend the problem is simply <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2013\/01\/06\/is-removal-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-utilitarian-dream\/\">choicism<\/a>, that women opt out rather than that systematically structures make it harder for them.<\/p>\n<p>Now the latest social sciences study I\u2019ve come across tells me that things are even worse than I feared: that women (or other minorities) are actually <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/mar\/25\/women-minoriites-penalized-workplace-diversity-study?CMP=share_btn_tw\">penalised for promoting equality<\/a>, whereas (white and only white) men are not. So, if this is correct, the \u2018rational\u2019 thing for women to do is to be as nasty as possible to their minority friends. I sincerely hope women will go on being irrational on this front! I am well aware that, speaking personally, I have long since passed that point in my career where this is an issue \u2013 indeed that people make a virtue out of my championing of women in science \u2013 but, that earlier in a career those around you may mark you down for speaking up is horrendous. However, as with unconscious bias more generally, that can only be the case if we don\u2019t appreciate that is what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n<p>When asked, as I often am, how things have changed during my life, it is very obvious that we have moved a long way. There are no longer formal barriers (I can recall quotas of women for medical schools for instance when my peers at school were applying), but informal ones are even harder to address. We can\u2019t tear down invisible walls so easily, merely constantly bump into them. Sexism it seems to me is even more rampant, perhaps because the old-fashioned and patronising idea of \u2018respect for the ladies\u2019 has long since gone out of the window. Whereas I may be glad to see the retreat of condescension, the dominance of explicit sexism is hardly progress. We have a veneer of equality that for far too many women simply doesn\u2019t translate into the lived reality. And this veneer means it is all too easy for the male who wants to bury his head in the sand or, worse, feels threatened by genuine equality and inclusivity, to continue to deny opportunity and due progression to 50% of our population.<\/p>\n<p>There is no point getting angry, since this too often is simply misplaced energy and a waste. But there is every point in highlighting transgressions \u2013 small and large \u2013 whenever possible to emphasise the structural inequities that exist. The sad fact is, however, that too often circumstances mean that speaking out can backfire. Every genuine supporter of equality has to walk that tightrope. In the meantime, signing the L\u2019Oreal Manifesto is one small action to spell out that enough is enough. We need to shout about the deep-seated societal problems and we need to do it loudly and persistently.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Science needs women\u2019 proclaims the L\u2019Oreal\/UNESCO For Women in Science awards\u00a0tagline. For the last 18 years the pairing has been awarding five laureates to women from different geographical regions around the world each year to celebrate (and publicise) their success. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2016\/03\/28\/manifesto-for-change\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,27],"tags":[1029,77,101,255],"class_list":["post-4939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equality","category-women-in-science","tag-charlotte-proudman","tag-discrimination","tag-loreal-for-women-in-science","tag-sexism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}