WISE@QMUL: Parenting in Academia

Date: Monday 14 September
Time: 12-1.30pm
Location: Fogg Lecture Theatre, Mile End campus

Combining a family and an academic career can be a challenging task and every parent has their own way of managing this. Three panel members will tell attendees about their experience of having children while pursuing a career in science. After a brief round of introductions, they will answer all of your questions about this topic.

A representative from HR will also be present and will discuss QMUL’s current policy on taking parental leave.

The panel:
Nuria Gavara, Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials
Anita Patel, Professor of Health Economics
Eleonora Oreggia, PhD student in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science

Everyone is welcome to attend – both men and women and all staff and students. Refreshments will be provided. Please book your place through Eventbrite.

The event is organised by WISE QMUL (Women in Science and Engineering at QMUL).

Guardian: Three things holding women back at work

Quote: Ever looked around a boardroom and wondered where all the women are? Me too. The reality is that while the number of women on FTSE boards has nearly doubled over the past four years, and there are countless studies extolling the virtues of diversity on decision-making, inclusivity and business performance, very few companies can truly say, “we do diversity well.”

Despite recent progress on gender diversity, organisations continue to struggle with turning good intention into positive action. Based on my seventeen years in recruitment, I’ve found that three factors are keeping talented women out of the boardroom.

Read on at www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2015/sep/01/the-three-things-holding-women-back-at-work

Guardian: The Guilt of Quitting Sexist Workplaces

Source: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/24/guilt-quitting-sexist-workplaces-discrimination-women

Quote:

“This autumn marks five years since the Equality Act was passed – an all-encompassing bill taking in older acts concerning pay, race, gender and disability discriminations – making our right to work free from prejudice enshrined in the law. The tricky part is that it’s often hard to implement. With the lack of an obvious offence, it’s often a case of being crushed by a thousand tiny micro-aggressions … To preserve sanity, it’s often easier to quit a job than deal with the labour-intensive process of pursuing a grievance. But not being able to impact on a toxic workplace environment, to subvert and change from within, can be a concern that many women share when leaving a sexist workplace. Compounding the feeling of failure on leaving is the awareness that remaining or future female employees will face the same treatment.”

New Republic: Gender Bias Plagues Academia, Especially in STEM

Source: www.newrepublic.com/article/122466/gender-bias-plagues-academia

Studies, mentioned in article, revealing unconscious bias:

Linguistic comparison of letters of recommendation:ds
“recommendations … tended to include descriptors of ability for male applicants, such as “standout,” but refer to the work ethic of the women, rather than their ability, by using words such as “grindstone.””

“… female, but not male, students applying for a research grant had letters of recommendation emphasizing the wrong skills, such as the applicants’ ability to care for an elderly parent or to balance the demands of parenting and research.”

Gender and letters of recommendation:
“letters of recommendation for women used more “communal” adjectives (like helpful, kind, warm and tactful), and letters of recommendation for men used more decisive adjectives (like confident, ambitious, daring and independent), even after statistically controlling for different measures of performance.”

Gendered language in teacher reviews:
“… men were more likely to be described as “knowledgeable” and “brilliant,” women as “bossy” or, if they were lucky, “helpful.””

WISE Campaign 2015 Awards Call for Nominations

The WISE Campaign is calling for nominations for the 2015 WISE Awards — see  www.wisecampaign.org.uk/wise-awards/wise-awards-2015.  More details at www.wisecampaign.org.uk/news/2015/07/help-celebrate-women-in-stem-at-the-wise-awards . Deadline is 17 August 2015.

Categories include ‘open technology’, ‘inspiring young people’ ‘hero’ ‘campaign’ ‘influence’ ‘tech startup’. The ‘research award’ category nomination form is here: https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/wise-awards/wise-awards-2015/nominations/research-award . (criteria: cutting edge research, inspirational story, evidence of supporting other women, compelling role model for WISE campaign)

Each nomination needs 300 words max each under 1) biography 2) the research and its impact and why it is cutting edge 3) testimonial on impact of the research “from someone in a position to comment” 4) how the WISE award, if won, would be used to support the work and/or inspire more women and girls to want to work in science.

A nomination also requires: 5) referee 6) photo 7) the candidate must be available on 30 September for a full day in London .

QMUL had a ‘highly commended’ in 2013 in the ‘WISE Leader Award’ category: Nela Brown, PhD researcher in computer science, and Ursula Martin was shortlisted in the WISE Lifetime Achievement Award the same year.

THE: Sexism: pervasive in the academy?

Source: www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/sexism-pervasive-in-the-academy

Quote:

“The rhetoric of equal opportunities, the legislation against sexual harassment and gender discrimination and the replacement of the metaphor of the glass ceiling with the one of the “sticky door” (a term used recently by Nemat Shafik, the second female deputy governor of the Bank of England) all serve to obscure the emotional and practical stress that still afflicts female academics aspiring to leadership, seniority and power. It is indeed troubling to be a “girl” in the academy.”

Telegraph: Sexism in the Workplace used by Men to Bond

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11758421/Sexism-in-the-workplace-is-used-by-men-to-bond-says-academic.html

Quotes:

Sexism in the workplace is used by men “as a bonding experience”, an academic and expert on gender at work has said.

Paula Nicolson, emeritus professor of health and social care at Royal Holloway University, has also said women risk making “powerful enemies” if they object every time their male colleagues make “anti-women remarks”.

BusinessInsider: The 15 most amazing women in science today

Source: uk.businessinsider.com/coolest-women-in-science-2015-7

1. Cori Bargmann is uncovering the causes of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and autism.
2. Cynthia Kenyon is developing ways to help us live longer and healthier lives.
3. Elizabeth Holmes developed a groundbreaking blood test that will transform the future of healthcare.
4. Emily Levesque is discovering the hidden mechanisms driving the formation and collapse of massive stars and galaxies.
5. Helen Fisher is an expert on love, relationships, and sex.
6. Holley Moyes explores caves and examines artifacts to understand the rituals of ancient people.
7. Jennifer Doudna’s discovery could cure tons of diseases — or create superbabies.
8. Jennifer Eberhardt is improving race relations between police and the communities they serve.
9. Karen King decrypted a third-century message and helped set history straight.
10. Katherine Freese developed a revolutionary theory about a new kind of star.
11. Katrin Amunts is building a 3D map of the human brain.
12. Maryam Mirzakhani is helping us understand the complex mathematical relationships that govern twisting and stretching surfaces.
13. Nina Tandon is using stem cells to grow human bone — potentially changing how 900,000 surgeries a year are performed.
14. Sara Seager has discovered more than 700 new planets.
15. Sonja Lyubomirsky can teach you how to be happy.

More details at uk.businessinsider.com/coolest-women-in-science-2015-7

NYTimes: Overcoming the Confidence Gap for Women

Source: www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/business/dealbook/overcoming-the-confidence-gap-for-women.html

Quotes:

“…the consulting firm Zenger Folkman studied 16,000 of them – two-thirds men, one-third women – as well as their managers, subordinates and peers. … Women rated better than men on 12 out of 16 competencies. These included “takes initiative,” “drives for results” and “stretches for results,” all traditional measures of effective leadership. They also included every one of the more human competencies — “practices self-development,” “develops others,” “motivates and inspires others,” “builds relationships” and “collaboration and teamwork. … Interestingly, the female leaders in the Zenger Folkman study were rated about equal with the men when it came to solving problems and analyzing issues. The only competencies in which men rated higher than women were technical expertise, innovation and a strategic perspective about the outside world and other groups.”

“… the organization Catalyst found that companies with the highest representation of women in top management consistently experienced better financial performance than the group of companies with the lowest.”

“Nearly two-thirds of the 3,000 professional and college-age women in the KPMG study expressed a desire to someday become senior leaders. Only 40 percent were consistently able to envision themselves as leaders. While men often overvalue their strengths, women too frequently undervalue theirs.”

“Two-thirds of the women in the KPMG study felt they had learned their most important lessons about leadership from other women, and 82 percent of working women in the study believed that networking with female leaders would help them advance their careers. Even so, four out of five women did not feel comfortable asking for mentors.”

Guardian: Class of 2015: women are still making less than men – and prospects are poor

Source: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/28/class-of-2015-income-inequality-jobs

Excerpts:

“This year, young male graduates can expect to earn on average $19.64 an hour – all of 20 cents higher than in 2000. Women, on the other hand, are likely to earn $16.56, which is more than $3 less than their male counterparts and $1.18 less than what they were likely to earn in 2000. On the bright side, that means that women who graduate from college earn about 84 cents for every dollar that male college graduates do. That’s better than the 78 cents earned by all women for every dollar earned by men.”

“It’s interesting that women have been pursuing college in greater numbers to improve economic prospects, but we see that their wages have gone down.”

“Some wage-gap deniers insist that the wage disparity between the genders stems from women’s choice of careers – for example, women are more likely to pursue degrees in education, social work, healthcare, arts and communications, while men are more likely to study computer science and engineering.”