| Issue 51 Contents |

Is CSIRO still a man’s world?

by Rosemary Sutton

The first issue of the WISENET Journal published in April 1985 included an article by Carmel MacPherson entitled CSIRO – Still A Man’s World! In this article some 50 issues later, I’d like to reflect on the changes for women over the years since then in CSIRO.

1984

1984 was a year of beginnings in my life – with the births of WISENET, the CSIRO EEO subcommittee, and my first child. It was a real watershed year – the years before 1984 are referred to in our home as BC (before children). My pregnancy had brought with it the realisation that my career as a research scientist in CSIRO might be more difficult for me as a mother, than the years I’d enjoyed as a woman without children in a male dominated profession.

Photo: Rosemary Sutton in 1984.

In 1984 CSIRO also entered a new era, with the Executive’s acceptance of the 49 recommendations in the final report of the Consultative Council’s Sub-committee on the Employment of Women. Almost all of these recommendations were eventually implemented, and slowly but surely brought about many positive changes to the organisation. I was nominated by the union to join the new EEO subcommittee and so participated in this process.

Numbers of women in CSIRO - then and now

At June 1983, there were 1879 women in CSIRO, being 24.8% of the 7,574 staff. As in the general community where many occupations were largely single-sexed, the distribution of women amongst staff groups varied from near zero (0.5% in trades) to 100% (all of the secretarial staff). Only 3.3% of CSIRO research scientists were women, and the distribution varied from 6% in Animal and Food Sciences to only 1% of the scientists in Industrial Technology and Physical Sciences. There were more women in technical positions (27%) but they were concentrated in the lower ranks.

By June 1997, there were 2225 women in CSIRO, being 33.2% of the 6709 staff. By then, women made up 10.4% of CSIRO research staff and 34.3% of research project staff. The distribution of women is still uneven in CSIRO, but we do now have some women at the top. Of the 22 CSIRO Divisions, two have women as Chiefs - Elizabeth Heij at Tropical Agriculture and Nan Bray at Marine Science, and Adrienne Clarke was Chairman of the CSIRO board for a term in the 1990s. Women make up about a third of Australia’s new PhD graduates in scientific fields, so it pleasing and appropriate that 30% of CSIRO postdoctoral appointments are women. It is great to see that in the year ending June 1997, women made up 47% of all staff appointments.

Family-friendly policies in CSIRO – then and now

In 1984, women in CSIRO were already entitled to take 12 months maternity leave including paid leave for the first 12 weeks (for which we can thank the Whitlam Government). However there were no CSIRO childcare centres, and there were not enough long day care places in community centres for children under 3 years. The only tenured positions available were full-time, so many women resigned their positions after having children and came back, if they could, as part-time casuals. There was also a lack of older women in the organisation to act as role models and mentors. This missing cohort had been caused not only by social attitudes and previous lack of maternity leave, but also by the policy, rescinded in 1966, that a woman had to resign her position in CSIRO when she married.

Today, the staff of CSIRO has access to permanent part-time positions and job sharing. Although advertisements for tenured part-time positions are rare, requests from existing staff "to go part-time" are usually accepted. The 1998 Staff Opinion Poll (which had a 58% response rate), showed that 16.4% of female staff and 1.8% of males were on part-time tenured positions, and only 0.7% of woman, but unfortunately 0.9% of men, had applied unsuccessfully for permanent part-time. Job sharing was reported by 4.1% of women and 1.5% of men.

The current Parental Leave provisions go beyond the original maternity leave. They give more flexibility in the use of the 40 weeks unpaid leave, so that parents can use it to work part-time or to share child care during a baby’s first 15 months; and new fathers and adopting parents are now eligible, as well as birth mothers.

Personal leave, which accrues at a rate of 3 days a year, and which is used by more than half the staff, is now available to allow staff to care for sick kids or other family members.

Finally, for parents facing the problem of how to care for children over the school holidays, the Extra Leave 48/52 arrangements allow staff to negotiate up to 12 weeks annual leave in exchange for a proportionally lower salary. In the staff Poll, 7.1% of women, 7.9% of men reported accessing Extra Leave.

One result of these changes is the large increase in women in CSIRO with children observed by comparing the 1998 Opinion Poll with 1987 EEO Census (Maureen Bickley and Chris King 1988). Now 51% of women in CSIRO have children compared to 40% of women in 1987 and with 71% and 70% of men in 1998 and 1987. The number of women with dependent children has also risen from 28% in 1987, to 36% in 1998.

The keys to progress

It is difficult to define precisely what caused the increased numbers of women (particularly scientists) being employed by CSIRO over the last 15 years, in an environment of changing attitudes and work conditions in Australia at large. That said, the progressive changes in CSIRO policies and practices followed the 49 recommendations of the Committee on the Employment of Women. Fortunately, 3 key members of that committee - Judith Koch, Pam Powell and Carole Popham - provided continuity on the EEO Sub-committee, which oversaw the transformation of these recommendations into realities.

Carmel MacPherson was appointed as the first EEO Officer for CSIRO and her unlimited energy and enthusiasm were vital to the implementation of these changes. In addition, her workshops and newsletters inspired the network of EEO Contact Officers, at each of the 70 or so CSIRO sites in Australia, who saw and heard the problems first hand.

The 49 recommendations had resulted from the analysis of an Attitudinal Survey in 1981 of all women and a matched group of men in CSIRO (Cecily Neil 1983) which highlighted key problem areas. Both committees drew on their own expertise and outside advice to recommend solutions. The 1981 survey was followed up by the EEO Census of all staff in 1987, and again recently by the 1998 Staff Opinion Poll.

The logical approach of data collection by surveys, analysis, proposal of solutions, intervention, and re-evaluation is compatible with CSIROs dominant science-based culture, and has often gained essential management support for change when emotive appeals would have probably failed.

Several recommendations addressed staff selection, and the new resultant policies and training for staff on selection committees had an early impact. The previous system of choosing staff largely on "gut reaction", was replaced by documented assessment on selection criteria, based on the job description, performed by a committee, including at least one woman or an EEO Officer.

Other early implementations included some of the family friendly policies already mentioned; the adoption of annual collection and analysis of appointment; promotion and exit statistics; development of training programs; and the improvement of career paths for clerical and secretarial staff. Finally, science was promoted as a career for girls through the Women in Science video and the program of school visits by women scientists and technicians.

A second impetus for change came from the 1987 EEO census, which provided both evidence of progress and of problems still needing to be addressed. In late 1987, I presented the EEO Subcommittees Recommendations on Child Care to CSIROs Consultative Council. The essence of these was the provision of child-care centres for staff at 5 large CSIRO sites. I believe that it was the Census evidence of strong support and expressed need for childcare places coming from both men and women, which carried the day. Subsequently the Board of CSIRO was convinced to fund over a number of years the building of child-care centres in Canberra, North Ryde and Clayton and to provide some of the land needed for a community-based centre at Lindfield.

The 1987 Census also pointed to problems arising for staff from a non-English speaking background, for staff with disabilities and the low proportion of staff of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. So, the focus of the EEO committee changed to address these issues working with the new EEO officer Patricia Quinn-Boas. But that is another story.

Challenges for the future

It is too early to see what effects the 1998 Staff Opinion Poll will have for women in CSIRO, but the yearly statistics put together by CSIRO and the Poll, have illuminated some continuing EEO issues.

- The revolving door

A major growing challenge for CSIRO is the problem of retaining a fair proportion of the new women staff, particularly scientists. To provide scope for rapid changes in research direction, CSIRO staffing has became more "flexible" over the last 15 years, with greater use of transfers, more redundancies and greater turnover of post-doctoral and technical staff employed on short-term contracts. In the year ending June 1997, 1615 staff joined CSIRO and 2019 staff left.

The number of women in CSIRO plateaued between 1994 and 1997 at 33-34% of total staff. This reflected the higher turnover of female staff compared to male staff, with a greater proportion of total female staff leaving. Over those 4 years women made up an impressive 49% of the staff commencing with CSIRO, but they also made up 47% of the staff leaving the organisation. While the reasons for staff cessations were not broken down by gender in the statistics, the main reasons for cessation were completion of term (62%), resignation (17%) and redundancy (17%), with only 3% of exits due to retirement (Human Resource Statistics June 1997).

The hypothesis that women are over-represented amongst staff made redundant because of refused transfer to another city or down-sizing of large groups, should be tested against the data available to CSIRO management, as should the supposition that proportionally fewer female post-docs are eventually employed in tenured positions.

- The glass ceiling

Unfortunately, the CSIRO published statistics do not allow us to compare rates of promotion between men and women. The EEO Census data in1988 allowed some interesting multi-variable analysis on factors contributing to promotion, which showed that curiously that having children enhanced success, but only for men.

It would be highly valuable to repeat this type of analysis today. While CSIRO continues to have a merit promotion system, since the late 1980's it also depends on annual performance evaluations, in which staff members are rated on how well they achieved their set objectives. While in theory this should make promotions more objective; in practice a system which requires individuals to list their own achievements discriminates against those who tend to share the credit and who are less inclined to blow their own trumpets! I suspect that those women and some men whose focus is cooperation and team-work rather than competition are disadvantaged.

My other concern, based on prevailing male attitudes and anecdote, is whether CSIRO is promoting women (or men) who work part-time on merit. In my experience, many male supervisors in CSIRO assume that women who work part-time are not serious about their careers. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, with bias in allocation of challenging work, the tendency for evaluations to be distorted by expectations, and the discouragement of women who are told not to expect promotion while they still work part-time.

In the Falls 1998 Opinion Poll which asked staff to what extent if any, they had been treated unfairly in relation to 8 different matters, it was pleasing to see that there were only small differences between male and female responses for 7 areas. However, twice as many women said they had been treated unfairly, sometimes or often, in the allocation of repetitive duties - 19.1% compared with 8.9% of men. It would be interesting to know the response rates for permanent part-time staff or casual staff. Repetitive duties are double burden, since they usually reduce a person’s opportunity to work at a higher level, which is required for promotion.

A new extensive statistical analysis of factors correlating with promotion would provide a useful test of the hypothesis that CSIRO does promote on the basis of merit, without influence of extraneous factors. This would either generate confidence in the system or provide pointers to areas needing to be addressed.

- Not enough women at the top

At the top, CSIRO is still largely a man’s world, with women making up only 10% of research scientists and Chiefs. CSIRO still has a dominant male management culture, though it is exposed to some moderating influences of professional women at a corporate level. Elizabeth Heij has recently addressed the key issues involved in "The impact of women of the top". It’s a great article and I recommend her discussion of why some women with consensus management styles are not selected for top positions and the benefits they could bring for organisations.

One result for CSIRO, to put my opinion bluntly, is that research priority setting is dominated by "alpha" males, limiting the input from women and younger men. In addition, the 30% external funding target has tended to bias CSIROs efforts towards short-term research of direct benefit to business, rather than favouring more research for public good.

For instance, my view is that we need more emphasis on research aimed at reducing and ameliorating man’s negative impact on our world eg. through conservation, renewable energy sources, pollution and waste control, bio-remediation and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. CSIRO is searching for solutions to today’s problems, and needs to focus more effort on the concerns of our youth; on the research issues important for tomorrow.

Particularly given the long lead-time needed for research, CSIRO needs a more futuristic view, which better reflects the diversity of community values, so that it remains relevant to Australia. One means of addressing this problem, would be to promote greater participation of all staff, as de facto community representatives, in research priority setting within the new Sector structure of CSIRO.

- Loss of EEO focus

Another problem is complacency and apparent loss of impetus for further changes. The EEO subcommittee was disbanded in 1990, and its responsibilities were subsumed by a Human Resources subcommittee. I have said "apparent" because it is possible that this is only a problem of perception on my part - now that I am no longer in contact with the people making policy changes. The devolution of responsibility for EEO matters from a corporate level to Divisions has also meant that changes are harder to observe, except locally, and progress could be very patchy, with little or no improvement for some of the workforce.

However, on the positive side, more innovative approaches are now possible in those work-sites where EEO principles are valued. For example one division has, on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis, decided to pay the cost of a nanny to care for sick children, when requested so that a parent can continue at work, instead of taking Personal Leave.

Hopes for the future

The new Regular Home-based Work arrangements could provide useful flexibility for some staff for example with responsibility for caring for disabled or older family members. Although only 45% of staff responding to the Poll knew about them, 3.5% of the men and 3.0% of women were using these arrangements.

The recently introduced salary packaging can be used to pay CSIRO childcare fees out of pre-tax income, so an alternate plan to assist parents paying non-CSIRO childcare fees should be a priority, given the exceptional increases in these costs over the last few years.

Finally, I take hope from the 1998 Poll results, some of which I’ve already referred to above. In addition, there have been big improvements in the reduction of sexual harassment in all categories, to about a third the level reported in 1987. The number of women who believed they have been treated unfairly in the last 12 months because of their sex, had reduced somewhat from 17% to 15.5%. However when we look at perceived unfair treatment in areas such as allocation of resources and staff, travel, promotions, term status the responses of men and women are very similar. The Poll results should provide new incentives further improvement.

Is CSIRO still a man’s world?

In answer to the question posed by my title, CSIRO has made excellent progress since 1984, in the employment of women in general and in the provision of family-friendly policies, so that in some respects it is no longer a man’s world. However, its still largely a man’s world at the top, and CSIRO needs to address the issues of revolving doors and glass ceilings to resolve the resultant imbalance in culture and management styles. There is still room for improvement to make CSIRO an ideal workplace for todays men and women.

Sources

1. Report to the CSIRO Consultative Council by the Sub-committee on the Employment of Women. October 1983.
2. Survey report to the Consultative Council by the Sub-committee on the Employment of Women. Cecily Neil 1983
3. CSIRO Personnel Statistics Yearbook 1985/86
4. CSIRO EEO Census Report. Maureen Bickley and Chris King. 1988
5. CSIRO Human Resource Statistics. June 1997
6. The impact of women at the top. Elizabeth Heij 1998 WISENET J, 46:7-9
7. Staff Opinion Poll, Falls Corporate Research Pty Ltd, May 1998

Rosemary Sutton has worked with CSIRO for 19 years. She is a senior research scientist and her current research is the molecular genetics of coat-colour in sheep and the development of wool follicles. She is married with three children. Photo: Rosemary Sutton today with her children.

If you would like to comment on her article, she can be reached at: R.Sutton@prospect.anprod.csiro.au or write to WISENET.

Figure 1: CSIRO by Gender 1986-1997
(page 36 from CSIRO Human Resource Statistics. June 1997)

Table 1: Recent Staff Turnover in CSIRO by Gender
(data drawn from CSIRO Human Resource Statistics. June 1997)