Mentoring and Women in Science
Sue Keay
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Queensland
When I began my career in science I naively assumed that I would be selected for jobs on the basis of my skills and merit and that gender would never be an issue. In the two years since I graduated with my PhD, I have seen many of my contemporary graduates succeed and fail within the academic system. In that time I have formed a growing respect for the importance of mentoring in molding one’s academic career. Unfortunately, it is not the type of mentoring that is readily available to most students, particularly women. In my experience it is the fortunate few graduates blessed with generous and well-connected PhD supervisors who have fared best in the academic system. These students are steadily guided down the best path to academic success, they are introduced to all the right people, they are invited to help organize conferences and edit special journal editions. Their supervisors unashamedly use their contacts to actively promote their student’s career prospects. In such a competitive system, there is little opportunity for students with distant, indifferent, jealous or threatened supervisors to succeed. Even fewer opportunities exist for female students to succeed.
As
a female PhD student in a traditionally male-dominated science I was surprised
to find that more than half of my 37 fellow students were women. We studied in
an establishment where, of about 30 members of faculty, there was not a single
tenured woman on academic staff. The women on the fringes of the faculty
attempted to form a support group but the attempt was widely ridiculed. Our
meetings were kept private to avoid the constant carping from our male
colleagues about “secret women’s business”. “Why isn’t there a men’s
mentoring group,” many of the men wanted to know. Why indeed? There was
certainly nothing stopping one from being created, but of course the reason
that women’s mentoring groups exist is the knowledge that most men already
operate within a mentor-driven system, a lot of them just don’t realize it.
There are many opinions as to why, in a field where 50% of the graduates are women, so few women are able to obtain even junior academic positions after completion of their PhDs. I’ll list the most common reasons offered by my colleagues: women have different goals; women want to have babies; women are not competitive enough. One of my female mentors suggested to me that, “as a woman, you can’t be serious about an academic career and be married”. Well why did they accept me as a PhD student then? Let us assume for a moment that women, even married women, are actually as driven, talented and intelligent as their male colleagues, as evidenced by their graduation with PhDs. Why then are so many lost to their field of choice after such high level training? Perhaps the current PhD process fails to offer adequate mentoring to women to allow them to advance in the academic system.
One successful female academic I know, now in the States, has suffered from being one of the rare women on staff in her department. She is the universal mentor to all female students. From career counselor to sexual harassment officer she is expected to provide a universal panacea for all women struggling to get ahead in the academic system. Why are so few men fulfilling such roles? Naturally men feel more comfortable mentoring other men and there is the legitimate fear of sexual harassment complaints when men try to mentor women. These factors make it difficult for men to treat female students in the same way they would treat their male students. Whether it is deliberate or not this often leads to women being isolated and excluded from the mentoring process that nurtures male academics in a male-dominated system.
When I moved to a new university for my (self-generated) post-doc, I was excited to learn that a new women's mentoring system had been adopted. I was paired with a more experienced female academic from another science faculty. Although we had some things in common (difficult supervisors) our research was completely unrelated. We moved in entirely different scientific circles and there was zero chance of any collaboration. Even within the university we mixed with different people as we were from separate faculties. For this reason I found that although my mentor was often a good emotional support she could do little for me in the way of enhancing my career prospects. This is what you need from a mentor. Does this sound very mercenary? Well, how do you think most people get their jobs? A good mentor needs to be somebody in your field of expertise who has both power and respect, someone who knows the people who might hire you and someone who is not averse to using their contacts to help you. There is no room in mentoring for people who feel threatened by their younger colleagues or judgmental, "well, I did it the hard way - why shouldn't everyone else?".
Is affirmative action necessary to improve the number of female academics in the sciences? From my experience such an approach closes more doors for women than it opens. My last research institution was recently forced, after forty years, to appoint a female academic to their all-male domain. The appointment, though rigorously opposed, was eventually advertised. In international journals the institution openly proclaimed in a bold header that they were seeking “Women __scientists”. And went on to explain this extraordinary statement in the next line, “To address a gender imbalance at the XX research institution….”. While the advertisement may have been honest, it was guaranteed to alienate most academic women. Who would want to apply for a position where you would clearly be seen as the token woman on staff?
In academia it is not uncommon for positions to be created for specific individuals. Why is it so difficult to recruit promising female academics to staff before it becomes a gender equity issue? “We never have any suitably qualified women apply for positions” was a frequent comment I heard as a PhD student. One wonders what the definition of “suitably qualified” is when my old institution has been churning out almost even numbers of male and female PhD graduates for the past several years. Perhaps the academics currently in power need to rethink how they select and groom their post-PhD staff if they really want to see “suitably qualified” women applying for such positions. A good start would be to change the culture of all research institutions to include real mentoring for female students by their PhD supervisors not by fringe substitute groups. I believe there is a place for women’s mentoring groups as they provide a useful support mechanism but a support group cannot recommend you for research positions or write you glowing recommendations – that is the job of a PhD supervisor. Either there is a significant problem with the way the current academic system is promoting women within its ranks or we are left with the proposition that women PhD graduates are somehow “inferior” to their male colleagues. How else can the gender imbalance in science faculties in the current university system be explained?