| Issue 62 (WAIS 2) Contents
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Workshop 2A
Equality - Fostering
Supportive Environments
Christiane Ludwig
Session Chair
This workshop looked at the working environment and relationships at work to better support women in SET. Mentoring programs of various sorts have been running in different institutions and more can be done to assist women.
Jane Lowther talked about the changing world of R&D, reiterating some of the key themes of the workshop on New Ways of Working. She outlined diminishing public funding for science, expanding outsourcing in and to the private sector, employers looking for young talent and increasing globalisation of an already global industry.
The new skills needed are enhanced by diversity. They involve collaboration, interaction, integration of new ideas across disciplines. Women are better in these new skills.
Leaders are needed to fulfill the new demands. From Jane’s experience in leadership development training, there is more than one way to gain these skills for leadership. Women should be more confident in their abilities.
Imogen Wareing spoke about her experience with informal mentoring. She put that mentoring is a very important tool to increase the confidence of female scientists. There are benefits both in having a mentor and being a mentor - being a mentor is also a great way to learn. Mentoring can bridge the generation gap, male mentors can be good for career progression and mentors need not be in the organisation where you work.
Imogen recommended that women be active to find a mentor. Gender or age should not be the driving factor. It is experience that counts.
Valerie Clifford introduced group mentoring as another strategy in larger institutions to enhance women’s careers in SET.
Women need to set up social networks, not just in their disciplines, to gain knowledge of the (university) employer structure and processes. Women receive less mentoring than men, are less likely to be tenured, plan their careers less. There are few senior women available for mentoring. Women lack access to power structures where resources are allocated and a lower value is often assigned to their research/teaching areas. Cross-gender mentoring can be problematic in terms of perspectives, sexual static and emotional dependency.
Group mentoring avoids these difficulties. It provides the opportunity to form a number of different relationships, to meet different needs, to access a variety of skills, knowledge and role models and offers greater access to social networking.
Group mentoring works best when facilitated. The facilitator ensures that everyone fully participates, that the environment is supportive and caring, and that the group addresses the needs of the individuals as well as the task. It requires top management support, adequate funding, recognition in workloads and training for co-coordinators and facilitators.
WORKSHOP 2A PANELLISTS
Ms Jane Lowther
Jane Lowther is a Director of
Knowledge Teams International, a company
specialising in executive coaching, leadership and
team development, succession planning, career transition and
change management for knowledge-based organisations. She
works with organisations in the high technology, research and
education fields in Australia and overseas. Together with her
colleague, Robert Marshall, she developed the Knowledge
Team Effectiveness Profiling System which is used by knowledge-based
organisations throughout the world to increase the
effectiveness and creativity of knowledge teams. She was previously
Manager Executive Development, in the Leadership,
Career and Team Development Group with CSIRO.
Assoc Prof Valerie Clifford
Associate Professor Valerie Clifford is Head of the Higher Education Development Unit at Monash University. She has initiated and run a group mentoring program at the University of Canberra, that is still going, and is a mentor and mentee on an individual mentoring program at Monash. She sees group mentoring as important strategically for women in academia. Her current research interests are group mentoring, reflective practice and inclusive pedagogy (especially in terms of gender and culture).
Ms Imogen Wareing
Imogen Wareing is the Managing Director of The Growth Connection Pty Ltd, specialists in organisational and personal change, leadership and career development, mentoring and coaching. She has been involved with the introduction of mentoring programs into 33 organisations and professional associations and is author of “Guidelines on Mentoring for Women” published by the Department of Women. She is Australia’s leading consultant in this area and has had a life long involvement in supporting the career progress of women. Her experience with mentoring for women includes Executive Management of Women and Management Inc and political mentoring with Emily’s List.
Christiane Ludwig