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Quality Careers for Women in Science?
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The APESMA’s Women in the Professions Survey Report 2007 has raised some challenging questions about the career opportunities and quality of work lives of women in the technology professions.
Key findings include that female scientists are earning less than their male
counterparts at equivalent responsibility levels. Female scientists were also
more likely to hold positions with lower responsibility levels than men. There
has been little overall change in these patterns since thefirst APESMA report in
2000.
APESMA has endeavoured to identify the factors that limit women’s careers. The
1953 female respondents to the survey identified the most significant factors to
impact on career advancement as balancing work and life, followed by workplace
culture.
The difficulty in balancing work and life is reflected in long hours of work and
a predominance of full-time roles. The majority of work undertaken by female
scientist respondents was full time (75%), slighter lower than IT (77%) and
engineering (79%) but substantially different from pharmacy (49%).
Across the technology professions the average number of hours worked per week by
full-time employees was reported as 45 hours, well in excess of the standard 38
hour week.
The capacity to balance work and life was particularly felt by women with
children. 53% of survey respondents did not have children (average age 39). This
reflects the rate of loss of female technology professionals from the workforce
due to family responsibilities and higher levels of childlessness of women in
the professions than in the general community.
Interestingly, there is a variation in the number of women respondents without
children in the different professions. For example 60% of respondents in IT had
no children whereas 48% in pharmacy had no children, the average ages for
respondents in both professions was 40+.
Unfortunately, key benefits that have been aimed at supporting women in
balancing work and family appear ineffective. For example 60% of respondents
with children had taken no paid maternity leave. This may be explained by lack
of access to paid leave and by the view of 60% of respondents with children that
taking maternity leave would be detrimental to their careers.
78% of respondents also had no employer provided on-site childcare and 94% no
employer provided off-site childcare.
It appears unlikely that professional women as individuals will reverse this
situation as 50% of respondents were not confident in negotiating the terms and
conditions of employment with their employers. This is despite the current tight
labour market.
There is a clear opportunity for individuals to come together through employee
representative bodies such as APESMA and groups such as WISEnet to pursue
improvements in conditions of employment and workplace culture. It is timely to
engage government and employers in this endeavour to enhance workforce
participation and full contribution of the skills of professional women in their
chosen fields.
APESMA acknowledges the assistance of FASTS in the distribution of our survey
questionnaire. The full survey report is available online at:
www.apesma.asn.au/women.
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Note. WISEnet members may remember participating in this survey. A call for
participants was distributed to members via email.
