WISENet Where to From Here?
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Professor Sharon Bell was commissioned by FASTS to report on Women in Science. The findings of the report support the dynamic of visibility and invisibility. Junior women are well supported and do not feel the impact of gender discrimination; however, tenured women believe they are marginalized and isolated through differences in salary, allocated space and share in awards. Every step to higher achievement results in fewer women – the ever present scissors diagram. There are no solutions – Sharon said: ‘these are wicked problems that need cunning plans!’ Sharon said that Minister Carr has put advancing the agenda of women in science in his portfolio. However Sharon advised we need to work on changing the paradigms of linear career paths and single discipline science; we need to institute cultures of decision making; and move from ‘accommodation’ and ‘support’ roles to changing the context and culture of science.
The report is available at http://www. fasts.org/images/news2009/fasts%20 women%20in%20science%5B1%5D.pdf
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Bio: Professor Sharon Bell is currently Senior Program Developer at the L.H.Martin Institute, University of Melbourne. Prior to taking up this role she was Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Canberra. Throughout her career Professor Bell has melded creative and academic interests: specifically filmmaking, research (in the fields of Anthropology and Ethnographic Film) and tertiary teaching and administration.
Professor Bell has held a number of synergistic academic leadership positions in
the Humanities and Creative Arts. She has been Head of Studies at the Australian
Film, Television & Radio School, Dean of the Faculties of Creative Arts, later
Arts at the University of Wollongong and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Equity and
Community Partnerships) at Griffith University. Whilst Professor Bell continues
to undertake research on postcolonial
Sri Lanka (the site of her doctoral fieldwork) and on the creative arts and the
academy, the current focus of her research is tertiary education leadership. She
is particularly interested in women in the tertiary sector. In 2005 she
undertook a study of Women in Research in Australia for the AVCC and she has
recently completed a report for FASTS on Women in Science in Australia which
draws on, and expands, her earlier work.
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Thank you for the opportunity to comment on where WISENet stands now, and some ideas about where we might head in future. Many thanks to the founders of WISENet, a few of whom could make it today, and to Dr Anna Robinson, who maintained the enthusiasm and visibility of WISENet while women’s issues fell off the agenda in State and Federal politics. And we’re all indebted to Lynne Wright for taking on the task of organising the forum today, and to all of you busy people who have taken time out to attend.
As we’ve heard, WISENet started when women were accepted into science programmes and jobs in increasing numbers, but didn’t make it further up the line. There was overt and covert discrimination against women, and more practical problems included childcare, superannuation, part-time work, after-school care, maternity leave, timing of meetings, and even just being visible to colleagues.
We’ve heard about WISENet achievements in the past, we know there are a few more women around, but we’ve also seen that things have stagnated since 1995, and that the dreaded ‘scissors’ graph with the proportion of women declining steeply with seniority, still persists. This is the case throughout academia in Australia, and elsewhere in the world. Why is this?
The 1990s started well enough. In May 1993, the then Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Science and the Minister for Science and Small Business, Senator Chris Schacht, established the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Advisory Group to advise on strategies to improve women’s participation in SET careers and education.
The principles adopted for this WISET report, produced in 1995 (1), were primarily to shift away from asking what is wrong with girls and women to questioning what it is about the environment of SET (and society’s perception of it) that it does not attract and retain the interest of girls and women. This included paying more attention to the range of behaviours towards women and girls by those who dominate both the educational and employment contexts of SET (that is men and boys).
The Advisory Group thought that one set of their 14 specific, multi-component recommendations could be implemented almost immediately through the Women’s Statistics Unit within the Australian Bureau of Statistics. However, the WSU was disbanded (‘mainstreamed’) after a change of government in 1996, and the WISET report and its recommendations were mothballed, as is common when a new government takes office.
The recently released FASTS report (2) has a somewhat different focus on the loss of human capital and innovation in a workforce less diverse than the general population, and also has a set of general recommendations. Perhaps if some of the WISET recommendations had been implemented, the FASTS report would have been more positive.
So, is there still a role for WISENet here?
WISENet has slowly been shrinking,
although it’s clear that WISENet’s objectives
have not been achieved yet! Perhaps
we could focus more on the last WISENet
objective – supporting appropriate action
to achieve the others. To this end, I would
like to highlight an area that was not a key
focus of either the 1995 WISET or 2009
FASTS reports. I refer to unconscious bias,
which has received some attention lately.
I have been fascinated by this as with all
insights into how the mind works and how
we absorb cultural assumptions and morés;
it makes me wonder whether I am biased in
my science as well!
One aspect of unconscious bias is known as stereotype threat, which refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group (3). This is especially true if members of the group, e.g. women, are aware that their behaviour might be viewed through the lens of the stereotype, which creates a ‘threat in the air’ of being reduced to the stereotype, which can then lead to underperformance. The classic example is that women do worse when reminded of their sex prior to a maths test, even by merely recording their sex, or having male instead of female invigilators(4,5).
A well-known example of unconscious bias was reported in Nature 12 years ago (6). Of 52 female and 62 male Swedish postdocs applying for a prestigious award from the Swedish Medical Council, only 4 women but 16 men were successful. It turned out that an ‘impact’ score, based on a quantitative analysis of the applicants’ track records, did not match the peer reviewers’ ‘competence’ scores. Only the group of women with impact scores greater than 100 were judged as competent as any of the groups of men, with impact scores ranging from 19-100.
This sort of bias has been known about for many years. For example, a comparison of evaluations of a resumé randomly assigned a male/female name found that both men and women rated the resumé lower if it was from a woman (7), and that the effect was increased if there were fewer women in the pool (8). Another study comparing recommendations by both women and men (9) for 300 successful applicants to a medical school found letters written for women candidates were shorter, raised more doubts, and talked about them as teachers/students rather than researchers/professionals. And in a third example, when asked to assess whether success at a task was due to ‘luck’ or ‘skill’, more women than men were systematically judged by both women and men to be ‘lucky’ (10).
'Blind' evaluations can even up the score; moving to 'blind' auditions for orchestras can increase women's chances of getting beyond the first round by up to 50% (11). Pressure exacerbates this effect: evaluators gave systematically lower job performance scores to women if under time pressure (12). These results suggest that we should question our own judgment every day with every assessment we make!
The FASTS report (2) outlined some of the social pressures on women; for example, in the University of California system, women faculty (4,400 respondents), aged 30-50, with children spent an average of 4.5 hours/week less on professional duties and also spent 18 hours/week more on household and care-giving duties than men (13).
A few final comments on unconscious bias come from Ben Barres, who outlined his (previously her) experience in a Nature article (14). He noted that 'As an undergrad [female] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I was the only person in a large class of nearly all men to solve a hard maths problem, only to be told by the professor that my boyfriend must have solved it for me. I was not given any credit.
'I am still disappointed about the prestigious fellowship competition I later lost to a male contemporary when I was a PhD student, even though the Harvard dean who had read both applications assured me that my application was much stronger (I had published six high-impact papers whereas my male competitor had published only one).
'Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."'
Therefore, I think all WISENet members could take action to combat unconscious bias, which may contribute to the underrepresentation of women at senior levels in science -- and on boards. Getting SMART solutions into the higher echelons of our institutions is a good aim for WISENet members for the next 10 years at least, probably for the next 25 years. It will take that long, judging by how long these things have taken in the past.
Some concrete actions to avoid such bias include:
Question your own judgement and evaluation every day with every assessment you make. Unconscious bias is just that ¡V unconscious, so we need to remind ourselves of it constantly.
Review your letters of reference for stereotype characteristics
Spend a reasonable amount of time on reading applications, writing reviews
Question others' judgement and evaluation in letters of reference, reviews of grant proposals.
Make assessments -- 'blind' -- remove name/gender from research proposals, abstracts submitted for oral presentations, initial evaluation of applicants for jobs, postdocs or postgrad places.
Other concrete actions to help women, but also men, include:
A reasonable job description. Jobs that are incompatible with a reasonable work/life balance take their toll on family and other relationships. Success should be pegged to reasonable standards of productivity, not a bar attainable only by someone living a uni-dimensional life.
Salary support for those currently on 100% external, short-term funding, especially for younger, non-tenured staff who then have more time to work and need to spend less time chasing more short-term funding.
More female colleagues on committees and boards where important decisions are made. There is a strong correlation between diversity of selection committees and diversity of award/job recipients. Gender diversity will be promoted by more diverse search and other committees and provide a positive example to younger women.
Other concrete actions to help parents in particular include:
Automatic paid parental leave -- not only for Government employees. Women may be reluctant to ask for parental leave, and may need negotiation training before approaching an employer about family leave.
Automatic stop of the tenure clock when parental leave is taken. Tenure decisions are usually made within 3-5 years of appointment, and faculty members should have the option of requesting an early tenure consideration if their prior productivity is strong.
Onsite childcare -- at all workplaces. Onsite childcare is one way to simplify parents¡¦ lives, and makes for much more productive, happier and less stressed employees.
Emergency sick care for children Finding emergency childcare at short notice is almost impossible, and finding a replacement to give your specialist lecture or give an important business seminar that day also virtually impossible. A central resource for urgent childcare would reduce stress and be an enormous boon to parents.
A number of universities have implemented some policies along these lines. Encouraging all the others to take them up will keep us going for some time.
The discussion about unconscious bias is derived from presentations by Kathryn Johnston (15), and Freda Walker (16).
References
1. Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, Australia, 1995
www.engineersaustralia.org.au/shadomx/apps/fms/fmsdownload.cfm?file_uuid=7151DBC1-9910-4D8A-EE4D-401BA13D3912&siteName=ieaust
2. Bell, S.
www.fasts.org/images/news2009/fasts%20women%20in%20science%5B1%5D.pdf
3. Steele, C. M. and Aronson, J. (1995) Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 69: 797-811
4. Stricker, L.J., Ward, W.C. (2004) Journal of Applied Social Psychology 34:
665–693
5. Good, C. Aaronson, J., Harder, J.A. (2008) Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology 29: 17-28
6. Wenneras, C., Wold, A., (1997) Nature 387: 341-343
7. Steinpreis, R., Anders, K.A., Ritzke, D. (1999) Sex Roles 41: 509-528
8. Heilman, M. E. (1980) Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 26:
386-395
9. Trix, F., Psenka, C. (2003) Discourse & Society 14: 191-220
10. Deaux, K., Emswiller, T., (1974) Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 29: 80-85
11. Goldin, C., Rouse, C. (2000) American Economic Review 90: 715-741
12. Martell, R.F. (1991) Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21: 1939-1960
13. Mason, M.A., Goulden M. (2004)
http://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/babies%20matterII.pdf
See also http://paesmem.stanford.edu/html/proceedings_12.html
14. Barres, B.A. (2006) Nature 442: 133–136
15. Johnston, K.V. (2008) http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/kathryn_johnston.pdf
16. Walker, F. (2008) http://www.nae.edu/File.aspx?id=12406
