SoapboxScience

So there I was, listening to my line manager’s words: “Sabrina, if you want to become a Professor, you need to start behaving like a Professor”, and thinking “so actually, at the end of the day, the only thing that seems to count is how much funding I manage to secure”. My thoughts were drifting away and memories of the past year started to crowd my mind. I generally find personal development reviews (PDR) quite useful. They help me with planning and devising possible research directions for myself and my group, while helping me to reflect on what I have accomplished and what I could have done better.

Last year was a tough one though – this was my second year of work in the UK, and I found myself juggling new courses, working on an endless Erasmus Mundus application, supervising PhD students – two of whom were in their final year – administering grants, doing research, organising an international workshop and giving talks, seminars and lectures at conferences and schools. And in the middle of this usual researcher’s life, there was the tragic and sudden loss of one of my best friends and the difficulty of a long-distance relationship with my husband (a physicist too, living and working in Finland).

Some kind of uneasiness was growing inside me during the PDR discussion – “In which way, am I not behaving as a Professor?” I asked. Apparently, it seems that one thing I needed to do was to supervise more PhD students. When I moved to the UK three years ago part of my group remained in Finland, so I continued supervising my three students there alongside starting to supervise two postgraduate students in the UK. But the thing is the Finnish students do not “count”. Only students enrolled in my University seem to be officially contributing to my chances of being promoted. But then, what about the time I spend supervising the others? Is that a waste of time?

To be clear, I have not applied or thought of applying for a promotion; that is, for the moment. And this really was not the issue. My line manager was just doing his job; trying to show me the direction to take in order to advance my career. What did make me think, however, was the realisation that, in one way or another, the criteria and values that seem to count for the most in academia are basically money and numbers. While I do appreciate the importance of securing funding, as it is indeed at the very basis of anyone’s ability to build and sustain a research group and carry out research, I do not believe that this criteria has to be the only important one against which scientists should be judged. Similarly, I do not believe that the number of supervised PhD students should be more important than the quality of the supervision; we do know well that there is a subtle equilibrium between the two.

I am not complaining about my work environment – I have worked in much worse situations in the past – and I do appreciate many things about my school and institute. However, money and power are values that should be complemented with other immensely important values such as more attentive supervision of students, or the provision of time and space for more creative and interdisciplinary endeavours to be pursued, which may not necessarily be motivated by how much money they will generate. The current lack of recognition of the many aspects that define a good scientist is likely to be underpinned, among other things, by the poor level of diversity in our STEM community.

Women are notoriously under-represented in science, especially at top position levels. Yet how can women in STEM bring about change? I was thinking of possible answers to this question yesterday when an email by Tara Sophia Mohr popped-up in my mailbox. I think she beautifully answers this question so I just decided to conclude sharing by her words with you.

“The task of our time is not just to help women participate in positions of power. The task is to empower women to transform the communities and institutions of which they are a part. The task is not just to help women participate in the system as it is, but to enable women to transform it. And here’s the thing I think and am scared to say: In a world shaped by masculine consciousness (which I’d argue politics, business, and our major systems still are), every woman who does her work with authenticity is a force for change. Yes, every woman who does her work with authenticity is a force for change. That means you. A visionary. A change agent. A rebel. I know maybe you didn’t sign up for that, but if you are really showing up, you’ll be a force for change because the questions, ways of working, and ideas you’ll be bringing into the arena at work will be quite different from what’s already there. It’s as if the status quo of your industry/workplace/community has long been blue and now you are showing up with red. Okay, that’s big. Let’s just breathe through that one for a sec. Of course, being a force for change entails struggle: the times when it feels like your new way of thinking is as small as the head of a pin, and the status quo is a MOUNTAIN the times when you have to face your fears of being seen as naive, stupid, or crazy for your ideas and ideals the times when the desire for change burns so intensely in your heart and you try to figure out, “how do I follow that burning while there are the kids and the aging parents to take care of, not to mention the laundry?” Rather than getting lost in that heaping pile of overwhelm (which feels kinda like that heaping pile of dirty laundry, doesn’t it?) today, let’s refocus on the simple stuff: You are a force for change. Struggle – and amazing moments – go with the territory. You are not alone. You are actually in the company of millions of fabulous women, who, just like you, are in the struggle of trying to at the same damn time make change and fit in enough to be allowed to make that change. We’re all up to that together.”

What’s one of the things you would most like to see transformed in your University or Research Institute? Think about it for a minute, and then leave a comment

Dr Sabrina Maniscalco is a Reader at the School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

A recent blog post, by the wonderful but anonymous blogger Female Science Professor (FSP) led to a heated debate on workplace gender inequality and biases towards one sex- again. Those debates seem to be everywhere at the moment, at least in my twittersphere and blogosphere but I am not complaining, as I am fully convinced of the prevalence of gender inequality, and aware that many people are not.

This particular post was entitled “Life is just unfair to men”. While the heavy sarcasm infused in the title is obvious, this post was about a genuine letter FSP had received from a male reader. I will let you read it for yourself but the gist is that this person thinks there is no bias against women in academia or anywhere else, and worse that men are treated unfairly as a reason of that perceived bias by all the feminists out there (I may be paraphrasing, don’t hold it against me).

What I like most about blogs, in general, are the comment sections, and as always I was not disappointed. In this instance, the debate raged on, and as a feminist myself, I was sometimes enraged, and sometimes disheartened by some opinions. Of course, I also agreed with many of them. The protagonist of FSP’s original post took the opportunity to make several dubious or downright wrong comments himself, but I don’t want to get into that here. Instead, there is one thing that he mentioned that I kind of agree with, and trust me this is not easy to confess.

It’s the one thing that I have been struggling to deal with in this gender equality debacle debate: women and men are biologically different. I mean it doesn’t take a scientist to see this, for example, on average women will have less upper body strength than men. If you are after scientific proof, I am sure you can find peer-reviewed studies showing differences in average male and female brain use or hormones and how this affect the way they act, or think- I am however too lazy to dig them out myself (is that a male or female trait??). I suppose that it is also true that on average men tend to be more assertive and aggressive at work than women. The fact is we are intrinsically different.

The reason this truth makes feminists, or at least me, uncomfortable is that it is used as a key argument by people saying that women are not equal to men in terms of overall capacity- including in academia. Because I know academia better than other sectors, I will comment on this career only and say that this argument is utter rubbish! Do you want to know why I can reconcile this intrinsic sex difference into a framework of equality in science? It is because it does not matter! It does not matter if the path a woman and man take to solve a problem is different, as long as it is solved. Who cares if the woman relied more on one part of the brain and the man on another? Who cares if the average woman spends more time thinking about shopping/shoes/make-up/*insert girly cliché here* than the average man? Does anyone think that the average male scientist spends his entire time thinking only of science and the pursuit of knowledge and nothing remotely frivolous?

There is no evidence that a woman scientist cannot intellectually perform as well as her male counterpart. Those who say men are better than women at math or physics -you know the proper hard sciences- are talking nonsense. And please don’t start with the argument that there are more male geniuses than female geniuses in the world. To be honest, it means very little to me and most people because those few geniuses are not responsible for the huge pay gap between equally qualified men and women. The reason why there are less female professors than male professors as nothing to do with abilities and everything to do with unconscious (sometimes conscious) bias against women. Yes, you will find individuals that are better at one aspect of academia than other people. This applies however to both males and females and it has nothing to do with their own gender, just their individual abilities.

So, I wish that everyone would acknowledge that women and men as a group are different from each other on my aspects, and that is a good thing. However, this difference is never a reason for them not to be equals.

Dr Alienor Chauvenet is a Postdoc at the Institute of Zoology (ZSL) and the
National Wildlife Management Centre (AHVLA); she can be contacted via Twitter
@AChauvenet