Making science more female friendly
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Making science more female friendly www.rse.org.uk/tapping_talents
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he preface to The Royal Society of Edinburgh’s report on women in science, published in April 2012, includes a sobering statistic: “In 1991 the number of female professors of physics in the UK doubled. It went from one to two!” writes well-known British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The numbers speak for themselves. Despite widespread programs to encourage women into the sciences and technology, they are grossly under-represented all over the world. The dilemma for policymakers remains the same: What can be done to fix the imbalance? The report, titled Tapping All Our Talents, said that encouraging more women into scientific careers is not just a benefit to them, but a boon to society as a whole. Increasing women’s participation in science, technology, and engineering could be worth “at least £2 billion” to the UK alone. A European Union (EU) study, it said, identified how making science more female might help identify new innovations and also boost public support for science. One of the main obstacles to achieving gender balance, however, is the “practical hurdles of family responsibility,” it said. According to Laurie Winkless, a young materials research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London, one quarter of her team are women, but higher up in the organization among the ranks of senior staff, they begin to disappear for exactly this reason. “All of the NPL fellows are male,” she said. “This bothers me. It’s not that there are no great female scientists at NPL. There are. But there are very few who have reached the required level of seniority. My guess would be that family commitments
have certainly contributed to this. If you are away from work for even a few months, it must be exceptionally difficult to keep up to date with what is state of the art in your field.” The experience of Michelle Dickinson, a senior lecturer in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, bears this out. “I had to make a choice to get where I am, and that is not to have children,” she said. “I have seen so many of my female colleagues start out so well, but lose their careers due to having children, mostly because it’s so hard to catch back up after taking a few years off from research.” She suggests that on-site childcare both in the workplace and at international conferences, plus more flexibility in working hours, might help women maintain a career while having a family.
Materials scientist Laurie Winkless of the National Physical Laboratory, UK, leads a research group in which a quarter of her team is female. But higher up in the organization, there are fewer women in senior positions.
“It’s not rocket science,” said Debbie Chachra, an associate materials science professor at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. “At the policy level, provide good access to education, and family-friendly policies, including parenting leave and affordable childcare.” The U
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