Imagine a world where universities and research institutions compete with each other to be the best at supporting the career progression of women.
Where universities will not be able to apply for major research funding unless they can demonstrate they’ve made progress in addressing the gender inequity in science that still exists despite the massive leaps towards real gender equity in the past century.
The notion may sound idealistic but a move to make this a reality in Australia is already well underway.
One scientist who is particularly determined for women in science to be offered equal opportunities to their male peers is Professor Jenny Martin, Director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD) in Brisbane, Queensland.
She explains that she is passionate about finding a solution to what she calls a “wicked problem” in science and academia – the higher attrition of women relative to men – because she has lived it.
Professor Martin recalls that when she was an undergraduate her female peers scored more academic prizes than her male counterparts – they were clearly bright enough to achieve.
Yet three decades later Professor Martin frequently finds herself the only female sitting on the boards of decision-making committees.
Where have all the women gone?
It’s an issue that she finds concerning given the amount of big problems we need to solve in this world.
“We’re not going to solve the world’s problems if everyone sitting around the table making the decisions has the same life experiences and the same background,” she told the limbic in an interview just before she delivered the prestigious Wunderly Oration at this year’s Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand congress in Canberra.
She explains that we question women more because we don’t expect to see them in leadership positions.
“When we see a woman taking charge we question it more, when we see a man taking charge we accept their credentials without question,” she says.
Women are probed more, expected to justify their achievements more, and subsequently they question themselves more, she says.
“That leads to the situation we have at the moment where in academia we still have more women than men at undergraduate level and less than one in five professors are women,” she says.
“That’s not good enough because it means we are missing out on half of our best talent – we all need to do something about that.”
Professor Martin reflects on the fact that when she first started out in her academic career she didn’t feel brave enough to tackle the issue of gender equity head on.
After all, her seniors were men who she relied on for opportunities, support and career advancement.
It was when she was awarded an inaugural ARC Laureate fellowship in 2009 that she felt she had finally arrived at a place where she could lobby for change and make a difference.
“I had got to the place where it didn’t matter anymore if speaking out would affect my career – I felt very strongly that I wanted to change the system for those coming after me,” she said.
It’s hard to fix something you can’t see
But how is it possible to solve a problem that is so ingrained within our society, where do we even begin?
Like a lot of issues, the first step towards solving gender inequity is to recognise there’s a problem.
This sounds simple, but as Professor Martin explains, we are often not aware of our biases because we are all subject to our lived experiences right from the day we are born.
“It’s no longer fit for purpose – we don’t live in a patriarchal society anymore yet we still live with the vestiges of that obsolete system because of our unconscious biases,” she says.
She gives a poignant example of a Harvard study published in the journal PNAS in 2012 that gave two versions of a postgraduate resume to professors (women and men) in the US who were asked to assess the suitability of the candidate for a laboratory manager role.
Each resume had exactly the same details except that one had the name ‘Jennifer’ and the other ‘John’.
Alarmingly, Jennifer’s resume was on average rated 15% lower than John’s for competence, and hireability. She was also offered $4000 less pay and less support than John.
The University Olympics
In order to truly overcome the issue of gender inequity we need an evidence-based process that recognises those universities and institutions that are the best at supporting the progression of women, says Professor Martin.
A charter in the UK called Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) is achieving this by recognising and celebrating good practice towards the advancement of gender equality in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM).
Running now for over a decade its mantra is “representation, progression and success for all”.