14 August, 2019
Four PhD students, Charlotte Imianowski, , , and Rachel Fellows, recently attended an Equality4Success hosted My Life in Science talk by , followed by a chat over lunch. Here鈥檚 what we took away from it.
1. Senior women in science care about equality issues It was inspiring to see a senior group leader talking about equality and diversity issues within academic science, as often we see more junior members or dedicated members of staff taking the lead in this area. Katrin eloquently expressed that long term changes to culture must come from the 鈥渢op down鈥 rather than the 鈥渂ottom up鈥.
2. Equality policies matter regardless of your 鈥減arental鈥 status A lot of progress has been made by academic institutions to implement initiatives to improve work life balance which should be commended, but these often revolve around childcare and parental leave. To continue to improve the culture of the workplace we need to include, and make, . 3. It鈥檚 OK to say no One of the important things Katrin said is the importance of saying no and protecting your own time. Obviously, it鈥檚 a great thing that for women to be represented on, and asked to participate in, grant committees and interview panels. However, there are fewer senior women to fill these posts and they may dedicate more time to these 鈥榚xtras鈥 than their male colleagues, therefore having less time for their science. It鈥檚 important to balance, but to me the solution is obvious 鈥 more women in senior roles!
4. Seek out a female mentor Something Katrin stressed is how can be as you progress through science. This isn鈥檛 to say a male mentor isn鈥檛 valuable! But she highlighted how insight from a woman with more experience than you can help you navigate situations that are unique to being a senior woman in science. 5. Things don鈥檛 go smoothly all of the time Whilst Katrin has had a successful career, it wasn鈥檛 smooth sailing the whole time. There can be periods where not much progress is made in research and experiments aren鈥檛 working, meaning that there are long gaps between papers. For Katrin this happened when she was a group leader during a period of change at her institute. All of the groups were reviewed to see if they would move to the new institute. While this was stressful, she and her group kept working and eventually made progress in their project. Then, during the next stage of the reviews, her group made it through. Credit: The Crick Institute
6. Don鈥檛 be afraid to change the direction of your project Despite being interesting at the start, sometimes projects just don鈥檛 go anywhere, you reach a dead end and have tried everything you can think of. A great message from Katrin鈥檚 talk was that you shouldn鈥檛 be afraid to change what you are doing. You need to be confident, propose a new idea to your supervisor and discuss it with them. This is what she did during her post-doc and it led to a much more exciting project.
7. Things aren鈥檛 going to change overnight - but that鈥檚 not a reason not to pursue a career in science Katrin told us that when she first became a group leader, there was a lot of optimism that there was about to be a paradigm shift in women鈥檚 representation in the most senior positions in academic science. Now, 20 years on, as her and many others had hoped (though things have vastly improved). However, she also told us this shouldn鈥檛 be used as a reason to give up on an academic career if that鈥檚 what you want to do - find the right institute and the right mentorship and it鈥檚 possible to go far. Also, while it鈥檚 true huge change didn鈥檛 happen in one go, we鈥檙e certainly in a much better position than 20 years ago!
8. Today鈥檚 generation of academics care a lot about equality issues We also discussed how equality issues are taken much more seriously by younger academics (at PhD and post-doc level). Of course - today鈥檚 junior academics are tomorrow鈥檚 senior academics, so there鈥檚 reason to be optimistic about the future!
14 August 2019