International Women’s Day
March 8 is International Women’s Day. It is a global celebration of the achievement of women and also an opportunity to raise awareness of persisting discrimination.
We wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on where we are in terms of gender equality at the College of Science and Engineering and to find out more about the experiences, challenges and hopes of the women who work here.
As an organisation, the College is committed to improving the experience of everyone who works here. Equality of opportunity for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation is a key goal, not only because we believe it is ethically right but also because we know that diversity means strength.
The challenge
Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines/subjects have historically been male dominated, which we see reflected in our own staffing balance. In Professional Services we have close to an even split but in our Academic Staff the ratio is about 2:1 in favour of men. As well as that uneven weighting in our demographics, we also have an ongoing challenge with our equal pay gap between the genders, which is caused by a lack of diversity across pay grades. We tend to see a higher proportion of men in senior roles and more women in lower paid roles while this, rather than differing levels of pay for men and women within pay grades, tends to be the cause of our gender pay gap, we do observe gendered pay gap, particularly at grade 10.
Inequalities in STEM begin early, with data from the Scottish Government (page 19) showing that between 2016 – 2020, the numbers of women taking STEM subjects as part of their Highers has remained relatively static. Enrolments in STEM courses at Scottish Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) (page 21), show more promise with women making up more than 40% of enrolments in all STEM subjects, except in engineering, technology and computing. If more women are applying to study STEM subjects, we hope to eventually see this trend filter through to our own student and subsequently staffing numbers. In the meantime, there are a number of initiatives already in place across the College which are helping to address some of the barriers women face when pursuing a STEM career.
Support
One example is the Molly Ferguson Initiative which promotes the visibility and community for women in the School of Engineering. It organises networking events and awards funds for staff and student-led activities that meet its aims. The School of Mathematics have just finished the first round of recruitment for their new Flora Philip Fellowship scheme for early career postdoctoral researchers having recruited three new fellows, all of whom are female and will start in September 2023.
The Christina Miller fellowship in the School of Chemistry is a well-established three-year fellowship which has traditionally supported female early-career researchers into academia, in its most recent round it was opened-up to also attract applicants from UK-domiciled ethnic minorities. The School of Informatics has a society for women, non-binary and transgender staff and students that organise events and have weekly meetings called Hoppers. They are officially independent of School leadership and self-run, but the school supports them strongly. This academic year the Schools of Biological Sciences and Engineering were successful in winning funding for four Women in STEM Fellowships from the British Council. This will support four Indian female post-docs in STEM to progress their careers.
To combat the gender pay gap mentioned earlier, the College’s extra sabbatical scheme for female academic staff (grades UE08 and UE09) aims to help advance the number of women in senior academic roles. As well as these and many other examples, each School also have their own Athena Swan (or equivalent) action plans which work towards levelling the playing field between men and women.
We also now have an active EDI Committee led by College Dean of Systematic Inclusion Professor Karen Halliday. The committee connects school EDI leads together regularly, helping to raise issues and share best practice across the College on all matters EDI-related. It also feeds into University-level EDI networks, giving us a chance to exert influence at a wider organisational level.
While we have made considerable progress, we recognise that there are still barriers for women and particularly for those who identify as BME, disabled, or LGBTQ+. We remain committed to lowering barriers, through policy reform and initiatives such as the Wellbeing project. I would like to thank the School and Professional Services EDI leads, and the EUSA liberation officers for their hard work and dedication to creating a fairer and warmer university culture better able to serve our diverse student and staff community.
Personal thoughts and experiences
We asked female colleagues to submit answers to a few questions about their experiences working in STEM and their hopes for the future.
Related links:
The UoE Women of Colour Leadership Programme
The Aurora Initiative - Advance HE's leadership development initiative for women.
DDI – Historical Heroines
DDI – Women in Data