What's the 'Gold standard' for conference diversity approach

There's much debate currently on how to increase representation of minority groups at scientific conferences.  It's essential that the scientific community gets this right, as conferences are where many careers are made and by dis-advantaging one section of our community we are making it poorer.

So what's the best approach?  Is there a current gold standard that conferences can aspire to in order to maximise their representation of the diverse community that drives them?  This post is inspired by Jenny Martin's PLOS paper, and the hope has been to interpret it into actionable items for organisation committees.

Have a conference policy - A stated commitment by the conference organising committee to achieving representation of the whole community published before registrations open.  This should be disseminated and upheld by all involved in organising sessions and inviting speakers.

Have that policy underpinned by a code of conduct - Often now covered by the code of conduct of a sponsorship organisation, but good to have explicitly stated - what is the expectation on behavior within the conference, where can abuses of this be reported.

Collect and report the data - This is key to tracking and understanding issues in the community and to see if you are meeting your policy goals.  A continued commitment to this, supported by sponsor organisation, will enable long-term trends and improvements to be monitored.  Report gender statistics on Kat Holt's site gathering statistics for all Australian Conferences.  

Have a statement on accessibility - How accessible is your conference and venue to those with disabilities? Are there any special considerations that need to be made for a sector of your community?  Have you given them a contact to flag if they require additional assistance.

Provide childcare bursaries and funding for accessibility needs -  Budget for grants to increase participation from parents of young children and for any needs flagged by those requiring special assistance in attending the conference.

Provide networking session for minority groups - Where identified, provide networking session for those advocating for a particular minority representation.

Provide time in conference schedule for discussion of diversity issues - Diversity representation is a concern of all of the community and time in the main schedule should be made for discussion of these issues, update on progress and approach.  This may be in the form of a workshop session, or if appropriate through abstract submissions.

So would covering all these represent a 'gold standard' in a conference's approach to diversity and inclusion?  Or are their other things that could be included, please do add these to the comments below.  Are there any extra action items, for instance, that perhaps are only applicable to the physics community?

Make a list!

I'm getting a bit tired of all-male or male-dominated speaker lists.  My own field (neutron scattering/high-pressure) has a good number of high-profile of women and a growing number further down the ranks and yet we are still under represented in the conferences I attend.  The same can often be said about overall diversity too.

I'm not going to spend this (short) post talking about why having a diversity policy for your conference/workshop/school is important (Jenny Martin has written an excellent post about this) but I want to urge you all to take positive action:

1. Make a list of women speakers in your field.  
2. Keep it, and add to it.

I guarantee it will be useful, to yourself - to your colleagues - or even to pass it on to a conference organiser that may have been remiss in not knowing about them.  A number of communities are setting up webpages for such lists - for instance the 'Women under High-Pressure'. 

 

Posted by Helen Maynard-Casely - Chair of the Women in Physics group

Awards season in upon us!

The following AIP medals and awards are now open for nomination:

·         The Harrie Massey Medal for contributions to physics made either by an Australian physicist or by a physicist working in Australia

·         The Alan Walsh Medal for significant contributions to industry by a practising physicist in Australia

·         The Walter Boas Medal for excellence in physics research in Australia (in the past five years)

·         The Education Medal, which recognises significant contributions to university physics education

·         The Bragg Gold Medal, which recognises the student with the most outstanding PhD thesis in physics

·         The award for Outstanding Service to Physics for exceptional contribution to the furtherance of physics as a discipline

·         And the  inaugural early-career research award, the Ruby Payne-Scott Medal, which recognises outstanding contributions made by a physicist who is just beginning their career.

More information aip.org.au. Nominations close 1 June (Bragg Gold medal 1 July).

New year, new challenges for Women in Physics

Gender issues are set to take centre stage in 2016, already this January we have seen strides taken to address sexual harassment within the Astronomy community. It is my hope that what has happened (mainly in the US at present) will send waves through other communities – and persuade them to revisit their policies and procedures when dealing with it. I urge you all to look up the procedure for dealing with sexual harassment complaints in your own department, and hope dearly that you never need them but you may be able to help someone who does.

So, onward from that somber note, 2016 will see the pilot members of Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) forum put together their applications for the equivalent of the Athena Swan Awards. With the awards due to be handed out in 2018, this will set the new standard for policies of gender equity across science institutions in Australia. Elsewhere, WiSENet have merges with Women in Science AUSTRALIA – hopefully making for a louder voice in advocating women in STEM subjects.

Looking forward, in December we have the joint 13th Asian Pacific Physics Conference and 22nd Australian Institute of Physics Congress happening in Brisbane from the 4th-8th December. We are hoping to have a similar program of Women in Physics sessions, and are looking for suggestions of invited speakers for these. It’s a really exciting opportunity to discuss our issues with our colleagues from Asia.

Other articles of interest Meg Urry’s comment in Nature on Science and gender – why we all must work harder for gender equity. 

The University of Arizona has put together an information sheet about how to avoid gender bias in reference writing. Find that at this link.

An interesting paper in Physical review special topics – physics education research, on 'Factors that affect the physical science career interest of female students.'

And this just made me smile.

My 5-year old's best friend has a science lab in her house. Not pictured: wash station, balance, microscope pic.twitter.com/5BbeIA37hR

— Andrew D. Steen (@drdrewsteen) January 20, 2016

Women get a much needed boost in research funding gender equity plan

Sarah Maddison, Swinburne University of Technology

Women make up 44% of Australian academics, but just 24% of professors. One of the contributing factors for this disparity is that there are fewer women applying for research grants than men, even though women are just as successful at winning grants as men.

Given that research grant success is a key promotion criterion at most institutes, this hampers the ability of women to reach senior positions. So if we can encourage more women to apply for grants, then this could help increase the number of women professors.

This week saw the Australian Research Council (ARC) announce its Gender Equality Action Plan. This includes a range of actions aimed to ensure equal opportunity for men and women to participate in its National Competitive Grants Programme.

The ARC has already included maternity and paternity leave for all grants, and part-time options for early and mid career researchers with children or other carer responsibilities. It has also extended the eligibility criteria of some grants to account for time out of research for maternity leave and carer responsibilities.

Previously, the ARC would rate research output relative to the number of years since PhD completion, which would disadvantage women who had taken time out to start a family. Now research performance is based on the opportunity the researcher has had to do research.

The ARC has also introduced two prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowships specifically targeted for outstanding women.

The ARC Gender Equality Action Plan collects all these initiatives into a single document, along with new initiatives such as improving the gender balance of ARC selection committee members, raising awareness of parental leave entitlements and part-time options, and monitoring the impact of recent changes to eligibility and leave provisions.

ARC Centres of Excellence will also be required to develop and implement an equity plan.

It will also consider unconscious bias training for grant assessors and the ARC College of Experts, who are the people who ultimately decide who gets funded and who does not.

Why change is needed

These initiatives are long overdue and whole-heartedly supported by the academic community.

While there is still debate over whether parenthood decreases productivity among academics, various studies show that the rate of research output drops for women returning from maternity leave and their research output is affected until their children are teenagers.

This effect is also far greater for mothers than fathers. A recent study of 10,000 economists found the research productivity of mothers dropped by 17% compared to 5% for fathers.

Targets and quotas make some people uncomfortable. But such actions are probably needed to create the disruptive change required to re-balance gender inequities. While differences in the grant success rates for men and women are relatively small, there are enormous differences in the numbers of men and women applying for ARC funding across almost all disciplines.

In the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) areas, between three and seven times more men than women are applying for grants. In the HASS (health, arts and social science) areas, this drops to one to three times more men than women applying. There are more women than men applying for ARC grants in only two fields of research: education; and language, communication and culture.

This is why the two targeted Laureate Fellowships (one in STEM and one in HASS) are accompanied by additional funds to support ambassadorial activities by the recipient to promote women in research and to mentor early career researchers.

Now that research output is judged relative to opportunity, career breaks and non-research tasks (like heavy teaching and administrative loads) can be taken into consideration.

Going forward

The ARC has no control over the employment conditions or workplace culture in universities, but it does control the research funding. Because ARC grants are generally paid to organisations rather than to researchers, they can put conditions on the funding. The ARC requires research institutes to comply with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 when signing funding agreements.

The ARC also expects institutes to have a gender equity policy in place. If the ARC wanted to push the issue, it could require institutes to hold a Workplace Gender Equality Agency Employer of Choice for Gender Equality award, for example. Or it could require institutes to participate in programs like the Science Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) initiative.

The Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering recently launched this pilot of the Athena SWAN Charter, which aims to improve gender equity and increase participation of women in STEMM (the second “M” is for medicine). The SAGE pilot is strongly supported by the ARC.

The Athena SWAN initiative began in the United Kingdom with the aim of encouraging and supporting women in STEMM careers. Since 2011, UK medical research institutes have been required to have an Athena SWAN award to receive research funds.

Will the ARC head in that same direction? There is no doubt that funding drives behaviour. And if the ARC Gender Equality Action Plan can drive good behaviours, then it will be a great success.

Sarah Maddison, Dean of Science, Professor of Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Where do we go from here?

It has now been six months since the Women in Physics group was rejuvenated at the AIP congress in December.  Since then we've had renewed motivation from the AIP council to support our aim, seen a blog established to support the community, have seen our committee members co-opted to a number of other positions in the AIP and now have picked our 2015 Women in physics lecturer.

It's probably time that we started to think strategically about what our aims are up to December 2016, and how we are going to move towards them.  So with that in mind, I’m (Helen – Chair of the Women in Physics group) putting together a strategy, outlining our issues and suggesting an (realistic) action to undertake.  So I thought I’d put this to you all – please add your thoughts in the comments!  What I’ll do is collate them and put a finalised strategy and action to the committee.      

Women in Physics group draft strategy 2014-2016

What are the BIG issues?

1.    Vast drop in young women taking high-school physics in Australia.

2.    Women aren’t reaching top positions in physics and physics-based industries.

3.    Women in developing countries in need of support for their science.

What do we do already?

The group already assists in the well-established AIP women in physics lecture tour, definitely a positive step towards addressing issue 1 through a positive role model. 

Established session at AIP congress every two years.  This has been very successful, along with the establishment of a ‘Women in Physics’ breakfast.  Excellent networking for issue 2.

Establishment of Women in Physics blog http://womeninphysicsoz.blogspot.com.au/ , rather than a newsletter.  The idea is that it will be more ‘evolving’ and allow more people to be involved and comment.

What are the difficulties in doing more?

We’re quite a diverse bunch.  Think that the reason that the astronomers seem a lot more focused (and successful in these activities) is that they are united about a science focus.  With a rapidly declining number of just physics departments it is getting harder to identify who is a physicist.  We are all pretty cross disciplinary these days. 

No one is collating the numbers.  Gender balance statistics used to be collected, but now aren’t. 

Geography, a problem for all Australian societies – membership is spread over an area the size of Europe.  That said, collating numbers should enable us to identify where people are so that we run

Possible things to help us do more?

Partnerships – Women in Engineering,  RACI,  Women in Astronomy?

Involvement with Science Academy’s SAGE project?

Seeking sponsorship – have seen some very impressive  work by the UNSW engineers in seeking sponsorship for their events http://wieunsw.weebly.com/

How to move forward?

At present, partnership must be key.  I propose to approach the Women in Chemistry group of RACI, and suggested a joint event in Sydney (they have run networking events in Melbourne, so would increase their reach too).  Propose event of ‘science leadership’ – plus networking after.   

Congratualtions Cathy

We'd like to congratulate Cathy Foley who, along with her colleague Keith Leslie, was awarded the prestigious Clunies Ross award for innovation and commercialisation.  This has been for the development of the LANDTEM system, which has discovered $4 billion of ore deposits across Australia - and $10 billion across the world. 

Cathy is a former Women in Physics lecturer and Chair of the Women in Physics group.  She's a fantastic role model and incredible supporter of women in physics.  Do check out her TEDx talk on what women can do for science - it's a great outline of the issues and how unconscious bias can hold us all back and what we can do to move ourselves forward.