WiSET Annual Report 2007/08

Professor Philippa Reed

Philippa Reed,
School of Engineering Sciences

This is the fifth annual report since the group's inception in 2002.

Group structure/organisation

Since anyone who supports our aims is a welcome member of the group we have been actively recruiting new members (both male and female) via our events (e.g. using sign-up lists at the Campbell lectures) as well as producing flyers about the group which will now be included in all new staff induction packs. We have also revamped and updated our web-site and set up an internal SUSSed group, with regular news updates. This year we have linked more strongly to Theano activities, with a combined events timetable. Theano events are open to all female undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths. Theano also runs regular networking events with speakers and free lunches. We have had a WiSET steering committee/strategy discussion meeting near the start of each term, and held one major networking/training event towards the end of each term. In addition we have had informal monthly networking lunches in the University staff club.

Aims for 2007/8

One aim this year has been to target postdoctoral workers (both men and women) for career support, as this can be a critical point in the "leaky pipeline" which sees the proportion of women in SET steadily declining as one goes up through the seniority levels. We wondered whether women (as a minority group) might be particularly disadvantaged by not having sufficient mentoring or peer support at this critical career stage. To this end we particularly focussed on postdoctoral staff focus groups and developing a bid to support their career development - this is reported on in more detail below.

People

Congratulations to those members of WiSET who received Personal Chairs in the last round of promotions in June 2007 (in no particular order): Geraldine Clough, Jeremy Frey, Mary Edwards and Andrea Russell (all on the Steering committee) and Janice Barton (who is perhaps more of a friendly associate of WiSET). This at a stroke means the number of women professors in SET has more than tripled from 3 in 2002 to 10 in 2007. Hopefully this shows that involvement in WiSET is not detrimental to career progression! We would welcome anyone else who might be interested in joining the Steering Committee, especially from those Schools where we currently have no representation, please contact the new Chair (Prof Andrea Russell) if you are interested in becoming involved.

Kirsten Dey left the University to devote more time to her own jewellery making business from the end of July 2007. We would like to thank Kirsten for all her hard work as Diversity and Equality manager over 2006/7 and wish her every success in the future. She has had an enormous task with the various impact assessments associated with the diversity agenda, and also co-ordinated the University's recent Athena Silver award bid. Although this was not successful (we perhaps went for it too soon after the bronze award, and need to show more improvements since award of the bronze) it has been helpful in raising the profile of various issues which are important to WiSET with University management. Kirsten has been a valued member of the WiSET group, and we are sorry to see her go. There was WiSET representation (the WiSET chair) on the appointments panel for Kirsten's replacement, and we now have an excellent replacement in the form of Kamaljit Kerridge-Poonia. Kamaljit has very extensive experience in equality and diversity policy issues within the senior ranks of the civil service and Government (including the Cabinet office) and relocated here with her family. Her appointment started in October 2007 and she has been attending recent WiSET meetings to find out about our activities.

Events

Summer term: 27th June 2007: An Audience with Prof. Caroline Thomas
Prof Thomas, DVC at the University of Southampton, with responsibility for Education and HR, joined us for an informal lunchtime meeting. She shared the choices she had made along her career path up to the DVC position, reflecting on the effects of these on her work-life balance and frankly discussed the opportunities, pressures and drawbacks associated with such a senior position. She also shared with us a "typical" week's activities, and discussed both what one might need to do to enter such a senior management position and what it would entail once you got there. She also discussed how she had managed her work-life balance as a single parent in the DVC job and the extent to which the University had been able to support her in this. We really appreciated her openness and frankness in the discussion, and we all found it an extremely useful experience, giving us much food for thought.

Women's No Pay Day: 30th October 2007
The Fawcett Society declared 30th October 2007 as Women's No Pay Day: 'The pay gap is a national scandal - women are paid only 83% of men's wages. This is the equivalent of women only being paid until October 30th, while men get paid to the end of the year' (see the Fawcett Society for more info). The day was designated as a day of action to raise the profile of the gender pay gap and to urge the government to take more assertive action to reduce it. WiSET, together with the Fawcett Society, UCU and Unison took part in hosting a stand outside the University staff club between 11am-2pm to distribute campaign material from Fawcett and encourage action - mainly signing the on-line petition. In addition the University's recent equal pay review figures were displayed. The sun shone, and we had plenty of volunteers, successfully handing out all of our promotional material. Thank you to everyone who helped on the day!

Action learning groups: Meeting Friday 14th December 2007
A joint SES postdocs and WiSET meeting was held on Friday 14th December to discuss (and experience) action learning groups. After a brief informal introduction by members of WiSET who had taken part in action learning groups, a "taster" session was set up in smaller groups. "Hot seating" and "cherry picking" techniques were introduced for up to two people in each small group. In the roundup session afterwards it was commented that the approach seemed a highly effective for networking, and it was agreed that it could have uses both for postdoctoral staff networking groups, new lecturers within SES and also for women academics further on in their career paths. This has been taken forward to the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics (FESM) for postdoctoral staff development support, and will be pursued with HR as vigorously as possible.

Mentoring Scheme developments: update
Several joint WiSET/SES meetings were held in January 2008 to develop ideas for a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) mentoring scheme. These included a talk about her individual career path and types of mentoring encountered by Philippa Reed on January 14th 2008 and a workshop on January 25th 2008 with newly appointed School of Engineering Sciences (SES) academics to reflect on their mentoring experiences. From these sessions a set of materials have been developed for the PDRA mentoring scheme which has now received FESM funding. The PDRA career development scheme in 2008/9 will include specific career talks on gaining funding, publication success etc as well as the formation of action learning groups for those PDRAs who are interested and the implementation of a mentoring scheme. The FESM funded scheme will pilot in SES and Chemistry initially with roll-out planned in 2009/10 to other Schools.

Campbell Lecture: May 21st 2008
The 5th Campbell lecture "From short cracks to glass ceilings: Alice's advice on a career in engineering" was given by Professor Julia King,VC at Aston. Professor King's lecture was a lively and interesting discussion of her career to date and the challenges and opportunities this had offered her. She had some interesting reflections on how industry might be ahead of Universities in valuing diverse teams, and shared some interesting statistics on the leaky pipeline for women in SET as well as the mismatch of perceptions between men and women of how women might or might not be disadvantaged in their career path.

Summary

We have had a busy year in 2007/8 and hope 2008/9 will allow us to continue to develop our work. I have enjoyed being the WiSET chair in 2007/8 (despite a baby interrupting my stint at the end of February!) and wish Andrea all the best in her endeavours as WiSET Chair for 2008/9.