Annual Campbell Lecture 2012
The Annual Campbell Lecture takes place on April 25th at 2pm in the Nightingale Building (67) room 1027 and where Professor Ottoline Leyser will present 'Women in science - the glass half full.
Abstract:-
Women are under-represented in science. The reasons are often different for the different science disciplines. In the Biosciences, there are more than 50% women at undergraduate level, but they progressively disappear along the leaky pipeline of the academic career. There is a lot of discussion about why this might be, and the discussion is almost all about how very difficult everything is. While it is certainly true that academic careers are competitive, the negativity in the discussion about academic careers in science and the ability of women to pursue them is in my view a self-fulfilling prophecy. If women are endlessly being told how difficult everything is, why would they choose to follow the academic career path when there are so many others available to them? And interestingly, why do men disproportionately choose to stick with the “difficult” career? I think there needs to be more emphasis on the range of career options available and their diverse merits, so that everyone is choosing their career path based more on positives, and less on negatives.