Academic Abelism

If you've been following my tweeting this week you will have seen me using the Academic Abelism hashtag and RTing and talking with the @phdisabled account. I decided to get some of my thoughts down and try to explain why I think this conversation is so important. 

As regular readers of my blog (or twitter followers) will be aware I suffer from a chronic illness. This illness is debilitating and severe. As you will also know, I'm a PhD student. I'm hoping that it's apparent how much I love my research, and my institution (most of the time). But this intersection of graduate study and ill health is HARD. It's hard for many reasons and all of them need to be talked about, because in truth what is needed in academia is a culture shift. A paradigm change. And for those you need pressure. You need evidence and you need someone to make the noise. 

The acadmeic lifestyle nowadays is predicated upon this ideal of the "superhero worker". Someone who works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week minimum. You are supposed to live, eat, breathe and sleep academia. It is not enough now to be a good researcher, you must publish, publish, publish in respectable journals. You must be an exceptional teacher (I mean, students are paying £9K), but you have to do all your prep for this teaching in "your own time" because all of your working hours are taken up with research and grant proposals. 

This lifestyle is unhealthy.  As is evidenced by the high insidence of mental health problems and depression amongst PhD students and academics. God help you if you come to the academy with existing health problems. If you come to the academy unable to put in all the "extra" hours because doing so will exaccerbate your pre-existing condition. In this case, the blame is put on you. You are weak, and cannot cope with the high pressure academic environment. You are found wanting. NO-ONE considers that actually it's academia that has the problem. 

At least no-one did until a few small voices started to make noise: Thesis Whisperer, @JessicaRdctd, @nadinemuller and then @Phdisabled. And suddenly all of those in academia with chronic illness/ disability realised that we are not alone. We started to talk, and realised that our experiences were similar. And we began to join the dots. Realising that the problem isn't us, it's the system. 

Any system that purportes to be built on an intellectual meritocrary, that excludes some intellects because of disability is a broken system. Our intellect is not wanting. We are not lesser minds. We have bodies that betray us: That mean we cannot and SHOULD NOT work ourselves to illness. 

The changes we would make, the issues that we see as needing to be addressed, will not only benefit us. All of academia is exhausted. Isn't it about time we started talking about changing this?! 

NEFG 2013

This time last week I was in Newcastle. In fact I was in the flat of a lovely woman, who before then I'd only known through twitter, with two other women I'd only know through twitter. I say "only" known through twitter, but the truth is, these women are some of my closest friends. There's a group of them who have been amazingly kind and supportive, who have made me laugh, have allowed me space to be myself and have taught me a lot about myself. And, perhaps more importantly they have taught me about feminism. 

So, a few months ago these twitter friends of mine began tweeting about this thing called NEFG. It turned out to be a "Feminist Gathering" in Newcastle. I had no idea what a "feminist gathering" was, but the fact that the majority of my amazing women twitter-friends were going was enough to convince me to get a ticket. I figured, no matter what happened that weekend, I would finally be able to meet these women and give them actual real life hugs. 

In the run up to the conference I realised that I was going to need somewhere to stay, and that I couldn't afford a hotel. In stepped the lovely F with an offer of a place to stay. I was very touched by this and as the weekend approached I got very excited. When I realised that B and P were gonna be staying too, I was beyond giddy. I knew I was going to get to meet C and J and L; it was going to be like some "reunion". That's really how it felt. Not that I would be meeting them for the first time, but that I was meeting them again. I have got to know these women very well over the last year on twitter. They have supported me, been there with a kind word and their ass-kicking boots when I needed them. So, meeting them felt kinda like coming home. (Yes, I know how corny that sounds, but it's true - so there!) 

I've never been to a feminist conference, in fact my entire contact with any sort of feminist community has been through social media (mainly twitter). So I had no idea what to expect. I knew that NEFG was going to be a woman only space. But I was not prepared for the affect this had on me.

I'm not entirely sure I can put into words the experience for me of the opening of NEFG 2013. There were around 100 women in a small hall. As people where getting settled the women of Midnight blue began drumming. The drumming was amazing, but for me what happened next was so powerful that even now I'm on the verge of tears thinking about it. The women in the room began to join in, first just clapping, then instruments were passed around and then voices joined. There was drumming and clapping and whooping and cheering. This immense and joyful noise. It was LOUD. It was in your face. It was connected. And every single person making that noise was a woman. This was what was powerful for me. A room full of women, being loud, making noise, raising their voices, demanding to be heard. No more sitting quietly, no more "decorum". No more "seen and not heard". These women were declaring their presence in the world. Declaring their right to make noise. And for me it was powerful. Hah! Powerful doesn't being to cover it! There was joy in that noise, but there was defiance too. And that "coming home" feeling multiplied ten fold. It set the tone for the whole conference. And it's left a lasting impression on me. I don't think I'll ever forget that experience. 

So, as the rest of the conference went on I attended key notes and workshops, all of which were very interesting (though to maintain anonymity for the women involved I am not going to give any details). But for me, something seemed off. See, I'm normally the chatty one. The one who asks questions, makes a comment, opens discussion. And for some reason on the first day at NEFG I was quiet. I tried to analyse why that evening, but I couldn't place it. It wasn't until I was driving home that I realised that it was because it was more important for me to LISTEN. I was surrounded by amazing women, some of whom were/are second wave feminists. The women who fought so that I can access free birth control, fought for the right to a safe abortion (should I need/want it), fought for my right to attend university. I don't need to talk to these women, I need to listen to them, to learn from them. And I did. (I was especially lucky as B is a second wave woman, and I got to spend two evenings with her as well as the two days of the conference. :) )

But I also realised that there was more to my silence. You see, I'm used to being the defiant female voice. I'm the woman that speaks first, that interrupts the men, that makes the noise, so that other women feel they can too. I am the loud, obnoxious woman, that defies the stereotype. At NEFG I didn't need to. I didn't need to be the first to speak, to break the deadlock, to interrupt the men. At NEFG there were only women talking. And it was actually quite nice to be able to sit back, relax and let others do the talking. 

Coming back to the "real world" this week has been hard. NEFG provided a safe space. A space with likeminded women, where I didn't need to explain why something is sexist or misogynistic. Where I didn't need to go into the debates about the need for feminism, or what we should focus on. Where I could talk about and share personal stories of abuse and pain caused by the world in which we live; without the need to justify or explain anything. It was AMAZING. It was freeing. But coming back to "normality" was like a slap in the face. It's been hard this week. To go back to that, to arguing with men who want to tell me how to do feminism. To be faced with victim blaming and male violence. To hear stories of sexism and to see objectification everywhere. This week it has been exhausting and made me heartsick for the sisterhood I felt at NEFG. 

So, I want to give my most heartfelt and sincere thanks to the wonderful and amazing women who made NEFG happen (despite their heartbreaking loss). And I want to say thank-you to the special women who shared that weekend with me. It was beyond exceptional to meet the lovely and awe inspiring women that I know on twitter "in real life" and I count myself truly blessed to know that I have them as friends. And I want to thank my on-line feminist community, because when I was loosing hope this week, you reminded me that I'm not alone. That we can make a difference and that when women come together we are LOUD, DEFIANT, and IMMENSELY POWERFUL. 

Why should we focus on women in STEM?

So, the question posed as the title for this post prompted a twitter discussion between myself and a friend the other day. The discuss got a bit heated, which some could see as a bad thing, personally I see it as a consequence of debate between passionate people. What came out of that debate though, is that I've thought about this question a lot, I assumed that everyone understood why this is an important issue and why we should be focussing on it now, but it seems that assumption May be wrong. I've been thinking about how best to explain it, and so I approached my friend to see if he'd be ok with me writing a post on this subject. I want to make clear, this is in no way a continuation of some imagined disagreement. He's happy for me to write this, and I'm looking forward to coffee with him soon. There's no personal vendetta here.

 Right, so that's the disclaimer out of the way. :) 

Before I explain the why. I suppose I'd better explain the what. What is the women in STEM issue. For those that don't know STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. And currently we have a problem in STEM subjects and careers. That problem is the low uptake of women. This is not just a recruitment problem, in fact you could argue it's not a recruitment problem at all. Since girls tend to like and do well in STEM subjects through high school. The women in STEM problem is being referred to as the "leaky pipeline" - at each further stage of education and career progression the proportion of women to men drops. It starts at A-levels, with fewer girls doing a-level in STEM subjects despite out performing boys at GCSE level. Fewer still continue to study STEM subjects at undergraduate level, and fewer at post-graduate. This trend continues through career progression, for example in academia, after PhD, fewer women become lecturers, then fewer become senior lecturers; on and on. Women disappear. Despite clear interest and aptitude in STEM subjects they vanish. But we don't know why. This is the women in STEM problem. 

So, the why? The question raised in the discussion was why are we (as scientists, engineers etc. those involved in public engagement, the media, institutions and the government) placing such an emphasis on this problem? 

For me, the answer here is self-explanatory but I'm going to try to break it down a little. According to the 2011 census roughly 51% of the UK population is female. A recent Guardian article reports that only 6% of engineers are female. So there a massive problem of under-representation. Women are half of the population, so we should make up substantially more of STEM than we currently do (even if we never reach half). This stands even without all the arguments about the benefits of having more gender balance in workplaces etc. but it is especially troubling when you consider that we are getting women in. 

Let me use my own subject as an example, because it's one of the rare ones with more female undergraduates than male. The undergrad population for Psychology is roughly 80% female. In fact males in a psychology classroom are a rare sight. As rare as females in some other STEM subjects. (I am not entering into ANY argument about if psychology is a science, it is. There is no argument). So you would imagine then that this gender balance continues throughout the career progression. (Again, I'm going to focus on academia, because that's what I know, but this holds for other arenas/career paths too). Well, you'd be wrong! As you move up the career ladder, the ratio of women to men drops. Until, at professorship level the men outnumber the women. This CANNOT be due to a lack of ability. The probabilities that the only people good enough to make it to professorship are the few male psych PhDs are slim. So what's happening? What is causing this drop off of women? Why are we losing women? It does appear that they are leaving, but again we have no idea why?

So, people have FINALLY started to notice this problem. The big STEM professional bodies, institutions, companies, and the government are noticing. People are beginning to see that we need to do some research, we need to address why these women are being lost and then find ways to keep them. For some of us, as women in STEM we are very vocal about this issue. We understand the need for role models and so we use whatever platform we have to get out there and say "I'm a woman in STEM, look at me, you could do this too!" We are involved in groups like @Science_Grrl and we contribute to discussions around this problem. We're the minority, the small few (probably weirdos) that made it. That stuck it out. And we'd like to know what makes us different. We don't want STEM to be seen as an old boys club. As something for men only, and so we push and shout. Amazing women have been doing this for some time and now, finally people are listening and taking notice. 

So, there is this focus on the women in STEM problem. Money, time, research, media attention, all directed at understanding why women leave STEM and what we can do to prevent it. I always thought this was a good thing, in fact, I couldn't see how anyone could see it any other way.

However, the argument I have been faced with is "we risk alienating other minority groups by focussing so much on women. If we tell people all we care about is women, then they'll be left thinking that we don't care about them. Like, what about people with learning disability or mental health problems?". 

OK, first - *screams*

Right, now that is out of the way, let me calmly break this down for you. I do not believe that anyone who is currently focussing on the issue of women in STEM is unaware of the general issue of under-representation of minority groups. We are all to aware that STEM is pale, stale and male. I personally am passionate about not only dealing with the women in STEM issue, but also in encouraging kids from disadvantaged backgrounds into STEM. And race is a HUGE problem in STEM too, though I'm not going to deal with that, because it wasn't raised.

WE CAN CARE ABOUT MORE THAN ONE THING AT ONCE!!!!! I'm not sure why this appears so difficult for some to wrap their heads around. But it is infuriating the frequency that this "what about this other thing" argument comes up whenever people begin to focus on issues faced by women. We are capable of understanding that there are many problems around recruitment into and retention in STEM subjects and careers. We are all intelligent, passionate people. We care about our subjects and we want to make it a better place for everyone. By making a bit of noise about one minority group, it doesn't mean we don't care about the rest.

WOMEN ARE 51% OF THE POPULATION!!! This is an important point to remember. Women are not a "minority" group. We make up half of the population and so should be represented accordingly across STEM. It is not unreasonable to focus on an issue that affects HALF OF THE POPULATION!

Lets put this into perspective: 2.4% of the UK population have some form of learning disability (source) of these 41% are women. So, in terms of alienating those with learning disabilities, we're talking about possibly, maybe, alienating  .98% of the UK population. That's right, less than ONE PERCENT!! So, we shouldn't focus on the women in STEM issue, which affects 51% of the population, JUST IN CASE less than 1% of the population feel alienated? Hmm, not seeing the sense here.

How about Mental illness? Well Mind regularly give the 1 in 4 statistic: that is that 25% of people will at some point during there lifetime suffer from some type of mental health issue. This is a larger and more substantial number of people, but again we need to take account of how many of these are women. Statistics here get complicated, since some MH diagnoses are more common in women and others in men. So, for simplicity, I'm going to say that half of those with mental health issues are women. So, again in focussing on the women in STEM issue, we MAY alienate 12.5% of people.

Even if we ignore co-morbidity (i.e. the overlap between those with mental health issues and learning disability) we are possibly, maybe going to make roughly 13.5% of the population feel like we don't care about them, in order to tackle a problem that affects 51% of the population. Personally, I don't think those are bad odds. I'm prepared to take the risk.

If you look at this handy diagram (not *exactly* to scale, since I drew it by hand, but I did try to make it at least somewhat representative) you can see what I mean. Those people represented by the purple areas, are the ones that could feel alienated and excluded as a consequence of the focus on women in STEM issue.

OK, so at this point, I'm probably sounding a little off. Like I don't care about those "purple" people. Well, that's not actually a true representation of my standpoint. I think it's a fair argument though, and I think we need to keep some perspective on the scale of the issues that we are trying to address. 

So, how do I see it? To me, it's like this. STEM is a medical patient, faced with numerous problems leading to ill health. Each of these medical problems results from a different illness, with a different cause. In order to cure the patient, we need to diagnose each illness, suggest and find an effective treatment and then deliver that treatment. We CANNOT cure the patient of all of these illnesses just by administering one pill. 

What I'm saying is that there are different reasons why women, those with learning disability, those with mental health issues, people of colour, those from lower SES backgrounds etc are not represented in STEM. We need to analyse these issues individually, in order to understand the specific obstacles faced by each of these groups in order to remove them. We can't fix these problems just through recruitment, or outreach. We can't stand there and say "STEM is awesome, woo!" and expect the problems faced by these people to vanish. We have to tackle these issues individually. That doesn't mean though, that we can't tackle them simultaneously. In fact, most of us are. Like I said earlier WE CAN CARE ABOUT MORE THAN ONE THING!!

References
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-and-household-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom/stb-2011-census--population-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom.html

http://www.learningdisabilities.org.uk/help-information/Learning-Disability-Statistics-/187699/

http://www.mind.org.uk/