Podcast – Gender Equality in Research

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher Podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, a network for early career researchers.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Hello, my name is Dr Aoife Kylie. I’m a research officer from Alzheimer’s Society, and I’m pleased to be hosting this podcast recording for the NIHR Dementia Researcher website. This week, we will be discussing gender equality in research.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

I’d like to welcome our panel of experts, Dr Natalie Marchant, who is an Alzheimer’s Society funded senior fellow based at UCL. Her research focuses on whether repetitive negative thinking increases cognitive debt, and so the risk of dementia. Dr Frances Wiseman. Frances is a senior research fellow based at UCL. She holds an Alzheimer’s Society grant which funds a PhD student, and is investigating Alzheimer’s disease and Down syndrome. Dr Penny Rapaport, a clinical psychologist and winner of the Alzheimer’s Society Rising Star award. Her work involves creating real world solutions to manage agitation and to improve quality of life in people living with dementia.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

So let’s get into it. For my first question I’d like to ask, we know that dementia research is quite typical of both biomedical and care research fields, in that it is dominated by women, but the top jobs are largely held by men. Why do you think this is, and do you think that the field would be different if there was more of a balance? Frances.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

I think that’s such an interesting question. I think it’s really hard to say or pinpoint one particular factor that’s influencing that difference, and partly its historic that senior people are older have been affected by maternity leave policies and stuff from the past, so we can’t really predict the future, but I also think unconscious bias and other things that are preventing women from putting themselves forward for kind of challenging ambitious leadership roles are also a factor.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think it seems to be the case in many professions too, is that the top jobs are held by men, and probably for the very reasons that you just mentioned.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

Yeah, I think I would agree as well. I think it feels like it’s changing, or at least it’s being kind of thought about and talked about much more openly, but I do still see that as being the case within research more broadly, I think, and I think that partly, that’s also just to do with maybe some of the other things that are going on at kind of an unconscious level within departments that perpetuate the kind of same power relations really, I suppose.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

I also think at an individual level, I think quite a lot of it is people not putting themselves, well, in my experience, not putting themselves forward when they would be competent, but they don’t put that application in, they don’t have that conversation, because they’re kind of fearful or worried about that consequence. because that’s seen as not what they should do, because they’re a woman.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Do you see that as a sort of internalized unconscious bias?

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Oh absolutely. I think it’s not just about other people as well. That’s my personal viewpoint. I think often people feel a little bit reluctant to put their themselves forward as a woman, whereas I think that men, in my experience, don’t have that same feeling of reluctance to promote that self-promotion, because it’s seen in society is a bit negative to stand up and say, “I’m brilliant,” when you’re female, whereas for a man, it’s seen as a good thing to do.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Something that’s promoted and supported, and from personal experience, I go through that too. I don’t really want to stand up and say, “Pick me,” or, “I can do this.” I feel like if I had a buddy with me almost, who I could kind of hold hands with and say, “Okay, we’ll do it together,” then that would probably be more likely to go for promotion and do something like that, and I wonder whether that’s also linked with the men being sort of generally in the higher positions, is that it is sort of a singular track, these are outcomes that are measurable that they have to fulfil, whereas women may tend to be more collaborative and have more reaching across kind of tendencies that maybe wouldn’t put themselves in more position to be promoted.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Natalie, I’m glad you mentioned about enjoying the idea of kind of buddying up with somebody to take on a new challenge, because that reminded me of the Athena Swan program, and for anyone who’s not familiar, Athena Swan is a charter that was drawn up to encourage and recognize commitment to combating the under-representation of women in science. So it involves initiatives such as the mentoring program, there’s networking events and different initiatives to kind of support women in research. When I was a researcher in my previous life before I was with Alzheimer’s Society, I was mentored in the mentoring program, and I find it really useful. I don’t know if any of you have been involved in the mentoring program as mentors or mentees.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Yeah, I’ve been mentored, and I found it amazingly useful. It resulted in me getting promoted, which I never would [crosstalk 00:05:43] ever happened before.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Fantastic.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

That’s what I didn’t understand, there really was a way to be promoted before someone pointed out to me, he was my mentor, that yes, not only that there was, but also I probably would be if I applied, which actually was quite important to me, that kind of fear factor that maybe I shouldn’t put myself forward because I didn’t really deserve it. So that was really important to me, and something I feel really passionately about helping other people with as well.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

I had a mentor when I was at Kings College, London, not through the Athena Swan program, but I think it was a KCO program, and it also helped me tremendously. She was in a totally different research area, but she was a professor and had experience of kind of straddling different countries and working within different environments, and she really helped give me a lot of confidence in becoming an independent researcher, which is not something I had before.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Sometimes it’s quite nice to have somebody outside of your field and outside of the troubles of your day to day research life who can give you that kind of perspective on issues or things like promotions and so on.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Yeah, that was very much what she did, actually. She sort of zoomed out on my day to day minutia stuff, and then helped me see the bigger picture and then the direction in which I wanted to move. Yeah, it was great.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Yeah. I feel like mentoring is a great way for women to support women in a way of kind of all boats rising in the tide, but I know I have come across criticism that male researchers that I know have said to me that they’d love a mentor, and I think in order for real gender equality, men have to be included, and especially young researchers, to get those opportunities as well. I don’t know what you guys think about that.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

I think in our department, the mentoring scheme is open to everyone, and I think all kind of early career researchers have the opportunity for mentoring. My experience has actually been that … I have been allocated to mentor and kind of met with them, and it was really useful conversation, but actually, I think that the mentoring that I’ve kind of valued has been more informal, really, and it’s through a network, and I think often has been related to being a woman at a particular point in my career, finding people who maybe are having similar challenges and dilemmas within the context that I work. So I think we’ve kind of established almost informal networks and kind of people that we’d have lunch with, where we can just talk through some of these things, because I think that there is a … I think it was just finding the people that you can kind of connect with on these conversations, and also that you feel comfortable talking about certain things with, because it doesn’t always feel that kind of safe or okay.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Yeah, so peer support, also, in addition to mentoring.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

I’d kind of like to add as well, I think that if you kind of start taking responsibility for supervising other people in terms of an academic setting, you really do need to think about their career development, whether a man or a woman, and have conversations with them. I think that’s kind of become an on the PI with my students, that’s very, very important that we all learn to do that, man, woman.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Yeah, I think that’s an accident point, because obviously, a lot of researchers become PIs without management training, and it’s short term focused on deadlines, grant applications, that sometimes I can imagine it’s very easy to just want to get the results out of that person and not really care where their career goes after that, but yeah, it is about improving our whole field and improving the whole environment, the culture that we’re working in. So I think that’s an excellent point.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

But I do think that some of those things are … I mean it goes back to that first question about kind of why is it that the field is dominated by men at the top? I think it is partly because historically, those qualities or ways of being, working with other people valuing the importance of developing colleagues, those weren’t necessarily prioritized or privileged, and I don’t know if it was before or after talking about transparency, and things being really clear and processes being followed, I think that’s really changed. I think in the past, it wasn’t like that and that’s why there was a lot more of a kind of … It was about who you knew and kind of how you connected with those people, but now I think that there is starting to be much more of a sense that actually how you supervise other people and how you manage people as well as projects is really important, and those qualities, we should be valuing them rather than them just being sort of things that happen along the way. I don’t know if that’s …

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Yeah, I totally agree.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

So another issue that I wanted to discuss with you all is about the effect of taking maternity and paternity leave on careers and gender equality, and at Alzheimer’s Society, we’re really proud to support all our grant holders who need to take any form of leave such as parental or sick leave. We particularly stand out in the research field, as we’re one of the very few funding organizations to offer maternity leave and pay to our PhD students. Anyone looking for more information about this can find it on our four researchers section of our website, alzheimers.org.uk. My question to the panellists who’ve all taken maternity leave at different parts of their career is whether you anticipated a negative reaction to you taking maternity leave, and what has the reality been for you? Was your institute flexible? Are meetings restricted to core working hours, and so on? Natalie.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Yeah, happy to talk about that. So I’ve just come back from taking maternity leave. I came back a few months ago after having my first child, my only child, and I was very nervous about sharing the fact that I was pregnant with people, with colleagues, with my funder, with everybody, but in fact, once I started sharing that information, there was absolutely no negative response from anybody, and I have to say that talking with the Alzheimer’s Society was really brilliant, [crosstalk 00:13:04] but really, actually, because I am funded through a fellowship, and I spoke with the Alzheimer’s Society, who were very flexible with what I would do with that fellowship, whether I could keep it open so that I could have a research assistant continue on while I was on maternity leave, and it was actually a really enjoyable experience, and the transition to coming back to work was fine.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

Also, within my division, actually, people were very supportive of me, and even though I did work during my maternity leave, I think I can say it was by choice. Nobody made me, but in order to keep other projects kind of going on, I think it was necessary for me to keep a toe into the research, and I think that actually benefited me coming back that it wasn’t such a difficult transition.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

So I’ve taken maternity leaves, because I’ve got two kids, and the first time, I was like you. Before, I was utterly terrified. Telling my PI? Absolutely scared. Telling my head of department? Really, really worried. Actually, I found coming back from maternity leave actually really difficult. I only took five months off the first time, and that was a really hard balance when I was coming back to do full time lab work with a five and a half month baby at the time, and it was long days, and I was trying to maintain breastfeeding, and it was very difficult period.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Second time around, the whole thing was a total breeze when I took just shy of 12 months off. So I kind of had a slightly different experience to you from the first time, and I didn’t have that many negative comments from people, I have to say, but there were a few. No one senior, I have to say, and I don’t think they would have, even if they’d been thinking it, they wouldn’t have said it, but certainly at kind of a more junior level about, “Oh, you’re going to be a part-timer now,” that kind of classic announcement. Actually, when I proved to everyone that I was coming back to do work, and it was fine, the second time, I completely felt so confident about going in and saying, “Oh, I’m having another baby. I’ve done it before, I can handle this.” So that was my personal experience of the two different breaks.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

I really struggle with this, because I do … This idea that doing work on maternity leave, and it’s through your own choice, and what that actually means and who’s making those choices, and what you were just saying, Frances, that if people are making comments about being a part-timer, and it’s almost like, actually, what you can reassure people with is that when you come back, you’ll be doing just as much, and probably over and above, actually, because you need to prove yourself, and that’s what I see happening within our department when people come back from maternity leave. It’s almost like it’s absolutely fine and no one says anything and it’s all great, but I think there’s something about the kind of pressures that people put themselves under in order to do it, which I don’t think is just. I don’t want to [inaudible 00:16:27] you, Natalie.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

Even having to work when you’re on maternity leave, in other contexts, that’s just not how it’s done. I have taken maternity leave on two occasions, but I was mainly working in a clinical job in the NHS, and I think the expectation there, the thought that people would do work when they’re on maternity leave, it’s just not how it is, and I think there’s this idea that if you’re managing your own projects, and in research, it’s like you have to keep it going because … It can be questioned though, those.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

But for me … Yeah, I do. I get it. So for my fellowship, that was fine, because that was mine, and so when I went on maternity leave, that could sort of pause, but there’s another project that I’m involved with that’s not going to stop for me that kept going. So in that situation I felt I had to keep going then too. Yeah.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

I think also, because at the time, and my second time, I was supervising PhD students, and I already made loads of arrangements for those people, but I felt personally responsible, and I also, to be honest, I wanted to know what was going on. I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t want to stop second time around, and we used to have group meeting, my baby came with group meeting. We had group meeting at my house the first month. It was great. We had a day, and it was just what I wanted to do, and it wasn’t external pressure at all to keep working. It was, I genuinely didn’t want to let it go, and also because I was now used to juggling baby and work, it was completely natural for me.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Actually, I had to fight quite hard to be allowed to have those kind of esoteric meetings and keep my email access open, but just by the letter of the rules and our department, everything should have been shut down and I should have been stopped from working. So I had to be quite careful about how I organized it to make sure I wasn’t kind of in breach of my kid days.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

That’s sort of going to the other extreme, isn’t it?

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Well, they wanted to protect us. So that’s why those rules are there for these reasons that we don’t want to feel these external pressures. Obviously, I wanted to do these things, but first time around, I wasn’t capable, my first baby, of actually working on maternity leave, because I was learning quite a lot about looking after a child.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

It does make it harder, and I do think that sometimes those questions don’t get asked actually, or it doesn’t get talked about. I think within departments, it’s just you see these people coping really well and just getting on with it and coming back full time and all of those things, and I often think for other members of staff, what that’s like, and if they chose to do things differently or wanted to not have any contact, what that would be like, because we don’t see that happening.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Yeah, no, absolutely, and my experience, as well as you, and what type of baby you’re going to get, and also, that massively, my personal experience affects how your maternity leave goes, because my kids were completely different. So you can’t predict that, you can’t plan for it, and my PI was really supportive and actually kind of realistic about telling me, I think that maybe you shouldn’t kind of commit to these things now, and you should wait to see what happens. So I found that really valuable as well, having that support from someone at that direct line management level saying, “Actually, please don’t commit to this at the moment. That’s not sensible.”

Dr Aoife Kiely:

In your opinion, do maternity and paternal leave policies have an impact on gender equality and research?

Dr Frances Wiseman:

Obviously, I’ve seen kind of the pre paternity leave policy. So when I had my first child, there was no parental leave. There was two weeks, and that’s what my husband got at the time, and that’s what we actually did the second time around as well. So I know, I kind of have the perspective, and I know that the second time around, lots of my friends were having kids at that kind of age, and lots of my husband’s friends and our friends, the dads did take time off, but I didn’t see the same thing happening in the academic setting. I’ve not actually met any man who’s taken more than the two or four weeks, depending on kind of the university setting, so I don’t know if anyone actually knows anyone who’s done that, because I’ve not seen that happen.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

My husband denied shared parental leave, but actually, he’s not an academic, but he stayed home one day a week, so we were together, and that worked very well for us, but yeah, I don’t know any male academics who’ve taken paternal leave for more than the two weeks.

Dr Penny Rapaport:

I think there is someone we work with who has, and I think he speaks very positively about the experience, but it’d be interesting. I don’t know whether he would say actually he’s had comments made about it or not. I don’t know what [inaudible 00:21:38] he’d like to talk from his experience of that, but I do think more broadly that it has an impact on people’s research trajectories and careers, and there’s no sort of getting around that, really.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

So my personal viewpoint as well, is it isn’t just the maternity leave that affects it. To be honest, it’s the first, particularly the first couple of years to do with childcare and exclusion from childcare because of sickness and having to drop things at the drop of the hat, and come home for a certain time, having to turn down conferences, attendance, or having another childcare nightmare to go. So there’s more to it than just those six months, in my personal experience, about decision making that then happens.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

I feel like I’m now experiencing that myself, having been back for a few months, had some childcare issues, and I used to love working late into the night, and I just can’t do that anymore. So it’s really caused quite a big lifestyle shift and working shifts. So now I’m up very early trying to work early in the morning, which is not something I’d ever conceived of doing before, just to try to make sure the hours are in.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

I think that that affects all parents. That’s not excluding to women. All parents, I think, or primary caregivers or caregivers experience that kind of need and to rearrange one’s life after you’ve got kids to worry about.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

I know at Alzheimer’s Society, when we’re receiving grant applications, when there is, say, the gap, in inverted commas, in someone’s CV where they’ve taken maternity leave, we do take that into account. We’re not going to compare them to a man who published five papers during that time. You have to take everything into account, and I think that’s more important that people and funding bodies, especially, bear that in mind. Look at the whole research, look at everything they contribute to the department, and look at them as a whole person who’s got a work life balance, which in the end, is healthier than somebody who just locks themselves in doing their research all the time and contributes nothing else to the department.

Dr Natalie Marchant:

That’s really nice to hear that the Alzheimer’s Society does that, really reassuring. Do you think other funders do that?

Dr Aoife Kiely:

I think it’s something that’s becoming more considered, because I think they’d be losing a lot of excellent voices in the field if they weren’t bearing that in mind.

Dr Frances Wiseman:

My experience with all the major funders and all the dementia research charities in the UK, for certain, completely take it into account, and actually, I think the ERC, if I remember correctly, it’s 18 month per child for the primary caregiver, so [inaudible 00:24:45] to show that, say, obviously in terms of how they account for your clock.

Dr Aoife Kiely:

Well, I’m sorry to have to stop this very interesting conversation there, but I’d like to thank all the panellists for taking part and I’d like to thank you, the listeners, to our podcast, and to remind you that you can subscribe to the podcast through SoundCloud and iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Please do share, subscribe, and rate the podcast, and you can tag us using the hashtag #ECRDementia. If you would like to join one of our panels or to write a blog for the website, please get in touch. Thank you.

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