Encouraging Women in STEM.

Simon
I don't think that's the reason here, as the leave fathers are entitled to is actually parental leave that can be used by either parent.

@Goosefoot

Company with decent maternity pay tend not to have decent paternity pay, here women receive full pay for five for months then 75% for the rest (which is much higher tha SMP), male members of staff only receive the minimum legal rate if they take longer than two weeks off work to use SPL.

We have parental leave here. I haven't noticed that it has made a huge difference in the work world or to what fathers do in general, but it may be that it is too soon. Fewer take it, there is less sympathy for fathers to do so than mothers in many workplaces - they are seen as letting people down.

I only have anecdotal evidence of this, but I think perhaps more fathers in less secure employment take it, compared to people in professional employment.

It's not just paternity leave though, it's the whole 'default parent' mindset.

I've got male colleagues who do school runs, take their kids to doctors appointments etc ... which is good, but I've noticed that they're rather more likely to mention what they're doing than a woman would, IYKWIM.

Wouldn't it be nice to see an ongoing campaign to encourage more fathers to work flexibly / part-time / take on responsibility for child-care and the school run.

Yes, paying fathers for parental leave would help. Having the right to equal leave means little when only the mother is paid maternity. For most families, it's just not an option financially.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the problem in biosciences isn’t wording or recruitment, it’s institutional sexism.

Yes. Wouldn't it be nice to see an ongoing campaign to encourage more fathers to work flexibly / part-time / take on responsibility for child-care and the school run.

Most children think of engineers as people who fix their cars or people who come to the house to fix/service things like boilers. These people are nearly always men so they draw men

DD used to want to be an engineer ( shes now in another area of STEM) and her primary classmates told her that she couldn’t because she was a girl. She laughed of course.

Her best friend through most of secondary school was an academically bright girl whose ambition was to be a beauty blogger while her parents wanted her to work in a nursery. I spent a lot of time when she was at our house enthusing about her blog, saying what a great way to fund herself through uni and talking about exciting STEM jobs.

We found her a STEM work experience placement but her parents wanted her to work in the local cafe, which she did. Apparently they thought the engineering one would be hard and stressful and the cafe would be fun and just around the corner so she would be home early. Rather than having to make a 20 min bus journey .

The good news is she’s now in 3rd year doing Maths at a RG uni.

@Namenic

Well yes. We now have 3 people there full time so there are more appointments available. So is that not a cautionary tale to anyone who says that if drs can't work part time hours they will leave? This model seems to show that there are alternatives to drs in some cases.

In these instances they appear to have considered the needs of the patients and increased the number of appointments by employing people who are willing to work full time. Unfortunately they aren't drs but as you say, in many instances patients don't need to see a dr particularly.

Anyway, this has moved far away from the topic of women in STEM.

We've strayed considerably off topic, but the GP model is maybe due a significant overhaul. AFAIK other countries have different approaches which maybe work better. Rather than 'general practitioners', perhaps we need 'general practices' - local provision including diagnosticians/testing (increasingly computer assisted), pharmacy, minor ailments and injuries.... it's the way some practices are moving but not explicitly enough and still dominated by the GP.

@decomposingcomposers - sure. So patients should be able to see someone more easily then. No reason to stop gps working part time if someone is willing to hire them.

Essentially they are reducing the requirements to increase supply of staff (takes minimum of 10 years to become gp from start of uni). Organising things can increase efficiency as many problems do not need a GP eg insect bite, stable chronic conditions. In hospital many clinics have specialist nurses and in A&E you get advanced practitioners for similar problems. I suspect they would run into problems when the current gps who run the practice retire. If people want more funding they have to vote for a govt that will do this.

Sorry should add - those 3 full time members of staff were cheaper than the 2 part time drs.

@Namenic

From talking to a dr in my practice the entire reason is funding. They've already lost 2 drs and replaced them with advanced practitioners and a pharmacist.

@decomposingcomposers - what is stopping the practices from hiring more doctors or full-time doctors instead? Or what is stopping them from paying more to people to work full time?

Maybe the issue is that there aren’t enough doctors because it is not attractive enough???

I really don’t think it’s as simple as go shortages are due to too many part time staff, it is one factor of many things including:
Staff retiring early
Staff leaving the profession
Loss of EU workers due to brexit
Aging population increasing the need for go cover
Andrew lansleys commissioning reforms taking GPs away from practice work

So the question is how forcing everyone to work full time will help this situation? You will have some doctors who’ll comply but will this compensate for the increased numbers that will leave the profession? Or will you end up in a worse situation because, actually, part time workers are only one part of a complex problem?

But in reply to both of those points simply saying that it is better to have someone rather than no one doesn't mean that the patient or pupil is getting a good deal.

Yes, maybe having a part time maths specialist plus a part time non specialist can work well. I have to say ime the part time teachers weren't specialists so you ended Up With 2 part time non specialists. The communication didn't appear to be great and, as it was told to me, oftentimes the teacher would be asking the class where they were up to or what they had covered so far. Parent evenings were another issue with neither teacher available or one teacher there but claiming they were unable to answer certain questions because that was the remit of the other tacher. 2 part time form teachers was another issue altogether - as parents you had no idea who to contact and information never seemed to be handed over.

I guess the success or failure of part time working in certain professions rests on how committed the individuals are to making it work plus the expectations of the employer.

I understand that drs have choices but ultimately, as a patient, what concerns you is being able to see a GP when you need to see one, preferably the same one for continuity. That certainly isn't happening here and the reason given is that so many of the drs are part time. So for that reason I disagree with the statement that part time working benefits everyone.

It benefits the employee, not everyone.

EBearhug, yes, Death by 1000 cuts is where I've got to. I've found things much easier in smaller companies. Being part of a team of five or six people all working together is great. Always some frustrations and healthy debate, but you can still feel like you're working together. But when you're outnumbered 20 to 1, with all the competitiveness and backstabbing, never mind harassment and bullying, then you get to a state where you don't want to be there and you wouldn't recommend it to others.

To apply this to teaching, take specialist maths teachers. It may well be a problem organising part time, but there really aren’t enough maths teachers to go around, so if parents care about having a teacher with a maths specialism (which may or may not be important to them), then it is up to the school/head/govt to give them good working conditions so they take the job in that school instead of somewhere else or different sector. Otherwise the kids will have a non specialist maths teacher to teach maths (maybe parents value having 1 single teacher more than a part time specialist).

@decomposingcomposers - IF there were more GPs than jobs you could consider increasing job requirements (eg longer hours, less flexible time to fit with patients’ lives). BUT there are already too FEW GPs compared to jobs, and GPs are likely to be employable in pharma, management counsultancy etc. Therefore unless you consider GPs needs MORE, you will end up with a shortage which will be bad for patients.

You could increase SUPPLY of GPs by increasing training places, decreasing training time or improving work conditions. Some of these will have knock on effects of quality of patient care.

GPs are allowed to have a life outside of work and a good employer would balance employees and clients needs.

I'm not disputing that they are entitled to have a life outside of work - in fact everyone is. I also have no issue with people working part time. That is between them and their employer. But it is for the employer to make sure that they balance it so that it doesn't affect service users and I don't think that happens.

I have head teachers talk about some of the negative impacts for schools when employing part time staff - sometimes the implications of on costs, the difficulties when a part time staff member leaves or goes onto maternity leave and the school has to try and find a replacement for the shorter hours, trying to arrange training days or parents evenings, so my point was in relation to the comment that allowing part time hours benefits everyone. I disagree with that point.

As I said, GPs are highly mobile. They can and already do emigrate to countries seen to have better working conditions, so you would be exacerbating an already existing problem if you force them all to work full time. Especially when you consider that “full time” for a GP involves a lot of additional overtime. As we’ve discussed in other careers, if you force people to do full time plus hours on top then you will lose a lot of your working mothers. GPs are allowed to have a life outside of work and a good employer would balance employees and clients needs.

It's in the employee's interest and probably the employer's. I don't think it is always in the service user's interests - be they students, patients or customers

It's always going to be in the employee's interest. As an employer, it's only in my interest as there are certain members of staff I want to keep and there is a shortage of experienced staff in my sector. Beyond that, no it isn't in my interest and involves more management for me and indeed the full time staff when they need holiday cover.

So far as clients, it requires careful handling and some clients really are not happy that the person dealing with their work is only there part time.

PigeonofDoom

Do you really think that if the option was full time/emigrate/leave medicine that all drs would choose emigrate or leave?

You might well be right but I just think that is unlikely. And it isn't the part time hours that are causing the problem as much as not increasing the number of drs working the part time hours so that patient care and availability of appointments isn't affected.

Surely there's more to be considered when looking at part time hours rather than only what the employee wants?

GPs are in desire across the globe so if you make working conditions undesirable here they’ll just move. I know a couple who have moved to Oz for better working conditions.
Or retire early. Either way, your retention rates will plummet.

I think one about women in STEM is that often, we don't really know what jobs are available. Yes, we know what nurses, doctors, vets and teachers do. A lot of people have an idea of what engineers do, at least on one level And you can take a guess at some things like research scientist, but most of the people outside the relevant fields won't have more than a vague idea, and when it comes down to some jobs like UX designer or unix admin and various other tech roles, most people outside of IT have virtually no idea at all. So if parents don't have any idea about jobs involved, they're not going to talk to their children about them.

On top of this, we don't tend to see many depictions of STEM jobs in soap operas and so on. We see the IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory, which are mostly nerdy men as a figure of fun. Where's the working mother in a soap opera, who happens to work in user experience testing or is a lab technician? I suppose part of it is that having people work in customer facing roles (receptionist, bar work, catering, retail,) opens up more opportunities for moving stories forward and interaction with other characters, which isn't so easy with a pass-accessed office or lab. So other than medical staff and mechanics, we tend not to see STEM roles as a just by-the-way, incidental part of everyday life.

Nonetheless, there are girls who make it through school without dropping STEM subjects - this is more likely to happen in single-sex schools. Some make it through university, too. I think another issue is that our education specialises way too early in the UK - I think the Scottish highers take a wider range than at A-level, but nonetheless, we do force people to reduce their choices at a ridiculously young age. Many people have no idea what they will want to do when they're 14 and choosing GCSE subjects, but those choices may be cutting people out of studying STEM subjects at higher levels even at that age.

Nevertheless, she persisted, and some girls do end up working in STEM. I was at a women in tech event a few years ago, and one of the speakers said, "You tend to get a certain sort of woman working in computing, because the rest don't make it." You do need a thick skin and certain level of stubbornness. I met someone who worked in nuclear physics, and she said she won't get involved in any events promoting STEM to girls, because she doesn't want to have the guilt of encouraging them into an environment which is still sexist. It's rarely overtly sexist these days (though don't be under any illusion that doesn't still happen), and a lot of men seem to think that as long as they aren't actively groping anyone by the photocopier, they're doing their bit, and everything is fine with the culture.

It's not though. There's plenty of unconscious bias (and at times, conscious bias.) Just happens to be the man who gets the promotion and that high-profile project - again. Happens rather too often to believe it's all fair and based on merit.

Then you get to a point where maternity leave or redundancy or something forces you to take stock of your world, and you realise you don't want to have to put up with that crap every day, you don't want to have to fight for everything in a way your male colleagues don't need to do. So you decide to go and do something else where you can focus all your energy on actual work, rather than fighting the system just to stay level.

And so the other women who made it through, 10, 15, 20 years behind you - they don't see any female role models in their area. All the managers are men. You find it difficult to believe that women can make it there, and meanwhile, all the male managers will be bemoaning that they can't get any women, despite all the gender equality initiatives they have tried. They will see there is no sexism, because it doesn't affect them at all, so they just don't notice all the institutional bias, and they'll decide that it's all because women just don't want to do it, so it's not their fault, and they don't need to change.

It can be very, very tiring. Death by 1000 cuts.

Namenic

In my borough the OOH GPs are employed just for that. Our GPs don't cover it themselves.

Funnily enough, other part time teachers at my school have had enough of this and quit teaching.
Well I'm not surprised if they are working 5 full days a week but only paid at 0.6. I've never heard of such a bizarre idea. Any part time teachers that I have known have done it for the purpose of reducing the need for childcare so they have worked either 2 or 3 days/week.