Encouraging Women in STEM.

noblegiraffe

Oh that is ridiculous that you are working, and being paid, as part time but are actually in school full time.

The only times that I've been aware of it were when staff worked say 2 or 3 days per week but would have been teaching, less PPA time, for all of that time.

Otherwise what benefit is there to being part time? If you are in school 5 full days a week you may as well be full time and paid for it.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has just published a book on Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? and says (going by the reviews, I've not read the book yet,) that we should have more data-based recruitment, which looks at the skills actually required, rather than what we think makes good leaders (but often doesn't.)

I have more to say, but I'm meant to be doing the STEM job I get paid for.

Either that or women are just too smart to apply for jobs where employers seem to be looking for dickheads...

How the fuck is independence and intelligence etc masculine? I find it hard to believe that women genuinely don’t think that they have these traits. Is it perhaps more industry specific code for ‘applicants with penises please’?

We're going through a major restructure at work at the moment. Lots of internal recruitment is going on and I am constantly harassing our change management team about the language they use in the recruitment adverts. I've been running all adverts through this

I head up one of the bigger IT teams, but we are definitely front facing so I need people with the soft skills. I need people who can reign in their belief that they know better than our users and who can navigate some of the big egos we have to work with. Predominantly (though not always) these tend to be women. From a business point of view it is far preferable to start out employing people with these skills than to have to train, mediate and at times discipline "active, ambitious, challenging, competitive" employees.

That’s exactly right. In fact I have been paid 0.6 and been in school 5 days per week. Some late starts and early finishes, but also unpaid trapped time.

noblegiraffe

How does that work then? You are paid per lesson? So if someone worked 0.6 they could actually be in school 5 days per week but only paid for 0.6 that they are teaching? That can't be right?

They would be paid per day surely

Hahahahahahahaaaa no. I’ve just described my timetable. PPA is only 10% of hours taught, and the amount of trapped time on my timetable exceeds that by quite a lot, so P3 and 4 are definitely unpaid.

So they might teach P1, P2 and P5, with P3 and 4 (and lunchtime) unpaid.

Why would they have P3 and 4 unpaid? They would be paid per day surely, not per lesson taught? Wouldn't 3 and 4 be PPA time?

Fme the problem is made more difficult when teachers want to work part time but aren't able to be flexible about the days so it isn't possible for them to be timetabled to teach one class and another pt time teach another class. That's when you end up with classes having split teachers and the potential (around pay review, I've witnessed it) for one teacher to blame the other for lack of progress or the like.

Like I said, it might not be good for kids to have split classes, but it’s worse for them to have no teacher.

And that’s where we’re at.

Yes, you end up with a part time teacher who is in school way more than they are actually being paid for. So they might teach P1, P2 and P5, with P3 and 4 (and lunchtime) unpaid.

This is not great for teachers who have children in childcare, as you might be working 0.6 of a timetable but paying for pretty much full time childcare.

Schools are notoriously shit at offering part time working to teachers. It makes writing the timetable a pain in the arse, not good for the kids to have split classes etc etc.

But it should be about balancing the needs of the children with the needs of the staff surely? It isn't good for students to have split classes so by allowing it schools are accepting that some classes will be getting a worse education.

Is there a way to work the timetable so that part time teachers still teach the same class for all of their lessons?

Schools are notoriously shit at offering part time working to teachers. It makes writing the timetable a pain in the arse, not good for the kids to have split classes etc etc.

And so we (as a country) are running out of teachers and the kids are being ‘taught’ by unqualified staff.

So by trying to avoid kids having two teachers, they end up with the kids having no teacher.

It will be if you retain your staff!

Academic science is a little different in that full time is not viewed as enough. So you are expected to do significant amounts of unpaid overtime (eg work 7 days a week) without being paid enough to cover adequate child care. Fine if you have a rich spouse (I know a fair few lecturers this applies to), otherwise it’s pretty discriminatory. There’s no real need for this either, it’s just the culture.

And maybe the question on a feminism board is how to encourage men to demand jobs with family-friendly hours, for the benefit of all.

Do family friendly hours benefit everyone though? By everyone I mean employers and service users too? Certainly in medicine, particularly GP practices, I don't see the huge increase in part time GPs being a benefit to patients.

I have 3 teens, the two eldest are girls. We are in the USA and my eldest is very interested in the FBI. She is going to uni in the Fall and will major in German with another subject she hasn't chosen yet. She had a lot of leadership roles at school, including leading a small group of 8 for 5 days including overnights. All the participants in her group applied to be a leader (like her) the following year. She is also interested in Environmental science. She plans to continue taking math and science at uni until she chooses a major. She understands that having knowledge of STEM subjects is necessary and it's important not to abandon them.

Number two has a very strong interest in medicine and thinks she wants to do Emergency Medicine. DH is a doctor though.

I think girls are turning toward medicine because it's a STEM career they understand. Engineering and IT feel more remote and vague and are very masculinized. I think if careers linked to these subjects were clearly articulated and what they could lead to maybe more women would be interested.

With my girls I have encouraged athletics, independence and leadership and to follow their interests. I have been around so many hopeless male managers I know for a fact many women could lead extremely competently.

I've shared my positive experiences of STEM before, but I'll do so again.
I'm not sure where it goes wrong.
At school, the top of the class in maths, physics, chemistry, biology were all girls (and in most other subjects too, tbh).
At uni (25 years ago), most of the people on my chemistry course were girls, out of maybe 40 in the year. Friends on biology and biochemistry courses were more than half female too. We had female lecturers and professors.
I've worked at STEM companies with majority women (and some majority men of course).
I know top women professors, CEOs, directors, heads of dept., consultants, surgeons, etc.
I realise this is my personal experience and not the majority according to statistics, but there are women doing well in STEM and working at the top.

But one thing I have noticed is that women in these jobs are more likely to go for the kinds of positions with more limited hours. My husband is a chemist in the civil service, and there are a lot of women in those science positions, and it's the same in law positions in the civil service. I think it's because for women who have kids, they are often wanting limited hours and good benefits.

No shit, Sherlock! And maybe the question on a feminism board is how to encourage men to demand jobs with family-friendly hours, for the benefit of all. (Including, probably, benefit to the employers - long hours cultures are generally less productive, poorer retention of skilled staff.)

I can't get hugely excited about getting more people of either sex into STEM, I wish there were more really good people going into the humanities.

But the sciences and tech are really quite uneven for sex representation. Medicine is much more female, my son asked me once why doctors are all women. (He forgot his grandfather is a doctor I guess.) Biology, oceanography, medicine, animal sciences, all tend to have a lot of women. Physics, chemistry, engineering, have a lot of men.

I am not sure that this is in itself a real problem. But one thing I have noticed is that women in these jobs are more likely to go for the kinds of positions with more limited hours. My husband is a chemist in the civil service, and there are a lot of women in those science positions, and it's the same in law positions in the civil service. I think it's because for women who have kids, they are often wanting limited hours and good benefits. Something like academia, with all its demands, isn't as attractive.

Interesting article. I think unfortunately a huge part of the problem is the sexist assholes at the top. I am considering PI positions in the next year or two and had a really odd encounter at a conference the other week. Quite senior prof in my field, found out we have similar interests, all "oh we should sit down over a beer" lots of winking and oh yes look at us NETWORKING at a conference from his side. Cringe.

Then half an hour of banging on about his self developed positive discrimination to encourage women to apply at his institution, followed by fifteen minutes of how that wasn't positive discrimination and he doesn't believe in positive discrimination because ALL discrimination is discrimination against some (ie white men).

Rounded off with a hilarious joke about how the new IBM CEO didn't accept her job quickly enough and if she was a man would never have possibly asked for a whole evening to, you know, go home and think about how being the CEO might impact the rest of her family or, shock, whether she actually wanted the job. Because obviously a man would have accepted on the spot and that is therefore the right way to do it. And then everyone actually laughed.

I was sat there the whole time like, what the fuck? It's no wonder women don't want to work for assholes like that. Needless to say I have not followed him up on his offer for "help".

the company is known for allowing flexible working, job shares and working from home. So it is more likely to attract women in the field

And, crucially, retain them.

I write scientific software. It's very much the sort of thing also done in academia.

I don't work 9-5 ... for many years I've worked from home, and half time since DD started school. Flexible hours, it's about getting the job done not presenteeism or pointless meetings.

I'm not 'ambitious' ... I want to do my job well (which of course means my skills evolve and grow), I'm not sniping for my bosses jobs.

I work with (not in) the armed forces and massive leaps have been made recently to be more gender diverse and to encourage girls into STEM. Although the general public finds it harder to adapt it seems. A local councillor(male) replied to my email listing attendees and speakers at their event pointing out an alleged typo. He said "I'm sure Colonel X won't appreciate thag you wrote Stephen as Stephanie."
Actually Colonel X would have expected it to be Stephanie because that's HER name!
This was followed by a surprised "Oh, a lady Colonel"
No, just a Colonel. Like any other Colonel!! grrrrrr

My personal view of the word ambitious is that it implies selfishness. Looking to get ahead, take the credit. It would put me off applying for a job. Being kind and caring and a good team player is just as important in a STEM job as any other so I think this is a good move as it values what women bring to the work environment. Please don't be fooled into thinking the so called 'masculine' traits are more valuable and more worth mentioning.