Encouraging Women in STEM.

[DpWm]

The institute for Apprenticeships seems to have developed a novel way to encourage female applications for apprenticeships in STEM careers, which sits around a woeful 9%, and apparently works, seeing a rise of about 40% female applicants when tested.

feweek.co.uk/2019/05/10/ifa-to-trial-gender-neutral-language-in-bid-to-boost-female-stem-applicants/

It's really interesting and quite depressing, if this really works, to see how gendered language works to hold women back. It reveals how extremely sexist the world is, how women and men are shaped to view themselves.

From link
The advert that increased female applications by 40 per cent referred to by Morfee, and seen by FE Week, lists a number of “feminine and neutral” words that should be used in job adverts, which include: understand, kind, honest, dependable, co-operative and support

It also lists “masculine” words that should be avoided, such as: active, decisive, leader, ambition, challenge, objective, competitiveness, independence, opinion, confident and intellectual.

So women are put off from applying for jobs that ask for applicants who are "ambitious" and "intellectual" and prefer jobs that ask for those who are "kind" and "supportive".

I understand why they have taken this approach, and great if it helps women into stem, but avoiding the words of traits that actually help people get ahead in their career is surely just a bit of a blunt tool, and pretty sexist.
So much work needs to be done for women to see they can have all the traits usually associated with masculinity, why should "ambition" be reserved for men?

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?

@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???

@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.

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

@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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.