Women's research network

[Sunnydays41]

I work at an HEI which has recently set up a 'women's research network' to help counter the underrepresentation of women in active research due to the many obstacles women face.

Great.

Until you get to the line about it being open to women of all backgrounds, including those who identify as trans women 🙄

Yes, there are indeed many barriers to women in research, but how many of the following are applicable to trans women...

Maternity leave

Part-time working, most likely because of caring responsibilities (okay, generally applicable to all, but statistics show the vast majority of part-time workers are female)

Time-off due to:

• menopause symptoms
• myriad of many other gynaecological issues

General bias against women (both unconscious and conscious!)

It just makes a mockery of the whole thing. It is crazy how seemingly intelligent organisations and people are the most captured.

Well, everyone knows the best way to increase the representation of women in any field is to change the definition of women to include men.

The numbers of women in the field go up immediately, and there's no need for any of those pesky decade-long initiatives to identify and address systemic barriers - what's not to like?

Funnily enough the HEI I work for announced the exact same thing on our intranet earlier this week.

Possibly the same HEI!

Quite

Yes possibly if in a famous Cathedral city.

Wasn't that also one of the reasons given for blocking Scotland's Self ID bill?

We're certainly debating it in Germany right now. The constitution demands the government work actively for women's Equality- which would be moot if sex is abolished as an actual legal category.

PS - OP my temporary username is a clue. if we’re in the same HEI you’ll get the references.

Name change on this board a lot as although GC views are legally valid I’m scared to air them at work.

Especially with UCU’s position.

Yep! And a Google of your username confirms.. (Surprisingly not heard that term before!).

Yes, I also name-change fairly frequently. I've made my views known before to one colleague and I would maybe raise them tentatively to others if the subject came up, but would hesitate to more corporately (though various email compositions have been running through my head today!).

I think it's predictable with the other place up the hill being so captured

If you ever want a Teams chat or on-campus meet up, let me know! I was pretty ‘agnostic’ about this stuff until I got peaked with Isla Bryson and Lia Thomas. I have to admit I never gave much thought to the end game of ‘TWAW’ but now I get it. Please feel free to DM me.

Not in academia but I hope you both meet up. Out of a tentative email to someone in my organisation we went from smallish WhatsApp group to holding a bigger teams meet that was open to anyone and are now 👏to 😇Maya part of the EDI initiatives in the company. When we find one another, we are strong

Love that!

I’m not a researcher. I work in professional services. But this article resonated with me.

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/12/womens-research-plummets-during-lockdown-but-articles-from-men-increase

There's a afaf group in this city if you want to link with like minded people

Please forgive my ignorance but what is an afaf group?

LonginesPrime · 29/06/2023 12:40
Well, everyone knows the best way to increase the representation of women in any field is to change the definition of women to include men.

this is gold! Thanks @LonginesPrime

Academics for academic freedom

Thank you. I’m in professional services though.