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This is a bit of a cheeky question really, do you think with biomedical that we'll ever
get to a situation where we've got to do positive reinforcement the other way, in other words
to get more men into the field and how would you do that?
Positive reinforcement for men in the medical sciences, is that?
Well, it's a possibility.
I think that we're still to see how the trajectories pan out at postdoctoral level where you still
have this imbalance of women not being able to get as far as fast as men, but that might
be an important issue to face, quite an interesting one.
It's a little bit comparable, we're already seeing this, I'm sure it's the same in Australia,
in the UK, primary school teaching is very heavily female dominated and people are saying
that we need more men as male role models for the next generation, so there's issues
already in other sectors and I'm sure it may well be the same, but again my views on positive
discrimination are unchanged.
They are offering positive discrimination for primary school male teachers actually, aren't
they?
Do you have anything to add, Marie?
No, I said nurses.
Okay, good, thank you.
Down the front here.
Hi, Crystal Evans from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, I just wanted to follow up
regarding positive discrimination and reflect on a publication that Nature put out this
week which looked at the number of Nature reviewers, editors, commissioned pieces that
were by women and they found that they self-reported, that they had asked less women to be guest
editors, less women to be reviewers and that their solution was a form of positive discrimination,
was that the editors were to say, well who are five and I could ask to do this job and
I guess my comment says, well my question is, if you want to have the most able person
in the job, yet we've shown that unconscious bias discriminates how we judge able, how
are we just going to make sure that the women are still in, can we use positive discrimination
to make sure women are in the pool to be selected from in the first place?
That's a very good question, can I just qualify that I've actually got the paper here and
the area that Nature was talking about was in their News and Views section, it's not
in the Peer Reviewed section.
Susan, did that report surprise you when you saw it?
Again, it didn't surprise me, it depressed me because on the whole, all of us do this,
we tend to favour people that are just like us, they look like us, the same age as us
and the same gender as us and so on.
Now there, I wouldn't call it positive discrimination if one policed and really made a great effort
to ensure that if there's a choice between a male and female reviewer, then the female
is selected, that for me wouldn't be positive discrimination any more than when I was doing
a missions at Oxford and we had two equal candidates, one from a disadvantaged background,
one from Eaton, I would take of course the disadvantaged, now I wouldn't call that positive
discrimination, it's just trying to keep the playing field level, that's very different
from ring fencing or biasing and taking a less able person over a more able one.
But isn't it in the very public end of science important to have the female voice, which
is essentially what Nature was saying, sorry we haven't been doing that?
Yeah, I agree with Susan on what she said and what Fiona has been saying as well, just
about nurturing female talent as well and the way I see it is with any job when someone
gets into it, there is a time when you need to learn the skills, learn all the tricks
of the trade and I think a woman or a man could be taught those tricks and have that
mentoring to be brought up to scratch.
I think the other thing in that article was that women need to actually, there was some
interpretation that women might have less time to actually review and might reject reviews
more so what we have to do with our mentoring and the sort of networking is to encourage
women to actually try and do it so they don't let people down and that they really do play
their part in doing that reviewing and those sorts of activities because I do think it's
very important.
I think that's absolutely right, it's partly, let's say the women are sometimes not very
assertive, they don't push themselves forward, they don't let themselves be known, so I think
the onus is on us as well to show that we're there, to make it clear we're happy to volunteer
to do these things and so on because there is a pool of women there, perhaps that people
may not know this.
This is the leaning forward that you were talking about earlier, it's about being more
assertive.
We actually train people in media training for example, being more assertive, being able
to ask questions at conferences and to give a paper and to actually do that because then
you do get chosen because you get noticed and so I think that's really important and
women tend not to because of the male networks but if you've got a really good one who gives
a very good presentation at an international conference she may be asked to review the
next paper for nature.
That's the way to do it.
I know myself personally, I find it really uncomfortable to put myself forward sometimes
but what I do is I say, okay, just suppress all those feelings and just go and do it and
then I can feel bad about having done it later.
That's the packet of Tim Tams when you get home.
That's women in science sharing their secrets of success, that's my secret of success,
just put those feelings away for a while.
It's the same as I was saying about that we're brought up to say we're people persons.
There is, if we're going to have caricatures, a sort of image that we don't want to deviate
from.
We want to be touchy-feely, we want to be people persons, we don't want to shove ourselves
forward because that's not very feminine thing to do because then you're called assertive
and strident and aggressive and things like that and at the same time unless you do those
things and you can do it nicely then people won't notice you and then we will have these
sort of situations.
We have a question up here.
No, sorry, over here.
Yep.
Good afternoon, Mark Bergen from the Melbourne Design Awards.
I'm interested in a values proposition that seems to be coming up.
I'm getting the impression that it's nice or it's desirable that women are in science
whereas from a marketing perspective it's when something becomes important and is a
value that the community has.
That's when we see the transition take place.
What do you think can be done to communicate the value of what we're missing out on because
we don't have as many women in science?
I certainly made that point at the beginning that I think women do science differently
and they ask different questions and I think they bring a richness to science and I think
that might be worth trying to document that a bit more in a way I guess because then you
could market it for us.
It is, as Susan said, this wonderful individual contribution that you make to any kind of
creative activity and I notice this particularly because I have teams of people working with
me who are both genders and there are different contributions and I think it's something
that we should value.
I mean I think this is very personal for engineering because currently Australia doesn't have enough
skilled engineers.
We have to bring a lot of skilled workers in from other countries and if we had as many
women doing engineering as men then there wouldn't be that gender imbalance.
I think training more engineers now will mean that in 10, 20 years' time we'll have new
industries because we have a greater talent pool of people starting up technology companies
and being able to contribute to our existing companies in different ways and maybe we're
just not forward thinking enough and we're not thinking well what's going to be good
for us in 10, 20 years' time economically because it is a very pressing issue and I
know that these men are all in front row, I've had conversations with a few of them
and they all agree with me, it's all about educating the young so that we can build
that foundation so that we have this huge talent pool to get knowledge from.
I don't know if anyone here is in the sort of HR sector but certainly on British television
quite recently they did some experiments showing what's the most efficient.
All male teams, all female teams or teams equal male and female and they have little
tasks like you have to build a tower with flat bits of paper and staple guns and this
requires you to cooperate and have ideas and so on and the tower, the best tower is the
one that's tallest and can support a glass of water or something and very clearly the
best were 50-50 and this would be what I would say, if I was coming to you to market us I'd
say look, yes of course you can have all male teams and that gets a bit testosterone rich
and very aggressive and very focused but not necessarily working as a team very well, very
competitive or you can have all women which in my own experience sometimes women can
get somewhat emotional and sort of strange, let's say, and the relationship.
But together, that's what I try to name, for 50-50 has been proven in other sectors to
be the most effective.
It brings out the best in both genders and I would use data like that to apply it to
science.
On boards for example.
Okay, we have a question down here.
Neil Byrne, amongst other things we manage L'Oreal's Women in Science program in Australia
and what strikes me in that, what struck me in that over the last few years, if you look
at the life sciences, so women are doing science at university, life sciences at university,
the challenges are coming when they're having kids, career break and it's not that difficult
to consider public policy options to fix that.
It might be hard to get the NHMRC to do it but you can see how you could implement policies
to make that happen, it shouldn't be that difficult a problem for society.
But when it comes to physical sciences, maths, physics, chemistry, engineering, girls clearly
aren't doing the subjects to enable them to retain those options into university and they're
not applying for university.
What two or three public policy ideas do you have, if any, that could actually address
that fundamental problem because I really don't know other than trying to run advertising
campaigns.
I can't think of a few simple ways of fixing that.
Do you have some ideas?
Science is a girls thing, that would be a good starting point.
I do think the idea of targeting early on and training and offering girls and helping
girls through the secondary school to try and get them more excited about that.
That's what they do with the Aboriginal stuff, is to get people excited quite early on and
to give them the opportunities to train up.
It's a good question, Neil, because you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the differences
and women have been discouraged from going into the maths and physical sciences.
How do you legislate for a culture change is really the question and I don't know how
you do that.
Marita, this is probably a good time for you to tell us a bit more detail about robo girls.
Well, firstly, I think that ads on TV are a good start.
There's been ads on TV about getting more people into nursing, getting more people into
teaching.
Why not about getting more girls into engineering?
I think the other problem is, as Fiona mentioned, there are a lot of schools out there that
I've heard say we don't encourage our students to do science, we don't encourage our students
to do maths, you don't have to worry about us, send your girls here.
The person who told me that story said they did not send their girl there because they
were from a science background.
I think part of the problem is about education as to what engineering careers are like.
We did a study with robo girls last year where we surveyed 350 girls out of those 350, only
five of them knew what engineering was.
All these girls were between the ages of 8 and 12.
Education as to what these careers are would play an enormous role.
Another reason that people don't do the harder maths and the physics in high school I've
heard is the schools say they're really hard subjects, don't do them.
And if students don't do them, when they get to university, when they get to deciding
what to do for university, going into an engineering degree without physics and without the hard
maths it's hard, you need to do a bridging course and get up to scratch and all of that
as opposed to learning it over the two years in year 11 and 12.
I think that having more incentives for all students to do physics and the harder maths
would be the way to go so that when kids are leaving high school, they have the credentials,
they have the subjects to go into any field, particularly engineering and science.
They've got to have good teachers to teach it, I think that's the other thing as well,
isn't it?
There's a young girl here with her hand up.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'm so sorry, so sorry.
I've got my eye on you, don't worry.
You'll get there.
Okay, well I think it's interesting if we go back to the issue of biomedical sciences
not having this issue as much.
First I think it's really misleading if it's being perpetrated that the physical sciences
are, quote, harder than biomedical sciences, anyone trying to study the brain, I would
defy them to say that was easy compared to physics and chemistry and so on, because anyway
it's all one and the same.
So why is it that biomedical doesn't have the problem that physical sciences does?
I think if we can probe and think about that, then we can tackle it, and my own view is
that as I said, biomedical sciences more readily quote all about life.
You can relate it because it's on the same space and time scales that your body is and
your navigation of the world is and so on.
So we should therefore, if that were the case, think of ways of teaching, and this is something
that's fixable, the way one teaches physical sciences in a way that can relate to time
and space scales and quote real life in a way that will be appealing to everyone, and
the way one can do that is with metaphor, one can do that with analogy, one can do it
with narrative, with stories.
May it be that biomedical sciences is also popular because there's soap operas on the
TV concerning hospitals and so on, whereas you don't have, and wouldn't it be wonderful,
the everyday story of simple lab folk, if anyone knows about the archers, here they
are in the lab, I've just had my paper rejected, oh never mind, and that would actually, wouldn't
the archers, those of you from the, the archers which has been going since the 1940s as a
radio soap opera was introduced, was introduced to inform people about sensitive agricultural
issues and to subtly get them on side about agricultural issues, why can't we, if there's
any media people here, why can't we have a science soap opera, where we have, the big
bang star female engineer, you know, fighting against male chauvinism, that, that, no seriously,
that, that is the way you get people, on side by telling stories like that.
Well, we've got the big bang theory, but no one wants to be like, well, the wits.
Just to add to Fiona how she said, it's all about the teachers, there was a great study
from the Gratton Institute about what's been going on in Asia, why South Korea, Singapore,
Shanghai, Hong Kong are performing so well, and one of the things they do in South Korea
which has meant that they spend less money, but the scores of the students have improved
greatly, is they spend, they focus their money on, on the teachers and giving teachers PD
weekly, so that teachers can learn about science and maths concepts and, you know, the more
they learn about it, the more they'll relate to it, the more passionate they'll be, and
the more they can relay that passion onto their students.
It comes back really to the, the Jesuit thing about, give me a, a child to less seven and
I'll give you a person for life.
So in terms of policy, let's put more money into teachers PD.
True, true.
Shall we, we had the question from this, this last year, and then we'll.
There's a lady here.
Sorry, which one?
I was pointing to the young girl here, but the other lady, you have had a long time.
And then we'll get you next.
But I thought here's a budding scientist, I want to nurture her.
Your question please.
Hi, my name's Afia, I'm a grade five student and I'm 11, so I guess I'd be one of the
young girls you're talking about.
I go to a lot of science lectures with my mum a lot and also to robo girls, I've been
to that.
And well, because yeah, there is, there isn't really any science and mathematics, good science
and mathematics teaching in primary schools.
With mathematics, there's also the stereotype that, you know, maths is hard, I don't like
maths.
And so I just like it kind of in relation to that, I'd like to ask you, well, in, in,
in Australia and other countries, the percentage of women in science and relation to the, well,
the amount of science teaching in primary school and secondary school in those countries.
Do we know any of that research is to.
Well, I think that Marita's touched on it a bit and the country that's really doing
the best in terms of science teaching now internationally is South Korea.
Looking at the OECD data on education, educational outcomes, then those countries, South Korea,
some of the countries you mentioned are doing, are doing better.
And I'm not quite sure, I don't, I haven't seen the Chinese data in there, but certainly
South Korea's doing, doing very well and the investment they've made is in the kind
of things.
You know, wouldn't it be great if we had more women and men teaching maths and science in
primary school that made it fun?
And you know, now I've got grandchildren and taking them to places, you know, like sci-techs
and science works and everything.
It can be fun and it can be really fun.
It's, I'm finding, I'm learning, I'm learning from some of these things as well.
So I think you're absolutely, you've absolutely put a very good point to us that if we want
to really make a difference, we've got to start very young, exciting people and we've
got to get rid of this thing that maths is hard and boring because it's not and it's
very exciting.
And so that means getting us excited about it too, so that we can help our kids and grandkids
with the homework and other things they have to do, but you know, I think it's, it's, it's
really changing that cultural thing about it being a hard thing to do, which Susan's
already, and Marita have already commented on, but very good comment.
Yeah.
Do you want to guess?
Oh yeah, sure.
I think you've raised a really good point, actually, and it's good to hear that you've
been involved with Rory Gals.
Yeah, I've spoken to education experts and they tell me the particular focus that is
needed is on science in primary schools because that, it's solely lacking there.
I don't know what to do about it, but it, yeah, you have stated what so.
The other thing that you spoke about is that you go to a lot of science lectures and a
lot of science related places, and I think that's fantastic, and that you're very, very
lucky.
And I think you highlighted another really good point, which is that parents have as
much to do with getting kids into science and nurturing kids as teachers, and so we
shouldn't all be pointing the finger at teachers, but saying, well, what can we do as parents
in order to help our kids and educate our kids and broaden their minds because you're
only at school for six hours of the day and the other 18, you're at home with your parents
or.
Yeah, I think the key to everything is inspirational teaching.
And so everyone remembers a good teacher.
I'm sure everyone in this room probably chose the subject they did at school or the specialty
because their teacher was just great.
They got on really well with them.
Now how do we get that at this level equal gender representation and also teaching science?
One possibility is there's a brilliant scheme started in the States called Teach First.
I don't know if that happens here.
Yeah, it's Teach Australia.
Yeah.
So Teach First is where you take absolutely stellar graduates who've just got a first,
who've just left university, and they spend, say, two years before they embark on their
career.
It's very controversial.
Yeah, they go into a school and they teach.
So they're bringing a real fresh approach.
They're bringing a new face, a young face into the science.
Let's hope it's equally gender matched.
That's one possibility.
Another way, of course, is the RI, plugging the RI Australia because we had a meeting
today.
The RI is absolutely behind teachers.
They want to empower them, support them, help them, invigorate them.
And so, you know, look here to help the teachers.
Well, what we haven't talked about is that there's the internet and how powerful the
internet can be to both help teachers and students.
And I was up in the remote aboriginal community of Warman, which is Turkey Creek, where Queenie
McKenzie and Robert Thomas came from, famous painters.
And I was talking to the kids about science.
These are the kids in secondary school at Warman.
And it is a very remote aboriginal community.
And I was walking down the classroom after giving my talk, and there were all these kids
on the computer doing math Olympics.
And they wanted to get 100%.
I mean, the boys wanted to get 100% because then they couldn't go play football.
And they could only play football if they'd got 100% in their math Olympics.
But I just thought, what a fantastic thing this was for these kids in this remote community.
The teachers were not, you know, that good at teaching maths up there.
But this, using the internet, was actually really quite powerful.
So I think that's a, and the other is the Academy of Science, which has run, of course,
a primary connections, which is their scientific thing, which of course got cut, should never
have cut something as important as the teaching of science in primary schools, which enables
teachers to be better teachers of science at that primary level.
What we're talking about here, though, is what Sophie is at Sophie.
There's really sort of a, you really have to start young, and I think that's a really
important point.
I would like to quickly run around the question of how do we promote and get more teachers
of science in primary schools to start the process at that end?
Have we got any ideas on the panel?
Well, I do think we have to look at France because, you know, what France does is to
understand that brain development is occurring early and that the best investment you can
make is early.
And so a lot of the teachers that are in the French system, the most highly qualified teachers
are the ones in the early years and in the primary schools.
And so they put a lot of effort into high quality educational environments earlier.
And I think that that's exactly what you're saying.
In other words, we need to value primary school teachers and early childhood educators above
all the other groups because they're the ones who are going to really make the biggest difference
and the earlier you can do it, the better.
So that's a policy, Neil, that we can bring in, that we would actually enhance the career
trajectories and pay more and value more the teachers in the primary school system.
Marita?
A major culture change.
I don't have anything to add on teachers.
Nothing to add there.
Susan?
Well, again, I say it's a complex situation.
There's no simple answer.
I mean, obvious things are the higher the pay and the higher the status, then the more
attractive for many people, especially their asset for men, the job will be.
But I think really what we ought to be asking is what we're actually teaching, not just
the recruitment of the teachers, but how we're going to convey to girls, especially the excitement
of science, the idea of an experiment and testing something out when you don't know
the answer, that's the real thrill.
So there's very many factors and perhaps we should have another session on teaching
in science, because clearly there's a lot of factors and it would not be doing it justice
to do some kind of quick sound bite.
But I think, again, getting people like Teach First to come, having much more promotion
in the media about this, perhaps profiles of teacher in the media, that's a very good
way of getting people interested and aware and alert to those kinds of careers.
There's a whole raft of possibilities, but we're out of time now, but let's have another
session on that.
Just on 10 gently for that as well.
I think if you want to introduce young kids to new ideas, and especially in the science
area, if the teacher doesn't feel like they're capable, getting outreach programs in, there's
a lot of science and engineering outreach programs out there, RoboGal is one of them.
They're very suitable to primary school kids.
One thing we did in Adelaide, and I think that's called National Linda has it now, was
to get graduates in labs, young graduates who are doing research and twin them with schools
so that they could go and visit their twin school, and they would go from time to time
and give talks and so on, and the older kids in theory could go to the lab in the holidays.
This is a way of personalizing science, and also very good for the graduates because it
gave them communication skills that perhaps they wouldn't have in the sort of narrow remit
of the lab.
I don't know how much that was rolled up, but it was, it was called the twinning scheme
at the time.
Linda Cooper down the front would know probably what's happened to it, and I'm sure others
were just scientists in schools, there we are, and RoboGal was founded from the scientists
in schools.
And RoboGal was actually founded as a result of scientists in schools.
There we are.
Right.
So it all happened in Adelaide first.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've had an abundance of tsunami of wonderful ideas this evening.
It wouldn't have been such an entertaining discussion if it weren't for my three brilliant
panelists.
Susan Greenfield, Mareita Chang, and Diana Stanley.
