The 11th of February celebrated the International day of women and girls in science.
However, if we really want a fantastic talent pipeline we need to invest and nurture our talent. Incidentally, over at Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN) we support 14k women researchers from PhD to Vice Chancellor and across sectors from Higher Education to Healthcare, Charity to Industry - wherever research happens. Through a digital professional network our members have benefitted from peer learning, expert coaching, compassion and challenge! Results include being promoted. securing stable employment, finding research collaborators and securing multi million pound grants. We are so proud of the academic collegiality of our members that we dedicated and constructed our first book around them! 'ResearcHer: The power and potential of research careers for women' spotlights diverse women researchers from within our network and the diverse research they do. We are a charity so funds are tight but we were able to donate £16k worth of the book for free via a network of universities, charities and research institutions to young people in areas less well represented in research careers and are developing workshops / widening participation events. WIASN are always looking for ways to pay it forward.
With pay it forward in mind, on Valentines Day, we were delighted to co-host a Twitter chat with publishers Taylor and Francis. The chat discussed academic community for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and we shared, amongst other things, the WIASN origin story of being women ECRs subjected to misogyny in a professional community so decided to start our own. We thought we were starting a small group but within a few days we were inundated with join requests. We'd hit on something. Women rarely had space where they didn't have to moderate their own behaviours and could be authentic - goodbye panopticon. We've also found huge kindness and willing to help each other and that our digital community can flatten hierarchy - that world leading Prof who you were once scared to email for a paper - you are now giving them some key life advice!
But it's not all roses. We also used that chat to surface issues of loneliness, overwork and precarity; drawing attention to the UK, Higher Education sector where UCU have called strike action across February and March to improve academic precarity and under pay that are detrimental to developing high quality research and innovation. Solidarity.
We need a healthy talent pipeline but also to keep the talent we already have! We are left wondering what the UK's newly formed Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and its Secretary The Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP position is on the dire treatment of our researchers? If we want to be at the forefront of science and technology we need to invest in our current and future talent and diversify that pipeline.
This week we also see Wellcome Trust advertise a C-suite level EDI post that will impact who and what they fund - hopefully nurturing pipelines for ECRs. But will Wellcome have the guts to be radical and go for someone different to the usual corporate? Will they really put their money where their mouth is and hire diverse? and by that I also include not just hiring someone already on that salary. We have many fantastic charity founders mobilising communities and volunteers who would be a breath of fresh air.
WIASN push for diversity in the research pipeline and you can read more here in our latest article in University World News 'Diversity in research: You can’t be what you can’t see'
To pay a book forward and fund additional widening participation for women and girls in science you can donate via this link
Dr Kelly Pickard-Smith is a co-founder of WIASN and our Director of Community and Culture.
