Untenured staff provide much of Britain’s academic research effort, making
major contributions to lab work, teaching, management and mentoring. Yet the
more expertise and skills they accumulate, the harder it becomes for them to
obtain renewed funding. They are trapped in a professional dead end with only
slim chances of an eventual career breakthrough
(Forum, 8 November 1997, p 57).

The research councils, the learned societies, industry and some charities
fund a limited number of personal fellowships. However, those are invariably
intended for recent PhD graduates who show strong potential, rather than for
more experienced researchers. Ageism is a serious yet ignored by-product of
burgeoning university education, and haunts every graduate.

The problem is particularly acute for mature women whose careers have been
interrupted by having children, or who have suffered earlier setbacks through
discrimination. In the end, most are obliged to give in to the system and give
up, presenting a highly discouraging example for younger women hoping to enter
science. The public money spent on training these women in the first place is
wasted if they cannot go on to use their skills to the full. Industry has long
since realised that vast sums can be saved by retaining positions for trained
staff who take maternity leave. Why shouldn’t the same economics apply to
academia? Opportunity 2000, Britain’s initiative to improve the number of women
in business in the 1990s has provided a useful focus for industry, but academia
mostly does not work that way. The US has developed a strong conscience
regarding gender issues in business, which is highlighted through numerous media
firms whose human-relations policies are considered worthy of special notice.
The idea of ignoring expertise just because the producers were mature would earn
grave contempt.

Academia is intensely competitive, tough even for those whose career paths
have not been interrupted by having children. And there is no mercy for those
stuck in the career cul-de-sac. The damage has been done. Eventually they will
cease to receive financial support for their research because they are
considered too senior to be eligible. Many highly qualified mature scientists
are being discarded in this way.

The changes which most governments in the developed world are proposing to
address the gender imbalance in academic science are too small and too slow to
purge the system of entrenched attitudes. Equal opportunities policies do not
take age barriers into account. With such a mute disregard for the expertise of
mature people, what are the career prospects for young women who are fortunate
enough to win fellowships today but who will need to take time out tomorrow to
raise children? How will the system prevent them from ending up on the scrap
heap? Can only those who live ascetic lives hellbent on publishing as much as
possible ever expect academic status?

The need to remain competitive in research, be it industrial or academic,
grows ever more urgent. It makes the emphasis on the slow recruitment of a few
young women and the dogged insistence that potential in an inexperienced
researcher is more valuable than proven ability, seem less than credible. The
national need could be addressed immediately if even a small fraction of the
many mature scientists currently without a future were given opportunities. And
the impact would be even greater if they were selected in proportion to their
gender.

Unless there is a major restructuring of academic careers and an effective
abolition of ageism, morale in academia will continue to sink. Bringing more
young people into the research arena may fit in with the national agenda, but it
only delays the inevitable and increases disillusion. Nor will the overall
quality of research output rise as long as the system ignores all those highly
experienced scientists who are considered too mature to have careers.

Contract researchers are disadvantaged in every career-related aspect
possible—income, promotion, pension, job security and opportunity, and
even lose their credibility as scientists. Each must maintain a constant
overhead of exorbitant effort just to avoid disappearing off the map altogether,
and all continually suffer the pain of rejection by the system. Such
determination and capacity to survive would reap enormous scientific rewards if
it was channelled into productive research energy. But the effort is wasted.
What real improvements in opportunities can women in this category
anticipate?

A recent investigation of peer-review ratings within the Swedish Medical
Research Council showed that women were more harshly rated than men, to the
extent that a woman had to be 2.5 times as “good” in research (such as more
effective, productive or cited) in order to stand the same chance of winning a
grant as her male colleagues. These revelations provoked anger and sympathy
among women in Britain, but few other people were seriously bothered. We should
all be concerned—equal opportunities in Sweden are reckoned to be
exemplary. Every research council which believes its own performance to be above
reproach should open its files for similar analysis. The Swedish Medical
Research Council may not be the only one to end up with egg on its face.

When the disadvantage of harsh ratings is added to unwritten ageism policies
and to the temporary career disruptions caused by raising a family, the real
opportunities for an experienced female to gain due recognition and support are
seen to be minuscule. Thankfully, there are some signs of change: universities
are beginning to print on their notepaper that they are Equal Opportunity
Employers, and their personnel departments are starting to send advertisements
of their crèche facilities to job applicants. Schools are being urged
that girls must not be discouraged from pursuing science in higher education,
while the burgeoning “women in science” projects are doing their bit. Indeed,
more women are achieving better academic qualifications than they were 20 years
ago, but the momentum flags when the time for professional commitment arrives.
Little short of a gale is needed to blow away the cobwebs of discrimination that
still festoon attitudes towards the employment of women researchers. The
fulfilment of a woman’s hopes of a permanent position because it is as necessary
to the development of her career as for a man is still as far away as ever.

The problem is not just a lack of effective measures to persuade more young
women with PhDs to apply for appropriate openings; it is a lack of women who
have such positions already. Departments that do not have a reasonable
smattering of senior as well as junior women staff are less likely to attract
applications from women. Only people who have been in a tiny minority can
possibly know how uninviting the atmosphere can be; statistics relating to job
applications do not gauge feelings. The present situation is self-perpetuating,
and collectively there is inertia in abundance. All the rattling is being left
to the women themselves, who may thereby endanger their own credibility by doing
it too often or too loudly. But perhaps they do not do it often or loudly
enough.

It will take more than a generation before the changes occurring slowly at
the lowest end of the scale alter the gender balance at the higher level
substantially, where it so needs to be affected now. Changes of a more
revolutionary nature are required, and on a relatively short timescale. The
situation calls for the creation of instant role models, and an end to the happy
belief that if women want to stick around in scientific research they will be
content to do so on elusive short-term contracts.

Cracking it!, by Josephine Warrior has been launched by Britain’s top women
ministers. The book is full of practical tips and strategies for women in
science engineering and technology based on the experience of “those who have
succeeded” (Training Publications, £10.99, ISBN 1840190000)