Where are all the women?

[Spring Onion]

Where are all the women?

WHEN I was a young lecturer a knock came at my office door. “Oh”, said the young man as I opened it, “So sorry — I was looking for Dr Reynolds.”

This is a story from the ‘olden days’ but things have not changed that much. I think of one eminent woman friend whose writing was criticised for “a streak of vulgarity”. Or the colleague serving on a selection committee where a man expressed surprise at her support for another woman because she was “so much better looking”.

Women’s under-representation in all spheres of public life (in the UK) was the prompt for last week’s British Academy debate at the Culture Capital Exchange’s Inside Out Festival: ‘Where are all the women?’

Speakers included women working in film, business, nursing and the police, as well as two representatives from higher education, traditionally a place where women seem assured of a presence.

Vicki Bruce, head of the school of psychology at Newcastle University, argued that we still need more role models, more portraits of achieving women on the walls.

Meanwhile, Morag Shiach, vice-principal and executive dean at Queen Mary, University of London, wants to see the sector address the lack of women at senior management levels.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, just under 20 per cent of all UK staff who hold the title of professor are women, though women make up nearly 45 per cent of the sector’s academic staff. Women in non-academic roles constitute the majority, but few occupy the most senior roles.

Something needs to be done — and done soon. Because there is a new problem creeping up on higher education. The women themselves.

Too often women are choosing not to go on with their studies at postgraduate level or, where they do, not choosing a life in academia at the end of them. At undergraduate level, it is hard to maintain the virtues of anonymous assessment with the introduction of virtual learning where everything links back to a name.

And though money troubles beset everyone, girls are more often reminded of their ‘selfishness’ in studying for a PhD.

Once awarded a PhD, young academics face the prospect of short-term contracts and need to be willing to move jobs. Women find this more challenging than men. But they also worry about the impact of career breaks necessitated by children, or the need to care for elderly relatives.

Add in the fact that they are often advised that success is more difficult for women, and you wonder that there are any women academics at all.

Finally, at the highest levels, the most senior management positions are judged on research output rather than teaching expertise and — for all the above reasons — women are likely to have done more of the latter.

The offices of principals and vice-chancellors are governed by long working hours which are by no means family friendly. And so women do not apply.

What can we do about it? Last year, the Guardian Higher Education Network published a series of answers from top women academics ranging from mentoring to self-promotion. A new book by Elisabeth J Allan, Women’s Status in Higher Education: Equity Matters, recommends more strategies.

Of course, we should be thinking about colour, race, experience, class too. If we don’t have difference and diversity now in higher education then we won’t have it in the future. ‘No woman ever produced a Shakespeare’ goes the taunt. The proper response is: ‘Well, who did then?’ We need Shakespeare’s mother, his sister and his daughters in our universities too.
— The Guardian, London

 

[Safriz]

you may want to read this article too..

| The Sun |News

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/14/students-working-prostitutes-fund-studies-nus_n_1147656.html

 

[ajtr]

A lot more than just a pretty face

“Men are much more comfortable with numbers and women generally are good in courses which require ‘extensive use of memory’ or must I say rote-learning” is what I heard from a male student on an Eid party, moments later he found out that a handful of students, and I must reiterate not just female students, scored terribly low in a course called Quantitative Analysis.

This certainly wasn’t the first time I had heard such a sexist statement; however, no matter how many times and when I hear this statement it infuriates me as if I was hearing it for the first time.

How many times have you heard that if female students score high they’re automatically categorised as nerds, having no social lives whereas, male top notchers are regarded as geniuses? How often do you come across people saying women score low in mathematics or calculus because they are inherently incapable of fathoming number-oriented concepts whereas, men get away with excuses such as the exam was really tough or we partied all night long?

I must reiterate that men who compete with women on the basis of gender by making such brash statements are only looking for ways to lick their wounds by hiding behind such shallow words.

For all those people who still believe that women are generally bad with numbers be informed that the physicist who discovered the square in Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=MC 2 was a woman called Emilie du Châtelet. It is quite ironic that more than half of the world’s population remembers Einstein but knows nothing about Emilie du Châtelet who played a pivotal role in his research.

Although, now only remembered by a few in the field of Physics, however, she did a great service to the world of science. Unfortunately, her gender invited many discriminating comments in her days of glory. Her mentor Voltaire once wrote in a letter that “Emilie was a great man whose only fault was being a woman”.

One would attribute his statement to the culture of days bygone, however, that is not true. Even today, women are fairly underrepresented in the fields of Physics, Chemistry and Biology. A recent study has shown that both female and male scientist subconsciously favour male students. The study further proved that the scientists considered male students more promising and competent as compared to their female counterparts without any reason whatsoever. Male students are also more likely to receive higher compensation than female students because of their gender.

It is not only the field of science and numbers in which women are stereotyped due to reasons that are best known to people who think so unwisely. Women have been known to be marginalised in almost all fields. Even something as mundane and mechanical as driving a car is also stereotyped in most parts of the world. All you have to do is type women drivers on a search engine and there will be no end to the chain of websites and studies proving that women are horrible drivers whereas, all men continue to give strong competition to Michael Schumacher.

Why are we so disrespectful towards women? Why cannot we all understand that every individual is different and possesses different sets of core competencies which make him/her unique? Why cannot we all appreciate the differences that exist between people rather than stereotyping their achievements? Have we ever wondered why are we so unfair to women? Shouldn’t we think that women are a lot more than a flip of the hair, high heels and pouted lips?

In Pakistan, gender discrimination is quite evidently a notch above other developing economies, especially in highly male dominated professions such as law enforcement. It is estimated that less than one per cent of the workforce in Pakistani police comprises women. Moreover, research also shows that it is extremely difficult for women to get promoted as a prosecutor or investigation office on the basis of gender.

It is not only law enforcement agencies that treat women differently. Even large conglomerates are exactly the same. Whilst working at one of the most prestigious organisations in Pakistan, I frequently heard sexist comments regarding how it is easier for women to either get promoted or hired just because they are women. Well, being a woman I must tell you that everyone who believes that women are promoted easily all you need to do is to look around and evaluate your current board of directors. Most of you will notice that women are greatly underrepresented in the upper echelon of the corporate hierarchy. In fact in many organisations there is a virtual ceiling which only facilitates men to get promoted after a certain level and unfortunately the practice is constant all across the globe.

Despite all the odds that Pakistani women face in terms of blatant and subtle forms of discrimination, we still have women like Yasmin Lari, Shamshad Akhtar, Musharraf Hai and Bapsi Sidhwa who have fought against the gender bias and risen to their current status through sheer perseverance. I am sure they must have heard sexist comments every now and then but it must have motivated them to work harder because every time I hear a gender biased statement I think about all the aforementioned and many more women like them who have managed to make us all proud.

It is essential to understand that in societies such as Pakistan, women have to go an extra mile to achieve their dreams and it is only humane to encourage them as much as possible. It is also significant to realise that we are also an active and integral part of the society and must be treated on equal footing.