Campus Review Volume 26. Issue 11 | Page 15

challenge for me. But by being selective and strategic about which opportunities I will take up, and having good support from family, I have managed to maintain my research output throughout those difficult years.

What attitudes do you think need changing in order to alter the workplace setting in academia? There has been a perception that women, and anyone with carer responsibilities, needs to keep that out of the workplace. The culture needs to change so that having to take leave to be home with a sick child or having to work from home is not any disadvantage, and is not looked down upon in any way. We have at my university, Deakin University, and many places, wonderful tools to enable people to work from wherever they are, and that needs to be de-stigmatised. We need to normalise the idea that people have a variety of caring responsibilities and other responsibilities, and that we can’ t expect people to be working all hours.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by de-stigmatisation in this context? I mean that we need to be much more open about the challenges that women face, particularly those with young children. We need to be offering childcare support for any work that’ s expected out of hours. Conferences should be offering childcare. It is happening, but it needs to be happening more. We need to be much better at recognising the achievements of women who’ ve had to interrupt their careers or who are working part time. This is right through from internal and external, nationally competitive grants to avenues for promotion and mentoring. Across the board, we need to make it a much more accepted and normal fact of life that parenting presents huge challenges.

Is a big part of this getting more women into senior leadership positions in academia? If we look at the figures for women doing PhDs, in many fields it’ s 50 / 50 or more, and in the STEM fields, it is increasing all the time, so the talent is there, and those early postdoctorate years are crucial. If we support women through those years, we will see women in senior positions increasing.

How important is spotlighting women in research by recognising them for awards the way you have been? [ It’ s definitely important ]. There was a great talk today from Fabienne Mackay, who’ s an immunologist, about an international conference she was involved with organising, where nearly all of the 20 keynote speakers were men, and it was a colleague of hers, what you might call a male champion, who pointed this out and demanded the plan be changed so there were many more women presenting.

This goes to a pervasive culture that sees women keynote speakers, leaders or professors as something strange, something out of the ordinary, and it also speaks to, again, those early postdoctoral years when women find it difficult to travel if they have caring responsibilities, and are not as visible on the international academic circle.

[ We need to be ] aware of gender bias and gender equity across the spectrum, and have everyone, women and especially men, stepping up and increasing their awareness and always asking if they’ re achieving equity. Not just gender equity; equity across ethnicities, equity across a whole range of areas. If everyone is aware of equity, then things can change quite quickly. ■

� Please see " Next steps for gender equity ", p24.

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