#AnniversaryStory
Professor Dame Athene Donald is a retired Cavendish professor of Experimental Physics, former Gender Equality Champion for the University of Cambridge and former Master of Churchill. She’s also a first of many things: first female lecturer in the Cavendish, first female professor in any of Cambridge’s physical sciences and the first female Master of Churchill. Notice a pattern?
Since 1999, when MIT admitted to discriminating against women in its faculty, due to evidence collected by Nancy Hopkins and other senior female scientists in MIT[1], Athene realised for the first time that there was a universal problem for women working in STEM. As part of our 150-year anniversary, we interviewed Athene to discuss the Cavendish’s involvement in Gender equality, as well as the themes in her latest book, 'Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science', exploring why women are discouraged from STEM careers.
The Physics
Athene is, first and foremost, a brilliant physicist. After her PhD in metal physics in the Cavendish Laboratory (1977), she changed discipline during a four-year period at Cornell University. She began to study polymers using electron microscope techniques, under the inspiring leadership of Ed Kramer. Her work during this period proved to be influential, and she then moved on to the studies of liquid crystal polymers when she returned to Cambridge’s Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science in 1981. Subsequently she moved back to the Cavendish as a Royal Society Research fellow in 1983.
In 1992, she became the group leader of the newly created and innovative Polymer and Colloids Group in the Cavendish, which used advanced techniques of analysis including environmental scanning electron microscopy and infrared spectroscopy to study the properties of foodstuffs. This field, along with Athene’s research, was influential in the food industry with support from Nestlé, Dalgety-Spillers and Unilever.
Athene in the 1990's
Is it just me?
However, others were not so positive about Athene’s research. With her studies related to food, some journalists and commentators started dismissing her work as ‘typical woman work’, saying things that imply that women belong in the kitchen, or domestic science was all she could do as a woman. At the time, Athene attributed the comments to simply a failure in her lack of media training. “Up till 1999, I don’t think I had twigged that any issues I had faced was because I was a woman. After reading the MIT article, suddenly I realised things I initially assumed were me, ‘I’m not as good as other people’, ‘I’m not as persuasive or loud as others’, were actually a systemic issue,” said Athene.
During her tenure as the University of Cambridge’s Gender Equality Champion from 2010-2014, she started to become more interested in reading about gender studies and social sciences. “At this point, I was probably reading more social science articles than physics.” During this period, Athene was astounded by the lack of women in STEM. Today the percentage of girls taking A-level physics has plateaued at 23% - an increase of only 2% in the last 10 years[2]. “You can really start to see the kind of structural problems that exist for women and indeed other minorities.”
“I believe the problems start at birth. It is the toys we give to kids, how we encourage them to be active or passive when learning. You have to pay attention to the early years,” said Athene.
A personal example Athene faced came from her granddaughter. “I remember her playing with bricks, at the time she was only six, and I asked her if she plays at school too. She said, ‘oh we have a construction corner, but the boys play there.’ And I just thought how dare her teacher not say anything or try and get the girls involved,” said Athene.
Athene also pointed out that this was never a problem for her as she came from a single-sex school. There was no ‘boy corner’ for her. It shows the effect of peer pressure, and though Athene insists that mixed schools are the way to go, she does suggest that a lot of other female scientists she knows were also from single-sex schools, showing that there might be a serious problem of systemic, if subtle, bias against girls and other minorities in mixed schools.
The effect of this bias is to isolate young girls, who feel alienated from pursuing a STEM field. “This A-level student once told me she was the only girl in her A-level physics class and all the boys were telling her she shouldn’t be there. And yet, she was getting better results than all of them. My response to her was ‘there’s your answer as to why you should stay in!’, but it’s very isolating. It's very hard to want to persist when everyone around you is treating you as if you're a freak,” said Athene.
Cavendish trailblazers
Athene’s book highlights how most of the exceptional female scientists of the past were all treated as ‘un-lady like’. These trailblazers had to combat stereotypes to do their science, opening the door for the next generation of female scientists. The Cavendish itself has had many innovative female physicists like Jocelyn Bell, Rosalind Franklin and Dorothy Hodgkin, and only the last ever got a Noble prize despite each of their great work. However, the question of the Nobel prize aside, all of them felt some sort of discrimination and misogyny.
Bell recalls her time in Glasgow University in the 60s, “Whenever a woman walked into a lecture hall all the guys in the room would slam their desks and whistle and catcall. Every time. And the women in my dorm said, ‘Jocelyn, why don’t you change course?’ So I had to stop and think, ‘Do I really want to do physics badly enough that I am going to live with this?’” [3]
When Dorothy Hodgkins won the Noble prize in Chemistry in 1964, the Daily telegraph announced: 'British woman wins Nobel prize- £18,750 prize to mother of three' and the Daily Mail simply said, 'Oxford housewife wins Nobel'. [4]
“You never see a story saying, ‘man wins Nobel prize’. Gender should really not be relevant. There is no female way of doing science. We’re all scientists, not female scientists, just scientists,” said Athene.
Nowadays, the above examples would be quickly recognised as blatant sexism. Indeed, as awareness on these issues has been raised, society has changed to be more supportive, with more women in STEM than ever before. However, there’s always more to be done to get rid of the more subtle discrimination.
“In Cambridge, I see too many female physicists switching to Materials science, and I can’t help but wonder what things they may have experienced that led them to this,” said Athene, “it’s perhaps indicative of the wider issue the world faces.”
“I think it firstly comes back to confidence. They may find that their lab partner is much more confident in practical labs and supervisions, and suddenly they’re talked over and have lost their voice. It’s then very hard to find the right support, and imposter syndrome can exacerbate the issue,” said Athene. “It can be challenging to feel welcome when others around you are very different to you.”
Practising inclusive messaging, encouraging people and giving them a platform to speak their thoughts is vital to increasing inclusivity at Cambridge and in the world. “A more diverse place ought to make better science,” continued Athene, “if you only promote someone who looks or thinks like you, you’ll end up with a mindset that doesn’t lead to innovation or new ways of thinking.”
So, what do we do?
Even if things have improved for women who enter studies or a career in STEM, Athene’s frustration resides in the number of girls being discouraged to even get into this field. “Whether or not we should have 50% of the physics class be women, I don’t really care. I am just frustrated that girls who would be really good at and enjoy physics, get cut off.”
For her, more can be done to encourage girls to get into STEM. “You can't invent these girls! Until the number of girls doing A-level physics and maths changes, it's not really possible for the universities to do much more,” said Athene. “Financial incentives like university scholarships help retain these brilliant 23% of girls who are already there, but it’s not enough to encourage new people. We need to encourage girls to be curious, experiment with puzzles and learn maths and science. This can be done through interventions at all stages in their education.”
Effectively, a shift in the narrative must happen. “Most young boys and girls when asked to draw a scientist, draw a man in a white coat,” said Athene, “this needs to change if we have any chance of doing this.” One method of changing this is through creating and advertising existing role models in STEM.
“There is a big problem of a lack of female role models in STEM. The reality is that girls don’t find the lone, determined brilliance of Marie Curie to be relatable. We need role models who are similar to us. We need female STEM teachers and professors,” said Athene. [5]
“We need to raise the pay of teachers so brilliant women who would maybe have to make a choice between teaching and finance, will pick teaching. These women will then inspire the next generation and be living proof to young girls that STEM is not just for the boys,” said Athene.
Next, we need to encourage what Athene calls a ‘growth mindset’, the idea that if you put your mind to it, you can improve skills, memory etc. This must be done by interventions in our schools at all stages of education.
“If you get to your teens and you see your peers can rotate shapes for example and you can’t, you’ll naturally think that you are stupid and then be led away from the fields that require that. Growth mindset isn’t advertised enough; the idea that ‘I’m not as good at maths as they are, and that won’t change’, isn’t the right message. In fact, there’s lot of evidence for neuroplasticity throughout life. It’s been shown that London taxi drivers’ brains had increased in size from memorising the London map, and once they retired, this area of the brain shrunk again. Neuroplasticity happens at any age, and all we have to do is train those areas of the brain to get better at these tasks.”
At a collective level, everyone has to make a conscious effort to recognise their own biases and try and build inclusivity in all places. It even works the other way: “I have been invited to science meetings where the panel were all women. And I complained saying ‘we objected when it was all men, you can’t just do the same thing. We can do better than that’. We should be mindful of this over-enthusiasm, because we need diversity in everything,” said Athene. “We need to actively encourage more collaborative, diverse groups, with both men and women, at the top of their game. That’s relatable, healthy and inspiring.”
Finally, it’s about recognising that anyone and everyone can do something to help. Athene’s supervisor, Ed Kramer, provides a great example of how people can improve this situation. “Ed just treated me like a brain. He didn’t see me as British or as a woman. And the project just worked for me. He was incredibly supportive, always positive, and it is luck - we can’t control who our supervisor is. But I do think that anyone can support a bright student, point them in the right direction and not belittle them,” said Athene.
A losing battle ?
“I’m not particularly optimistic that things are changing fast enough. We need men who have influence to lead. It is walking the walk and not talking the talk. I see many people who say one thing but are not doing anything about it,” said Athene.
So, with the question still very much relevant, Athene’s book is must-read. It highlights the history of women in science, or lack thereof, and raise awareness on the wider issue of gender equality that goes far beyond the STEM fields.
References:
Words: Dhruv Shenai
Image: Athene Donald | Credit: Lloyd Mann