A few weeks ago I attended the
Pump Your Career meeting--a day of workshops organized for female academics to give them a platform to meet and work on professionalization. While the title of the event is a bit stereotypical, the content is usually very good.
The event started by a keynote by
Pravini Baboeram which drew everyone's attention to the theme of diversity. While it is known that diversity tends to increase quality of work output, still there is a challenge in making workplaces friendly to a diverse audience. The speaker encouraged us to move from being colour-blind to being colour-brave. One important thing to keep in mind is that equal opportunity does not just involve providing the same opportunities for everyone, but more to provide circumstances such that everyone can make use of these opportunities. For example, having a network is great, but if someone does not know how to network, the network is of no use. In a sense, we need to think from not just our own perspective but from the other person's perspective.
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| Pravini Baboeram |
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| Rana Dajani |
This time I attended a workshop by
Roel Breuls from the
Centre for Academic Leadership which I enjoyed a lot. The workshop talked about the complicated feelings involved in taking a position of a leader, which I recognized quite well. For example: a leader cannot satisfy all. A very painful conclusion, but very recognizable. An inspiring quote that was shared was by Philip Massinger (1623): "Those who govern others first should be masters of themselves." Consequently, Roel introduced the concept of Personal Leadership, which means that to effectively lead others, you first need to be able to govern yourself, and realize your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are strong on vision, you may be weaker on implementing practical details, and if you have a tendency to control others, you find it difficult to go with the flow. Yet leadership tends to require us to go beyond the strong preferences and tendencies we have to endure the discomfort of working with our dominant tendencies such that they are reduced and balanced out by their opposites. It is quite helpful to reflect on your dominant tendencies and to think about which ones need work. Leadership is also a lonely position, because you have to do this work mostly by yourself: your team is not going to do it. However, friends and colleagues can help you power through this.
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| the leaky pipeline |
We also talked about the complicated meaning of a team in academia. Usually a team is a group with a common goal, a common leader, and interdepency. While the common leader and interdependency are satisfied. the common goal is more rare with many different projects happening at any point in time. An insight from this discussion was that the tasks of a leader are to set boundaries and to protect her people. When there is too little nurturing or too little boundaries, disturbances can arise in teams. Leaders should strive to still create some coherence, such as creating a culture for working together. I realized I should probably create such a vision statement for my lab as well, following some wonderful examples from
Candice Morey and
Maryam Aly.
Other interesting factoids were that females tend to deal with uncertainty in different ways than men (in general, of course). While males tend to resort to hierarchy and competition in the face of uncertainty, females tend to resort to a lack of hierarchy. And guess what the academic world looks like? Pretty male in my book!
Finally, I also found the overview of leadership tasks very helpful. A leader is to endure loneliness, otherwise you cannot set boundaries. Moreover, they have to use power, using language such as "I want you to...", "I don't want you to...". I notice how I find that quite challenging. Also, the leader should leave the fate of the employee with the employee, and not do their work for them. Finally, the leader should be an example of success, which includes the ability to take criticism, which can inspire others to also dare more. While this is challenging, a good message was that "there is nothing great about making yourself too small." Good point.
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Presentation of the LNVH monitor on females in senior academic
positions and salary gaps |
The day ended with a keynote by a very inspiring woman:
Rana Dajani, who presented herself as someone wearing five scarves, after a
book she wrote. The five scarves represent her roles as mother, academic, advocate, and more. She mentioned that interestingly, in the middle east and India, there are more women than men in STEM. Why is this? Why is there na absence of leading females in STEM in the Western world? She proposed that this could be because success is defined mostly in male terms: fame and money. What if we redefine the criteria pf success? Maybe we can then have a much more creative and diverse workforce. I resonate quite a bit with those ideas. She encouraged us to persist, because the world needs us, and we can be role models for others. Yet, we also need support, and recommended mentoring. I highly agree--mentoring is incrdibly helpful. She also mentioned a website with resources of mentoring support:
the three circles of Alemat. In short, a very inspiring day in which I learnt a lot!
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