Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?

[Alessandro Esposito]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping
each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps
me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore,
it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.

I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by
Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific
community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the
STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should
all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When
scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance
that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of
their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles
in the career progression of women in academia.

I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either
as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly
and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I
promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased
overall.

You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse
through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers,
moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people
are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were
at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least
unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that
the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of
careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you
will agree with me.

Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could
have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy
overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is
somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less
than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall,
balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of
course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better
or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific
small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to
understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the
academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the
good cause some of you aimed to support.

The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone
and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague
and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and
appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a
useful debate. That I do not endorse.

Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions
like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be
interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could
adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this
charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a
subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select
speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated;
some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to
microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a
community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work
on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is
useful is welcome.

Cheers,

Alessandro

[Claire Brown]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

As a women and a microscopists I'm happy to see that this topic has
generated a lot of interest.

I organize a lot of events and from my personal experience (sorry only an
"n" of one) women tend to turn down speaking invitations more often. This is
often due to the fact that they have young children and/or other family
obligations that are difficult to balance with traveling to scientific
meetings. I know I have turned down a lot of invitations myself for just
these reasons. So even if equal numbers of men and women are invited it
often ends up that in the end the program has more male representation. So
it is often hard to find the names of female microscopists as well.

I have been on organization committees with men and women all with good
intentions to have a balanced number of male and female speakers only to
realize at the end that we did not achieve this at all. I think this then
propagates because when anyone is asked to recommend speakers for an event
they think of the speakers they saw at the last meeting they attended.

Like others I would like to focus on a solution.

As Co-President of the Canadian Cytometry and Microscopy Association (CCMA,
www.cytometry.ca) I would like to offer to host a list of high quality light
microscopy and flow cytometer speakers. We could create a nomination form,
the suggestions could be categorized to instrument/technique development,
applications in different fields - cancer, neuroscience, development and
technologies - super resolution, high speed imaging, intra-vital etc. I
would like to propose to take recommendations of men or women and just have
that as one of the pieces of data in the database. I will have to pass this
by my executive board but I think it is in line with our association mandate
in light microscopy and cytometry to provide community resources and ways to
network.

On that note, I'm looking for a keynote speaker for our Montreal Light
Microscopy Course in August 2016. The last three courses we had a male
keynote speaker so if anyone can recommend a good female microscopist as our
keynote speaker I would love to hear from you offline.

Sincerely,

Claire

[Doube, Michael]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Dear Gabor,

> that you continue it directly or establish a new mailing list dedicated to the subject.

You are missing the point. This is an important professional issue affecting the STEM fields in general and so it ought not be relegated to the internet version of the last-millennium "wimmins' rooms". It is best that we have it out right here, in the middle, where everyone can learn and contribute.

I was dismayed when zero women applied, among ethnically diverse candidates, to a recent imaging Research Software Engineer post with me at RVC - a very female-friendly place (80-90% of our undergrads are women). So there is a problem. We need to discuss and find solutions together, as a community.

Best regards,

Michael

>
> Thanks      Gabor
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Johannes Schindelin
> Sent: Dienstag, 13. Oktober 2015 13:37
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Alberto,
>
> On 2015-10-13 08:10, Alberto Diaspro wrote:
>
>> Dear
>
> His name is Jeremy.
>
>> I decided to reply since you are mentioning me.
>> I think that your email is “self commenting”.  I really do not
>> understand your points.
>> Are you full of anger? are you frustrated for something? They missed
>> you in the Nobel prize nominations? I do not understand.
>
> I have to admit that I was utterly shocked to see this statement.
>
> It is bad and sad enough that respected leaders in science do not see any problem with announcing ~100% male speaker line-ups. And it is not the first time, but seems to repeat itself over and over and over again.
>
> It is also quite distressing for me to see that you did not even feel the need to reply to the concerns brought to you in a timely manner.
>
> But then to go on and *belittle* somebody who mustered enough courage to voice his opinion? This is appalling.
>
> If anything, it is proof to me that there is a serious lack of empathy in science. I perceived this response as just a bullyish method to discourage dissent.
>
> But maybe this is just a cunning strategy to demonstrate the dear need to balance out the gender inequality in science's higher ranks?
>
>> From my side, I apologise for stopping to reply on this topic. If
>> there is something wrong I did, please write me and we can discuss
>> about it. I am sorry to say that my impression is that you look like
>> the “only real victim” of yourself.
>
> No, the real victim is science. Good, decent, polite scientists are driven out of science by the problem that elicited this email thread.
>
> I hope that a few will remain.
>
> Ciao,
> Johannes
>

--
Michael Doube
BPhil BVSc PGCert(Vet Ed) PhD FHEA MRCVS
Lecturer, Comparative Biomedical Sciences
The Royal Veterinary College, University of London
Royal College Street
London NW1 0TU
United Kingdom

[phone] (Internal: 5503)
@mdoube

<http://www.rvc.ac.uk>

This message, together with any attachments, is intended for the stated addressee(s) only and may contain privileged or confidential information. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Royal Veterinary College.