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<a href="#section_1" class="banner_link col-xs-6 col-sm-3"><span class="twoline">Equality and <br />Diversity</span></a>

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Equality and Diversity

The fundamental reason for targeting equality and diversity within science, is that synthetic biology has the chance to be hierarchically and systematically equal from the beginning. If those working in the field can encourage the importance of diversity to younger generations, then when synthetic biology becomes more well recognised publicly as a field of science, it has the possibility of being known for its progressive nature towards gender, racial and socio-economical equality.  

We started our work on Equality and Diversity after we spoke to Dr Robert Smith of Kings College London, at the UK iGEM meetup in Westminster. He spoke to us about our progress with Human Practices and some the successes we have already had, however he emphasised that our idea for a study into diversity and equality in science had not really been performed, to his knowledge, at iGEM before. We therefore thought that we have the possibility of making a significant impact in the field by highlighting and addressing some of the issues surrounding a lack of gender equality and diversity in science overall.  

The original plan was to create a short video highlighting the some of the issues surrounding a lack of gender equality in science and demonstrating what synthetic biology could do to address these wider issues. Dr Smith encouraged that we could look more broadly at diversity in science as well, emphasising that the problem doesn’t just stem from gender inequality, but also from a lack of diversity in terms of ethnicity, religion, disability and background.  

Using statistics gained from the Equality and Diversity office at the University of Exeter, and further statistics on gender inequality within the College of Life and Environmental Sciences (CLES) and the College of Engineering Mathematics and Physical Sciences (CEMPS) provided by Athena Swan, we want to highlight the problem with inequality and diversity to a wider audience.  

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<h6>What is being done?</h6>

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On 24/08/16 we met with Dr Andrew Griffiths to talk about his role as the current Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity lead for Biosciences at the University and what he thinks could be done to improve these areas within the department. By talking to the point of contact to staff about these issues, we can understand what sort of issues are brought up recurringly, and what the university is doing to address these issues.  

<q style="margin:auto;display:block;"><i>Perhaps we should trying to promote paternity leave allowing flexibility for men to look after the children so the burden doesn’t fall on women all the time.</i></q>

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Consequently, we are again led to question whether shared parental leave would relieve some of this pressure put on women? In fact, the ‘Swedish model’ of parental leave and balancing career with family commitments shows some very desirable qualities that employers would look for: ability to multitask (especially under pressure), commitment to career, etc. However, Dr Santos warned us about attributing the fact that fewer women are taking up jobs in higher up roles within Bioscience to maternity leave - <q style="padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;">Maternity is an easy excuse</q>.

The need for supervisors to act as role models to young, inspiring post-docs is very apparent, especially as role models are so important for undergraduates and postgraduates, so why should this stop at levels beyond this?

To conclude this meeting, we asked Dr Santos what she thinks needs to be done to improve gender equality in science and her response was thus:

 

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<q style="margin:auto;display:block;"><i>She would never make it in science unless she learnt to give a talk without sounding like a silly little school girl</i></q>

                 <p id="pp">This is shocking to think that a female role model would feel this is an appropriate comment for a nervous but aspiring young, female scientist. Dr Lewis argued that you could <q style="padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;">never imagine a man being told he gave a bad talk because of a mannerism</q>never imagine a man being told he gave a bad talk because of a mannerism and this kind of advice and influence has the potential to destroy all confidence in an individual.</p>

                 <p id="pp">Considering the problems that we have heard from different academics at the university about establishing yourself in science as a woman, it is understandable why this in-built confidence in your own ability is very hard to attain. Interestingly Dr Lewis highlighted that there is an <q style="padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;">ingrained difference</q> and that many academic situations are <q style="padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;">built around the male world</q>. For example, presentations. She had observed many male tutees stand up and be naturally confident in their ability to talk in front of a crowd, however, she noted that it is more intimidating for the female tutees. Consequently, we have to consider if universities are doing enough to promote confidence in all students.</p>

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                 <p id="pp">This confirms some of our fears about the fight to change equality and diversity in science. when we began working on equality and diversity, we had the view to look at diversity in science as a whole, however, the more people we spoke to the more we looked into gender inequality and the more we saw how much of a problem it was. Therefore we can understand why the university would be focusing so much on improving gender equality, however if gender has become the only issue then we cannot condone that. Dr Dixon went on to talk about the new Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity group was set up to combat other issues like disability, sexuality and ethnicity.</p>

                 <p id="pp">Dr Dixon echoed many of the views raised by Dr Lewis, of the importance of role models and mentors to the development of both students and academic staff. Dr Dixon did stress however that mentors and role models do not need to be gender specific, and this may be a way of changing the more unconscious biases in gender. If we encourage people that a mentor can be someone who has experience of certain experiences that you require help with, no matter the gender, then you might be able to reduce the pressure on certain individuals. </p>

                 <p id="pp">From the initial interview with Dr Griffiths, to the interview with Dr Lewis, all academics have spoken about giving women more confidence in putting themselves up for promotion, however, Dr Dixon had a different perspective. She recognised that more needs to be done to give support to women and give them confidence to apply for more senior roles, however, she indicated that university culture was actually affecting the health of men, due to the pressure of promotion:</p>

<h5>What is ‘diversity’?</h5>

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<h5>The Gender Study - A Future Project</h5>

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Paris Bettencourt in 2013 provided a detailed study of gender distribution in synthetic biology and iGEM. They found that women were not as represented as men within iGEM and equally there were fewer female supervisors of iGEM teams. They provided data to suggest that there is a significantly higher proportion of women to men in teams that win prizes compared with teams that don’t. They concluded their study with suggestions of how to improve the gender distribution within synthetic biology and iGEM, proposing that bonus points could given to teams with female supervisors, and iGEM should promote larger teams with more female judges, in the hope that this would improve the gender distribution within teams.

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Our aim was to conduct a follow up study, looking at the distribution of male to female students and supervisors in iGEM teams in 2016. We wanted to compare the statistics to those gathered in 2013 to determine whether Paris Bettencourt’s Gender Study was successful in improving equality within iGEM. Then, if our study showed that there was a significant balancing of the distribution then it could indicate that small, impactful studies, like Paris Bettencourt’s, could be the key to improving gender distribution and diversity within the field and thus more teams should take up the mantle and work to improve equality and diversity. If, however, there was no significant improvement, then we would have to question whether this is due to a lack of follow on studies compounding the data, or if small scale studies, performed by iGEM teams, can ever be enough to make a significant change in the field.  

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Due to time restraints, we will be unable to undertake this follow-up gender study, however we challenge future iGEM teams, who struggle with Human Practices, to look at the impact they could make locally and nationally in equality and diversity, and perform a follow up study to Paris Bettencourt’s from 2013. We believe that iGEM teams have a fantastic opportunity to make a significant difference in this areas by highlighting the work of academics and researchers at their university working to achieve greater equality in their field of science, or in science as a whole. We also challenge iGEM to look more at ways of improving and encouraging greater diversity, so that synthetic biology can be recognised as a positive, progressive field of science and one that acts as a representative to the individual core subjects that make up it.

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