Ada Lovelace Day 2015
The second annual Ada Lovelace Day, took place on the 7th of October 2015 and featured inspiring talks from Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock, presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night, Dr Sarah Barry of King’s College London and Professor Paul Walton from the University of York.
The event kicked off with Dr Aderin Pocock describing her experience in communicating science to young women and girls. She stated that science has a PR problem, showing a video in which schoolgirls described physics as a boy’s subject. She then went on to discuss the importance of having relatable role models for young women to give them hope that they too can be successful.
Dr Aderin Pocock revealed to the audience that it was The Clangers (a troop of aliens that live on a moon-like planet featured in a BBC television series from the 1970s) who had inspired her, aged 3, to study space. She described the wonders of space to the audience and how the enormity of the universe made the issues that divide us, like race and gender, seem insignificant. She concluded that we should “make more rockets and less war.”
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Dr Sarah Barry from the Department of Chemistry was up next and talked about her journey into science. She described inspiration as something made up vague ideas that become more complex as more experience is gained. Her own journey into science began while watching National Geographic documentaries on television where she was fascinated by bioluminescent life under the ocean. She decided that she would become a vet but then ended up studying biology and chemistry in university, eventually specialising in chemical biology. Dr Barry concluded that it is about introducing people to a diversity of experience and then letting them find their own way. This, she stated, is where girls are often lost because they are not exposed to the same diversity of experiences as their male counterparts. She ended with a story about buying a toy for her niece and finding that all the science toys were in the boy’s aisle, which she said was wrong.
Dr Sarah Barry
The final speaker, Professor Paul Walton from the University of York, spoke about the issues faced by women in science and the resistant attitudes he has faced when raising awareness of this with other people. He described three attitudes:
- “There isn’t a problem” – This can easily be refuted by evidence of the leaky pipeline, where far more women are lost to science than men. Only 10% of professors in the UK are women,” he explained, a statistic that he described as baffling.
- “It’s a women’s problem” – Talent is being lost and this affects everyone, he explained. This loss of talent, as he described it, is due to unconscious biases that we all have. These biases lead to small disadvantages experienced by women daily that add up to become larger issues when it comes to career progression and reputation. He stated that this needs to be challenged in order to mitigate the financial losses to the industry and to individuals.
- “It’s not my/our problem” – To address this Professor Walton again turned to the evidence. He referred to a paper published in 2014 in Nature that showed that diversity led to better science.
In terms of what can be done, Professor Walton explained that it’s not about tokenism, it’s about getting people who are committed to equality involved in hiring and onto panels. He said that we need to put money behind it and we need to remove the stigma from things like working part-time so that it can be taken up by both men and women.
Professor Paul Walton
Following the talks there was a panel discussion chaired by Dean of the Faculty, Professor Michael Luck. The panel comprised of Dr Sarah Barry and Professor Paul Walton, in addition to Josh Simpson who is a current informatics student and vice president of KCL Tech society, and Gemma Healey, a past mathematics student from the Faculty who now works for L’Oréal. The panel were inundated with questions ranging from what we can do about competition or bias in hiring to why we can’t just even the pay gap by giving female staff an immediate raise. A survey was also conducted at the event and comments from attendees showed the benefits of raising awareness of these issues and give the Faculty of Natural & Mathematical Sciences a mandate to aim even bigger and better next year.
"As a woman in science sometimes it is difficult just to keep motivated and take all the challenges that this career involves. Attending today helped me to remember that I’m strong and I can do it!” (Female PhD student in Physics)
“I thought it was going to be a bit ‘all talk and no action’. But it was very good.” (Male student in Informatics)
Panel discussion featuring Professor Michael Luck, Gemma Healey, Professor Paul Walton, Dr Sarah Barry & Josh Simpson