Once a year our university offers female PhD candidates and postdocs the opportunity to participate in a mentorship program called Antelope. It has two branches - Antelope at university and Antelope at Novartis, addressed to those willing to pursue academic and industrial paths respectively. The objective is to support young lady-scientists obtain a better picture of their future career possibilities and help them shape a strategy towards the desired role through a series of workshops and mentor-mentee activities. Over-arched, this is the university's and corporation's infusion into the ongoing fight for gender equality.
After a formal introduction, we jumped directly into the career planning workshop. Since we had to present ourselves by outlining our backgrounds and previous paths, the conversation slipped into the personal plane pretty soon. The ambient created in the circle of humans with highly similar life situations was comforting: female, permeating scientific thinking, feeling being financially undervalued by society, experiencing obstacles in their programs - through mobbing, unsuccessful experiments, lack of materials or funding, difficult advisers, lack of future perspectives - all of that boiled up into the state where nearly everyone was upset about their projects for one or another reason and an overwhelming feeling of insecurity. Both in professional and personal lives.
Still, at this point I kept questioning whether there was something special about the audience of the room compared to the rest of the PhD and postdoc population. The obvious answer was gender. But what does this unfold into?
For a long period in the past I stayed very skeptical towards all gender specific issues in the 'first world'. 'How are we going to achieve equality by keeping the frontier so sharp? How can we unite by underlying the separation?', - I was wondering. Somehow, over time this attitude ceased as I informed myself better about the so called 'leaking pipeline'.
'The leaking pipeline' is a phenomenon when high number of women leave academic careers after the PhD stage making the counts of male and female scientists on further levels uneven. The same applies to industrial leadership positions. At a first glance one may think that there are simply more women who prefer staying in the work force or being housewives compared to roles with power, social and business involvement. But we will never know the answer until the mentality of our society is such, that it allows us to run that experiment collectively. And count the numbers a posteriori.
Now back to the workshop room where we, confused girls, are putting bits and pieces together to understand how a perfect career for each of us looks like. One of the exercises we have to do is to select the values, that we prioritize at the moment. We are given a list of pairs like 'Influence-Justice' and from each pair we have to select just one. These preferences build new pairs, and so on until only three values are left. We write them on colorful cards and put them on the floor to have an overlook. Most frequent outcomes are Meaning, Challenge, Independence, Fun - very representative for our social group. 'No trace of power, status or relative features, like it often occurs in male and/or industrial groups. No harmony and aesthetics, that so many females would seek.' - our coach notices. I couldn't fully relate to the last assertion since I sometimes physically suffer when colors in a space or on a person opposing me don't feel harmonious. But overall, this is a very precise portrait of the material that is about to 'leak', including myself at some point in the future. It doesn't really sound that we carve for high positions, power and respect. Who cares for the outlook when it is only the content that matters - what do you really know? what are you able to do? how do you leverage hard tasks? If you perform well at those, all rewards are yours - one may think naively. Anyhow, there is one hidden obstacle in this story. It is called resources. Any task is performed better, or has potential to be performed better, when better resources are available. And most of those resources are concentrated in the hands of men, who, not because they are bad, but because they are different, may be overlooking some issues, crucial to the lives of women.
The day was closed by a talk of a female professor. She communicated a clear message about the currently existing inequality between genders at work. Her style, though, was witty but provoking. Some of her arguments sounded sexist. She proudly told us stories of how she made some men, whose ego she considered over-pumped, feel bad.
My eyes became big: oh really? Is this how we are approaching the problem? Putting someone else down won't help us rise! The saddest thing was that most of the girls kept knocking their heads in agreement or giggling. What an evil strategy she picked - playing on other people's insecurities and presenting women almost faultless compared to men. Trying to understand my feelings and reactions while listening to her, in defence of integrity, I hurried up to formulate my own position: 'Don't be faultless. Be conscious and proactive'.
At the end of the speech she mentioned a book, that was advised to me recently by Odette, whom I accidentally met through a friend and found very pleasant. That friend, Jenn, who is an amazing woman herself, dares to be all in one: passionate about her job, a caring mother and wife, a wise open person. Having those examples in front of my eyes substitutes all the talks of the world about how it may and should be... in theory.
The aforementioned book is 'Lean In' by Sheryl Sandberg - a curious reading-matter supported with facts and stories. The content of the book is summarized by Sheryl herself in the TED-talk posted below (even, the book is dated later than the video).
These were my reflections after just the first Antelope 2016 event. Looking forward for more.
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