Computers, creativity and learning

When boys get the toys

[cross posted from http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/dec/18/research-council-sandpits-funding-decisions]

There aren't a lot of women professors around, particularly in science and engineering. Figures from the Higher Education Statistic Agency (HESA) indicate that only one in five professors are women, even though women make up half of the rest of the academic workforce. There are many reasons for this, but here's a contributing factor which deeply irritates me: research council sandpits.

These are five-day intensive residential workshops at which research consortia are formed and large sums of research funding are allocated. They are fairly brutal events by reputation – disturbingly the phrase "tribal behaviour" crops up in one description of how the sandpit model was developed.

Imagine a literal sandpit of bespectacled professors hitting each other with plastic spades and chanting "But I want funding!" as they kick sand into each other's faces. I imagine this scene because I've never actually been to one. Why? Because I don't have the luxury of spending five nights in an expensive hotel indulging in tax payer-funded intellectual play.

I spend my time at home, building real sand castles with a lovable yet demanding three-year-old. Other academics will be helping their children with homework, doing the laundry, cooking the dinner, attempting to find their elderly mother's heart pills, visiting their grandfather in his care home or quite possibly doing all of these activities at once.

There are many people who balance caring responsibilities with working. Currently, one in eight adults care for adults with ill health or disability and 58% of these carers are female. In the UK, 48% of women with one child under six-years-old work part time (in comparison to 5% of men).

Attracting research funding is a key activity for those who wish to advance their careers, and the last thing women academics need is another barrier to promotion (or indeed male academics with caring roles, who are also affected by this issue). It is deeply puzzling to me that Research Councils UK funders, who claim not to discriminate among applicants for research funding , persist in this model of allocating funds.

In my field, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) states that "sandpits inadvertently can suffer from a low female participation", as if this was not a direct consequence of the way the event is organised. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at least "appreciate that some people will have caring roles that make it difficult to commit to the residential nature of the sandpit". Having acknowledged this problem, it goes on to propose the non-solution of asking your employer to fund childcare costs, or discussing flexible arrangements around hotel accommodation.

Maybe I am suffering from a lack of imagination, but I can't see how this is meant to work in practice. How are we to reconcile part-time flexible working routines with a working week away from home? Are toddlers meant to be locked in the hotel room by themselves while academics brainstorm about transformative research? Do elderly relatives get a bucket and spade and join the sandpit? Who is going to pick up our children from school when we are 400 miles away for five days straight?

A long suffering partner with a flexible employer is presumably part of the funders' rather hazy picture of family life for academics. I am lucky to have such a partner; others may not. In any case, a caring role goes beyond meeting the financial costs of childcare or the logistics or arranging meals for a disabled parent. It is about being present when people need you most: to provide comfort, help and love.

In the past financial year, EPSRC alone spent £218,000 on sandpit running costs, and allocated £19.4m on research to be funded from sandpits. This is 2.5% of EPSRC's budget commitment for the year for research, as revealed by a freedom of information request in November 2013. This is a low proportion of its budget, but a large amount of money in real terms. What's more, the success rate for getting funding is presumably considerably higher for sandpit attendees than responsive mode applicants because there is a smaller pool of people competing for a pot of money.

The most frustrating aspect of the sandpit model is the lack of compelling evidence that it results in better funding decisions, more innovative ideas or higher quality research. Rather than providing such data, EPSRC's explanation of why they use sandpits includes such soundbites: "The IDEAS Factory Sandpit mechanism is unique and has already shown a universally positive impact for those attending."

The impact on those unable to attend is not mentioned. The lack of inclusivity seems unnecessary. What's wrong with writing proposals and having them evaluated on scientific merit? Is the extra Lord of the Flies-like intensity in sandpits really advancing scientific knowledge?

EPSRC is very proud of its model: "The IDEAS Factory Sandpit has emerged as a shining EPSRC innovation invention, copied far and wide across continents, funding agencies and multinational corporations," writes organisational psychologist Bharat Maldé on the council's website.

But what of all those carers across continents who have found it more difficult to succeed at work because of this fad – and the British taxpayers who funded it? At some point, funders must realise it's time to grow up and climb out of the sandpit.

Feed finder

[cross posted on the CACM. The new material for readers of this blog is in pink

Being a new mother is hard. While society celebrates the romantic idea that early motherhood is a joyous and scared time, the reality is not so straightforwardly positive.  It is physically demanding, but also emotionally challenging: new mothers report a spectrum of emotions including exhaustion, loneliness, fear, guilt and resentment [1]. HCI has recently begun to explore how technologies can assist women in this difficult period. We held a workshop at CHI 2013 on Motherhood and HCI to explore the opportunities in this space, listening to the experiences of (mostly) female researcher, discussing existing technology which is already supporting mothers and exploring new research prototypes.

A good example of using the capabilities of new technology to help new mums is FeedFinder, developed by Madeline Balaam and her team at Culture Lab, University of Newcastle. It’s a location based app which helps mothers to find suitable places to breastfeed their babies when they are not at home. Breastfeeding has positive health outcomes for babies, but a relatively low proportion exclusively breastfeed their children for the 6 month period recommended by the World Health Organisation. One contributing factor to this may be logistical; babies need fed when their mothers are out and about but finding a good spot for feeding can be hard. In an ideal world, babies would be able to suckle happily anywhere but in fact in some public places such as cafes, breastfeeding is not welcome. FeedFinder enables mothers to rate and review places where they live in terms of comfort, hygiene, privacy, baby facilities and affordability.  By using the app, women can get together to support each other as well as getting practical advice about locations and tracking their baby’s feeding habits. A particularly good aspect of the interface is that it can be used one handed by people holding a baby! On a personal note, I found many places to breastfeed my son where I live in Edinburgh – airports, park benches, primary schools, libraries, John Lewis baby change room, and a long list of cafes. The places I liked best were the ones with other mothers to chat to, with whom I could swap stories or trade advice or simply emphasise. FeedFinder would have been very useful then.  

It’s worth saying that the Motherhood and HCI workshop did attract some criticism, mostly from women. Some researchers were concerned by unintended implication that only women who are biological mothers can perform a nurturing role. This is clearly not true, and we never intended to imply this. Other researchers felt that we should not have excluded fathers, and that by focussing on mothers as a user group we were perpetuating the negative stereotype that childcare activities are “women’s work”.  I have argued strongly against this view here and here so I shall simply summarise my point: because in the real world, women do considerably more childcare than men [2],(regardless of our longing for equality)  HCI should be trying to help them out.

A workshop participant used the evocative phrase "blood, milk and tears" to refer to the challenging biological aspects of being a mother. In the political correctness of including more people with a wider definition of mothering, or telling fathers that nurturing is their joint responsibility, let's not forget the millions of women who mop up their blood, milk and tears every day. Let's design technology which assists in small ways, by helping mothers monitor the changes in their bodies, or find information or share experiences when they need to. Let's consult with mothers about the design of the technology they use, and invent new consultation methodologies to suit this user group if necessary.

Until we reach the wonderful era of gender equality, I say we should focus considerable design effort on women, on mothers and on mothering. If technology can make some of the more mundane tasks just a little easier, or some of the challenging experiences slightly more bearable then it will have been worth it. 

  

[1] Barclay, L., Everitt, L., Rogan, F., Schmied, V., Wyllie, A. Becoming a Mother — an Analysis of Women’s Experience of Early Motherhood. (1997) Journal of Advanced Nursing 25, pp. 719–728.

[2] Schober, P. (2013). Gender equality and outsourcing of domestic work, childbearing, and relationship stability among British couples. Journal of Family Issues.34(1). 25-52.

 Ps Did you notice that I managed to write this whole article without mention the Royal Baby?

 

Arguments against motherhood and HCI

[edited after a lunch argument with a friend]

Our workshop on Motherhood and HCI at the CHI 2013 conference seems to have angered some feminists. I wouldn't have predicted this, but then I don't devote much time to studying feminist theory. We didn't get any negative comments from men that I'm aware of. Maybe they were fearfully gathered in the corner of the men's toilets, worrying about being marginalised by powerful women.

[EDIT: I just recalled a criticism of the general area of Motherhood and HCI which emerged from a pre CHI event from a man. This memory was provoked at the weekend by a male doctor friend who was criticising a mum in a cafe for cuddling a very new baby while reading her phone. "Look at the perfect example of mother baby bonding", he said in his doctorly way. "The baby thinks her mum is wrapped up in cuddling her, but she's actually ignoring her". The comment from the male HCI academic was similar: "Isn't it a bit sad that all these new mums are using technology instead of spending time with their babies?" The baby in the cafe WAS ASLEEP! Newborns do that. A lot. They also feed for hours at a time. Mummy is meant to sit there enjoying the platonic ideal of motherhood and do nothing else? Mummy is meant to soley devote her cognitice capacity to watching a mini-person sleep? I realise this argument is presented as a bit of a straw man, but I find it too irritating to spell out that yes, of course, parents should attend to their children but there is a balance to be found between the well being of the mother and the needs of the child.]

The workshop was highly productive in terms of mapping out an emerging reseach area and it was also very helpful to hear about the participants' experiences as mothers, daughters, midwives, obsetricians and designers (and also from the two fathers and one baby who joined us).

For now, I want to focus on the criticisms to get the arguments clearer in my head. There were two main areas of contention which I came across.

1. Criticism of the unintended implication that only women who are mothers can perform a nurturing role. Something in the call for papers for the workshop seems to have given this impression although exactly what eludes me.  To be clear: I believe that people who are not biological mothers can and do nurture others. But being a literal minded computer scientist, I did initially baulk at the statement "You don't have to have a vagina to be a mother".  This is a question of semantics. The OED defines the noun "mother" as "a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth" (definition 1).  This clean cut definition does leave out adoptive mothers or step mothers, who obviously can have a nurturing role. "Mothering" as a verb is potentially more useful here (definition 2),  defined thus "bring up (a child) with care and affection: the art of mothering.  look after (someone) kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so: she mothered her husband, insisting he should take cod liver oil in the winter". So from this point of view, dads (or anyone else) can mother people, regardless of their vagina-less state. It's maybe also worth noting that the object of the nurture is a child in the first definition, but is more generally a person in the second definition. So, as mentioned at the workshop, the mothering of students could potentially be included, but the mothering of cats would be out.  Maybe the workshop should have been entitled "Mothering and HCI" to encompass this broader notion.  

2. Criticism of the focus on mothers rather than parents, the (again unintended) implication being that it is only women's work. At the ACM Women's Breakfast, Kia Hook took a swipe at the workshop without really explaining what her problem with it is. But in response to a follow up email from me, she wrote:

"What I started from was the position that a feminist position that singles out women as having other traits and abilities than men is a problematic position. Your workshop of course makes sense when it comes to the biological  aspects of becoming a mother (pregnancy and breastfeeding is, for the most part, a female only experience). But monitoring sleep? Monitoring need for food? If we write this off as only being for women - what have we done to fathers? What have we done to the possibility of sharing maternity/paternity leave? The word for this in Swedish is "särartsfeminism" - in english it might be "specificity feminism"? To me, deeply problematic! CHI has had a range of papers on "mother's work", "soccer moms" etc. In essence telling fathers that this is not their work, their duty, their fun, their life. Problematic if we want to share responsibilities, share the work-life-balance, and move forwards with our equality strive. "

It is not the first time I have had this sort of comment from a person from Sweden, that world leader in gender equality . Here parental rather than maternity leave is enshrined in law: both parents may share the leave although in fact only 25% of it is actually taken by men. In the UK, men are entitled to two weeks paternity leave, and women one year of maternity leave. This may change to a more equal arrangement by 2015 but I am not holding my breath. Being a pragmatic computer scientist, I say we should help the users who are actually performing the tasks here and now. And the evidence base is that more women perform nurturing and domestic work than men. An Australian study found that children add (an alarming) thirty five hours of domestic chores a week to a couple’s household [1]. In childless couples in the UK, 62% of domestic chores are done by women; for couples with a child, this rises to 75% [2]. Furthermore, there is evidence that mothers and fathers have different expectations about fathers’ roles in parenting. A study in the US found that mothers have higher expectations of support from the father in housework and emotional support. Men have lower expectations of themselves in terms of emotional support and baby care. [3].

Focus on blood, milk and tears

I can't remember which workshop participant used this evocative phrase, but "blood, milk and tears" covers the challenging biological aspects of being a mother (definition 1 above) rather nicely. Let's not write off the biological aspects so glibly. In the political correctness of including more people with a wider definition of mothering, or telling fathers that nurturing is their joint responsbility, let's not forget the millions of women who mop up their blood, milk and tears every day. Let's design technology which assists in small ways, by helping mothers monitor the changes in their bodies, or find information or share experiences when they need to. Let's consult with mothers about the design of the technology they use, and invent new consultation methodologies to suit this user group if necessary.

Until we reach the wonderful era of gender equality, I say we should focus considerable design effort on women, on mothers and on mothering. If technology can make some of the more mundane tasks just a little easier, or some of the challenging experiences slightly more bearable then it will have been worth it. 

 

References

 [1] Craig, L., & Bittman, M. (2005). The effects of children on adults' time-use: Analysis of the incremental time costs of children in Australia. Social Policy Research Centre. Retrieved on 8/1/13 from http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/media/File/DP143.pdf

[2] Schober, P. (2013). Gender equality and outsourcing of domestic work, childbearing, and relationship stability among British couples. Journal of Family Issues.34(1). 25-52.

[3] Fox, G. L., Bruce, C., & CombsâOrme, T. (2000). Parenting Expectations and Concerns of Fathers and Mothers of Newborn Infants. Family relations. 49(2). 123-131

 

Why HCI should listen to Mothers

We've released the list of accepted papers for the CHI 2013 workshop on Motherhood and HCI. This is tremendously exciting, because a brainwave which Madeline and I had while eating pies during the summer has really come off. (Thanks, Piemaker on North Bridge).

We were pleased to get so many submissions and such a diverse range of topics. Some are early stage design ideas, some are about existing prototypes, some are analyses of off the self motherhood apps, others are personal reflections on technology and motherhood. The authors are mostly, but not all, women which I think will make a nice change at a computing conference. Here is the text of my position paper, which argues why we should consider mothers (rather than the more general term "parents") as a specific target demographic. Not that I have anything against fathers. I have one myself.

Abstract

This position paper argues that more research effort in HCI should be directed at understanding the needs of mothers as a distinct technology user group.

Introduction

There are many reasons why mothers are deserving of HCI research attention. As mothers comprise a huge demographic group, we should not ignore the needs of these users, particularly as mothers are politically influential [9] and are powerful consumers [10]. Expectant and new mothers endure taxing and rapid emotional and biological changes during which technology could offer some support through monitoring and recording of the changes. New mothers experience a spectrum of emotional challenges, not all positive: exhaustion, loneliness, fear, guilt and resentment [5]. They are particularly vulnerable to depression [1].Technology could have a role to play in helping women find emotional support from health care professionals and other mothers. There is a huge learning curve associated with the practical tasks of child care [1]; technology could be used to assist healthcare professionals in parental education.

What about the dads?

Fathers play an equally important role in raising children, but it is a distinct (although overlapping) role. Being a mother is not the same as being a father.

Mothers, particularly in the very earliest stages of their children’s lives, have unique experiences and biological needs. Women’s bodies carry a burden which men’s do not.  They must contend with the pain and inconvenience of menstrual cycles; weather the discomfort, hormonal changes, fatigue and the invasion of privacy required by medical care during pregnancy; carry the literal weight of the growing baby; endure the agony of child birth; and (possibly) nurture a baby through their breast milk. These biological challenges are accompanied by a range of emotional and social pressures, which may overlap with those of fathers, but are quite distinct.

Some might wish fathers’ behaviours and expectations around child care to be the same as mothers’. However, this is not the case in many parts of the world. An Australian study found that children add (an alarming) thirty five hours of domestic chores a week to a couple’s household [3]. In childless couples in the UK, 62% of domestic chores are done by women; for couples with a child, this rises to 75% [4]. Furthermore, there is evidence that mothers and fathers have different expectations about fathers’ roles in parenting. A study in the US found that mothers have higher expectations of support from the father in housework and emotional support. Men have lower expectations of themselves in terms of emotional support and baby care. [6].

Where do we go next?

Based on personal experience, I believe that the most fruitful area of research will initially be in supporting women as they undergo physical changes associated with bearing children, and as they learn how to care for an infant. There is a dearth of formal HCI research, but a plethora of homespun smart phone apps in this area. Applications in these areas can be simple non-threatening tools for providing information and enabling users to record changes in their own or their baby’s bodies. Given the sensitivity of the domain, and some controversy in the role of technological interventions in delivery itself [1], I believe that we should take great care in developing new technology which would alter women’s experience of motherhood. We may need to develop new design and consultation methodologies for working with new mothers to overcome practical difficulties associated with consulting chronically sleep deprived users who are holding miniature users! But our direction is clear: we should listen to mothers, and respect their needs in the design of technology products for them.

References

[1] Petch, J., & Halford, W. K. (2008). Psycho-education to enhance couples’ transition to parenthood. Clinical psychology review, 28(7), 1125–37.

 [3] Craig, L., & Bittman, M. (2005). The effects of children on adults' time-use: Analysis of the incremental time costs of children in Australia. Social Policy Research Centre. Retrieved on 8/1/13 from http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/media/File/DP143.pdf

[4] Schober, P. (2013). Gender equality and outsourcing of domestic work, childbearing, and relationship stability among British couples. Journal of Family Issues.34(1). 25-52.

[5] Barclay, L., Everitt, L., Rogan, F., Schmied, V., Wyllie, A. Becoming a Mother — an Analysis of Women’s Experience of Early Motherhood. (1997) Journal of Advanced Nursing 25, pp. 719–728.

[6] Fox, G. L., Bruce, C., & CombsâOrme, T. (2000). Parenting Expectations and Concerns of Fathers and Mothers of Newborn Infants. Family relations. 49(2). 123-131

[9] Osnes, B. (2004). Mothers Acting Up: A Political Force to be Reckoned With! Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 6(1).

[10] Silverstein, M.J. and Sayre, K. (2009). The Female Economy. Harvard Business Review, September.

[1]    Davis-Floyd, R. The Technocratic Body: American As Cultural. (1994) Social Science and Medicine 38, 8, pp. 1125 – 1140.

Motherhood and HCI - call for papers

I am excited because we got a workshop proposal accepted for CHI 2013 on Motherhood and HCI.Write a position paper! Come along! It'll be fun!

Here's a previous post of mine about interface design issues for breastfeeding mothers, written, as I recall, while feeding a sleeping and very heavy baby.

 Call for Participation: CHI 2013 Workshop on Motherhood and HCI Important Dates 11 January 2013: Workshop Submission Deadline 8 February 2013: Notification of Acceptance 27/ 28 April 2013: Workshop held in Paris, France Website: http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/ *********************************** Becoming a mother and the experience of being a mother are increasingly influenced, mediated and invaded by technology and digital interactions. We invite the CHI community to grow and nurture the emerging topic of motherhood and HCI and explore how the lens of “motherhood” changes implications for design, development, and notions of care through participation in the CHI 2013 workshop “Motherhood and HCI” (http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/). This one-day workshop will address research and design issues relating to technology use associated with the processes and experiences of conception, pregnancy and infertility, labour, childcare and the mother’s work in the family and home. Topics include (but are not limited to) the experience of motherhood, technologies for supporting mothers, and perspectives on the role of the mother, as well as everyday practices relating to technology and motherhood. We invite non-mothers,mothers and mothers-to-be to participate in our workshop through the submission of a 2-page position paper in CHI Extended Abstracts format that describes the authors experience engaging with a specific theme, or challenge involved with designing, using, or evaluating technologies that relate to the concept or experience of “motherhood”. We positively encourage submissions from a diverse range of participants, perspectives and disciplines. We also encourage active participation from industries already engaged in the design and development of technologies for motherhood. Submissions will be selected based on their originality, quality and ability to promote discussion amongst the community. Submissions and questions should be directed to [email protected]. More details can be found at: http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/. At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop. Please submit your position paper by Friday 11th January 2013. *********************************** Workshop Organisers Madeline Balaam, Newcastle University Judy Robertson, Heriot-Watt University Rebecca Say, Newcastle University Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Vienna University of Technology Gillian Hayes, UC Irvine Melissa Mazmanian, UC Irvine Belinda Parmar, ladygeek.com

Athena Irony

Last week was steeped in irony. I attended an Athena Swan self-assessment team meeting my university. Athena Swan is a scheme by which universities get accredited for not being rubbish about gender (and other sorts) of equality. Currently my university doesn’t have accreditation; it lost it in mysterious circumstances some years ago. Or at least, the circumstances are mysterious to me as they were not discussed at this meeting. Athena provide a giant checklist of practices which universities should try to follow to get themselves out of their mire of favouring white middle aged blokes (WMABs). They all seem perfectly sensible to me but let’s just say they may seem exotic – luxurious – to university senior management who after all are predominantly WMABs (and not just at my university).

The first serving of irony was the meeting itself. It was chaired by a WMAB,  and to an extent dominated by another WMAB who gave the impression of being somewhat dismissive of the scale of the problem.  There were women at the meeting. A lot of the preparatory work had been done by a well-informed woman. There was a female former member of Athena Swan panels there. So why the bias towards WMAB even in the meetings about gender equality? I have a suspicion, which might be completely unfair of course: the committee had to be taken seriously by the heads of academics schools so it was decided to have it chaired by an academic head of school to give it credibility. And due to the very problem which Athena Swan exists to solve, the heads of school in science and technology are WMAB. This is problematic in my view. There is a lot to be said for understanding stemming from lived experience, and clearly being a bloke academic prevents you from having experience of being a woman academic.  (Mostly. Apart from that psychologist who had a sex change and found that people took her a lot less seriously than her “brother”.) At any rate, I have decided not to continue as a committee member mostly because I think it is too important to be done “off the side of my desk”. The whole point of the accreditation process is to give serious time and resource to gender equality issues and I couldn’t realistically see it being factored into my work load. Further, I am increasingly taking the view that just because I could do something doesn’t mean I should do it. There are, after all, other women in my department who are working mothers and who would contribute to such an activity.

The second portion of irony was served as I desperately tried to do my share of an EPSRC Culture and Communities network proposal on Communities of Motherhood. This was in a week of potty training angst (my angst, toddler’s potty). I was attempting to appear like a normal sane mother to grandparents while costing a proposal during nap times and after bed time. My collaborators on this (and other proposals) all had way too much to do as well. I wanted to help earlier career researchers to get this (tiny amount of) funding in these times of frugal funding. (Don’t get me started on the futility of funding research networks rather than research.) It seemed like a lot of effort for not very much reward. And yet, academia is structured in such a way that people routinely put in mega efforts to achieve yet more seemingly impossible things – meet this funding proposal deadline, write just another cheeky wee paper. Because there are core teaching activities which simply must get done within working hours, research sometimes becomes a strange hobby. I have a colleague who saves his paper writing for Friday evenings.  And the problem with this for gender equality is that working mothers don’t have extra hobby time to spend on the research which advances their careers. There just isn’t any slack time in the week for anything extra.

So, what could universities (or funding councils) do to improve gender equality? Here are my thoughts:

• Stop having stupid sand pits where people get walled up in a country house for 5 days at a time, in a terrible Lord of the Flies scenario. This makes it hard for people with family responsibilities to attend. It is costly in terms of childcare, puts strain on other family members to manage the child care in one parent’s absence and is particularly hard for breast feeding women.
• Don’t spring funding calls with short deadlines on people, particularly not during the school holidays.
• Make targets and expectations clearer and more feasible. Academics seem to carry a burden of guilt that they should have more grant funding or write more papers. It would help to know when one has done enough.
• Introduce careers paths where people can succeed through high quality work which can be done without extensive foreign travel. For example, this might mean weighting journal articles more highly than conference articles, and considering reviewing duties rather than key notes as indicators of esteem. Or not expecting EU grant funding (which often requires travel).
• Make an effort to put women on interview panels for promoted posts, even if this means asking women from outwith the university to serve on the panel.

Research excellence and the gender gap

Monday was the "the point in the year when women in effect start working for nothing because of the gender pay gap – for every £100 men take home, women are getting £85 – a 14.9 per cent difference."

Doesn't that make you happy to be alive?  That makes me feel great about all those essays I marked this week. To cheer me up, I can look forward to a lifetime pay gap of £423,000, if I make it to a managerial position. My university is feeling very pleased with itself because it now has gender equality in the strategic plan. Huzzah! That'll make all the difference then.

One of my reasons for starting this rant is that I just filled in the form to apply for reduction in my expected REF outputs. You may recall me blogging about this before when it appeared that those who took a period of maternity leave would be expected to produce the same number of publications over the 4 year period as those who did not. Luckily the REF people saw sense and decided not to pursue this policy and now people who have been off work get a reduction in the number of papers they were expected to write.

What made me snort (loudly) was there was also a box to fill in asking you to record any other factors which might affect your work (like breastfeeding or maternity). Sleep deprivation? General distractedness caused by raising a small person? Babies don't just go away once they are born. Turns out they grow into toddlers who also need looking after. Apparently this state of affairs continues for some time. Like 18 years or so.

What bothers me about this is that research careers (and in the UK, REF is one of the main ways of measuring research success) are built on hours of dedicated work above and beyond contracted hours. If you have small children (or indeed are caring for other family members) you don't have any extra hours. None. (If you want a further depressing read, here's an article on the impact of child rearing on female academics.)

What I want to know is this: why do academics feel compelled to work so hard? I can understand the lure of data analysis and the pursuit of new knowledge That's exciting work, worth doing and worth spending spare time on it. But applying for more and more funding for projects you don't really want and writing more and more obscure papers? That's make-work. I refuse to spend my very precious working hours on it.

 

Gender discrimination in the UK Research Excellence Framework

[cross posted from my CACM blog]

All over the UK, academics are frantically writing papers. Yes, I know academics everywhere are frantically writing papers – there are after all over a million papers published per year. But UK academics are writing now to publish in high impact journals in time for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), the result of which determines how government block funding for research is allocated. We are meant to publish 4 world beating Turing-award level papers between 2008 and 2014 to bring in the maximum funding for our cash strapped departments. However, this is not a post about the problems of channelling researchers’ efforts into stalking their own bibliometrics on Publish or Perish instead of doing something productive. This is a post about how the REF discriminates against female researchers. It's an issue which could prevent the recruitment of more female computer science academics (or encourage existing ones to leave) at a time when as a discipline we should be trying to address the gender imbalance.

You might expect that female researchers who have been on maternity leave during the REF period would be expected to produce a number of papers proportional to their time spent at work in that period. No. Instead, the draft REF guidelines indicate that women will be expected to produce one paper fewer only if they have taken more than 14 months off for maternity during the REF period. Because of the way statutory maternity leave works in the UK, it is common to take between 6 months and a year off. So to qualify to produce one less journal paper output, you’d probably need to produce more than two human outputs (babies!) over 5 years  (See http://www.swipuk.org/notices/02-09-11/ for a good summary).  An alternative proposal is to reduce the REF output by one paper for each child. I do find it bizarre - almost comical- to equate the effort of carrying, delivering and raising a child to researching and writing a paper but at least this proposal acknowledges that children have an impact on their carers’ careers.

This proposal, if carried out, would further divide academia along gender lines. It’s already a fairly bleak situation. In Europe, only 18% of professors are female, only 9% of universities have a female head , and there is a pay gap of 20% in the US.  An interesting article in the Times Higher from last year cites studies which show that women’s publication output falls after childbirth, although it does bounce back later. Further, in countries which invest in high quality childcare, female researchers are more productive. So it is not inevitable that women who have had children must be less effective researchers in the long run. It is however probable that their productivity will drop in the period when they take maternity leave.  It would be strange indeed if being off work for 6 months to a year didn't affect one's output.

What about computer science in particular? A report from the main research council which funds computer science in the UK (EPSRC) shows that only 13% of grants are awarded to female researchers. Of course, the prospects in the computing industry outside academia are not good either. In the US, an NCWIT report states that there is a gender pay gap in CS jobs  starting at 7% and increasing to 11% for workers with more than 15 years experience. Also worrying is the trend reported in the same source that two years after graduation from CS degrees, only one third of women remain in science and technology jobs. 

The odds are stacked against women succeeding in academia, and in computer science  as it is. The discrimination built into the REF would penalise women who have had children, increasing their stress at work and reducing their chances of promotion. The good news is that the REF document is still under consultation. There is a chance to change the way the REF is conducted by writing comments here before October 5^th. Please do this for your sister computer scientists!

 

A crazy day

 At the start of December I had a crazy full-on academic mummy day which I have been meaning to write about but I have been too busy. Now the baby and the husband (and both the cats) are asleep and I have a spare few minutes.

We had a lot of snow early this year which seemed to bring the UK transport infrastructure to its knees. Naturally this coincided with a workshop which we were committed to running for a network I am organising. The blizzard timed itself for rush hour so that people who were coming from other parts of the UK had already travelled safely. Which was good in a way, but it also meant we couldn't cancel the event as that would have been pretty lame if people could make it from Southampton but couldn't come from the other side of the Meadows. So I took Mr Bitey (who now has 2.25 teeth) in his pram to nursery in thick, thick snow. Have you pushed a buggy in the snow uphill? Not very easy, even in spite of kindly souls who help you over kerbs. Nursery was in uproar because the catering supplies couldn't be delivered, but luckily Mr B had a a packed lunch. I was running a bit late by then due to my Arctic buggy voyage so I had to jog through the snow in my hiking boots to the Edinburgh Uni campus where the workshop was held. Just as well it wasn't on our own campus which is in the real wilderness.

Let's take a moment at this point to dwell on the extreme irritation that academic workshops can cause. There seems to be a universal law of Obstreperous Professors (OP) which will guarantee one will show up at any workshop I am involved in. An OP will seize upon innocently chosen words from everyday language and insist it should be defined. An OP will quibble over tiny points and generally waste as much discussion time as possible. An OP will have an endless fund of stories which illustrates their importance and grandeur. An OP will insult other workshop attendees and start academic cat fights. An OP will be incapable of accepting that a (relatively) young female academic might be leading a workshop and therefore, be temporarily, leading them. The OP of this day chose to address me as “Little Miss Bossy Boots” as I facilitated his group. My outrage is hard to frame in polite text so I shall not comment further. Without wishing to be sexist, OPs tend to be a certain age of gentleman who like to draw attention to themselves. I have never met a female professor who behaves in such a way, but I suppose my sample size is smaller as there aren't many female CS professors.

Alright, back to the snow. About half the people registered managed to come for the workshop. Some had to leave early to pick up their own children because the Edinburgh schools closed at midday due to the snow. Things gradually became more chaotic as the snow got worse and the local bus service stopped, trains stopped running and the airport shut. The nursery called me mid-workshop to tell me Mr Bitey had a fever and Calpol (usually magic stuff!) wasn't working to reduce his temperature. Please could we pick him up early, they said. My husband, knowing that I was trying to facilitate the workshop all day, kindly set off from work to nursery, a journey which normally takes 25 minutes but on this day took 4 hours and involved loaf bribery from a Warburton's driver. So I had to run the workshop until almost the advertised finishing time. I did try pretty hard to close it early to the relief of some attendees who needed to get home themselves. But, being an academic workshop, some attendees just kept on talking and I ended up quite bluntly and firmly saying “Now we should all go home!”. Then we had to tidy up which took ages. So I ended up running back across the Meadows in my hiking boots to fetch poor Mr Bitey who was the last child left in the nursery by this time.

You might hope that would be the end of a long day, but no. My husband made it home in time to find Mr B feverish again and me getting in a bit of a first time mum panic. I made the mistake of checking the NHS website and following a flow chart which directed me to the NHS phoneline and then an out of hours clinic at the hospital. Of course, these phone lines are ultra cautious about babies if you answer “yes” to a question about whether the baby has spots and even although he had perked up hugely by the end of the phonecall we still thought we ought to follow it through. Everyone wrapped up warmly, and ventured back in the car on the un-gritted roads to the local hospital where the out of hours doctor plainly thought we were mad to to come and see her about a cold and nappy rash (as the spots turned out to be). Particularly because Mr B was grinning and happily eating his socks during his consultation. All was well in the end, as it turned out. Although I am getting on OK with juggling work and being a mum, snow adds an extra layer of craziness which I can well do without! So let's hope there will be no more this winter. Please?

Thinking

In one of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, Mma Ramostwe ponders on how good it is that school teachers are paid by the government to think and grow wise during the summer. As an academic, I think I should be paid to think. In reality, it seems that I am paid to be busy rather than to think, to produce lots of papers and funding rather than insight or understanding. The other day I was working on a framework which emerged from months of analysis and I was deeply engrossed init when I had to go to teach a class. I mentioned my frustration about this to one of the maths lecturers I met in the photocopier room, and she sympathised. She said she was sometimes able to work on research problems while lecturing. Wow – how on earth? She also said that she often thinks about her research when she is driving to the supermarket and then does the calculations in the car park. She suspected her kids thought she was a zombie when they were young because she would space out at bath time while chewing over a problem. I admit I have discussed the finer points of statistical methodology with Mr Bitey while taking him for a walk in his pram. I have scribbled diagrams on the bus to the accompaniment of students’ headphone pollution. I have bored my poor husband witless by describing my latest thoughts over dinner. Why isn’t there time to do this in the office? I hereby resolve to make time. An advantage of returning from maternity leave part time for now is that I have accepted that I don’t have time to do everything. So I don’t feel guilty about not getting everything on and I focus on the work which matters. Which is research at the moment, given the menacing emails we get about it from on high. So teaching will have to take a back burner although I will probably continue to attend classes. For now…