University of Exeter
“Power shift” needed to improve gender balance in energy research, report says
Women still face significant barriers in forging successful and influential careers in UK energy research, a new high-level report has revealed.
A team of experts from the University of Exeter’s Energy Policy Group has analysed gender balance within the crucial field of energy research and spoken to female researchers about their experiences of academic life. The study, launched today (14th June 2019), sets out how research funders and universities can ensure female talent and expertise is mobilised in transforming our energy systems.
The report is particularly timely as the UK parliament declares a climate emergency and the government commits to legislate for a 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target. It is clear that energy research needs to harness 100 per cent of available talent in order to meet the challenge of rapidly decarbonising energy systems.
The study revealed that women are still significantly under-represented in energy research and application rates from women are low. It also found that grants applied for and awarded to women tend to be of smaller value, when they do apply female academics are equally and sometimes more likely to be funded than male academics.
The report also highlighted the ‘significant drop-off’ between the number of female PhD students and funded researchers – meaning the sector loses a substantial pool of potential talent at an early stage.
The research presents four key ways in which funders and universities can work together to improve gender balance: look at the data, fund more women, stimulate career progression for female energy academics, and build on what’s already working.
Jess Britton, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and co-author of the report said: “Progress on gender balance in research has been too slow for too long, but we think now is the time to bring together action across funders and universities to ensure that female talent in capitalised on. Taking action across the funding, institutional and systemic issues we identify could drive a real shift in inclusion in the sector”.
The new report, commissioned by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) saw the researchers speak to 59 female academics conducting energy research and from various disciplines, institutions and career stages. They also analysed available data on gender and energy research funding.
Crucially, interviews with the researchers unearthed an array of issues that were felt to be holding women back from career progression – including the detrimental impact of part-time work or maternity leave, and inherent institutional and funding bias towards established, male academics.
While the report recognised that since 2017 there has been some progress in the gender balance of Peer Review Panel Members and small increases in awards granted to female researchers, progress has remained slow.
The study suggests that any progress should be accompanied by systemic change within the institutional structures and cultural environment of institutions involved with energy research.
Jim Watson, Director of UKERC added: “This report shows that there is an urgent need to address the poor gender balance within the UK energy research community – particularly with respect to leadership of grants and career progression.
“It not only reveals the extent of the problem with new evidence, but makes a series of practical recommendations should be required reading for funders and universities alike.”
The research identified four key ways in which UKRI, other funders and universities can work to improve gender balance. They are:
Look at the data – There remain significant difficulties in accessing meaningful data on gender balance in energy research. Data should be published, used to set targets, monitor progress and provide annual updates. The report also suggested using quantitative and qualitative data to identify key intervention points, speaking to more female energy academics to identify biases and barriers, and continuing to improve gender balance in funding review processes.
Fund more women – the report identified that funding structures can be a barrier, and that both part-time working and career breaks are perceived to slow progress. It suggests that the assessment of part-time working and maternity leave needs to be standardised across funder eligibility criteria and in the review process. It also identified that a lack of diversity of funding types impacts on women, and suggested trialling innovative approaches to allocating funding and supporting early career researchers.
Stimulate career progression for female energy academics – The report highlighted the need to acknowledge and take action on the individualistic, long hours culture of academia and also overhaul existing institutional structures and cultures. Early career stages are often characterised by precarious fixed-term contracts and over reliance on quantitative measures of progress. It also recommended building suitable training, mentoring and support networks to help more women progress and ensure the visibility of female researchers.
Build on what is working – The study recommended identifying key points of engagement to build gender balance: combine specific targeted actions, such as UKRI and university frameworks and targeted funding initiatives, with long-term action on structural issues that promote cultural change in our institutions. It also identified the need to ensure equality of voice – so that female academic voices are heard.
Alison Wall, Deputy Director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at EPSRC said: “We welcome this report, its findings and recommendations. Many of the issues raised are ones we recognise more widely in our research community.
“Enhancing diversity and inclusion is one of the priorities in our new Delivery Plan. For example, we plan to make further progress on embedding EDI into the grant application process, developing our peer review processes, provision of further data and increased flexibility in our funding.”
A copy of the report and the full list of recommendations can be found here: https://geography.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/schoolofgeography/pdfs/Power_Shift.pdf
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Why does gender balance even matter in this case? It’s seems like just another case of political correctness run amuck. What’s next, to demand gender balance for professions mostly occupied by women and then extend this to the dozens of fake genders now embraced by the political left?
“True science” cares only about reality and not a whit about your gender or sexual identity.
“Political science” OTH cares only about sexual identity and gender while not caring a whit about reality.
Pipelines are phallic symbols. They are “laid” into a trench, which is a yonic symbol. These are all important engineering concepts. Not sure why you don’t get this. The Canadian Prime Minister is woke and you should be too.
Shoshin: You are biased toward the missionary position? Hmmm this may be reportable to the Commish.
Reminds me of the old “Virginia Pipilinay” joke. The condemned man was asked what his last wish was, and he replied “To spend one night with Virginia Piplinay.” The puzzled warden made some inquiries, and finding no such person, returned to the condemned man and asked him what he was talking about. The man reached under his pillow, and pulled out a newspaper clipping consisting of just the headline: “Five Men Die Laying Virginia Pipeline.”
Sex, gender, and a transgender spectrum.
Once again, they’re using the word “gender”, which refers to behavior, when they mean “sex”, which refers to biological attributes.
This makes for an easy fix: Just ask half the researchers in the field to identify as women.
Problem solved.
I am all for it, if we first remedy the gender imbalance in the garbage industry. Every garbage truck has a male driver and male helpers pushing dumpsters around. This must stop! It is time for drastic action now and get all these talented and eager women into the garbage industry.
Let’s not forget gender equality for roofers and masons.
And sanitation workers and electrical linesmen and pretty much any job that involves a risk of death or serious injury.
careful what you say about Masons, or they might give you the 33rd degree
Guys
Women are more than capable of doing traditionally male manual work. For example, in the UK we have female bricklayers, plasterers, bus drivers etc.
We also have men doing traditionally female work.
The problem with women carrying out traditionally male roles isn’t with their ability to do the job, but with the male attitude to women in their workplace.
As long as the person is physically able to do the job, suitably qualified or experienced and good at the job, I don’t see what the problem is.
I’ve seen female bus-drivers in the UK, but never female brickies or plasterers. I’m sure there are some, but they are very few and far between.
How do you know the the problem is male attitudes towards such women? Could the explanation be simply that not many women want to do such jobs?
female brickies
I’ve worked in building sites most of my life. The lads on site can be less than diplomatic when it comes to women on site to the extent that I feel like telling the lads to shut the frack up. It can get pretty unpleasant at times.
I would hate to get caught in the middle of a cat fight between 2 female bricklayers.
An office with a majority of women is bad enough, I could not even begin to contemplate a construction site with that level of estrogen. Menopause could induce building collapse.
Buses have power steering now.
Brickie’s hods don’t.
It’s not a case of capability or perceived workplace hostility, but one of desire. The same is true for men in jobs traditionally held by women. In general, men and women are wired differently and it goes far beyond the gonads. Certainly there’s a small fraction of women wired more like men and men wired more like women and those who seek professions outside of the typical gender preferences are frequently among this minority. There’s just not enough of this minority for balance to be achieved. Nurture can modify this, but nurturing away from nature may be beneficial for training a wild animal, but not for raising a child.
It’s all part of the package deal ideology. You must accept all feminist ideological presuppositions such as the patriarchy and implicit bias – in addition to accepting all other politically correct aspects of ideology. If you do not you are a racist, sexist, bigoted Nazi that likely kills children for fun.
So….
Only jobs where an activist in an authoritive position comes in handy. Hence, they will not address the over representation of women in teaching or the epidemic of false accusations that deter men from these jobs.
I’m not sure about the killing children for fun bit.
I like children, I just can’t eat a full one.
Empty ones?
So it seems that women are too smart to endure a low reward academic system that men are forced into by cultural pressures.
You cannot force people to do jobs they don’t like doing – and that is the basis of the gender gap. I have been in aviation for 40 years, and I have NEVER seen a female line engineer. Is that sexism? No, it is because it is shift work (not child friendly), outdoors in all weathers (not in a cushy office or hospital), often abroad (not child friendly), doing a very solitary (not sociable) job in engineering.
Nothing to do with preventing women doing a job.
R
Yeah? So?
Exeter Uni aka UKMO aka Government propagandists aka BBC
Mo’ diversity is mo’ better and here I thought gender didn’t matter?
What I find puzzling and amusing is that the entire concept of “diversity” is predicated upon the assumption and acceptance of stereotypes.
“We need more (fill in the blank) because “they” think a particular way.”
Diversity or color, not limited to race, skin, sex, gender, etc. judgment.
By definition they are inclusive…. except for white males, but, of course WM are not part of diversity anyway. Indeed the creation of diversity was precisely to exclude WM.
Sex matters. Gender: masculine and feminine attributes (e.g. sexual orientation), apparently, do, even when they are not significant in context. And the consensus has determined a conflation is in order for the sake of social progress.
Gender: masculine and feminine physical and mental attributes? Or Sex: male and female individuals? The conflation of concepts and logical domains has been a progressive and political process.
Perhaps if 1/2 of the Male Engineers self identified as Female, this would resolve the issue
We had this discussion ten years ago in the academic department I taught in for 15 years. I suggested that the issue could be resolved if a few faculty members “volunteered for surgery.” But we’ve had a lot of “progress” since then, so your solution should be entirely adequate now, Bryan.
If people can change their gender to win athletic competitions, there shouldn’t be any problem with doing it to meet diversity requirements.
That’s brilliant. I’d love to see some person identify as female, even though she has a penis, and get a job that would be otherwise unavailable to her because of a quota. link Obviously, if the employer didn’t hire her, that would be transphobia. She could also identify as lesbian and then she could mate with cis females.
We already have the spectacle of women’s shelters being criticized for rejecting trans women who still retain their penis. link
Rachel Dolezal claims as black despite being white.
There are whole range of these now under gender fluidity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender
Personally I identify as a toaster and demand equal rights for all toasters.
Make sure you toast brown bread as well as white bread or you’re a racist toaster.
a Toast…
For She’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow…
The only way to get more women into energy research is to mandate quotas. I leave it to you as an exercise to figure out what quotas will do to the quality of the workforce and the resulting quality of the research.
In Sweden, which is a very equal society, the gender split in employment is most pronounced. Women tend to dominate in nursing and men tend to dominate in engineering. There’s nothing enforcing that choice, it’s just what the people are interested in.
And yet EVERYWHERE in Sweden the same kinds of blue haired crazies say that rampant sexism is why there are few female engineers and computer scientists. Its ALWAYS oppression.
Jordan Peterson observed that the gender gap in STEM education and employment is actually greatest in countries like Sweden, which have the greatest gender equality. This is completely contrary to the Progressive dogma, of course, as it shows that given freedom to choose, women go preferentially for the stereotypical “female” roles.
Why does research of ANY kind require ‘gender balance’?
Well…
“Validation of traditional methods of human fertilisation; A Practical Study”
That MIGHT be assisted by a bit of gender balance… 😛
Why not?
There are just as many stupid gullible venal women as men.
There has also been very slow growth in achieving gender balance in bricklaying, roofing contracting, miners, engineers etc. And there has also been very slow growth in achieving gender balance in primary teaching, cosmetic sales, nail technicians, nursing and midwifery. Maybe folk do what they want to do.
‘Maybe folk do what they want to do.’
Can’t have people acting on THAT sort of thing, can we?
I do not believe in gender discrimination and women need to be given the same opportunities in their chosen fields as men.
Women are not as interested in STEM as men and no amount of extra encouragement or affirmative action is going to change that
It is not politically correct to say that but we need to admit there are differences between the sexes
I suppose raw talent has nothing to do with it.
I suppose the best person for the job, based on skill and intelligence, has nothing to do with it.
Oh, I forgot, we are all equal, and so we should have equal numbers of genders, races, nationalities, minorities, and whatever other everybody-is-equal-yet-elevated category distributed equally in all professions or positions.
After all, it’s not about talent. It’s about gender, race, nationality, minority, and whatever other everybody-is-equal-yet-elevated hypocrisy is in style.
Pulllease!
There are ~4 times as many boys taking A-level physics as girls in the UK, and ~7.5 times as many boys taking computing A-level as there are girls.
How do universities think they are going to get to gender parity from there? Impossible.
Meanwhile, the last windows update has turned my trackpad back on, and now I can’t turn it off. So the cursor keeps jumping all over the **** place.
Must be Windows 10…..aka…garbage spyware..
Jit
Go to ‘Settings’ (right click ‘start’ and a window should open with ‘settings’ on it) find ‘Devices’ click and scroll down to Touchpad – Click and there should be an On/Off option at the top. (Assuming Windows 10).
Batteries just quit on my Logitech keyboard.
No warning and no indication.
Win-10 sometimes does really odd things, or one of the programs does.
So being able to use the cursor, I spent about 2 minutes before thinking
I was going the wrong way.
Used the downtime to clean the junk off.
Yesterday it was black lines [borders ? ] that didn’t want to go away.
Infuriating.
John F. Hultquist
How old is your PC?
You didn’t get a call from Microsoft Support from someone with a really thick Punjabi accent did you?
I don’t have this problem.
I use Linux.
How many women do, as opposed to men?
I expect there will be a marked balance.
Err… ‘imbalance’
‘How many women do, as opposed to men?”
That statement is either Inflammable or flammable. or something.
It’s balanced.
Photios
With the best will in the world mate, I keep trying Linux, Ubuntu, Mint, Redhat (been a while) and whilst basic functions are OK, it’s a pain in the backside to reliably connect up a wireless printer without having it seriously compromised in it’s ability.
I’m no PC whizz but I have been using MS for years now and whilst it has it’s glitches, I can use innumerable browsers, MS Office (yep, I have used all the clunky free office variants on Linux as well) link my iPhone (although I loved Windows phones but they ditched them) and Android phone almost seamlessly.
And when I loaded up Linux onto my families machines they all squealed like stuck pigs. My wife couldn’t access her office properly, if at all and my kids couldn’t play their usual games.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Linux, I can resurrect old machines I have that work beautifully, except when I get a new printer and half it’s abilities are crippled.
HotScot, give TurboPrint a try. It is commercial software (not free as in cost), but allows my Canon Multi Function printer to work flawlessly via cable or wifi. No loss in functionality from the Windows software that came with the printer.
While I have a Canon, TurboPrint supports Brother, HP and Epson printers.
@HotScot
That on/off option has gone into the netherworld. The lappy is Asus & there is an Asus accessory program that is supposed to handle the touchpad, but for some reason now turning it off there makes no difference. Ta anyway. :/
Authoritarians driven to micro-manage everything they can.
It is time for another Great Reformation.
Perhaps spreading popular uprisings is leading to something profound.
This is typical left wing politically correct ‘fuzzy logic’.
What we need are real breakthroughs, discoveries that really do change everything, not more Ted talks about a hydrogen economy, wind and sun gathering without the magic batteries, and other hyperbole.
It is not clear how or why gender-neutral science hiring or throwing more people at a problem and working on stuff that does not work will change anything.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
“It also identified the need to ensure equality of voice – so that female academic voices are heard.”
So they think that the use of affirmative action to silence more men and promote and finance more women in energy research will be productive? As long as the loudest female voices in academia are those who complain about misogyny and male privilege, affirmative action will only foster more complaining parasites, not productive researchers. Add to that the growth of “me too” accusations, and you will have a situation where established male researchers will be reluctant to mentor new female researchers for fear of having their careers destroyed by unsubstantiated claims of harassment or bias. I’m all for solving social problems with education. What I am not for is throwing money at a problem in hopes of putting up artificial barriers against one group to benefit another. These attempts to social engineer society never consider the unintended consequences of such actions.
Louis Hunt
Top comment.
I think the dullards pushing “equality” of outcomes did consider the consequences and they were delighted to push for “equality”. What could be better than knocking men down to size and pushing women one or two steps past their competence(Peter Principle) in order to make government and education even more dysfunctional.
Wait…. I thought the “woke” left didn’t believe in “male and female” ! D’OH !
Good point. Let’s say they start reserving a large number of research grants for women to encourage more women to enter the field. What’s to stop men from claiming to be transgendered women for the purpose of applying for the grants? It works in women’s sports. They’re not required to submit to a doctor’s examination or have any surgery done to compete as a woman. They just have to claim to be one. So, if they set aside large sums of money for women researchers, won’t the same thing happen? But how does the unintended consequence of encouraging more men to pretend to be women help society?
The EPSRC is the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK, formerly a dispenser of money for research in hard sciences and engineering, now yet another dismal vehicle for social engineering. They don’t even understand basic economics, as in this call for research proposals, which has a MINIMUM cost requirement, you don’t have to be Einstein to work out that money will be wasted on frivolities padded out to get to the minimum:
https://epsrc.ukri.org/funding/calls/decarbonising-heating-and-cooling/
I’m still waiting for a similar study to be done on sewage workers.
We seem to go to extraordinary lengths to ‘encourage’ women to join various occupations that they don’t want to join. Could this be seen as oppression?
Or a study to get more men into nursing, figure skating, or cheer leading.
Or a study to get more woman into boxing, football, and so on.
I saw a male CNP(Certified Nurse Practitioner) at a walk-in care place for a bloody cough, fever, trouble breathing. He had a couple of female assistants to do the preliminaries. He listened to what I had to say. Asked few questions such as “have you had this before?” which I had, wanted know which antibiotic was used. Had the two nurse(working towards CNP) to listen and pointed out what the different sounds meant. Then sent me to the next room for an Xray, which showed the pneumonia.
Bottom line is both men and women can do that job.
I’m not so sure about MD’s. The GI doctor I was seeing got upset because I didn’t jump at the chance to get one of the new biological meds at $27,000 a dose. I explained that the clinical studies’ statistics didn’t look very promising, with none of the drugs working really well.
That I got shuffled to a CNP for follow up. Her job appeared to get me to try a biological. I opted for a cheaper one, only $6,000 that didn’t work. Ended up agreeing to try another one sort of in between. The poor nurse was a nice lady but she didn’t seem confident in the science involved. I explained that I was hesitant about the statistics problem. She agreed there weren’t any really good options so the only thing left were to try some and see. There are other drugs that are used but they all can cause really serious side effects in significant numbers of patients.
The other bottom line is that if you get sick, get educated. Most doctors are smart, but no more so that any other technical degree. Anyone here can quickly learn enough to understand what is going on. (Well, maybe not some of the real climate science deniers).
Men tend to live in their intellects; women tend to live in their emotions. Let each have what they want and STFU.
There are a couple partical things that could make it a bit easier for women to work in univerties.
Maternity leaves and short work weeks should tolerated more. We’re wasting good engineering talent because of non-flexible work hours. If your building also a family it should not destroy your professional carreer.
I have a grandson at Exeter. He leads the sailing team. Haven’t asked him but I guess the team is not gendered. Won the inter university competition the other day. Nice photo showed coupla girls in the crew of about a dozen. Bravo
Meanwhile, the last windows update has turned my trackpad back on, and now I can’t turn it off. So the cursor keeps jumping all over the **** place.
Women programmers. Just cant make up their minds
Articles of this sort that push a woke progressive agenda will omit the fact the over 80% of undergraduates enrolled in fields like early childhood development and interior decorating are female. They will also omit that over 90% of undergraduates in mining and petroleum engineering are male.
I have yet to see a single woman who is interested in riding up a bucket to the top of a power pole in freezing weather to properly torque the insulator bolts on a string of high voltage wire that is the size of your wrist. While it is live at 14 kv.
One of the reason socialistic ideology fails and destroys lives and prosperity is its steadfast and unstoppable desire to alter physical and human reality with doctrine and theory. It is a constant fact of human nature that females in general are better at and prefer to interact with people than with things. It is a similar constant that males have the opposite orientation. Any attempts to change this cannot succeed, and will only waste resources and lives.
If socialistic ideology ended there it would be bad enough. Consider the following:
Václav Havel was a playwright, author, the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003) after the Czech–Slovak split.
He wrote a famous essay, The Power of the Powerless (the social and spiritual consequences of socialism)
“The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.” Havel warns that socialist regimes create and enforce their own truth to maintain power. As time goes on, this truth diverges from factual truth and it increasingly forces those who support and depend upon the power of the regime to corrupt themselves to sustain the artificial truth.
“Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics … It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”
from:
https://tavaana.org/sites/default/files/The%20Power%20of%20the%20Powerless.pdf
In the end, people not only lie to each other, but they start to lie to themselves.
They want to force equal outcomes, while pretending to provide equal opportunity. Unhinged leftists need to be reeducated.
“I have yet to see a single woman who is interested in riding up a bucket to the top of a power pole in freezing weather”
Riding up in a bucket…lol. Maybe how about climbing that power pole with spurs in freezing weather where you can’t get a bucket truck to, and hanging off your belt for an hour or two while doing that dangerous and extremely difficult work. Not that a properly trained woman in very good condition couldn’t do that work, but probably 97% of men couldn’t do it either. Not many jobs are that demanding or dangerous than trying to work at the top of a high voltage line especially in inclement windy weather, usually in the dead of night.