Equality

Have you ever been commsplained?

There I was, scrolling through LinkedIn, when a post stopped me in my tracks: ‘Have you ever been commsplained?’ It was a moment of instant recognition. ‘Commsplaining’ is real, and while subtle, it is a more common example of workplace dynamic than you might think.

We explain to everyone, all the time

Indeed, many a time, a colleague, who is not a comms professional, has tried to explain communications (or something about communications) to me. However, unlike the infamous notion of ‘mansplaining’ derived from the influential essay by Rebecca Solnit, the person wouldn’t necessarily be condescending. And time and again, colleagues make confident statements about comms-related issues to me, while being wrong. Or sometimes, very wrong.

We probably all do it with no malice and feel embarrassed when it’s pointed out that we are talking to an expert, or that we are wrong and why (again, different from the case of ‘mansplaining,’ which includes the ‘mansplainer’ not being embarrassed).

A photo of a black door in a white frame within a brick wall

Number 10 Downing Street
Photo by: Sergeant Tom Robinson
under the Open Government Licence version 1.0 (OGL v1.0).RLC/MOD

After all, most of us think we know, for example, what the government should be doing, what policies it should pursue, and in what timelines, even though hardly any of us have experience governing.

It’s the opposite of impostor syndrome: a cognitive bias that makes us believe we know more than we do, and since we don’t know what we don’t know – well, we are blissfully ignorant!

Lift them up, don’t bring them down

However, the problem with preaching to the experts is how it makes them feel – I certainly get irritated when it happens to me. It’s also not always obvious how to tactfully make the ‘commsplainer’ aware that what they are sharing is not news to me: on the contrary, I have already tried and tested the exact same idea. Most people who approach me in a professional context know that I work in comms. Still, they are ignorant of the fact that I must have knowledge about it, resulting from education, qualifications, and some 20 years of experience.

But it gets worse: when we tell people what they already know, positioning ourselves as experts, we might inadvertently make them doubt themselves or even underestimate their own expertise. Especially, if they perceive us as being in a position of power. In this case, it is no different to ‘mansplaining,’ or simply patronising anyone, who we have power over (even if perceived only).

Do we want our expert colleagues to feel they lack expertise? Or do we want to empower them to be even better at what they do?

Patience is everything

I chatted with a couple of academic colleagues about situations when I wouldn’t be given credit for my knowledge and expertise and instead be lectured, and they pointed out the obvious: ‘That’s probably because we are lecturers! So, it sounds like we are lecturing, but we do not mean to.’

It gave me something to consider. Most people don’t mean to be mean; they might just be wearing their ‘lecturer’s hat.’

The author of the meme I started my post with suggests that the best strategy to deal with ‘commsplaining’ is not to take it personally. Be respectful and kind and take the ’lecturing’ in good spirits.

Last summer the InfComms team hosted a summer intern, a lovely and inquisitive Aagoon, who asked me: ‘What is the most important skill in comms?’ Without a second thought, I said ‘patience.’

A lot of work in communications is done in the background, in the solitude of one’s office. The outcome (a story, a social media post, a newsletter, a paragraph in someone else’s comms, a website, a microsite, an ad, or a blog) can seem easy to create. But there is a lot of work behind the scenes to do research, ask questions, proofread, refine, re-write whole passages to ensure the message is accurate and appropriate, and so on. It can sometimes take weeks to develop one output. If the outcome seems ‘easy’ and not laboured then your comms colleagues have done their job right. But it might have required a lot of effort and knowledge. Just because you can’t see the work put into achieving something, it doesn’t mean someone didn’t work extremely hard for things to happen.

It’s a bit like seeing your GP, who takes one look at your results and diagnoses you. Easy! But it took years of study and experience to be able to do that.

Be like Lieutenant Columbo

A black and white photo of a middle-aged curly-haired man

Peter Falk as Lt Columbo, public domain

For a comms professional, patience isn’t just a virtue; it’s a necessity. You need to do, what I call ‘being Columbo’ (referring to the persistent and thorough detective portrayed by Peter Falk in the classic TV series): keep asking questions, until you are absolutely certain that you have all the knowledge you need to write your story accurately, and that you’re observing embargoes, not stepping on anyone’s toes, and not dumbing down the story.

But you also need a lot of patience to deal with outside pressures: deadlines, expectations, and yes, you guessed it, ‘commsplainers.’

We all communicate every day, so it’s easy to assume that we all have a level of expertise in comms. It may result in putting undue pressure on or having an unreasonable expectation of our colleagues working in comms roles.

However, when you’re at the receiving end of such pressures, you need a lot of patience to listen and explain what is and isn’t possible, and more importantly, what is and isn’t good practice. But, on the other hand, if someone takes the time to come to you with their ideas, even if they sound like lecturing, consider listening and harnessing their enthusiasm. Use the opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise to manage their expectations and teach them something new.

If you find yourself advising the expert, take a moment to reflect: are you offering new insight, or might you be ‘commsplaining’? Perhaps start with giving some kudos to your comms colleague for their effort and expertise before sharing your ideas. Make them feel like the expert that they are and listen to their words of wisdom. After all, they have been doing it for a little while longer than you. Appreciating them will take you a long way and maybe will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Collectively, we can shift our workplace dynamics toward mutual respect and understanding.

 

Disclaimer 1: Sometimes people will just be patronising and malicious. Don’t dwell on them.

Disclaimer 2: I asked ELM to proofread the final copy of this blog (and used some of its proposed improvements)

 

 

About the author: Kasia Kokowska is the Marketing, Communications and Outreach Manager at the School of  Informatics, at the University of Edinburgh. She has an MA in Journalism and Social Communications and an MSc in science Communications and Public Engagement. She’s a member of STEMPRA and CIPR.

 

Related content

If you haven’t, you should also read two great blogs about the impostor syndrome, written by Andrea and Eillidh:

Psst – don’t listen to me!

Am I even good enough to have imposter syndrome??

Intergenerational Fairness and its role in Research Culture

The Royal Society has led the way on research culture in recent years, establishing  the following definition, which is now widely adopted:

Research culture encompasses behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms of our research communities.  It influences researchers’ career paths and determines the way that research is conducted and communicated.

You can find out more about the Society’s activities in this area. Recently they produced a video illustrating what research culture is and why it is important:

The University of Edinburgh published its own Research Culture Action Plan, and supporting Delivery Plan in 2023.

Both within the University and more widely much of the focus of research culture development is on early career researchers. In contrast, there has been less attention paid to those towards the end of their career and the role that they can play in creating a vibrant and inclusive research environment. In 2022 Professor Veronica van Heyningen, who has held leadership positions at UCL and the University of Edinburgh, led a Royal Society project on Changing Working Lives, which particularly looked at the roles and opportunities for researchers at different career stages. The project took into consideration general changes in the research environment and the impact of the pandemic on working practices.

We are all aware of demographic changes that are taking place in society, with rising numbers of older people and a falling birth rate. This project sought to understand the implications of these changes within academia, and in particular, on research culture. A key outcome of the project was the need for explicit consideration of  the responsibilities of older researchers and intergenerational fairness.

In the last decades there have been several changes that have led to longer active careers for older researchers such as the fact that there is now no fixed retirement age in most universities, flexible and part-time working has become more accepted and readily available for all, and the benefits of people staying healthy and active for longer are widely recognised. In the academic setting the continued participation of  experienced researchers has considerable benefits for the scientific community and our shared endeavours.

Nevertheless, sensitivity and awareness are needed to ensure that this “older” generation is supporting and generating opportunities for the “younger” generation, rather than becoming a block on their careers. This is particularly true when, as now, universities are working under situations of limited resource. Funding, PhD students, working space and positions of responsibility are all vital for early and mid-career researchers to establish themselves, but they may not have the credentials to compete directly with late career researchers.

The Royal Society Changing Working Lives project highlighted these issues and suggested that intergenerational fairness called for action from different stakeholders in research. Researchers themselves should consider how best to advance science. Particularly for those later in their career, this wider consideration should start to take precedence over advancing their own career. Funders should consider selection processes and the role of track record in funding decisions. Universities  should consider special support systems and resources for mid-career researchers to enable them to step up to the demands of senior leadership roles, then creating opportunities for early career researchers too.

Diverse teams have been shown to be more effective and creative in many circumstances, and diversity should include consideration of age and experience. But it should not become the default that the most senior member of the team should be the leader. These team members are likely to bring invaluable skills and experience, but in the long term these skills may be best used to focus on technical aspects of the problem whilst mentoring and supporting a less experienced colleague in the position of leader. It is essential that we maintain a flow of talent and provide sufficient resource for those in their early and mid-career for that talent to grow and flourish.

Equality, Diversity – and Pizza 🍕

I would like to take this opportunity to advertise the fantastic ED&I reading group that regularly meets in the Informatics Forum. 

This reading group usually discusses a research paper on a topic related to equality, diversity and inclusion. Everyone in Informatics – and beyond – is invited to attend. To give you an idea of the sort of research the reading group discusses, the first paper was “Everyone has an accent” by Nina Markl and Catherine Lai. The first author joined us to present key points of her work and we discussed it directly with her. The paper was published at Interspeech 2023, and it points at a gap between how accents and accented speech are thought of in the linguistics literature and how speech technology research talks about them. 

In everyday language, we might say that someone ‘has an accent’, which makes it sound like some people don’t have an accent. The speech technology literature seems to have embraced this idea. For example, there are studies that try to detect from a voice recording how “accented” someone’s speech is, and try to measure it on a scale. There have been suggestions that this technology could be used to decide whether a customer service employee is right for the job or whether they might require additional training. The linguistics literature, however, is clear: Everyone – from someone who has just started to learn English to the King – has an accent. The difference is that they have different accents, so they pronounce things differently. 

Why does this distinction matter? One reason it matters is that perceptions of accents depend on the listener: an American may find that a Hollywood actor “doesn’t have much of an accent” but of course a Scottish person would disagree if the actor sounds American. Therefore it does not make much sense to say that one person has more of an accent than someone else, objectively. Where things do start to have an impact is when you are having difficulty understanding someone’s speech. Therefore, a more useful concept than accentedness is intelligibility. That is still not something we can measure in a single number (intelligible to whom?) but we can measure whether someone’s speech is intelligible to a specific group of people or to a specific voice recognition system. 

To me, this research shows what happens when we take everyday notions and shorthands, like “having an accent” and incorporate them into our research without reflecting on the hidden biases that they are based on. In this case, could stereotypes about English learners and about class be playing a role when researchers equate the poorly defined idea of “accentedness” and intelligibility? It’s perfectly possible for someone to be easy to understand while they also have an accent that clearly shows where they grew up. Decisions about who gets a job or not, or who receives additional training, should not be based on research that uses flawed, outdated concepts. 

For me, the goal of discussing such issues in a group isn’t to point fingers, it’s to critically reflect on our own stereotypes, and how they may be influencing our research, so that we can become better researchers. 

The ED&I reading group usually meets once a month on a Tuesday at 1pm, in G.03. There is a mailing list (inf-edi-reading-group@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk), please find sign-up instructions here. For those who come, there’s pizza! 

Equality, diversity and inclusion in AI research – why should we care, and what can we do about it?

Research in AI is an increasingly exciting and fast-paced environment, with many new interesting features and applications available at a wider scale. However, it is also the topic of heavy criticism for often failing to represent and serve minority groups, which have historically been underrepresented in conversations about technology. Being PhD students in the CDT in NLP, we think it is extremely important to keep up with issues regarding equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I), both to improve our own work but also to be critical about new advancements in the field.  

Because of that, we are currently hosting a reading group in ED&I once a month, open to all postgraduate students and staff from the School of Informatics.  

Anyone involved can choose a paper which they think is of interest, no matter whether it is their own work or not. Although attendees are encouraged to read the paper beforehand, this is not a requirement as we start with a ~15 min presentation. Afterwards, an informal group discussion follows, which allows everyone to comfortably express their ideas and ask questions. For the past few months, the sessions have had a very friendly atmosphere and we have learned a lot from each other about how to be more mindful researchers.  

Through the ED&I reading group, we’re hoping to raise some awareness on how issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion can impact current AI research, but also how AI research can have consequences in areas which have a direct or indirect impact on society. We also aim to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment where researchers can share and discuss their ideas on how AI research is impacting our society. We hope that attendees leave with thoughts on how their choices as a researcher can make a difference for people who have often been left out of the conversation about AI and how their choices can change that.  

From the past few sessions, we have learned a lot from all the people who have presented and whom we have shared a discussion with! Our past sessions have covered: 

Our next session will be on Tuesday 30th April and will be covering issues related to the use of deep learning to identify transgender and gender diverse patients from electronic health records (A deep learning approach for transgender and gender diverse patient identification in electronic health records).  

With AI being an exciting and constantly evolving area of research, we believe that issues of equality, diversity and inclusion are more important than ever for researchers to be aware of, even if their own topic of research is not directly linked to them.  

If you are a researcher at the School of Informatics, we hope you’ll join us the last Tuesday of every month from 1-2pm for engaging presentations and fruitful discussions. Let’s all learn from each other! We usually meet in G.03, with the exception of 30th April, where we will meet in IF 1.15. 

Artemis and Ariadna 

Subscribe to inf-edi-reading-group@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk for notifications on next sessions 

Culture consultation

Our School works best when everybody is heard, and nobody is left behind. We are always eager to find out how to improve our community, with regular official feedback opportunities. In the last two years the School Culture survey, Athena Swan focus groups, and the University’s Staff Engagement survey have been implemented. These have revealed some common issues that we should improve; and although some we can only raise to College or University, there is a great deal that we as a School can act upon.

Findings to date may indicate that we need to listen and respond further to the needs of our staff. We’re keen to hear voices from across the whole School, especially including those who may not have contributed their views yet.

Therefore, the School is contracting an external body, Advance HE, to do three things:

  • Analyse all available data to understand what workplace issues are happening;
  • Facilitate an independent consultation of our School community to understand why these issues are challenging;
  • Develop independent recommendations about improving staff and student experiences.

Practically, over the next couple of months, Advance HE will be conducting 8 focus groups – 2 for professional services staff, 2 for academic staff, 2 for research staff, and 2 for research students – as well as in-depth interviews with key senior staff members. All work is completely independent from the School leadership, with robust and proper privacy and ethics considerations in place.

Our School has kindly invested in this work to improve our culture. When you are invited to join a focus group, please grab the chance, even if – especially if – you typically don’t respond to surveys. It is a great opportunity to improve our effectiveness to work together as a productive and happy community. Let’s seize it!

What I learnt at the ACM WomEncourage Conference

I went to the WomEncourage conference in Trondheim, Norway in September 2023, and here are some lessons that I learnt.

  • It’s amazing to be in a female-dominated computing environment. We are all used to spaces where people are talking about computing being very male dominated.  Mostly that is ok, and mostly we can feel welcome and part of that environment.  But it’s a wonderful change to be discussing technical details about computing in a room that is 80% female – being in the majority feels good.
  • Women working together is inspiring and uplifting. WomEncourage was formed by a group of women who had been working to support other women in their home countries and came together to form ACM-W Europe, and soon after came up with the idea of an annual conference – here is the inspiring story.  Anyone in tech can join ACM-W and get involved in working with this community, and this is something I would very much encourage our female staff and students to do.
  • Hackathons don’t have to focus on coding. The WomEncourage hackathon required teams to come up with innovative ideas about how tech could create meaningful solutions to some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Understanding tech and having plausible ideas about what could work was key, but the focus was on hacking the ideas and not the code.
  • There is a huge skills gap in ethics and DEI in tech. Employers cannot find enough people with technical skills who also have an understanding of:
    • How to support and encourage diversity within the workplace (tech firms are often terrible at this and want to get better)
    • How to develop technology that is ethically aware and accessible to all – e.g., not just aimed at the most common (white, male) demographic

Encouraging our students to develop these skills is not just about doing the right thing – it’s about equipping our students for the modern job market and helping tech firms fill these crucial roles.

  • Most people (companies, universities, etc.) are doing the right thing in terms of talking about unconscious bias and other diversity issues. But very often this has very little payoff because it’s not deeply engrained into every day life but instead is an add on.  This is rarely effective.
  • In university settings, ethics is often taught as a separate or additional subject rather than as a core part of every single branch of CS and tech – and it’s often taught by people with no background in ethics. Every time we teach or learn anything, we should regard thinking about the ethical and societal impacts to be as important as the technical knowledge.
  • The paths into tech careers are many and various. Women and other minorities can flourish by following a ‘standard’ path in tech or by creating a new path that focusses on their passions and skills.  Birgit Penzenstadler, whose research focusses on sustainable software development, talked about how she brings yoga and mindfulness into her teaching and research practice.
  • There’s some great music in Trondheim, from the all-female student a cappella group that welcomed us to the conference (https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/WomEncourage+Conference+-+welcome/1_jajg1v42) to an organ recital on the largest organ in northern Europe in Nidaros Cathedral (https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/womEncourage+conference+-+recital/1_667zdc01)

If you want to see the Northern Lights, you’ve got to be patient and hope the clouds will part.

School response to survey results

Our School undertakes a culture survey of all School members every two years.  We don’t do this annually because we feel all this would result in is survey fatigue.  We know that completing the survey takes some time! So why do it?  We think the best incentive for completing the survey is evidence that the responses trigger changes that tackle the issues raised.  Here is a summary of the main issues raised by the 2021 survey  and how the School has responded.

Students

The survey saw 201 responses which was mainly completed by research postgraduate students. Response rates from undergraduate and taught masters students were low.  We’d like to see a significant increase in responses from all categories of student to the 2023 survey.  We hope the brief reports on each of the main issues identified in the survey will encourage more participation in the survey so we can have a clearer view of issues where things have improved and where we still need more work.  The main issues we identified were the following.

Workload

This is the clearest and most pressing issue that comes up in several different contexts and is seen as contributing to other issues identified in the survey.  Issues arise around the number, scale, and coordination of deadlines for coursework:

  • We use information from weekly reps meetings and Staff-Student Laison meeting to identify courses where workload is seen as an issue by students. These are reviewed and several courses have had the number and scale of courseworks reduced as a consequence of these reviews.
  • We have begun to make better use of the academic year by reconsidering the pattern of deadlines. Coursework-only courses can set deadlines beyond week 11 to make use of the early weeks of Semester 2 and the revision period prior to the main exam diet. This reduces deadline congestion and makes better use of the available weeks of study.
  • We are consulting now on reorganising the schedule the final-year project: deciding on a topic, preparing for the project and working on the project. Our goal is to avoid having the project run concurrently with other courses and permit a longer period of full-time work on the project.
  • Issues around deadline congestion are difficult to resolve. One approach we have considered is to have courseworks that span multiple courses to reduce the number of courseworks undertaken simultaneously.
Communication

Many responses point out that the respondents feel like the School is spamming them on multiple channels. Indiscriminate use of whole year mailing lists, multiple emails in the same day, inconsistent use of channels across courses all contribute to this feeling:

  • The move to LEARN ultra has started work in the School on how best to use the new structures. One opportunity is to establish a more consistent policy on the messaging related to individual courses.
  • We are considering the use of stricter moderation on the large and indiscriminate email lists (e.g.,
  • We are also actively considering options to request journaled messages on some of the more active lists.
Community and Caring

This is a somewhat more controversial topic since there is a minority view that questions whether the School should care about community and caring but the majority feel the School should attempt to build a caring community. In this area we have:

  • Initiated the development of basic training in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion oriented to students to help engender a more open, respectful dialogue in the School that will help counter the perceived difficulties some students experience in expressing their views to other students.
  • The variability in sense of community experienced by PhD students is also problematic. The School is considering how best to engender a stronger sense of community across all PhD students.
Timing of Events

Some student respondents raise the issue of the timing of events that assume students are always available. The School will now endeavour to ensure that events are more sympathetically timed.

Bullying and Harassment

Overall the level of bullying and harassment is low in the School.  However, the School will endeavour:

  • To make reporting mechanisms clear and more clearly anonymous to respond to the expressed lack of knowledge on how to report bullying and harassment.
  • The School is aware the EUSA is promoting active bystander training for some societies’ members. The School is exploring how to make such training more widely available to all students.
Mental Health and Wellbeing

This is seen as a major deficiency. The time delay and lack of mental health and wellbeing provision is problematic for most respondents.  These services are provided university-wide so there is little the School can do directly in terms of increasing the supply of services but we are exploring ways we can reduce demand:

  • Exploring how to reduce stress levels among our students. Better management of coursework loads (see earlier) are an important route to reducing stress.
  • Increasing the number of mental health first aiders in the School. This is not a long-term fix but having a wider trained group improves accessibility to prompt help and increases awareness and sensitivity to the issue in the School.
  • Our new expert student support staff will help ensure students receive prompt and consistent support for mental health issues. The School believes this is a significant improvement over the current situation.  The switch to the new system takes place over the summer.

Staff

The survey saw 185 responses which is a significantly higher response rate than the student survey. This has a good spread across all staff categories and levels of seniority.

Workload

This is one of the clearest and most consistent issues across all staff related to students and is related to increases in student numbers. It is seen a major contributor to poor wellbeing, stress and mental health issues.

  • Action to reduce the volume of assessed coursework mentioned above has a direct impact on staff workload. This work is continuing, and consultation on managing the final year project workload is underway.
  • Action has been taken on admissions more effectively to control admissions of taught students and growth in student numbers has been brought under control.
Community and Caring

The School is a large organisation and building an effective and caring community is challenging.

  • Continuing to strengthen the role of the Institutes provides smaller communities for some categories of staff and students that are still evolving, particularly post-COVID.
  • Strong staff networks are also seen as good mechanism to encourage communities with common interests.
  • Individual initiative such as yoga classes and the concert series also provide mechanisms that encourage interaction and socialising across all staff.
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

Currently the main focus in the surveys is on gender issues but the School is aware of wider EDI issues.

  • New training in EDI impact assessment will be used to ensure that all new policies are assessed for EDI impact.
  • EDI impacts will be documented and followed up by the People and Culture Committee.
  • Data on EDI impact on promotion will be gathered and analysed systematically to provide a good evidence base for further action.
Bullying and Harassment

Some bullying is experienced, particularly by more junior staff and between academic and other staff.  Bullying is clearly unacceptable.

  • School will establish a confidential channel to report bullying and will publicise policies and reporting channels widely.
Progression and Promotion

There is a feeling that decision taking lacks transparency and support for development to enable promotion/progression.

  • School is organising additional training for Line Managers to enable them better to support the development needs of staff.
  • School is working to provide clearer career route mapping.
Mental Health and Wellbeing

Issues around mental health and wellbeing are closely related to workload.

  • The workload model is explicit and transparently implemented. This is still becoming fully established.  As it beds in we anticipate being better able to identify under-resourcing and the need to recruit to better resource under-resourced activities.
  • School is working with the wider University to increase staff access to mental health services.

Edinburgh at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium

BCSWomen organises the annual Lovelace Colloquium: a day featuring talks, a careers panel, employer stands and a student poster contest. This year, three students from the University of Edinburgh made the trip to Sheffield, and Qiuye Zhang in fact won first place with her poster “Can Artificial Neural Networks Learn like Brains?” in the second year contest! Here is how she experienced the event:

I am excited to share my experiences and insights from the Lovelace Colloquium, where I had the opportunity to present my poster on computational neuroscience and computational psychiatry. It was my first time discussing these two fascinating fields publicly, and I was thrilled to see some attendees express interest in computational psychiatry.

Initially, my abstract didn’t mention computational psychiatry, but after being inspired by Peggy and her course on computational cognitive neuroscience, I decided to include it in my poster. The interest and discussions surrounding my presentation exceeded my expectations. We delved into topics beyond the scope of my poster, such as Hopfield networks, Bayesian models, and reinforcement learning models. The judges of the contest were very encouraging about my current research. Their kind words and support reinforced my passion for the subject and motivated me to continue my work in this field.

The event also allowed me to meet many amazing people who provided warm hugs and support when I felt nervous before my presentation. In addition to my poster experience, the keynote speeches were enlightening. They touched on the biases faced by females, gender-neutral individuals, and disabled people, as well as the use of technology to detect violence.

Going forward, I plan to be more mindful of potential biases in my research, particularly concerning people with psychiatric diseases. I will consider whether they receive adequate support and explore how to facilitate their lives when cognitive control is a challenge.

Overall, the Lovelace Colloquium was an enriching experience that allowed me to share my passion for computational neuroscience and psychiatry, learn from others, and connect with amazing people. I’m grateful for the opportunity and look forward to applying my newfound insights in my future work.

Can artificial neural networks learn like brains?

Qiuye Zhang’s poster “Can artificial neural networks learn like brains?”

What can we do about the gender disparity in Computer Science in the UK?

There are disproportionately few women enrolling for undergraduate degrees in computing in the UK.  Despite constituting 50.5% of the UK population and 57% of college graduates in the UK, only 19% of the technology workforce are women. The statistics for staff within our school align well with the national figures, with women constituting 56% of our professional services staff but only 20% of our academic staff. The disparity is lower in our student population: 27% of taught students (24.2% of undergraduates and 36% of post-graduate) and 22% of research students identified as female.

The decisions made by pupils in the last two years of high school is a key contributor to this disparity. The female to male ratio for first year STEM undergraduates across the UK hovers around 1, but its breakdown across disciplines reveals wide variation across the sciences (Figure 2 shows a detailed breakdown for interested readers). About one in four Computer Science (or Engineering) undergraduates identifies as female.  Those who identified as ‘other’ when given a 3-way choice of gender (about 0.4% of UK’s population) make up about 0.2% of first year undergraduates in the UK; within our school the numbers are significantly better than the national average (0.7% of taught students and 2% of research students).

Most of the interventions designed and delivered in the UK [2,3], to reduce gender disparity in STEM, have been targeted at high school students. Specifically, focussing on female pupils to educate them about the benefits of choosing careers in science, via mechanisms such as the Stimulating Physics Network [1]. It appears that female pupils choose non-mandatory STEM subjects [9,10]  in secondary schools when they:

  1.   believe that they are `good’ at it;
  2.   appreciate the value of science;
  3.   are embedded in a micro-culture that values and discusses science [7]; and
  4.   are exposed to role models provided they do not conform to STEM stereotypes [4,5].

The UK has spearheaded studies related to 3, under the umbrella of ‘science capital’ [6].

Paradoxically, there is  evidence [8] that gender disparity in engineering and technology is inversely related to national gender equality. That is, countries with higher percentages of women engineers (around 40%) tend to have a poor global gender gap index. E.g. Algeria, Tunisia, U.A.E., Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam.

 

Fig 1. Source: Technation jobs and skills report 2021.

 

In summary, with only 20-25% of undergraduates in Engineering and Computer Science being women, the status quo precludes the majority of women in the UK from gaining the skills needed for lucrative tech jobs (Figure 1). It is a large and complex issue.  What can we at the School of Informatics, as the powerhouse of computer science in the UK, do about this?

My view is that we could aim to overcome this disparity at three different levels:

  1. we are probably large enough to effect change by leading and organising effort at the national level (spawning something like the SPN but specifically for computing) while liaising with government (e.g. Scottish Parliament, Department for Education);
  2. locally, we could identify appropriate [5] role models within the school who connect with schools to keep female pupils (and their teachers) informed of the impact of their choice of subjects to society and their own careers; and finally. For example through the Informatics Tutoring Scheme.
  3. every one of us should actively contribute to an inclusive environment within the school. Although this sounds obvious and trivial, we continue to hear about scope for improvement, in this regard, via our student surveys.

What do you think?

 

Fig 2. Ratios of full-time female to male students in first year undergraduate (left) vs graduate (right) programmes in the year 2020-2021. Data from HESA.

 

 

REFERENCES

[1] https://www.stem.org.uk/secondary/cpd/stimulating-physics-network

[2] https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/SPN-evaluation-final-Jan-22.pdf

[3] Team, Behavioural Insights. “Applying Behavioural Insights to increase female students’ uptake of STEM subjects at A Level” (2020).

[4] Cheryan, Sapna, John Oliver Siy, Marissa Vichayapai, Benjamin J. Drury, and Saenam Kim. “Do female and male role models who embody STEM stereotypes hinder women’s anticipated success in STEM?” Social psychological and personality science 2, no. 6 (2011): 656-664.

[5] Cheryan, Sapna, Allison Master, and Andrew N. Meltzoff. “Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: Increasing girls’ interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes” Frontiers in psychology (2015): 49.

[6] Archer, Louise, Emily Dawson, Jennifer DeWitt, Amy Seakins, and Billy Wong. ““Science capital”: A conceptual, methodological, and empirical argument for extending bourdieusian notions of capital beyond the arts.” Journal of research in science teaching 52, no. 7 (2015): 922-948.

[7] Archer, Louise, Julie Moote, Emily Macleod, Becky Francis, and Jennifer DeWitt. “ASPIRES 2: Young people’s science and career aspirations, age 10–19.” (2020).

[8] Stoet, Gijsbert, and David C. Geary. “The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.” Psychological science 29, no. 4 (2018): 581-593.

[9] Wigfield, Allan, and Jacquelynne S. Eccles. “Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation.” Contemporary educational psychology 25, no. 1 (2000): 68-81.

[10] Goulas, Sofoklis, Silvia Griselda, and Rigissa Megalokonomou. “Comparative advantage and gender gap in STEM.” Journal of Human Resources (2022): 0320-10781R2.