I Invent The Future

I’m usually far more interested in planet research than plant research, but when I heard that a woman from my alma mater, the University of York, had a blurb in the June 2009 edition of GARNet newsletter, GARNish, about a women in science project she was running, I had to take a look.

As part of her Royal Society Rosalind Franklin award, Professor Ottoline Leyser (University of York) has produced a book entitled Mothers in Science. The aim of this
book is to illustrate, graphically, that it is perfectly possible to combine a successful and fulfilling career in research science with motherhood, and that there are no rules about how to do this. On each page you will find a timeline showing on one side, the career path of a research group leader in academic science, and on the other side, important events in her family life. Each contributor has also provided a brief text about their research and about how they have combined their career and family commitments. The book is available for downloaded from
http://bioltfws1.york.ac.uk/biostaff/staffdetail.php?id=hmol

The book contains profiles of 64 academics, including a woman from my former computer science department and quite a few other familiar names. It gives an interesting insight into a world that rarely gets to be in the spotlight. There are obvious limits to the story being told, but while there is a slight bias towards the idyllic world of supportive (and more often than not, academic) husbands with part-time or flexible working arrangements, the “2 body problem” that academics face when they are not located in the same city are also addressed.

Some women happily say that they delayed children until they were established in academia with research groups, while others were ‘unknowingly pregnant’ when taking up early research positions and took 8 year career breaks. Almost all detail their childcare arrangements, ranging from family to departmental nurseries to various nannies and au pairs being employed. One woman, Sunetra Gupta, has not only juggled two daughters alongside her academic career but is also an established novelist with four books under her belt! The only thing missing is greater coverage of single mothers and inclusion of same-sex partnerships: this is a good start, but there is more equality to be found here.

All in all, it’s a fascinating read and well worth hitting the print button for local libraries and schools to stock. People always say that women can have it all these days, but this is one of the few times where you get to see the proof of it with the compromises – from the parental side.

My generation spawned many things, including the birth of ‘ladette’ culture. Despite the stereotypical image of young British women downing pints, I still associate wine with a woman’s drink.

You can imagine my surprise at being the only woman in the room when I joined my other half for a wine tasting a few weeks ago, organised by his firm’s trading technology department (where he works). Where did all the women go?

It’s easy to come up with superficial reasons behind this phenomenon:

• They signed up but couldn’t make it due to work issues
• They have to run home and take care of the kids
• They like wine but they don’t care about it that much
• There aren’t that many of them there in the first place, so proportionally you wouldn’t expect (m)any anyway – unfortunately I wasn’t able to get hold of the percentage of female employees in that department to confirm what the expected figure would be around.

The first three points all lose ground when you take Women Inspired by Wine into account. The group was only launched in April of this year, and it’s exactly what you would infer from the name: an organisation that provides educational and social opportunities around wine for women. One would assume that they have a number of members, or it wouldn’t exist. Who are these women? I think it’s safe to say that they don’t work in trading technology at investment banks, or maybe they do and that’s why they eschew the work events for the superior women-only ones!

However, for anyone that thinks perhaps the women attending these events are something other than city professionals has it wrong because one of Women Inspired by Wine’s partners is none other than Women in the City. But how many of those women attend the wine events?

Women in the City was created when Gwen Rhys, a serial networker if there ever was one, decided that there should be a forum to gather city women together. This resulted in a ‘one-off’ lunch that has become the annual flagship event for the organisation. In addition to the lunch, they now have an annual symposium, an awards scheme and produce a magazine with items of interest to both men and women.

The network is currently focused at senior women, with a target age of 35-45, but I’m pleased to see that future endeavours include a Rising Star award for the 25+ age range. I remain convinced that while networks are good in the current atmosphere, the only reason they are necessary is because women are in the minority. The only way to bring this situation to an end is to increase the number of women, and that will naturally occur by fostering younger talent.

Maybe then, the day will arrive when wine events are open to both genders, and both will attend. What a novelty!

Anyone that follows me on Twitter will have been inundated with tweets last week when the ESA finally revealed their 6 new astronauts. The varied group consists of 2 Italians, 1 German, 1 Danish, 1 French and the one I was waiting for – 1 British.

There was thankfully one woman in the group, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, who the BBC News website called ‘ESA’s first female astronaut’ until they realised that the ESA has in fact had two female astronauts in the past. One was Claudie Haigneré, who was the first Frenchwoman in space and left the ESA to go into politics. The other was Marianne Merchez, a Belgian that married a fellow astronaut but then resigned from the ESA before ever going into space. So that leaves Cristoforetti on her own in the ESA Astronaut Corps, and she’ll most likely remain like that until the next round of recruitment in 15 years (if past precedent is anything to go by) but I’m more than confident that she can hold her own.

Earlier this week, ESA remained in the news with the launch of ESA astronaut Frank De Winne to the International Space Station. It’s a significant mission for many reasons. Firstly, De Winne and his two crewmates will remain with the current inhabitants of the ISS to form the first six person crew of the ISS. That crew will mark the first time that representatives from all five ISS partner agencies will be in space together: 1 Belgian ESA astronaut, 2 Russians, 1 Japanese, 1 Canadian, and last but not least, 1 American NASA astronaut. Of course, De Winne himself is going to be the first European commander of the ISS, a role he will take over after four months in space.

But what’s so good about space, apart from the fun vibe that one gets after watching the new Star Trek movie? The ministers in charge of space activities in the ESA’s 18 Member States and Canada met today for the Sixth Space Council. The ministers noticed the contribution of space to leading economic recovery through innovation, with key points including the potential of satellite communication technologies for broadband in rural areas. This is a remarkably simple concept that anyone visiting a rural area can understand, and yet we are not in a position to do anything about it.

I understand the need to generate excitement around space and astronauts at a basic level – and if we have things like new astronauts to announce, then by all means, that should be maximised for media attention – but I find that more often than not, the practicalities and usefulness of space exploration is sidelined, especially the role that the people down on the ground play. Things might be changing, though. It’s still the International Year of Astronomy, and the She Is An Astronomer project is going strong in the UK with Maggie Aderin working on projects with Blue Peter and arranging for short items about women in astronomy to be broadcast on the BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.

I also remember part of the astronaut application asking the candidate for their opinions on the role that an astronaut should play as a public face. It’ll be interesting to see what Maj Timothy Peake will be doing on the media front in the months to come – especially given that the UK has yet to contribute financially to the ESA’s human spaceflight programme.

Continuing with my posts of “useful” information, I’ll be addressing Events this time. It’s not hard to see that a lot of the things that I write about are sparked by events that I go to – and while I’m lucky to be aware of most of them before they happen, that isn’t always the case. So where should you be going to organise your calendar?

• Women In Technology shows ‘upcoming events’, including their own as well as external ones, nicely colour-coded. Their own events are always excellent, usually free, and touch on interesting topics with great speakers. Their next one is W-Tech 2009, which I’ll be going to – just look at the number of workshops and tell me that there’s nothing there that doesn’t interest you!
• The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology has a comprehensive list of upcoming networking, leadership and academic events across the UK.
• Girl Geek Dinners are usually advertised on the womenintechnology events, but it’s worth keeping an eye on them directly, because tickets go fast for the popular ones. I tend to mention the London events but it’s a very global occurrence now, so go to the website and scan down the list of locations in the right sidebar and see if there’s one near you.
• If you’re looking for the social side of networking, then Silicon Stilettos is the place to be. It originated on meetup, where you can still join to be notified of upcoming Silicon Stilettos events immediately. It’s since graduated to being a network, and you can find it at siliconstilettos.ning.com. The events page there allows members to post any events they have going on, so while there may be duplication between all of these sites, it’s a nice way to figure out who’s behind each thing.
• If you’re looking for social events that are techy but aren’t specifically for women, then Techfluff.tv usually has it listed, although you may have to Google them as links aren’t always provided.
• The Next Women regularly holds events, which can be seen on their events page. They also run a Kitchen Dinner Series.
• For the most technical people that want to learn, the British Computing Society is there for you. The BCS holds numerous events on a variety of topics. Some are only open to members but many are open to non-members. They have a number of specialist groups, including a Young Professionals Group so there’s plenty to get involved with.

Whew! After all that, you’d think there would be very little to suggest but there is one other thing: your company. Most large companies have internal women’s networks and it’s always worth it to attend the events, to make yourself known to senior female managers if nothing else. If your company is of a reasonable size and doesn’t have one, then start one up yourself.

It’s been another busy week for London women, although for once I wasn’t able to get into the thick of it as usual.

It all happened on Tuesday, starting with Women Who Tech. One of the few teleconferences I know of it’s kind, it’s essentially a series of webinars so that participants can dial in from all around the world. Presentations and podcasts should be put up on the website, so if there’s anything that you wish that you had made it to, the chance may well come around. It was followed up by a series of After Parties in the real world for those in the right locations.

Also on Tuesday, in a physical building in London, there were 2000+ women gathering for Deutsche Bank’s Annual Women in European Business conference. The Glass Hammer has an excellent recap of the event. With charitable giftbags, a great line-up of luminaries and speakers, it seems universally agreed that they can do no wrong.

A quick look at the bigger picture shows that Deutsche is even putting its money where its mouth is, by creating the Deutsche Bank Women’s Scholarship Programme, which funds three female MBA students and one Masters in Finance student at the London Business School with £20,000 each.

Of course, they’re not the only ones doing this at LBS. Citi’s charitable arm, The Citi Foundation, also has a scholarship of £20,000 for one MBA student a year. The only other external company to match this is The Forté Foundation, which sponsors two MBA students a year. Forté, in its own words, is “a consortium of major corporations and top business schools that has become a powerful change agent in educating and directing talented women toward leadership roles in business.”

Sometimes, all I see is so much information around recruiting girls into science/technology/business/what have you and so much around the other extreme of the lack of executive women at senior levels. I wonder where my peers and I fall in: women at the early stages of their careers, that need incentive and motivation to bypass those glass ceilings like they weren’t even there. This is what Forté does. They encourage young professionals into business careers, they have a strong range of partnerships which they leverage to show the value of an MBA for the working woman, and they also support research on the topics that matter.

My favourite FT Weekend columnist, Mrs Moneypenny, gave a talk at my firm last year at the behest of our women’s network. I watched the recording of the event recently, and listened to her say that she became pregnant shortly after getting married at the age of 26, when she also happened to be doing an MBA part-time. Now that’s impressive. While I certainly don’t expect to be pregnant in a year’s time, it might be an idea to start exploring that MBA – especially if those scholarships are still going.

Sci-Fi isn’t the only thing to retain the negative connotations of uber-geekiness. Gaming takes a close second place, with most people holding the stereotypical image of teenage boys immersed in Dungeons & Dragons for hours on end. The experience for female gamers can be a difficult one, with enough discrimination to make many of them choose male avatars just to enjoy the game as intended.

The sad part is that this has been an issue for years and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of things changing. BBC News has an article from 2004, Girl gamers strike at the boys, which touches on the imbalance, especially in relation to games that are sponsored by corporate firms with the associated prize money. There was a great article by a girl gamer called Whitney Butts in 2005, excellently titled OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1. Butts included actual IRC logs and depictions of her real interactions in the virtual world. While some attitudes may have changed in the years since then, the number of female gamers hasn’t increased dramatically and anecdotal evidence would indicate that they haven’t.

Wikipedia even has an entry on the topic, and claims that 38% of players are women. In fact, if one tracks down the source of that figure from the Entertainment Software Association, it appears to have been 40% in 2008, based on data gathered from 1200 ‘nationally representative households’ in America. But the breakdown by type of game isn’t available – and I wonder how many of those women are on consoles and how many are playing MMORPGs. Even within the console world, I’m sure there’s a significant difference between those enjoying Nintendo Wiis to those on Sony PS3s.

Despite all of that, there are some good role models out there for the women that want to game.

Girls’n'Gadgets is holding a Women in Tech series, and today’s features a woman that write games. It’s a fascinating read, especially as many young professionals may find themselves empathising with the choices taken – Cat Burton is hardly the first person to leave university and go straight for the traditional graduate scheme in the corporate world.

Finally, another heroine of the gaming world is Felicia Day, who made her own web series “The Guild.” It documents the lives of an online guild called “The Knights of Good”, created specifically to show that there are different types of gamers out there. It débuted on YouTube and was then picked up for Microsoft’s XBox Live, MSN Video and The Zune Marketplace video channels. Keeping with the theme of her web series, she is an advocate of social gaming, admitting that her experiences of playing World of Warcraft for eight to nine hours a day gave her the idea for the show.

She later became exposed to a wider audience with her role as Penny in Joss Whedon’s online musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.” That enabled her to build up a remarkable online fan base and she now has over 500,000 followers on Twitter.

Day also writes in her blog regularly. One piece that I loved in particular was the Nintendo “Girlfriend’s Guild To Gaming” party she held as a Nintendo Ambassador. Her acting career is going strong with guest appearances on ‘Roommates’ and ‘Dollhouse’ so far this year, definitively proving that the modern gamer is a far cry from the lone man in his parent’s basement – she can be a successful actress for all you know!

I’ve already detailed the talk that took me to Sci-Fi-London. However, when it finished I realised that there was an even more interesting panel following it, on Space Colonisation. I’m a huge proponent of space exploration and it was fascinating to hear about various aspects of it.

The panel opened with Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He gave us an overview of The New Solar System (I still keep forgetting that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore!) and gave us an idea of how large the universe is and by proxy, how many places there are to visit. 100 billion galaxies, to be approximately precise.

He was followed by David Ashford, who brought us right back to reality and talked about space tourism in the modern day, particularly with relation to his company: Bristol Spaceplanes Limited. The whole room fell silent with his opening slide, which stated that: “Probably within 15 years, one million people per year will be visiting space hotels.” What’s more, he believes that the great space scandal that historians will look back and analyse for decades to come is the fact that it didn’t happen 20 years ago!

Ashford also predicted that within 15 years the price of a seat on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (or whatever subsequent vehicles) will fall from their currently $200,000 to $2000-$3000. I can guarantee that when that happens, I’ll be on the list.

The third speaker was David Kipping, an astronomer from UCL, who tackled the question, Is the Earth unique? He took us on a speedy tour of what makes Earth habitable and the search for Exoplanets and Exomoons in the universe. Long story short, given the empirical and proven percentages they have to hand, there are 50 million trillion habitable worlds in this universe. That’s a large number! Do you believe that we’re alone in the universe after hearing that? I certainly don’t.

Finally, we had Jerry Stone, a rather enthusiastic freelance presenter on astronomy and space exploration. He spoke about Gerard O’Neill’s ideas to develop space colonies and space-based manufacturing, in order to ’save’ the human race as countries will no longer have to compete for resources. I rather liked the idea before I heard the reasoning. I’m fairly sure that giving humanity all that it needs for survival won’t be enough to make us get along together, but maybe I’m a cynic.

Ironically, I felt more optimistic than ever about space travel after the panel. Now is the time for development to move away from the singular-minded brains of NASA and even the ESA/JAXA/CSA/what have you. With private companies engineering innovative solutions, we might actually get somewhere reliably sometime soon. I can’t wait!

I decided to embrace my geekiness this weekend and stopped by the Sci-Fi-London festival at the Apollo Cinema. I was particularly interested in the Lab Science/Literature panels, which were launched this year to expand beyond the films that are usually shown to explore the literary and scientific worlds that bring sci-fi to life.

The first one that I attended was the “A Woman in a Man’s World?” panel. With five minutes to go, there were eight of us in the audience with three male to the five women. Hmm.

The panel was chaired by Dr. Rachel Armstrong, who also spoke at the Girl Geek Dinner that was held with Sci-Fi-London. The panellists were all accomplished writers in various stages of their careers. The ‘grand dame’ was Pat Cadigan, who will be celebrating 30 years since the publishing of her first book next month. Her second novel, Synners, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992. Liz Williams was also on the panel, having written over a dozen books, some of which have been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. The final panelist was Jainne Fenn, the self-confessed newbie of the group, having only one book published to date.

Despite all claiming to be feminists, they seem to have had remarkably positive experiences as female writers in a male-dominated genre. None had any discrimination experiences to tell of, although Cadigan is routinely assumed to be a man due to the name ‘Pat’, despite having her photo in the books. It raised the issue that one really can’t tell between male and female writing.

It was noted that a large part of the problem is the ‘public face’ issue – there are women in the industry, but for some reason you don’t see them. A quick visit to Sci-Fi-London’s homepage will show you their Flickr feed, and most of the images are of men. It was also pointed out that ignoring this one panel, all of the other panels were either 100% male or had one token female.

This directly goes onto a topic that I’ve had many debates about: is sci-fi slowly gaining ‘credibility’ and easing into the mainstream? The consensus from the panel seemed to be around the fact that Heat magazine is happy to show Doctor Who, and thus it is. I’d counter that Heat magazine likes stalking David Tennant, and Doctor Who is no more popular than the original Star Wars was back in its day. But it still has the stigma and negative connotations that it always has – and this deters women from being interested in it, and admitting that interest further down the road.

One audience member worked in diversity and asked a question that I can’t recall, but it raised the issue that diversity within sci-fi has a greater issue than gender – race. The genre is very white, and while accessibility can be increased by focusing on translations, that isn’t the source of the problem.

I personally was disappointed that the authors didn’t have more to contribute about their experiences. While it’s nice to hear that there isn’t much to say, that defeats the point of the panel to me. Surely a panel is being held because there is something to address? If not in that context, then further discussion about their feminist agendas and how they address that in their writing would have been interesting. Williams mentioned that she doesn’t believe in ‘preaching’ and chooses to write about it more subtlely. In other words, the days of utopias formed from planetfuls of women are long gone.

An article appeared on parenting.com/CNN’s International website a few days ago: Why I didn’t want a girl.

It’s the story of a woman with two sons, told that she’s expecting a daughter. And she doesn’t like it.

I don’t mind people having baby gender preferences in principle; to each her own. Preferences are just that – leanings formed from past experiences. But the reasoning behind it raises some questions. Personally, I think I’d be more comfortable with a girl because I know what it is to be a female child having been one myself. My experience is entirely limited to that, as I am lacking any siblings of either the male or female variety.

But Amy Wilson, the author of this article, doesn’t have that viewpoint. She has two sons that she seems to feel have the supposed stereotypical male characteristics of being simple, with “cut-and-dried needs.” This, she empathises with, apparently being cut from a similar mold herself. Despite that, she fears a daughter because they apparently are ‘complicated’: “Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate.”

Excuse me?

Sometimes I look at the stereotypes continually being thrown at women in business, and I wonder where they come from. And then I read this, and if these women that bear these daughters believe this, then the answer is far more complicated than I realised.

Apart from any of the content in the article, the other thing that bothered me was that it’s almost guaranteed that this article will still be around in some form decades down the road for her daughter to read. What child would want to read that about themselves?

It reminds me of the incident a couple months ago when Julie Myerson, the author of “The Lost Child” was heavily criticised for writing about the personal experiences of her drug-addicted son. Prior to the book, she anonymously wrote a weekly column for the Guardian (which has since been removed as the identities of her children have been revealed) that revealed intimate details of her children’s lives. The subsequent furore in her life when her son (that she and her husband kicked out of their home due to his drug habit) publicly retaliated has been well-documented. The question remains. Was she right to exploit her family for her work?

The Guardian unsurprisingly offers views from both sides. I’d love to say that the answer is No, that she was wrong in what she did and that it shouldn’t be done because children should always come first. That’s certainly what I believe to a large extent. But I know well enough that life experiences form a large part of a writer’s fodder and it’s impossible to take that all away. Nevertheless, there must be a better middle ground than the extremities displayed here.

What bothers me most about the Myerson incident is that after all that happened, she publicly went on record to say that she didn’t regret doing any of it. Despite how things unfolded, she chose to have her book instead of abiding by her son’s wishes (drug addled as they may have been). That’s the bit that doesn’t feel right, and that’s what generated the disbelief and scorn. What kind of a mother is this?

Google is Great, we all know that. But it’s not so great when you’re looking for a niche subject and not sure where to start. I still search high and low for blogs and groups that related to UK/London women in technology (not that I don’t like the Americans, which is the other predominant group, but it’s not always relevant to me). I do add links to my blogroll when I find something, but I know that I’ve only scratched the surface.

So, I’m going to start a series of posts with “useful” information. Today, I’m pointing out the various newsletters that I’m aware of. There’s far too much information out there in the world to go trawling for it yourself, so get a couple* of these delivered to your inbox and you’ll be clued-up on all the latest happenings. If you know of more, please comment!

* Don’t try to subscribe to them all, you’ll find yourself ignoring them and being annoyed when yet another hits your inbox! Read their past newsletters, figure out what’s interesting to you, and then subscribe only to those.

• WomenInTechnology.co.uk legal updates with Kingsley Napley
  http://www.womenintechnology.co.uk/legal-updates-kingsley-napley
• European Professional Women’s Network Newsletter
  http://www.europeanpwn.net/index.php?article_id=3
• Forte Foundation SmartBrief
  http://www.fortefoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagename=smart_brief
• GetSetWomen Newsletter
  http://www.ukrc4setwomen.org/html/news-and-events/progress-newsletter/
• WeAreTheCity Bulletin
  http://wearethecity.com/#/marchnewsletter/4533083910

No longer updated:

• Anita Borg Institute Newsletter
  http://anitaborg.org/category/news/newsletters/