Women in Science
Changing the culture in science
Audio clip: Lucy has heard of instances of situations where other women have been asked whether or not they intend to have children. Such questioning is against the law.
Do you use, have you still seen examples of concrete discrimination? Not sort of subconscious but……?
I’m trying to think off the top of my head whether, I mean people, I’ve heard people relate things but I wouldn’t, I’m surprised people say that. So recently we had to attend some training on unconscious bias, [laughs] and I was thinking yeah the problem, the problem is the conscious bias. And there were people in that training who were saying, who were scientists, not clinicians saying that they, women who were saying that at interviews that took place in the last year that they were asked by their panel about, or by members of the panel about whether they were going to have children, whether they were married and things like that. And that’s not even within; you know that’s against University policy. And so the person chairing this training was absolutely horrified ‘cos they were from personnel, and they were saying well that’s not even allowed, but this is happening.