Thread by @hwitteman

I had an interview-by-email recently about the made-in-Canada Athena SWAN charter. cc @KirstyDuncanMP

The journalist used my positive answers to earlier questions (overall, I like the charter) but didn't use my answer to the final question. That may be understandable. It was long. But the reason I responded was to get my answer to that question across, so here we go. thread/

From the journalist: "You were featured by CIHR for International Day of Women and Girls in Science. I saw your tweet about the question you chose to answer and how you answered it."

"Could you reiterate and/or expand on your message to policymakers about how to ensure women and girls in science? And do you have other ideas about how the government should complement Athena SWAN?"

My response: Sure. The question I answered was, "We know that women and girls already choose science. What is ONE thing (likely of many) that needs to change to make it easier for them to STAY in science?"

My answer was, “For women to stay in science, they have to feel like there’s a future for them. One thing that would really help encourage that feeling among women in countries around the world, especially Canada right now, would be better access to stable research funding,

so that they can keep paying their staff and funding their students. Regular, open, investigator-initiated competitions with predictable deadlines and reasonable success rates make it easier for people who have multiple responsibilities to submit high-quality research proposals.”

Long explanation:

The reason I focused on that question and gave the answer I did is because I think that is one of the key problems driving women out of science right now. It’s certainly something I see among female students who are forgoing further study.

They don’t want to launch themselves into the shark tank of hypercompetitive research funding. Having funding be competitive is good because it pushes us all to do better work, but having it be too competitive or too hierarchical is not good for science.

We know from international research that when grant success rates drop below a reasonable threshold, we start to miss out on funding some of the most impactful research,

and that letting scientists follow their noses towards the next exciting discovery tends to lead to more discoveries rather than pushing everyone in one direction.

Canada used to do much better at funding exciting, promising research that opened up whole new avenues for a knowledge economy. For example, our current strengths in artificial intelligence can be traced back to investigator-initiated science funding decades ago.

The tendency of the last two governments has been on consolidating science funding in hierarchies; e.g., the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Canada Excellence Research Chairs, Canada 150 Chairs.

This runs the risk of reproducing or exacerbating biases, and, in fact, that’s what we see in those programs.

Even the Canada 150 chairs—which included requirements for selection processes to incorporate issues of equity, diversity and inclusion—awarded more larger ($1,000,000/year) chairs to men and more smaller ($350,000/year) chairs to women.

https://twitter.com/hwitteman/status/1052607804597526534

Those extra programs might be fine if they were on top of regular TriCouncil and CFI funding, but they have come at the expense of that base funding.

When your house has a crack in the foundation, you should repair the foundation and make sure you’ve got a solid base before putting up expensive wallpaper and buying new drapes and light fixtures.

The regular, investigator-initiated, bread & butter programs run by CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC, and CFI are where the most rigorous assessment happens and where the most new ideas come. Yet they continue to be underfunded.

Even if institutions fully implement the made-in-Canada Athena SWAN program, because the government only responded partially to the evidence-based recommendations of the Fundamental Science Review,

until they respond fully, Canada won’t be able to fully achieve our potential in science. /thread

acronyms/terms:
TriCouncil = NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC
CFI = Canada Foundation for Innovation
NSERC = Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
CIHR = Canadian Institutes of Health Research
SSHRC = Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada