Inclusive Engineering

Dawn Bonfield MBECEng FIMMM FICE HonFIStructE FWES HonDEngRoyal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive EngineeringAston University

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI)

in STEMThe importance of EDI in STEM research and

what we as early career researchers can do to promote EDI in our daily practice.

• Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University

• EPSRC Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) Member

• Past President and Former CEO of Women’s Engineering Society

• Director, Towards Vision

• NO Medical Background!!

Note: My background is gender, but much of what I am saying applies equally to other minority groups

My Role

• The importance of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in STEM research

• What we as early career researchers can do to promote EDI in our daily practice

The Question

Three Sides to EDI

Personal/

Behavioural

Outputs of Research

Structural / Cultural

Inequalities

EDI: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

“Producing outputs (products, services, solutions, frameworks, plans, technology, research) that consider a multitude of (often) non-technical perspectives; that avoid the inclusion and promulgation of bias and discrimination; that consider future needs and trends; and that are equally accessible to all.”

The Importance of EDI in STEM Research

Outputs of

Research

www.towardsvision.org

Non-TechnicalInfluences

vTechnical

Considerations

Technical Considerations

Ethics PeopleCentred

Global Responsibility

SDGs

Future Technology

Safety & Security

Societal Impact

GenderPerspective

Or…what happens when you forget toadopt an inclusive mindset?

Examples:

• Products

• Technology

• Services

• Solutions

• Ethnicity and Gender of patients / samples

• Data Sets• Reference Models• Standards

Health

www.inceng.org

Covid Risk Assessment related to Ethnicity

First name: Surname:Job role: Date of birth:COVID-Age factor Number of years to be added/subtracted from

your actual age.Sex: Male No change

Female -8 Ethnicity: Asian or Asian British +5

Black or Black British +6 Mixed +5 Other non-white +3 White No change

BMI*: Under 30 No change30-34.9 +4 35-39.9 +5 40+ +10

COVID-Age without underlying medical

condition

• Covid Age

• Health

• Method of travel to work

• Home circumstances

• Lifestyle

Weighted Risk Assessment for Covid

Products

www.inceng.org

Technology, AI, Machine Learning

www.inceng.org

• Selection Bias: recruitment in own image

• Stereotype threat: reinforcing a stereotype before testing (e.g. girls and maths ability)

• Privilege Bias (the closer you are to success, the more likely you are to be successful)

• Confirmation Bias (wishful thinking)

• Reporting Bias e.g. L’Oreal survey on stereotypes in science: “In your opinion, what abilities do women lack that stops them from becoming high-level scientists?"

Other forms of Bias

The Gender Perspective

• The gender perspective looks at the impact of gender on people’s opportunities, social roles and interactions, and identifies areas where women or men are disproportionately disadvantaged. • Women are adversely affected in almost all countries, but particularly in the developing work are disadvantaged in the areas of climate change, energy resilience, the built environment, healthcare, poverty, hunger, access to clean water and sanitation• Science and technology has a unique role to play in understanding and addressing these inequalities, andconsider them routinely when creating solutions to these global problems.

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What Causes Inequality

• Financial inequality

• Access inequality (access to information, housing, health and social services, education and other economic, social and cultural services)

• Power inequality

• Gender norms and stereotypes

• Religious norms

• Lack of agency, Independence & empowerment

• Lack of safety and mobility

• Widespread violence against women

• War and civil unrest

• Climate Disruption

• The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, founded on the principle of 'leaving no one behind' call for transformative shifts, integrated approaches, and innovative solutions to overcome the structural barriers to inequality

• Innovation and technology provide unpreceded opportunities to reach those who are the most likely to be left behind, including women and girls

• Gender mainstreaming involves the integration of a gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring, financing, and evaluation of scientific and technical solutions, policies, regulatory measures, and spending programmes, with a view to promoting equality between women and men, and combating discrimination

No Sustainable Development Without Gender Equity – Making Innovation and Technology Work for Women

Target 5b: we must enhance the use of enabling technology – in particular information and communication technology – to promote the empowerment of women

#Engineering4All

Goal 5: Gender Equality

• Gender discrimination systematically undermines women’s access to health care, because of fewer financial resources, and constraints on mobility.

• Burdens imposed by gender disparities limit women’s ability to stay healthy, unsafe work environments, long hours spent on domestic and care work, gender-based violence.

• Globally about 303,000 women die from often avoidable pregnancy-related causes every year. In developing countries 1 in 180 women die in childbirth. 7,000 newborn babies die globally every day.

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• Consider how your research will impact women, marginalised groups, or people with particular societal roles

• Appropriate technology, cultural competence, use of local resource

• Can your work serve to reduce some of these biases or disadvantages?

• Leave no-one behind

http://www.towardsvision.org/the-gender-perspective-in-engineering.html

• Look out for bias (e.g. privilege, selection, stereotype etc)

• Use of robust data sets

• Standard reference models are inclusive

• Disaggregation of data

• Societal /religious differences (norms) and the gender perspective

• Leave no-one behind

• Net positive gain

Inclusive Research

Equality & Equity

Three Sides to EDI

STEM Outputs

Structural / Cultural

Personal/

Behavioural

Non-Technical Core Competencies

Safety Cyber Security EthicsInclusion

SustainabilityGlobal

Responsibility

• Inclusive Mindset• Know your blindspots• Inclusive Language• Inclusive Leadership• Curiosity and observation• Taking time to know and connect with people• Open Mindedness• Empathy, Kindness• Fairness & Respect• Elimination of bias and stereotyping• Communication – listening as well as speaking• Ally Behaviour• Cultural Competence• Visible Personal Commitment• Open to feedback (e.g. reverse mentoring)• Training

Inclusive Behaviours

Microinequalities

• Usually small (but not always!)• Seemingly insignificant• Cause unhappiness• Cumulative negative effect (opposite of marginal gain)• Limit diversity & inclusion = bad for business• Causes people to change their behaviour to ‘fit’• Uncomfortable…unwelcome…

inappropriate….unacceptable

• Tools and techniques to address inequalities

• Four Ds

• Transactional Analysis

• Bowtie Risk Assessment

• Not, however, suitable for any type of sexual

harassment or bullying which should be reported in

the usual way

Tools to Address Microinequalities

Transactional Analysis

Conflicts arise when transactions are crossed

http://lifestoogood.net/transactional-analysis-communicate-effectively/

Critical Parent or Nurturing Parent

Free Child orAdaptive Child

People keep getting my name

wrong

Causes Consequences

Bowtie Risk Analysis

Actions

• Social networking to get to know one another

• Name badges

• Put name on slides

• Celebrate cultural diversity

• Training

• Performance management

Laziness

I haven’t told them properly

Deliberate mistake

Genuine problem remembering

Poor hearing

I feel excluded & demoralised

Thinking of leaving

Cost to organisation

Results in lack of productivity, lack of

diversity, poor results

I don’t work as well

Frightened to ask

Doesn’t care

Issue

Things to Remember

• Small changes can make big differences

• Taking action helps you feel empowered

• Good to get others to understand and act too

• Needs to be done in a positive and patient way

• Not everybody will be able to change

• Some things you won’t be able to change

• Confine your effort to things you can influence

• Ask yourself what you can do

• Ally behaviour

• Gender neutral language

• Don’t make assumptions

• Ensure diversity on panels you participate in (or don’t participate)

• Use of ‘Personal Invitation’

• Listen

• Understand your blind spots

• Think from others’ perspective

• Be inclusive

• Inform yourself

Make a Behavioural Commitment

Three Sides to EDI

Personal/

Behavioural

Change

STEM Outputs

Structural / Cultural

Inequalities

• Progression

• Grant allocation

• Publishing

• Pay

• Service loads

• Promotion

• Covid related

Structural Inequality

Promotion

• Dependent on winning grants

• Dependent on publishing success in high impact factor journals

• Less likely to be gained for activities linked to Athena SWAN or Race Equality Charter activity, outreach or service provision

Structural Inequality

Service Work Burden

• Care work of dealing with students/colleagues

• Administrative tasks linked to the smooth running of the department/school

• Organising meetings and social events

• Outreach activities

• Serving on university committees

• Being the ‘diversity’ member of interview panels etc

Structural Inequality

Publishing• Royal Society of Chemistry Report 2019:

Is publishing in the chemical sciences gender biased?

• Biases exist in every part of the publishing pipeline, from submission to publication, resulting in a significant cumulative effect that hinders women and favours more established, often male researchers

• This narrows the range of perspectives that are heard, and limits the careers of female researchers

Structural Inequality

• Women are less likely than men to submit to journals with higher impact factors

• Women are more likely to have an article rejected without review

• Women are under-represented as reviewers

• Women are more likely to be chosen to review articles by female corresponding authors

• Women are less likely to hold positions towards the end of the author list, in particular that of corresponding author

• Both reviewer gender and author gender affects article acceptance

• Biases operate at editorial level too. The choice of reviewer and editorial agreement with a review are influenced by gender

• Women cite fewer research papers than men overall, and men are less likely than women to cite papers authored by women

Structural Inequality - Publishing

• Increase transparency – measure and record data

• Recruit and train reviewers, editorial boardmembers to reflect gender balance

• Empower editors to identify and eliminate biasfrom submission to publication

• Encourage intervention where opportunities for bias exist or bias is identified

Recommendations for Publishing

Grant Allocation

• Harmonised data across all Research Councils published June 2020

• Raw data also available for analysis

• https://www.ukri.org/about-us/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-data/

Structural Inequality

• There is a significant difference in the average award value between men and women

Gender Statistics (EPSRC)

• The cumulative award value total for women v men is described as ‘representation power’ by Professor Vanessa Diaz at UCL and is a difference of £400M compared to £50M

Gender Statistics (EPSRC)

https://twitter.com/vdiazucl/status/1275876658923352065

Unsustainable because:

• Every grants takes the same amount of effort to write

• Women need to work DOUBLY hard to get as much money

• If men need to write 3 grant applications per year, women would need to write 5 or 6 to win the same amount of money (assuming same success rate)

Gender Statistics (EPSRC)

https://twitter.com/vdiazucl/status/1275876658923352065

• Principal Investigator (PI) awardees for BAME researchers have gone DOWN from 90 in to 75 between 2014/15 and 2018/19

• Application numbers WENT UP from 320 to 385

• PI success rate dropped from 28% to 20%

• Remains 8% below the success rate of White colleagues

• Award value DROPPED from £815K to £750K in 2014/15 to 18/19

• In the same period, White PIs mean award value WENT UP from £713K to £854K

BAME PIs (EPSRC)

• In EPSRC BAME CI numbers remained static at 165

• BAME CI applicants have gone up from 520 to 755

• CI success rate dropped from 32% to 22%

• Remains 6% lower than their White counterpart - the same was true in 14-15

BAME CIs (EPSRC)

Some good news:

• The number of BAME Fellows increased from 5 to 30 between 2014/15 and 18/19

• The no of BAME applications in this period has gone up from 35 to 70

• An improvement from 9% to 25%

BAME Fellowships (EPSRC)

https://twitter.com/tanvir_h/status/1275757990470090752

BUT

• The mean award value for EPSRC BAME Fellow DROPPED from £675K to £609K between 2014/15 and 18/19

• The mean grant value for BAME Fellows is £123K less than that of their White counterparts

BAME Fellowships (EPSRC)

https://twitter.com/tanvir_h/status/1275757990470090752

• The impact of Covid pandemic is being felt unequally

across the research community and may more negatively

impact the work and careers of those facing additional

challenges such as caring/home schooling responsibilities,

at higher risk from the pandemic, or people already

marginalised in the research community

• Affects researchers ability to apply for funding

opportunities, submit papers, keep their current grants

‘active’, their ability to respond to peer review requests, and

other activities.

Effect of Covid Pandemic

https://epsrc.ukri.org/blog/update-on-epsrcs-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-edi-activities/

Disadvantage for women based on gendered response to pandemic

• Women submitting fewer papers (down by up to 50%) and fewer grant applications

• 57% of women say they are feeling more anxious and depressed, compared to 40% of men

• Women undertaking 60% more domestic work, home schooling and childcare

• Women spending more time on preparing onlineteaching resources, and in supporting the welfare of students

Effect of Covid Pandemic

Disadvantage for BAME researchers who are at higher risk due to ethnicity

• Impact on ability to travel safely to University

• Work safely in laboratories

• Increased exposure of other family members

• Higher risk assessments might limit opportunities

Effect of Covid Pandemic

• The importance of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in STEM research

• What we as early career researchers can do to promote EDI in our daily practice

The Question

Personal/

Behavioural

STEM Outputs

Structural Change

What we as early career researchers can do to promote EDI in our daily practice:

• Strategic approach

• Awareness

• Become visible – panels, peer reviews

• Consider all perspectives

• Ally behaviour

• Challenge microinequalities

• Specific actions – make a commitment

• Supporting structural changes

• Disaggregating data

Please get in touch:

Dawn Bonfield MBECEng FIMMM FICE HonFIStructE FWES HonDEngRAEng Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineeringd.bonfield@aston.ac.uk@dawnbonfield07881905520www.dawnbonfield.comwww.towardsvision.orgwww.magnificentwomen.co.ukwww.inceng.org