Read on Twitter
This. Lots of interactions this week have made me incredibly angry (even more than usual) at the idea that encouragement and "inspiring" people to pursue certain careers will fix the structural issues and active discrimination within those sectors. https://twitter.com/aksana_khan/status/1273616890238324736
Shovelling people into a system which will hurt them won't fix anything. Unless your desired "fix" is to be able to point at the resignations and lack of career progression and say "See? Maybe people who aren't exactly like me just aren't cut out for this job?"
I've seen SO MANY conversations this week which have mostly been "Hey, this is shit, how can we make it better?" with the response being "That's just how it is, but if it bothers you - why not do a whole load of extra work (for free) to do something about it?"
Obviously, this isn't new - it's just been a week of seeing that conversation play out more than I normally get to see it (as I am very privileged). There are times when I am still shocked that academia is so actively, brazenly discriminatory.
When I showed one email to my partner his response was "Wow. I can't imagine sending am email like that without facing career ending or at least severely limiting consequences".
In academia it is the people who speak out against discrimination who are worried their careers will suffer. I've said it before, and I will say it again. The systems, processes, and work culture within academia are actively harmful to all but a very few people.
I say this, knowing that my own sector - a sector with something of an identity crisis (what IS "Public Engagement" again?), which actively tries to change academia for the better - is a sector with a HUGE diversity problem.
We have to address the fact our idea of what "better" is, and who it would be better for - is warped by privilege. The whole agenda needs a shake up - clearer aims, less confusion over what we are trying to achieve, and to face up to the fact our ambition for change is limited...
...by our desire to operate within, and be respected by current academic structures and ways of working, and by the fact our vision of a better future has been created by a group of people who have remarkably similar backgrounds and life experiences.
When I started my Fellowship I had vague plans of a mentoring scheme for early career public engagement professionals (PEP) - it rapidly became apparent there was a greater need for training and staff retention schemes within the existing more senior "PEP" community.
... and a need to "encourage more diverse applicants for public engagement roles" (my work has focused on public engagement roles within institutions like universities, funders of research, and research institutes). Now, see the start of this thread...
...a sector which needs help retaining staff, where resilience training is the most asked for resource? Those jobs are not fit for purpose as they are! Encouraging more people into them will NOT fix the problem. The very nature and structure of those jobs NEEDS TO CHANGE!
How that change comes about needs to include people who are not currently part of the conversation.
