Report on Women@CL Workshop at ICAD 2006

Terri L. Bonebright, DePauw University

Impetus for Workshop|Funding for the Workshop
Activities and Schedule|Future Plans|Summary
References

Impetus for Workshop

During the existence of ICAD, both as an organization and as a conference, women have always been in the minority. This is due primarily to the fact that most of the disciplines represented in ICAD (computer science, sound engineering, perceptual psychology, etc.) tend to be dominated by males. This is not to suggest that women have not played any major roles in the organization; indeed, they have served on the board of directors and have been officers of the board, they have also hosted the ICAD conference in Boston in 2003, and played a major role in the conferences at Palo Alto, California in 1996 and 1997, and they worked as part of the group to write the NSF Sonification Report. However, in consideration of promoting women within these fields, it seemed that the time was ripe to make a more concentrated effort to support women involved in ICAD. Using an approach that has proved successful for women in computer science, I proposed an afternoon workshop to determine what types of assistance women in ICAD need to assist them in their graduate work and careers as well as to begin building a network that women in ICAD can use in their professional work (see reference list at the end of this document for resources on women in computer science).

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Funding for the Workshop

We were fortunate to receive funding for supporters of women working in the ICAD community from the Women @CL, which supports women in computer science and academic leadership at local, regional, and international levels. This funding was in the form of scholarships for graduate students pursuing their work in ICAD fields to assist them in attending the Women@CL workshop and the ICAD conference. Each scholarship was in the amount of £200 and was used for expenses incurred for attending ICAD. It was our wish to especially encourage women and men graduate students who might not be able to attend the conference without additional support to apply. We also felt it was important to be inclusive in our invitation and not to limit support to women only. There were six applicants and four of them were funded to attend the meeting.

Funds from Women @CL were also used to provide refreshments and to offset the registration fees for two senior women in their fields to act as facilitators and to present information about their experiences as women in male dominated disciplines. We were extremely grateful for the funds; in two cases, they made it possible for women to attend who would not be able to do so otherwise.

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Workshop Activities and Schedule

The event took place after lunch on the Wednesday afternoon of ICAD 2006 for a 2-hour period. We divided up our time into the following sessions:

Icebreaker

Everyone introduced him or herself by providing names and institutions or workplace. In addition, each person told the group the stage of their career or what their status was with their graduate work, and what their area of interest was that related to ICAD. We did this exercise so that everyone would get a chance to get acquainted with each other before we launched into more specific issues. It was clear from this initial session of the workshop that the 11 participants represented a wide range of stages in career from professors to first and second year graduate students in a number of disciplines, including computer science, electrical engineering, physics, music technology, psychology, as well as women who work in industry. There were also two men who joined the group who explained why they were interested in women’s issues in ICAD.

Past Experience in the Field

Two senior women in ICAD related fields presented their experiences as women in their respective areas and gave advice about how to succeed in academics. The topics covered include those listed below:

Contacting other Professionals: Graduate students should take advantage of any opportunity to increase their contacts in their field, even though they may worry that it makes them “look like an idiot”. This can be done by attending conferences, reviewing papers or grant applications or simply contacting people by e-mail. This last method can be especially useful since it is a low-cost way to meet other researchers and many times people will respond to e-mail, even if they are reluctant to talk to someone at a conference they have never met before. Contacts can be used for assistance in writing reference letters, recommending people for positions, helping with funding opportunities or for reviewing manuscripts, etc. It is important to remember that even though we do much of our work in an impersonal, high-tech environment, personal contacts are still a very important resource to cultivate.
Working with Mentors: It is imperative to find a good mentor who can assist the graduate student with a number of professional issues. The mentor can also be the student’s advisor, but this isn’t absolutely necessary. Many times mentors can be found within the same department, but there are cases where the best mentor may be in another field than the one in which the graduate student works. The important attribute this person must have is that he or she be willing to be generally supportive of the graduate student, be willing to listen and offer helpful advice, and be willing to give their time to the student. It is not essential that women students have women mentors, but rather that there is good rapport between the mentor and student.
Establishing your “Own Name” in a Field: Even if a graduate student has a good working relationship with his or her advisor and has been working successfully with a laboratory group, he or she will need to consider moving on to his or her own position as the head of a laboratory in order to receive recognition in the field. This move should be made when the individual has searched for appropriate options and when he or she had completed enough work in the advisor’s laboratory.
Publishing Your Own Work: Writing manuscripts to submit for publication is difficult work that gets easier with practice. Researchers receiving comments from reviewers need to be able to ignore the sometimes unhelpful and even rude comments that some reviewers send. In contrast to such reviewers’ feedback, other reviewers will be very helpful, so it is important to keep the reviews with constructive feedback in mind when comments are received that are only personal attacks. It is imperative to address every issue presented by the editor in order to be successful at publishing articles. Finally, even though it may be tempting to procrastinate when working on manuscripts, they should be sent to appropriate journals rather than being placed in a desk drawer.
Reviewing Manuscripts and Grant Applications: Graduate students and professional academics should take every opportunity to review manuscripts and grants. This will provide insight into the process and also allow the reviewer to learn how to give positive and constructive feedback to other researchers. When reviewing someone else’s work, the reviewer should keep in mind how he or she would feel when receiving unconstructive criticism from a review. It is much better to work to help mentor other researchers in the area. Sometimes this can lead to future contacts with other researchers with whom one might collaborate or from whom one might get feedback for his or her own work in the future.
Using Your Work Ethic Versus “Brains”: It is important for all professionals to keep in mind that there will always be other professionals who are both smarter than they are and some who are not quite as smart as they are in absolute terms. What really matters is having a good work ethic and good time management skills. It doesn’t matter how brilliant a researcher might be if he or she doesn’t get the research completed and submitted to the larger research committee.
Establishing Working Relationships with Others: Having good working relationships with both students and colleagues is essential. Such people can work as collaborators and can also give much needed honest feedback. It isn’t helpful to have someone who always gives positive feedback on an idea or a manuscript because he or she is a friend and wants to be “nice”. A good support network of like-minded people is important not only for a person’s professional work but also for his or her overall mental and physical well being. It is also a good idea to avoid working with people who have inflated egos or who are interested only in their own advancement. Such people tend only to take advantage of collegial relationships.
Recognizing the Imposter Phenomenon: Many professionals will suffer from the feeling that he or she doesn’t really belong in the field in which he or she is trained. This feeling of being an “imposter” leads to the expectation that it is only a matter of time before the rest of the research community finds out and can cause heightened anxiety about work. Women report this feeling more than men (which may only mean that men are less likely to admit to these feelings rather than that they actually suffer from them less). When the imposter phenomenon rears its ugly head, it is important to remember that some others have the same feelings and that simply continuing to work rather than to ruminate about such ideas is the best course of action. With time, these thoughts may lessen or even disappear for many people who have them.
Noting Self-Attributions about Success and Failure: There is a general tendency for women to attribute their successes to external factors (for example, “my manuscript was accepted because the new journal editor is inexperienced”) and their failures to internal factors (for example, “my grant application wasn’t funded because I am not smart enough to propose a good project”). It is important to recognize these tendencies and use feedback from trusted colleagues to recalibrate the ability to make correct assessments of abilities.

Present Experience in the Field

The rest of the participants each gave a "lightening" talk that was limited to 5 minutes for each of them to present issues related to women and their careers, such as: difficulties they are having for which they need advice; research problems for which they would like feedback; background information about how they came to the field, where they are now in their careers, and where they would like to go in the future. The issues discussed are the following:

Male Dominated Environments: Women working in male dominated fields have found that there are some environments within which the co-workers are very supportive of women, some where they show hostility towards women, and some where colleagues state they are supportive of women but who actually have hidden animosity or hold stereotypes about women in the field. The group discussed how important it is to determine how supportive the atmosphere is as early as possible and that individual women have to make decisions about what they are willing to risk to foster change in hostile environments. It was noted that the best possible situation is one in which all people involved work together to establish a good working environment for everyone, but that many times this type of approach is not found in reality. There was also one participant who noted that she had never experienced any problems in her field, even though she was many times the only woman working on various teams. We were all happy to hear this, and it gave us all cautious optimism for the future in fields where this is not the case.
Gender Issues in Teaching and Research: Several participants presented examples of problems encountered in both teaching and research contexts for women. In some cases, women teaching courses in fields that are traditionally male areas are viewed by the students as lacking in authority and having less knowledge about the area than men. In such cases, the instructor can be placed in the difficult position of having to prove to the students that she does indeed have the experience and knowledge to effectively teach the course. This can make a tense and stressful situation for the instructor and the students. Similar issues can occur in some research teams in which male colleagues may marginalize the female colleague so that she is not given the same opportunities and the same respect as other members of the team. In other situations, female researchers may be given what appears to be “special status” because she is female rather than because she has the skills to do the task at hand. In such cases for both teaching and research, it seems appropriate as a first step to speak with the supervisor about the problems, if that person is approachable about such issues.
Marriage and Family Issues: Women in many professions face stereotyped attitudes from men and women about how women should behave in the workplace when they are married and have children. There may be resistance on the part of supervisors to appoint competent women to management positions or leadership roles since they believe that women may leave the job or the field in order to have children. One participant even reported that her supervisor informed her when he thought she should have children. Indeed there are times when women do decide to put their careers on hold in order to start a family, but there are also women who decide to either have no children or to combine a career and family simultaneously. Thus, it is clearly detrimental to good working relationships and to the advancement of women when the assumption is made that most women will abandon their careers in favor of having a family.
Salary Issues and Work Expectations: There are still instances in industry and in academics where women are paid less than men for the same positions. There is also the tendency for men to negotiate for better starting salaries than women, which can lead to large differences in salaries across the lifetime of a person’s career. In some research teams and in some professional positions, there is tremendous pressure for all people to work long hours, especially when they first begin their positions. Some of the women in the group had experienced situations where they were expected to work more and do different types of work (“women’s” work) simply because they were women.
Token Woman Status: Several participants expressed their displeasure in being placed in the token woman situation. This can take several forms that have different outcomes, but which are all negative in their effects on the woman in question. Some teams or departments will have a single woman added just so they can say that there is a woman in the group. At other times, women are asked to fill in on committees or groups not because they have a specific skill or interest in the work or area but rather because they need to be seen as having gender equity. In the first case, the woman may feel herself to be an outsider and she may be resented since she may have taken the place of a man who the group might have preferred. In the second case, the woman is put in the awkward position of deciding whether to take the panel or committee position to satisfy administrators or supervisors even though it will not further her own work or whether to decline the position and risk being seen as someone who is not willing to contribute to the larger group effort.
Problems with Mentors: Good mentoring for women does not always come from other women. In some cases, participants reported that the women they attempted to work with were too concerned with their own careers to be effective mentors. Several participants expressed the desire to find out how to work effectively work with any mentor, regardless of gender, who would not exploit the graduate student in a number of ways, including claiming authorship on papers actually written by the graduate student. There can also be the mentality on the part of the mentor that “I went through boot camp so you have to too.” Such people seem to believe that if graduate students don’t suffer sufficiently, they should be allowed into the “guild.”
Gender Stereotypes: Both men and women have expectations about how women should be behave. A woman that is resourceful and assertive will many times be viewed as “unfeminine” and attributed negative personality traits, such as being pushy or bitchy. One of our participants was told by her supervisor that she was “too opinionated.” Of course the problem with such stereotyped expectations is that the same behavior from a man is viewed within a positive light and seen as part of a set of personality characteristics desirable for a man.
Experiences and Comments from the Male Participants: The two male participants in the group provided interesting insights into the women’s issues we discussed during the course of the sessions. One participant told the group that he hadn’t really appreciated the difficulties women face until his wife began working as a lawyer in a large law firm. He felt that he was now more aware of women’s issues in his own work as a graduate student, and that he was especially attentive to supporting female undergraduate students. The other male participant had attended the workshop to see what he could learn from the session. He felt that he should now pay special attention to his female students to make sure that they had the same mentoring opportunities as men. He also mentioned that he felt he needed to work on providing a safe place for women to contribute to the classes he teaches as a lecturer.

ICAD 2006 @ Queen Mary, University of London

Report on Women@CL Workshop at ICAD 2006

Impetus for Workshop

Funding for the Workshop

Workshop Activities and Schedule

Icebreaker

Past Experience in the Field

Present Experience in the Field

Future Plans

Role Models

Mentoring and Networking

Assistance with Teaching

ICAD 2007

Summary

References