§ Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West)I should perhaps declare an interest as I am a woman scientist, although, unless the electorate decide otherwise, I do not intend to return to my scientific career.
The importance of science, engineering and technology to Britain's future prosperity is well recognised and has been stressed by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the President of the Board of Trade and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If we are to build a truly competitive economy, we need to develop the new industries that exploit the opportunities provided by science and engineering, and especially biotechnology and electronics, and a key component of that strategy is to ensure that we have qualified scientists and engineers to work in those high-technology industries.
The pharmaceutical industry, which is arguably the industrial sector in which Britain is most competitive internationally, is already expressing concern at the shortage of suitably qualified scientists, and the engineering industry, including some firms in my constituency, is seriously affected by skills shortages. In that context, the under-representation of women and girls in science and engineering is of great concern.
In 1993, although 60 per cent. of university students in the biological sciences were female, women accounted for only 30 per cent. in maths and the physical sciences, and only 14 per cent. in engineering. How can we hope to meet future needs for scientists and engineers if half the population is excluded?
The previous Government, to their credit, began to recognise the problem, which was documented in the report, "The Rising Tide", published soon after the science White Paper, "Realising Our Potential". Measures were introduced to try to encourage girls and women to take up scientific careers, and those have been built on and extended by the present Government.
Much attention and activity, including the Engineering Council's WISE—Women in Science and Engineering—campaign, have focused on making science education more girl-friendly. The problem for girls is not only getting in, but getting on. There is considerable qualitative research evidence suggesting that women actively choose not to enter science and engineering professions because they perceive that they offer them poor promotion prospects. A report by the Prism group of the Wellcome Trust in 1994 documented a feeling among women science undergraduates that science had a masculine culture of which they did not want to be a part.
There is little quantitative data on women's participation in science in the private sector, so most of the statistics that I cite will relate to the academic sector, but anecdotal evidence suggests that women scientists experience the same difficulties in both the private and the public sectors.
In 1994, although 17 per cent. of all university science academics were women, they were disproportionately concentrated in the lower echelons, constituting 19 per cent. of all science lecturers, but only 5 per cent. of all readers and senior lecturers and only 2 per cent. of all science professors.
1047 A recent study by Fielding and Glover of the occupational destinations of women science and engineering graduates, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, showed that only 15 per cent. were employed as professional scientists or engineers, compared with 31 per cent. of the equivalent male graduates.
Most women science graduates are employed in teaching and in non-professional jobs for which they are overqualified. That represents not only a limitation for the women involved, but a considerable underuse of public resources. It is expensive to train engineers and scientists, and it must be of general concern if a high proportion of those trained choose not to stay in science and engineering, even when jobs are available.
Given the apparently poor promotion prospects for women, it is not surprising that they choose not to enter science. I want to focus on one factor that may contribute to women's problems in getting on in academic science: the difficulty in successfully competing for research funding. That funding is absolutely essential for scientists to establish themselves as independent investigators and progress up the academic promotion ladder.
Last May, a paper was published in Nature by two Swedish women scientists, Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wolde. The authors used Sweden's freedom of the press rights to gain access to the scoring system used by the Swedish Medical Research Council in assessing candidates for post-doctoral fellowships.
It was already public knowledge in Sweden that women had a lower success rate than men in the fellowships. The panels that award them base their assessment of each applicant in part on a score for scientific competence, the most objective measure of which is given by a person's record of scientific publication, which would consist of both the number of articles and the quality of the journals that published them. Wenneras and Wolde showed that women were consistently marked down by the assessment panel, and on average a woman needed to have published 2.6 times as many papers as a man to be awarded the same competence score.
The publication of the Swedish study raised concerns in this country about the appraisal methods used in allocating research funding here. In response to that concern, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade asked the director general of the research councils to investigate whether their assessment methods for allocating both grants and fellowships were free from any bias against women.
The director general reported that the success rates of men and women applicants for funding were similar, and that there was no statistically significant evidence of a bias against women. That is confirmed by figures given to me in parliamentary answers and by a study by the British Medical Research Council, published in Nature in December 1997.
Will the Minister ask his officials to examine more closely the systems used by the research councils? The strength of the Swedish analysis was that the competence scores of all the applicants, both successful and unsuccessful, were compared with an objective measure of their scientific output, whereas the director general's 1048 analysis merely compared success rates, which would demonstrate an absence of bias only if the quality of the male and female applicants was exactly the same, and I shall expand in a moment on why the quality of female applicants might in fact be expected to be higher. The director general should be asked to look again and consider whether candidates of equal competence are assessed equally, regardless of gender. The research councils should also be asked to monitor their own assessment procedures internally to ensure that British peer review panels, unlike their Swedish counterparts, do not discriminate in favour of men.
In questioning whether equal success rates really reflect a lack of bias in assessment, I pointed out that women and men applicants might not have equal competence. The most striking statistic in relation to research council funding is the percentage of women among the applicants. Even in the biological sciences, which have the highest proportion of women graduates, only about 15 per cent. of applicants for project and programme grants from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council are women, for the Natural Environment Research Council, the figure is only 9 per cent., and for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, the figure falls even further to 7 per cent.. The percentages are slightly higher for fellowships and grants aimed at new investigators, but even so, they are still low.
I have already quoted data to show the reduction in women's participation as they move up the scientific career pyramid. That must indicate a greater difficulty for women in achieving promotion in science, which suggests that women who have succeeded in establishing themselves as independent investigators—that is, the women who are in a position to apply for research funding—may well be of higher average competence than the much larger group of male applicants who have faced fewer barriers to their career progress. If that is so, one would expect women to have a higher success rate than men if the assessment system were truly without bias.
The low percentage of women among applicants for research funding is an issue in itself. Promotion within academic science depends on publication record and the number of publications depends, apart from on ability itself, on the ability to win research funding for oneself and one's research group. Clearly, the larger the group, the more work it will get done and the more publications it is likely to be in. We need to identify the factors that discourage women from applying for grants and fellowships. It could well be that fewer women are in a position to apply for funding. In most cases, only researchers in permanent positions can make independent applications, which rules out many women researchers as evidence shows that men are more likely to get permanent positions.
The Government have encouraged the research councils and the universities to introduce more family-friendly conditions, including more child care provision, holding women's grants in abeyance while they are on maternity leave and allowing women to take fellowships with them if they have to move from one place to another because of family commitments. I applaud all those measures, which obviously help to make it easier for women to pursue a scientific career and I hope that the Government will redouble and continue their efforts in that way.
1049 However, it appears that the barriers to women's progression in science are more complex than that. Comparisons between the situation in Britain and in France, for example, suggest that the problem is more fundamental. France has a tradition of high levels of support for child care, which is reflected in the fact that most women scientists in France have full-time and relatively uninterrupted working patterns similar to those of male scientists. That is not so in Britain. In addition, academic scientists in France do not have to cope with the same degree of insecurity and mobility as do scientists in British universities. Obviously, that is a factor that tends to affect women more than men. Despite those advantages, French women scientists and engineers experience exactly the same difficulties in promotion as do their British sisters, which suggests a need for a serious rethink about the way in which science is organised.
§ Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North)I congratulate my hon. Friend on this debate, as I have been involved in this matter for some time as a boss in a university department where more than half of the students were female, but where we had only one female member of faculty. It took some brutishness on my part and that of others to increase the number of women, but we managed to get it up to five after much resistance.
Recently, I went to the United States on a Science and Technology Committee visit with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones), to find out how practices in science were progressing. Somehow, I had expected more of the United States. Sadly, the situation is just as bad there. The US Congress has now set up a commission, which will legislate to improve matters for women. The battle continues throughout the world and its time has certainly come.
§ Dr. StarkeyMy hon. Friend confirms that the problem is extremely complex and that no country has yet managed to crack it.
Furthermore, all the figures I have quoted so far on the percentage of women applying for research funding and on their success rates relate only to that part of the Government science budget that is channelled through the research councils. However, that is only just over a fifth of Government spending on research and development. About £1.3 billion is allocated annually through the research councils and just over £1 billion by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Wales and Scotland to finance university infrastructure, but more than £3.5 billion or 63 per cent. of the Government's total science budget, is spent by other Departments including the Ministry of Defence, the rest of the Department of Trade and Industry—apart from the Office of Science and Technology—the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Department for Education and Employment and the Department for International Development. All those Departments award research funding by competitive tender, yet when I asked them in written questions to tell me the percentage of women among the researchers that they funded, they were unable to do so because they do not collect the data.
1050 If the Government are serious in their commitment to ensure that they do not discriminate against women researchers—I believe that they are—they need to monitor all their science spending for equal opportunities, not merely the money within the OST budget. I hope that the Minister will be able to take up that point with his colleagues in the other Ministries and urge them to monitor gender balance in the same way as the OST.
I shall end with an allusion to my constituency. Last week, I visited a school on an estate in Milton Keynes where all the streets are named after famous engineers. It is called Energy Village and has many energy-efficient homes. When the head teacher was first appointed to the school, which is new, he noticed that the street names all commemorated famous male engineers. Therefore, he chose to name the school after Caroline Haslett, who was born in 1895 and became the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society and the director of the Electrical Association for Women. Through the association, Caroline Haslett encouraged the use of electrical power in the home, believing that electricity was the real emancipator of women.
I applaud the efforts of that head teacher in choosing Caroline Haslett's name for his school to give a positive message to his pupils—girls and boys alike—that engineering is not the sole preserve of one sex. However, unless the reality of the barriers to women's progression in science are removed, girls will continue to choose more congenial career options and British industry will continue to be held back by a shortage of engineers and scientists. Making science and engineering more woman-friendly is not merely an issue for women, but one which we have to get right if we are to capitalise as a country on the opportunities of the new technologies.
§ The Minister for Science, Energy and Industry (Mr. John Battle)First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) for raising this subject, as well as all hon. Members who have stayed to take part or to listen. My hon. Friend speaks with more authority than most of us on these matters. We often ask for role models for women in science and she said, almost apologetically, that she had a former life as a scientist to which she might not return. As a scientist in here, her scientific training shines through in the quality of her contribution and long may she contribute to this House precisely on those terms.
I am tempted to be brief and to say, "Yes, I applaud and agree with every word my hon. Friend has said", and that the Government will take forward her proposals in a practical and direct way. I am grateful to her for her comments.
We must not continue to risk wasting the talents of more than half the population. If we do not allow women's talents to be fully developed, we shall jeopardise our future. There is an international problem, but we have much to do. Women are significantly under-represented in almost every area of research and employment in science, engineering and technology. In those areas, women work disproportionately in junior positions. There is little room at the top for women in science, and that must change. More practical action is required to increase participation.
Since we came into office, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade—a scientist herself—has actively pursued equality of opportunity and has 1051 attempted to increase the participation of women in science, engineering and technology, not least through the Department of Trade and Industry's development unit on the subject. She has also worked closely with bodies including the Engineering Council, which is making great efforts.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West said that there are complex reasons for lack of participation. I was encouraged to read an article in The Independent by Susan Greenfield, the professor of pharmacology at the University of Oxford. She wrote:
One of the problems of 'women in science' is that it is not just one problem. Rather, the term is a convenient umbrella for referring to a range of issues touching on women in late 20th-century society in all its complexity, and encompassing therefore economic imponderables, cultural values, biological imperatives and the public perception of science and scientists. There is no magic bullet through this tightly woven tapestry of feelings and facts.There are complex reasons for the lack of participation, and we must tackle them.The problem starts at an early age. Not enough young women are attracted into science, engineering and technology, particularly the physical sciences such as engineering, physics and information technology. If we are to change that, we must understand why girls tend to opt out of such subjects. We must explore that with the Department for Education and Employment.
Even when women choose science subjects at school and go on to higher education and research or careers in industry, further factors inhibit their progression, as my hon. Friend has said. Having chosen a career, women face barriers to progression; that, contrary to popular opinion, is true even of the biological sciences and medicine. My hon. Friend put it well when she said that we need to focus attention not only on women getting into science, but on women getting on in science. Many barriers are associated with the balance of work and home life, and those need to be addressed.
One disincentive to continuing an academic research career in the United Kingdom is the possibility of a fixed-term contract. Although that might bring advantages of flexibility for funders of research and employers, it can, if badly managed, put women off.
The development unit in my Department works with other Departments in trying to attract more girls towards science subjects and to encourage women into higher education. It considers means to improve women's career progression up the academic ladder. The campaign for Women in Science and Engineering—WISE—began in 1984 when only 7 per cent. of engineering graduates were women. That figure improved a little—to 14 per cent.—by 1998, but it remains far too low. The Engineering Council, the Women's Engineering Society, women in computing, physics, medicine and neurosciences and the European Union's women in technology group are all dedicated to increasing the participation of women.
WISE recently asked for funding for 1998–99 for an outlook project to provide an opportunity for girls aged 13 and 14 to obtain practical experience of engineering on a three-day programme at a further education college, including a visit to a company. That would be a sort of engineering workshop, and the DTI is providing £35,000 to allow 1,750 girls from 70 schools to 1052 participate. That is a small step, but we can build on it. The development unit's booklet, "X2—the mystery of vanishing girls", was aimed at girls aged 13 and 14. A series of posters was published in September. Videos and websites are among small, practical ideas aimed at secondary schools as we try to use every means to ensure increased participation.
My hon. Friend raised important points about the difficulties women face as they try to progress in their careers in science once they reach the research stage, especially if it is academic research. She mentioned the Swedish study. Its findings were welcome, and we have taken prompt action to examine our research council's review system. We examined success rates for grants and fellowships for all research councils. A much larger exercise than the Swedish study examined the outcome of 114 applications, and we are trying to make sure that success rates for grants and fellowships are monitored annually so that we can keep a grip on the analysis.
My hon. Friend referred to our study's finding of no apparent difference in success rates for men and women. Although that is welcome, especially in view of the concern generated by the Swedish study, we cannot be complacent. We must recognise that our study is not necessarily the whole picture. We will go a step further by examining whether there are underlying gender differences in the proportion of potentially qualified candidates who apply for grants and fellowships—a study that should help us to begin to address seriously my hon. Friend's concerns. We need to get down to the level of examining competence, and to find out why such a small proportion of academically qualified women apply for fellowships. I assure my hon. Friend that the work that she has requested today will be undertaken. I am grateful for her exploration of gaps in the preliminary research.
It is important to develop policies for family-friendly employment. We can co-ordinate Government policies on employment and social security to fit in with that, and we must identify examples of good practice so that we can focus the employers' attention on ensuring that opportunities exist.
§ Dr. Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak)Might my hon. Friend embark on a study, perhaps through the European Union, to find out why there are more women in science and engineering in southern Europe? In Spain, about 30 per cent. of engineers are women, and it may be that lessons could be learnt from that.
§ Mr. BattleI am grateful to my hon. Friend for internationalising the point. She, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West and I, among others, attended a conference in April at which note was taken of the comparative differences within the EU. I was struck by the German delegate who said Germany was like a developing country when it came to equal opportunities. That is true of all EU countries. We need to consider family-friendly policies, but without seeing families and children as the problem, because that would suggest, in turn, that women were the problem. There are deeper structural questions to address, and comparative work with our EU partners could prove helpful.
1053 Role models are important. I have met young women doing high-level particle physics research at CERN in Geneva and running gas plants as top engineers in the north-east. We should draw attention to such examples so that they can inspire other women. I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West about the school named after Caroline Haslett. Many women have been involved in the development of science, but they are, sadly, absent from the record. I should name Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel prize winner for her work on crystallography, Jocelyn Burnell, who discovered pulsars, and Rosalind Franklin, the co-discoverer of DNA. Their names are lost in the male stories, and we should celebrate women in science rather more.
We are making strong efforts to increase representation on public bodies, councils and committees in science-related fields. Women's voices should be heard more strongly in policy and decision making. In 1992, women held 8 per cent. of places on research councils. 1054 The figure is up to 17 per cent. now, and the Government's target is 30 per cent. by 2000 with further improvement after that. That is achievable.
I have tried to stress that the problem is complex. Only 8 per cent. of all professors are women, but an even lower 3 per cent. of professors in science, engineering and technology are women. The shortage of women professors is not simply a result of women having children. Larger structural questions need to be addressed—
§ It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
§ Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.