Brian Cahill
Polat Goktas
Polat Goktas
Mariya Evtimova-Gardair
Jenny Lind Elmaco
Paris workshopAs we already...
7 Comments
Dear all,
we are still in a phase of defining the programme of the Workshop to be held on the 15th of September in Paris and your suggestions are welcome...we do not have the link yet to it it will be soon available ... Ivana can you post in synthesis your proposal here on talking about gender equality also for Humanities besides STEM?
Current title of Workshop: "Boosting your career development and leadership through mobility" and it will be structured with two sessions: one a presentation of Role Models for mobility of women and men scientists and another as round table discussing "How gender affect your career development and leadership?"
Your ideas are welcome to refine the programme...
Best
Gianna Avellis
Dear Giovanna,
There is an aspect that may be interesting to discuss on the topic of "mobility and career development" which has been affecting my own career progression: the fact that different countries value a specific career pattern and by being very mobile we end up by not fitting the "expected" path of some european countries, failing to get some jobs. If you know from the start that you want to get job X in country Y you learn where you need to take your career to get it. But when a lifetime of mobility randomly takes you to a country where you never thought before of getting a job you may find out that you do not have the local requirements to get your ideal job X there. Therefore, we need to learn how to manage those differences acquired through mobility, which should be a plus, instead of a problem.
We all agree that mobility is positive, but sometimes it can bring some drawbacks. In my case I made my PhD and a first post doc in Portugal (both with collaborations in other countries where I spent time), went to the UK for a post doc, I am now a post doc in France where my family is installed. I am having difficulties in entering the "job market", academic or not, in France because my CV is not the tipical CV here. I have built my CV thinking of the portuguese reality. In Portugal experience is a plus, you don't have many jobs in science, so you need to stand out by showing a lot of resilience, experience and independency, ideally including a lot of teaching if you are applying for the academia. What is expected in France is a very straighforward and fast path: you make a 3/4 years PhD, go abroad for a sucessful post doc, and apply for a permanent position back home, which you may get before you're 35, otherwise you start worrying, specially because by law you can't make more than 5/6 years of temporary post doc contracts. When I apply for jobs in France I have plenty of details of my CV that reflect my experience in Portugal or the UK and that the french system does not easily understand or value, like the fact that I had duties of a senior resercher as post doc, before having a permanent position, such as getting my own funding, running independent projects and supervising students, including PhD's (in France you need a specific degree for that, which you get after getting a permanent researcher position). The age is also a problem, not assumed openly, but you need to fill in your age in forms and you can be many years older than most candidates if you made a significantly longer pre-doctoral training and PhD. I could make an endless list of points gained through mobility that should be a plus on my CV but that do not fit easily in the expectations of employers. I have been learning, though, how to deal with some of these issues. And I think it should be very interesting to discuss it in that round table.
Best
Fernanda
Dear Fernanda,
thanks for your comments. I think tht also the drawbacks of mobility such as the ones you mentioned should be discussed in the round table and you are welcome with your story...
Gianna.
Dear Maria and Gianna - will post the synthesis of the proposal.
Kind regards,
Nina
By the way, eLife is promoting a webinar tomorrow entitled "Careers: Achieving independence: The push for mobility". It may be interesting to attend it in preparation for the Paris workshop. One could get some interesting ideas and contacts there. Here's the link for registration: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6956623643506073090.
And the full information I received about the event:
Dear Fernanda
PLEASE JOIN US for the next #ECRWednesday webinar, ‘Achieving independence: The push for mobility’ on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 4pm UK. This programme of free, online events brings early-career researchers together to share opportunities and explore issues around building a successful career in life science and biomedical research.
The majority of early-career researchers are advised to move institution, city, or country, as they progress through the career ladder, in order to gain a greater breadth of experience. The push to be mobile presents issues and opportunities for postdocs looking to build their research CV, and there is no good model for how to manage this part of research life.
In our next #ECRwednesday webinar, we feature several researchers who have been mobile, but have done so through a variety of routes, and been presented with different issues thus made a variety of decisions along the way.
The aim is to demonstrate the variety of paths taken to establish oneself as an independent researcher, to highlight that independence is not the end of the journey, and to provide access to resources that may help to guide decisions and transitions, specific to being mobile. The best outcome would be for postdocs to feel supported as they progress towards independence.
Speakers include:
- Jeanne Salje, MORU/Oxford University
- Francesca M. Spagnoli, Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)
- Verena Ruprecht, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG)
- Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge
REGISTER FOR THIS FREE WEBINAR NOW
This event is hosted in partnership with EU-LIFE, an alliance of top research centres in life sciences to support and strengthen European research excellence and be a voice for research in European policy.
All webinars offer a Q&A session with the panellists and continued discussion on Twitter hosted by @eLife_careers and accessible at #ECRwednesday.
Kind Regards,
Clare
On behalf of eLife careers
@eLife_careers
Clare Bannister
Project Coordinator
Dear all,
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
As Gianna said, we are still defining the programme of the Workshop. The workshop is envisaged as a half day (around four hours) and the provisional structure consists in two parts:
A) 6-8 talks (15') related to mobility vs. gender equality.
*I must say that I am curious to know more about this topic. I understand that mobility for women turns harder once you have kids, due to the maternity care and the different maternity leave (laws) in each country. Appart from that (what is already a lot!), I find that bad aspects of mobility can be applied for both, women and men. So, I am happy to know about the particular women unequalities in mobility.
B) A round table discussing "How gender affect your career development and leadership?". For this part we contacted people from the L'Oreal Award prize, but still there is no answer from them.
Your suggestions are very welcome. In my opinion, it would be nice if we could come with only one main idea for the workshop that includes the talks and the posterior round table for continuous talk discussion. Something that mix gender equality, career develpment and mobitliy.
I have not a clear proposal as the mobility topic is difficult for me... after living in four countries, I think that there are more bad things than good things, to be honest (sorry for this pessimistic vision!). Well, being european and without children, bad or good aspects of mobility are not linked to gender in my case. But maybe I am wrong and probably there are many aspects that I am not aware yet. Thats why I would like to know more about the difficulty for women in mobility during the skype meeting if possible.
Regarding Nina propositions (sorry for the late reply),
1) I found very interesting what you said about the field work. The Institute where the workshop will take place, is an Earth Science Insitute and I hear stories similar to yours when they go to the field to take new samples. People will understand you very well here if you would like to say something about that.
2) I must admit that I am far away from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Even if I understand the importance of this issue, I am not sure if this workshop is the good place to have this discussion...
3) Yes, maternity is a very big barrier. We need to carefully think if we want to include the maternity discussion here or if we leave this special issue for a future workshop.
Thanks again and see you next Thursday,
Marîa
Could you please share the link? I cannot find them. Although I cannot be of much help as probably I will not attend.
thanks
Maria