15
WIPR Influential Women in IP 2019
www.worldipreview.com
This pushes collaborations with other institutions,
which can have unintended consequences on
women.
“Women are not as mobile as men because of
safety issues. If we can’t travel, we can’t conduct
experiments. If we can’t conduct experiments, we
don’t get grants or papers,” she alleges. This, in
turn, may have the knock-on effect of lessening a
woman’s chances of acknowledgment.
El-Imam adds: “If there is more credit awarded
to women and more women are invited as guest
speakers, then you have something to look forward
to in your job. It means you’re not confined to the
rear end of lab, while an equally competent man
becomes the face of the profession.”
Quotas and other types of interventions can
be a “dirty word” for both men and women, says
Charman-Anderson.
She adds: “You have to look at the starting point
of men and women when considering the nature of
the pool of female talent. If your base assumption is
women are unqualified, then quotas can only be bad.
“But if your base assumption is that women are
talented, then quotas are merely making sure that
women get an opportunity that men automatically
get.”
El-Imam recommends that the Nigerian
government sets a benchmark of women in every
stratum of STEM, and begins to encourage the
active recruitment of women into every level,
including managerial positions.
“Inclusion and diversity quite often become a
box-ticking exercise. We need to be looking beyond
those boxes, at the processes and policies we can
change to make the workplace better,” advises
Charman-Anderson. l
590
awards of the Nobel
Prizes and the Prize
in Economic Sciences
between 1901 and 2018,
but only 52 of these
laureates were women.
Women in STEM