My Experience.

My experience of academia has been profoundly shaped by these facts. I am increasingly speaking out about issues of gender inequity and power abuse in academia, as well as the problems of governance that amplify them.

Many women find academia an uncomfortable or unwelcoming place, a pattern that research shows can intensify as women move up the career ladder. Yet complaining about the hostile workplaces, discrimination and harassment that continue to push women out of academia is still taboo. In many cases it leads to minimisation and silencing. In the worst cases, the outcome can be character assassination and even institutional retaliation.

I experienced this directly when – as a director at a research institute in Germany  – I complained about harassment by several powerful male colleagues. Within weeks of submitting a formal complaint, I faced what I would describe as a retaliatory investigation, with accusations of misconduct now levelled at me.

I have made the decision to speak openly about what happened to me. A culture of silence ensures that the kind of experience that I had is perpetuated over and over in academic institutions globally. Research has clearly shown that this results in the severe attrition of women from academia. This loss of female researchers, teachers and scientists is not only bad for the individuals concerned, it is also bad for higher education and research. We lose diverse perspectives that make science and society better. And all of this represents a gross waste of public and private investment in higher education and research.

The attrition of women from academia, which worsens as women reach higher career levels, and which is intensified for women of colour and sexual- and gender-minority women, will only be reversed by serious culture and governance change in higher education and research. Many organisations, including those responsible for enabling hostile workplaces for women, engage in gender rhetoric rather than the organisational culture change that is badly needed. I am committed to advocating for such change, as well as greater accountability and institutional oversight, which I hope will one day make the kind of experiences that I have had as a woman in academia obsolete.