Ms Emily Sheridan:

Many members of the group I represent are in academia and a lot of people are more senior than me, as senior lecturers or assistant professors. Care is such a big thing, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. A medical article was published in Nature not that long ago. The author visited Women in Research for a talk about the increased burden of care that occurs with women in academia. Regarding what the Deputy said about self-advocacy, the same is true of the Athena SWAN awards and equality, diversity and inclusion panels. Much of the time, they are made up of women. Of course, people would like to get involved in self-advocacy but it also takes up their time. In much of academia, people are not necessarily paid for the work that takes place. To retain their job, academics write grant applications, which is not part of their nine to five main responsibilities such as teaching and looking after students. Writing grant applications in their spare time, reviewing papers and going to conferences, all of which can become part of it but can also be done outside hours, are quite difficult when someone has a caring responsibility at home. That can become a large part of it and this is stuff that is not going to recognised when someone is applying for grants and jobs.

There is a major problem surrounding people who take time out through maternity leave because they do not have that output and so many grants are based on age and output, not even quality of output. There is a level of quality of output but it is also quantity, so a large quantity can often outweigh output that is almost equal in quality. It is very important that care is taken into consideration. It has to be acknowledged even within universities. A lot of administrative tasks end up falling to women, even at the exact same level. Responsibility for undergraduates and additional work always falls to women and that is something that needs to be taken into consideration. To be honest, I cannot say I know what the answer is. I do not know how we can fix that or how it can be acknowledged. I do not have the answer but I know it is a problem.