Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020
Dear Isabel, dear all, I think that I might not have expressed my thoughts as clearly as I would have liked to, therefore one more mail on the subject: I never meant to say that developers should stay at home and only expert users should go to the workshops in the future, and I apologize if that was the impression I gave. Graeme gave all the reasons why a mixture would be the best case. Selina From: CCP4 bulletin board on behalf of Isabel Uson Sent: Friday, February 7, 2020 5:34 PM To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020 I would like to add my thoughts. Best wishes, Isabel 1- I appreciate Eddy Snell is raising an issue that is real and I would like to thank him for it. 2- I feel the discussion should be separated from this particular workshop in Montevideo. In the recent workshop in Shanghai I was the only female speaker. Is it that different? Would it have been different if I had been able to accept their invitation to this edition of a workshop I regularly attend? There have been quite a few more women in their program in past editions of the South American workshops and it would be extremely unfair to pick on them rather than valuing their role advancing science and education. I am indebted to Brazil and CCP4 for funding my research and for the opportunities their education and support constantly open. 3- As a developer, I appreciate being involved in the decision of who represents my methods, I expect my male colleagues will feel the same way, so having a parallel detached pool of female tutors is problematic from the onset and places such tutors in a vulnerable position, open for criticism. I would welcome offers of such cooperation and I am open to work with volunteers. 4- I have thought for a long time on why it is that we (women) lag back in our careers and for me the deepest insight came reading the homework of a 14 year old girl. School assignment for sports: the composition and strategy of a football team for her class. “And myself I would place as a defender because I want to play and I will have far better chances taking the ball from my opponent than expecting any of the boys in my team to ever pass it to me.” To me this is the essence. Anyone who is different from the pre-conceived role model has to fight for opportunities, if you conform to what people expect, you still need to make the best of your opportunities but they will arrive repeatedly. 5- We need to create (early) opportunities for those who do not conform to the norm because they get too few. In the school story, the teacher reacted issuing a rule that for two weeks only goals scored by the girls in the teams would count. This prompted a change. So, positive discrimination is necessary where it will make a difference. It is even a misnomer; there should be a mechanism to correct the existing negative discrimination. Some environments that do not find suitable women to appoint would find some if pushed by funding. As research directions are picked when there are grant opportunities. 6- Gender is just one aspect of diversity, there are others: nationality, accent, education background… having a comprehensive look the statistic is far more narrow than male-caucasian. The principle of looking away from the obvious expectation is general. 7- This edition of the school in Montevideo will have a speaker who 10 years ago was a student in the course. Would a South American student relate more to a role model with the same background or with the same gender? To my former student-self Eleanor Dodson was as much of a mythological creature in the Olymp as George Sheldrick. On Fri, Feb 7, 2020 at 1:08 AM CCP4BB automatic digest system mailto:lists...@jiscmail.ac.uk>> wrote: There are 32 messages totaling 42454 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020 (14) 2. Representation within tutors at workshops (5) 3. AW: [EXTERNAL] Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020 4. refinement of 0.73A data in shelxl (8) 5. [EXTERNAL] Re: [ccp4bb] Representation within tutors at workshops (2) 6. Postdoc in Paris, France: Methods development for cryo-electron microscopy image analysis 7. [EXTERNAL] [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020 # -- ICREA Res. Prof. Isabel Usón Crystallographic Methods Department of Structural Biology, Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona, Spanish Research Council; Barcelona Science Park, Helix Building, 08028 Barcelona (Spain) http://chango.ibmb.csic.es/ARCIMBOLDO To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB=1 -- This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential, copyright and
Re: [ccp4bb] Representation within tutors at workshops
Dear all, I couldn’t agree more to that what Rachelle wrote - thanks a lot! Being a rather junior member of the community myself, I would like to support two points in particular. For one, there are expert users for the software taught at these courses. Often, the software developers know these persons, and it would be great if they could nominate at least one or two persons who could teach in their place, having gender balance and (age) diversity in mind. As the CCP4 community organizes quite a lot of these courses, they may be in the position to help establishing a list of people apart from the usual suspects. Yes, the software developers know their software best. However, the main aim of these courses is to teach how to use the software best, not to write it. And in case there should be really tricky questions which can’t be answered by the expert users, there might be the option to introduce one session in the course where these problems can be discussed with the software developers via Skype or similar. Secondly, I am a bit surprised that there is still quite a number of comments which seem to indicate that everything is fine, and I understand the anger and frustration in some of the women’s answers. It is tiring to explain the still existing structural disadvantages over and over again, being explained that it’s the society and we can’t do anything about it. However, I also find it encouraging that there are a number of people out there who are not only aware of the problem, but are also willing and successful in doing things differently. Actually, this is what I experienced through most of my personal career. However, I know that not all woman in our field share this experience. Having sessions like ‘Women in Crystallagraphy’ at the last ECM is encouraging, but it would be nice if there would be something more institutional. Apparently, there is still work to do, both in raising awareness about the structural obstacles to a diverse (science) community as well as on making the community more inclusive. Workshops like the one suggested by Rachelle might be a good start. Selina Selina Storm Beamline Scientist at I24 Telephone: +44 1235 778417 Diamond Light Source Ltd. Harwell Science & Innovation Campus Didcot Oxfordshire OX11 0DE If we want to stay attractive as a community, I think it is absolutely necessary that we represent From: CCP4 bulletin board on behalf of "Gaudet, Rachelle" Reply-To: "Gaudet, Rachelle" Date: Thursday, 6 February 2020 at 09:03 To: "CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Representation within tutors at workshops Dear all, Representation is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and several of the comments in this thread have resonated with me, both positively and otherwise, so it’s hard to stay on the sidelines. Here are a few of my thoughts. As Graeme and others have pointed out, I believe most organizers have good intentions and likely try at least at some level to increase diversity. I try to always assume good intentions, even if I think some of the actions, reactions or comments are misplaced. I care deeply about diversity, inclusion and belonging, and I’ve put effort into the problem within my sphere of influence, I’m also still learning what are the best practices. I also think the best practices are still evolving, so the issue will move forward the fastest if we all keep in mind that we can continuously improve ourselves on the topic. In that spirit, here are a few points that have been alluded to in this thread that I think warrant more explicit mention: * In our jobs, we constantly balance activities that are more altruistic and activities from which we perceive a strong benefit. Yet we may not always fully realize to what point altruistic activities have hidden benefits. In the case discussed today, when a group of 6-10 tutors get together to teach a workshop, yes, the teaching is altruistic and assembling good instructors makes a big difference. But these 6-10 tutors also benefit from interacting together in that setting, and have productive conversations will generate new ideas, refine some, and feedback into their research activities. * Diversity has many benefits that may not be so obvious before we stop to think about it (and/or read from specialists about it). One example is that bringing new voices into conversations can spark creativity, by hearing new perspectives. That’s one reason many of us are fans of interdisciplinary research, for example. * When we intentionally work to increase diversity within one axis, we often succeed in increasing diversity on other axes as well, and this multiplies the benefits. One example that has come up today is that maybe in some cases to increase gender diversity, one solution is to increase age diversity by including more junior colleagues. Added benefits are that we help ensure that a new generation will continue the work,
