St Andrews women academics share their career stories
With a Foreword by Dame Anne Pringle and an Afterword by Professor Sally Mapstone, Academic Women Here! On being a female academic at the University of St Andrews was launched Monday of this week.
“Gr8 women”
The project aimed to provide an opportunity for participating senior academics to share their variety of career pathways and the different constraints and pressures they experienced that contributed to their current career success. In sharing, it’s hoped that colleagues, staff and students at St Andrews and readers beyond will understand that there is no right way to begin or advance an academic career. Contributors also hope to inspire future female academics to start and progress their careers and to address the continuing problem of low numbers of women represented at senior level in higher education.
In the words of the editors:
Our booklet reveals the diversity of career paths taken by these women, and also the variety of ways in which these women are currently experiencing academic life at the University of St Andrews. Perhaps most strikingly, some of our colleagues were initially unsure whether they should participate in the project at all, suggesting that their own careers ‘don’t fit what you are looking for’. We have all come to appreciate that one size clearly does not fit all in academia.” …
“There is no such thing as the archetypal academic woman, just as there is no single ‘right way’ to have an academic career. Recognising that, is a crucial step towards creating a diverse and inclusive staff community in our universities.
Compiled and edited by Sharon Ashbrook, Ineke De Moortel and Aileen Fyfe, the booklet is freely available from the St Andrews Research Repository http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12152.
There are already well over 200 downloads this month* which deserves a slice of cake …
