I have spent the last three days on a relatively big conference organised by the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. While I was trying to get my head around RNA science (I failed miserably) and gene editing (a bit more successful here), I also had quite some time to think about the equality in science. While the organisers did a pretty good job in taking care that the gender equality was almost 50-50%, I think they did not do that well when it comes to the experience equality. This corresponded very well with the recent tweet by someone saying something in the sense “how lucky am I to be at a presentation where both, Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz are presenting” (for those not from the field, they both got a Nobel prize for their work on GPCRs). While I agree that they are great scientists and wonderful presenters, it also made me think about the age distribution of presenters at a general conference.
I am an early career researcher- ECR- (2.5 years post PhD) and I was only able to attend this conference because I got a travel support for it. While my supervisor would probably be ok with me going, I always have a feeling I need to prove everything (and proving I am worth attending an expensive conference might be challenging). And I think this is generally a problem (and it seems bigger in Australia than in Europe)- while PhDs normally have quite a few options to apply for grants (or these are included in their scholarships) and older ECRs have their own grants that also support travel, being a very junior ECR usually leaves you deciding between not attending any conference or paying for everything out of your pocket. This is problematic as conferences in Australia are quite expensive (especially compared to the European conferences/meetings). This means that junior ECRs are mostly stuck in the lab and do not have much opportunity to connect to other scientists. I find this problematic as exchanging ideas with people you are not normally in contact with and listening to the lectures that are outside of you field can lead to great ideas and possible collaborations. Another problematic thing is that junior ECRs rarely have an opportunity to present their work. With this I come to my initial paragraph: while it is great to listen to a respected scientist, I also strongly believe that these people have researchers that could present their work as good as they do. This is often the case: as an ECR, you normally do all your work, but this is then presented by your supervisor. And this is problematic as one can only get better in things by doing them. Good ECRs will once become group leaders and by not having practice, they can never get better in public presentation. It is important to be exposed, to be able to think about your research and to know how present it well to different audiences and to know how to deal with the stress of presenting in front of big crowds and experienced scientists.
This might have sounded like a long rant. But, while I think we have done really good job in gender equality, I think our next step is supporting scientists from different stages of their career to present. I think this will only benefit the community in the long run.
