Interview with Dr Alecia Bellgrove, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology & Ecology at Deakin University
by Ilaria Biancacci
STEM occupations are expected to experience rapid growth in the coming decade, and they are far too important to our society and future for women to be so underrepresented. Increasing diversity in these fields boosts creativity and productivity, which in turn leads to greater innovation.
Science and gender equality are vital to the world reaching sustainable development goals, and in recent years much has been done to help inspire women and girls to study and work in technical fields. Yet, according to UN, women and girls continue to be excluded from participating fully in science. Long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are steering girls and women away from science related fields. According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data, less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women and this under-representation occurs in every region in the world.
Women who choose to rise to the challenge and pursue a STEM career face the prospect of unequal pay and restricted career progression. Additionally, gender disparities adversely affect economic growth and social progress. Family decisions, financial considerations, workplace culture and discrimination can shape female career choices and progression in STEM.
“I think for many women in STEM one of the biggest challenge is the balance between the career and the possibility of having a family”, said Alecia Bellgrove, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology & Ecology with Deakin’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University’s Warrnambool campus. “It’s a challenge for women in workforce broadly, but particularly in academic position. Women will generally complete a PhD at the time when they can start thinking about having kids and a family, and that is were they need to decide which direction to follow, and this is a real challenge for a lot of women. Australian statistics, particularly in biology, which is my area of expertise, shows that there is an higher number of female students in undergraduated courses, and then they start to drop off at senior levels. PhD numbers are still equal, maybe there is already a little decline of female participation, and in junior academic position women are fairly represented, but once you get into more senior positions women will start to drop off”.
“Deakin University is a very good employer for women has received the “Employer of Choice for Gender Equality” citation for 14 consecutive years, – continue Alecia, that has joined Deakin 19 years ago, while pregnant with her first child. Awarded by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), the ‘Employer of Choice for Gender Equality’ citation recognizes the University’s sustained efforts to improve employment outcomes for women. Deakin has also received a prestigious Athena SWAN Institutional Award for its programs that encourage more women to study, research and work in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM). This award recognizes that Deakin is committed on doing extensive work towards gender equity, inclusion and diversity. Actions being implemented will address systemic issues at the university with a goal of all genders having equitable opportunities in STEMM. “Deakin is working hard to find solutions to reduce gender gap in science and broadly across academia – said Dr Bellgrove. According to the most recent statistic women represent 34% of academics at Deakin, while the national average is 24%. When I started working for Deakin I had some support available as a mother to be, but the situation has changed a lot, and if I was starting today a lot of things would have been different”.
In 2019 the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA), accredited Deaking University as a Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace, for the support offered to working parents, in particular breastfeeding mothers, with established breastfeeding facilities available on all campuses.
“Maternity leave arrangements also improved – continue Alecia. When I started in 2002, we were entitled to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, but because I just started I could not benefit of it, you need to been working for an employer at least 12 months to access this benefit. When I had my second child in 2009 I had 5 months of paid maternity leave and 1 month flexible return to work option. One thing that we should learn from COVID and the pandemic is that there are many different flexible ways of working, even remotely, that would change a lot the situation for all the mothers to be. I believe it is a real benefit for women. Working from home during COVID made things a lot more easier for me, balancing work and family. Flexibility will be the game changer for women in particular, and parents in general”.
Dr Bellgrove is not only a mother and a wife. She is a marine ecologist with both botanical and zoological training. Her research focuses on the role of habitat-forming seaweeds in ecological systems, their life history dynamics and the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances such as sewage effluent and climate change.
After completing her PhD, Dr Bellgrove spent three years in post-doctoral research at the University of Tsukuba’s Shimoda Marine Research Centre in Japan, investigating the dispersal stages of seaweeds and the basic biology behind their complex lifestyles.
“When I started university – said Alecia – I wanted to be a teacher, a primary school teacher, and I was always interested in math and biology. At that time there was a shortage of math and science teachers, and so I was thinking to go for it. But my mum told me to keep my options open, especially because at the time when my mum was a student the only real option for women was to become a nurse or go into teaching. So when I have told her “I want to become a teacher” her reaction was like, “Nooo!”. Not because it was a bad career or something. She wanted me to have other options, to be something else.
Everybody knew a teacher, a nurse, a doctor or a lawyer, and every kid had some sort of relationship with one of them. But no kids had an idea of what being a scientist meant. Me included”.
Dr Bellgrove decided to go for a Science Degree with a double major in zoology and botany.
“How I ended up into Marine Biology? It was during my second year of zoology, I have started studying all these invertebrate marine creatures and I have said “wow this is another world!”, and that is how it started”. Once she completed her BA, Alecia was looking for a summer job and she heard about an opportunity with the Water Authority. She applied and got the position. She worked there for five months and she discovered the different career options and opportunities for a science graduate. She went travelling for a year and then applied for a PhD. “The early years of my career were a process to discover what I really loved the most. I truly believe that if you follow your passions you will end up somewhere good, doing something you love. We run a very specialist undergraduate course in Marine Biology at Deakin, and when we have students coming to our open days, to discover more about the courses. One of the questions that parents ask the most is “How many jobs are there in Marine Biology?” and I said “It doesn’t matter. Because if this is what your son or daughter loves to do, they will find themselves a job”.
Female scientists are being paid less than their male peers, have fewer opportunities for career advancement and are more likely to be considering leaving the industry as a result. Women scientists were making just 82.9 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, Professional Scientists Australia and Science & Technology Australia found in their Professional Scientists Employment and Remuneration Report 2020/21. Base salaries for full-time professional scientists grew 2.2 per cent over the 12 months to May 2020, women reported average salaries of just $102,000 – compared with $123,000 for men. This was attributed to a combination of factors, including the large number of women in lower-seniority roles and there being fewer women than men working past 40.
“I believe that gender pay gap comes in because women are not as good as men at negotiating, broadly speaking, not only in Australia. Men are more likely to apply for a promotion even if they only fit few criteria, while women will wait until they fit all criteria to apply. Hence why you end up with gender pay gap in STEM. Even in my case I was coming out of a Post Doc, I was pregnant and when they offered me the job I didn’t think to negotiate the salary. It wasn’t a conversation anybody had with me, I had no mentoring about what I should ask, how much I should get paid”.
STEM fields are very male dominated, but there are very good women mentoring program in Australia, and there are very active role models. “In Biology is a little bit different. In my undergraduates classrooms there are more women than men, or at least they are equal, I don’t know if it’s because women are more intrinsically attracted to biology, or whether is the fact that there are more women in this field so automatically they feel more attracted and motivated to pursue a career in Biology. Maybe is a bit of both, it is interesting.
I am passionate about mentoring female students, providing opportunities for them, at an undergraduate or postgraduate level. I am very conscious of the model that I am portraying to students because academia and science in general are very male dominated and there are so many systems in plays that make it hard for women to see a path.
I remember, when I was a PhD student myself, that I had female role models, but they all have made a choice in order to pursue a career as an academic. Some of them had children and left academia to come back after, or decided not to have children to pursue an academic career. And neither of them was a correct path for me, but that is all I could see, I could not see anyone that has done what I have done. PhD, career and family alongside each other. It’s a challenge. I was lucky, but it has never been an easy path.
The juggle between caring for young babies and developing an academic career is a challenge, I think the more the universities and employers understand the challenges and provide flexibility to support women, the easier it is going to be. The situation has improved since I started, but there is still a long way to go.
I want to say to all girls and women out there, if you love STEM, go for it, and if you make it somewhere, help at least a woman below you, fight for the position that you want for yourself but try to bring other women up with you.
I love to create an environment that fosters success for both female and male students, create opportunities for women that want to pursue the career they love, by being true to themselves. We don’t have to do science in the male way, we can do it in the female way, keeping in mind that through science we can improve life for the entire society. And societies are in desperate need of great scientists, now more than ever”.
