President’s note

Next month we are hosting our inaugural PostgradJuly, a month of events especially for our postgraduate student members with a particular focus on careers post-university. A huge thanks to Alanis Olesch-Byrne, Fernanda Alvarado Neves and Lorna Strachan for putting together an exciting program. All the details are below.

In July we also have in-person networking opportunities for our members, with our local meetups happening across the region. The full list of events is below. If your city is not on the list and you would like to organise a local meet up, please contact our events manager Fernanda at womeesa.network@gmail.com.

This month the Parliament of WA’s inquiry into sexual harassment and assault in the FIFO mining industry released their final report. It is horrific and should be compulsory reading for everyone in industry or who teaches students who end up in industry. Over the last year I have been doing a presentation roadshow to universities and mining companies on why we lose women from geoscience and I have talked about the submissions made to this inquiry to demonstrate why the mining industry loses women in such drastic proportions. Each time I talk about these reports, women contact me afterwards to tell me their stories of mistreatment in the mining industry and in other industries that require remote work across Australasia. This is a pervasive and urgent health and safety emergency and it is time our organisations and governments commit to creating workplaces where the basic human rights of women are respected.

All the best for the month ahead,

Melanie

WOMEESA News

#PostgradJuly

This month we have a particular focus on celebrating and supporting our Postgraduate student members with career workshops and a postgraduate research showcase. We will be holding two workshops, one on careers in environmental and climate science, and the other on careers in Earth science. In each workshop we will have a panel discussion with 3-4 WOMEESA members from industry, government and academia who will share their career progression, challenges and recommendations for early-career professionals. After the panel discussion, we will run a Q&A session with questions from the audience.

Environmental and climate science workshop

Wednesday, July 6, 2022 1:00 - 2:30 PM REGISTER HERE!

Panelists:

Jenny Fisher, Associate Professor & Associate Dean (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) at the University of Wollongong Australia

Camilla Gardiner, Assistant Manager at KPMG’s Sustainable Value team (New Zealand)
Carly Roder, Assistant Project Officer at the Conservation Bushfire Recovery of the NSW Department of Planning and Environment

Earth science workshop

Wednesday, July 20, 2022 1:00 - 2:30 PM REGISTER HERE!

Panelists:

Sally Watson, marine geophysicist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research of New Zealand
Fiona Best, lead geochemist at South32
Susanne Schmid, group leader at CSIRO
June Hill, principal research scientist at CSIRO

Postgraduate student research showcase:

For the WOMEESA seminar this month we have three of our brilliant PhD student members to present their research:

Rachel Kirby from the Australian National University

“Forged in Fire: the formation, cooling history and age of impacts on the IIE iron parent body”

Charlotte Pizer, Victoria University of Wellington - Te Herenga Waka

“Hunting for earthquake evidence on the Hikurangi subduction margin”

Neethu Madhukumar, James Cook University

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) for weather forecasting”

Register to attend at this link or find out more here.

Local meet ups

WOMEESA organizes bi-monthly local meetups, which are a great opportunity to network with members in your local area and build a stronger community. This month we have events planned for Townsville, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Canberra! All the details are below.

Adelaide, SA: Friday 15th of July at 12 pm at Community (North Terrace Lot 14, Adelaide, SA 5000) Register here!

Melbourne, VIC: Thursday 14th July at 6pm at Fonda Mexican (31 Flinders Ln, Melbourne VIC 3000) Register here!

Brisbane, QLD: Thursday 21 July at 6 pm at Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers South Bank (Shop/10 Little Stanley St, South Brisbane QLD 4101) Register here!

Perth, WA: Wednesday 27 July at 6 pm at Miss Chow's South Perth (39 Mends Street, South Perth, WA, 6151) Register here!

Sydney, NSW: Thursday 28th of July from 5:30 pm at Wood Fire Pizza and Coffee Roasters (Shop 2/338 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000) Register here!

You don’t need to be in a capital city to organise a local meetup, WOMEESA members are everywhere! If you would like to organise a meetup in your local area, contact our events coordinator Fernanda.AlvaradoNeves@monash.edu before September to get help or to let WOMEESA know your plans so we can help you with publicity.

WOMEESA #SUAW session

On the last Friday of the month we hold an online Shut Up and Write #SUAW session via zoom. We get together and talk briefly about what we want to achieve in the session, then write for about 50 minutes.

It’s a great opportunity to connect with other members and get some uninterrupted writing done. Even if you don’t have anything to write, you can just come along and say hi.

Next event will be Friday 29 July, 12 pm (Sydney time) and you can register for the zoom link here.

Other WOMEESA news

Inquiry into sexual assault and harassment in the FIFO mining industry

The Parliament of WA report from inquiry into sexual assault and harassment in the FIFO mining industry was released late this month. The details are horrific. Submissions made to the inquiry detail the horrendous working conditions for women, the extent of the targeted sexual abuse and harassment, and the lengths that women go to try to avoid dangerous conditions at work. Even locked in their rooms, these women weren’t safe. The report also revealed the pervasive culture of covering up reports of assault and harassment and how women who tried to report this behaviour were punished. This is a devastating failure of industry and government to protect the health and safety of women in one of the most lucrative industries in Australia. The report was based on submissions by individuals, companies and professional organisations, and you can read the submissions here. WOMEESA is connecting with other organisations to determine how we can collectively push for change in this sector.

Maybe this is not the place for me

This month a new study was published on gender harassment and discrimination in geosciences. This study is a little different from the approach in previous papers because they highlight the importance of first-person accounts in order to humanise the data. They also look at intersectionality and how racism, ableism and anti-LGBTIQ behaviour impact geoscientists. The authors state “It is the responsibility of those in power, and especially those who hold more privileged status due to their social identities, to contribute to the dismantling of current structures that reinforce inequity.” Those of us who have had the pleasure of working with a leader who truly cares about equality will know the huge difference it makes to workplaces and employees and how much change they are capable of making to the organisational culture and to policies. Let us hope that one day such qualities are prerequisites for leaders in Australasian Earth and Environmental science.

the nature of “wahm” privilege

The notion of equity is that each individual is given what they need in order for the situation to be equal or, in colloquial terms, equity attempts to “level the playing field”. To achieve that, we need to understand the ways in which certain groups have advantages or privileges over others. A new study out this month demonstrated that the overrepresentation of white, able-bodied, heterosexual men (WAHM) in STEM is due in part to systematic advantages that they experience, purely due to their demographics. From the article: “WAHM experience more social inclusion, professional respect, and career opportunities, and have higher salaries and persistence intentions than STEM professionals in 31 other intersectional groups.” When you are in an over-represented group it is easy to ignore the notion of privilege, but it is precisely these groups that need to recognise their advantages so that they can help improve things for others who do not have the same experience. Sandra McLaren from the University of Melbourne has developed an academic privilege bingo card that can help us all do exactly that.

WGEA report on age and the gender pay gap

New data from WGEA has revealed that the pay gap between men and women in Australia gets worse with age (until people begin to retire). They found that although more women than men complete higher education and enter the workforce, they earn less on average and are less likely to work full time. The Director of WGEA, Mary Wooldridge, stated that part of the problem is that the highest levels of management are reserved for those who work full time: “With effective policies, workplaces can both enable women to work full-time if they chose to and make higher-paid managerial roles more accessible for those who work part-time”

Most workplaces have gender-biased parental leave and flexible work policies, whereby men are not afforded the same access to benefits as women, which incentivises inequality in childcare and household work. To read a full analysis of this new report, see this article from Women’s Agenda.

WOMEESA Newsletter June 2022