The response to this was, “Isn’t that a bit idealist?” I was no Greta Thunberg, so I probably just looked blank and that ended the interview. My feelings were piqued and on leaving, a response then formed in my head, “If I can’t be idealist when I’m 18, when can I?”. Needless to say, I didn’t get the scholarship.

I don’t know the intention behind the question the middle-aged white man posed to a young woman keen to start a career in engineering. Maybe he wanted me to show more fight and conviction in my choice of career, or maybe he had become disillusioned with his own work. I’ll never know, but I’m very glad that that comment didn’t deter me from working in the medical field. I have spent around 16 years working on products linked to healthcare. First as an engineer/designer and then as a human factors professional specialising in medical devices. And while I can get frustrated at red tape or feel that progress is slow, I am always glad that I have chosen to work in this field. I can’t claim to have made any major discoveries, but I do like to think that my input has been overall for good.

For example, since the pandemic started, Inspired Usability has provided input into guidance on usability testing of Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator Systems for Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, provided final human factors submission guidance for a novel device for cancer detection, worked on the human factors activities for new drug products that include a new cancer treatment and biosimilars for pediatric and adult patients and conducted human factors studies providing advice on 4 new drug delivery platforms that are not yet on the market with a range of benefits to end users (as well as adapting to working under Covid-19 restrictions).

On Sunday, I was reminded of the man in the interviews and his comment when I sat in the Yorkshire Showground Pavilion after receiving my first Covid-19 vaccine and waiting for 15 minutes to pass by before going home. I felt humbled by all the other people who had chosen to work in a field that can truly make a difference. I felt humbled by the fact that over 100,000 people had sat in that same waiting area before me. Because there are so many amazing feats of medicine, science, engineering, human factors, logistics and more that brought me to that waiting room. Of course, there were people who had the foresight to start planning on how to make a vaccine in record time when needed and the massive ramp-up in production and logistics but there was also all the work that went into the very running of the vaccination centres around the country.

My own customer journey was an amazing piece of human factors, from booking my slot on my phone based on my date-of-birth and postcode, driving up to the Showground with precision way marking, parking guided by expertly choreographed volunteers, hand sanitising, double identification and check-lists and finally the warm smile of a proud volunteer pointing out the golden balloons with the numbers 100,000.

On International Women’s Day (IWD) The Female Lead launched the Women at Work report.  The starting point for this research project, which I led, was data showing that at midstage career – roughly between the ages of 27 and 44 – career trajectories diverged: men’s continues to rise and women’s flattened.  Current research on women’s careers tends to focus on entry level where some women remain on a “sticky floor” of jobs with very limited opportunities, or on high profile senior positions such as CEO, but there has been less focus on midstage that involve special challenges for women as questions about balance, priorities and fertility necessitate what Mary Catherine Bateson called “composing a life” – drawing together meaningful themes to shape a life pattern, within a context of shifting constraints.

The first thing that struck me was the confidence of the participating women. Their words refuted many myths about women, in particular that women are uncomfortable with ambition, that they feel ambivalent about independence, that they do not identify as strongly with their professional life as men. These myths can now be set aside. The Women at Work report argues that subsequent progress requires us to distinguish between biases that persist and those that are now sporadic, often toothless.  Without such distinctions, inefficiencies will slow the advance and generate defensiveness in organisations, when what is required is energetic collaboration. 

The invitation from Inspired Usability to write a guest blog is a good opportunity to highlight three persistent biases that continue to impede women’s progress. 

The first I call expectation bias. 

Expectation bias involves lower expectations of a woman’s contributions to the firm, doubt as to her commitment and ability to take on new responsibilities and challenges. Many women told us that, on informing their employer they were taking maternity leave, they found that their access to clients, accounts, and responsibilities was restricted, and were no longer in line for promotions or pay increases. Sometimes this bias came in the guise of protectiveness as an employer said, “We don’t want to burden you with more responsibilities.”  But sometimes it was a brutal dismissal of a woman’s value. As a new mother she was seen to be less committed and less capable. 

Expectation bias did not only affect women who had children, because other women noticed it too, and thought long and hard about the effect having a child would have on their position in a company.

The second persistent bias is the flexibility penalty.

Women who took advantage of job flexibility, or who had taken a career break when their children were very young, were hit by a long term penalty, whereby it could take up to 6 years to return to the level they had been at before the career break.  It was only in firms where flexibility was the norm, and where very senior men also worked flexibly, or in firms run predominately by women, that there was no flexibility penalty.

The third persistent bias I call “unentitled mindset.”

Many women described a reluctance to negotiate pay increases and promotion, stemming from an unentitled mindset, whereby they felt unsure of their entitlement to promotion, to more family friendly conditions and to increased pay.  While confident in their ability to negotiate generally, and while they felt at ease negotiating pay increases on others’ behalf (usually other members of their team), the participating women expended a great deal of energy considering whether their own case was watertight. It could take six months or longer before they actually opened the discussion.  Employers’ responses, when they did try to negotiate, were confusing and sometimes punitive.

Unentitled mindset is in some ways the most disturbing bias, because it is internal.  That is, the women themselves felt unsure of their case, even though they knew it was sound.  So does this mean that, yet again, a report is telling women to change themselves and re-design their responses? 

My answer to this is, “No, it’s not the women who need to change.”  To explain this, I need to look at how expectation bias and the flexibility penalty are closely linked.  When an organisation sees a woman as less committed, driven and ultimately capable because she is going on maternity leave, they demonstrate a rigid template of the valuable worker as someone who can give everything to an employer (presumably because someone else, such as a wife, is carrying the mental load of domestic organisation).  When a woman who asks for flexibility suffers the flexibility penalty, she again learns that she does not fit the template of the organisation’s “valued partner.”  Knowing this, any case she makes for increased pay or promotion, however strong in itself, has a very weak foundation.

The report has been described as showing that “women are conditioned to believe they are entitled to less.”  This is true, but we need clarity when we talk about “conditioning” because it is easy for this concept to lose focus on which specific experiences activate which specific internal impediments.  If we don’t do this, and instead refer very generally to “the culture” or “society”, we waste a lot of time trying to fix everything when, in fact, only some things need to be changed.

Unentitled mindset arises in a very specific context, where old (usually defunct) stereotypes are activated.  This is the context of pay negotiations where women were uncharacteristically anxious about being seen as “grabby” or “ungrateful” or “asking for too much” or “putting themselves forward.” Some excellent and very recent research shows that the mystique so often surrounding shrouded pay and promotions negotiations activated normally defunct stereotypes.  In these conditions, those who know they do not fit the template of “standard valued worker” are more likely to see themselves through the eyes of bias – whether it is because they are women, or for any other reason (such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity). 

The Women at Work report makes robust but doable recommendations for organisations to remove biases that still hold women back by designing more imaginative, human-friendly jobs, by re-assessing standard measurements for value in terms of presenteeism, by clarifying and normalizing pay discussions for all workers, and by leaving behind the template of the valuable worker as someone whose family life is managed by a “wife.”

Read Terri Apter’s report for The Female Lead here

You can view more publications by Terri Apter here

Young women in tech might initially have a rosy outlook on the world they have entered, but this can change quickly. Here are some of the questions I was asked by my employer when I applied to reduce my hours after the birth of my first child:

• What childcare will you have?
• Do you have back-up childcare ?
• How often will your mother be able to cover for you in a childcare emergency?
• What measures will you have in place to make sure you can respond to problems instantly on the day that you are not working (and not being paid)?

It is almost unthinkable that a man would be asked these questions. My husband wasn’t when he successfully applied for  part time work. At the time he was working in covert law enforcement, undertaking safety critical work in high threat situations. Whether you accept these questions as legitimate or not (they are not) you can arrive at your own conclusions about the attitude of a company that would ask them towards women.

I was recently reminded of this when I saw the perfunctory LinkedIn posts on ‘International Women’s Day’.  There aren’t enough people in tech, let alone women in tech in the UK.  But does a post about support for women in tech or hosting a forum on women in tech/STEM really give you an idea of the company’s culture and attitude to women in the workplace?

Women in Tech: questions to ask your employer

If you are considering a future in a  technical consultancy, it might be more interesting to know that company is doing internally.  It’s easy to be seduced by PR statements made on social media by companies. It’s harder to know what they are actually doing about the gender pay gap, or the retention of female talent.  Here are the questions I would have liked to know:

• What are they doing to address the fact that the STEM pay gap begins from entrance into the job market?
• How many women come back to work after their first child?
• What do they do to encourage female growth in the company?
• Do they monitor their employee metrics to foster a gender inclusive culture?
• What proportion of senior managers are women?

Women in Tech: The start of a life in technology

I’m one of many women in the technology sector. I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. It’s why I work with social enterprises such as Solutions for the Planet to encourage children, especially girls into STEM. From a young age, my natural interest in how things work was encouraged and nurtured at home and school. On entering a mixed 6^th form class I was truly surprised to find that there was only one other girl in my physics A-level class.

By the time I went to University to study engineering I was less surprised to be in the minority group (a strong intake comprising of 20% women). This was not discouraging to me.  I enjoy the company of men and also found sisterly solidarity with my minority peers. Unconsciously I had made a, decision at 16 that I wanted to join the technology sector. That’s why we need to start encouraging all children at young age to consider their options carefully: we need more people and more women in tech

I didn’t see any barriers to joining this male world. What would stop me as a bright young person? But I’m white and middle class. My mother is a feminist author and both my parents are academics. There was never a question for me whether or not I could achieve in any workplace. And as young engineer, then industrial designer and now human factors consultant I was keen to just get started. I didn’t want to really think about what it meant to be a woman working in the technology sector.

Women in Tech need flexibility after childcare

As with many women, it wasn’t until I became a mother that I began to notice and feel the effects of how an industry designed for men did not necessarily work with modern family life, particularly for women. After the birth of my first child I was determined to go back to work. I loved my job and wanted to demonstrate that to my children. I wanted, as many parents do, to break the Monday to Friday 9-6 mentality and reduce my hours to 4 days.

Working in consultancy I split my time between various projects, clients and business development activities. I presented a case to my employer, promising them continuing flexibility, and to checking my emails on non-working days and how I could flex if the specific day needed to change. I argued that I could still remain a useful (and rare) resource to the company, and in the long term they would benefit.

The answer was a resounding “no”.

I was offered the opportunity to stay in what amounted to an administrative role with no client contact. The company in question then lost another five women in the following year. I don’t know the details of all but I’m sure Lady Bracknell would have something to say about carelessness.

Women in Tech: Male bias and discouragement of female staff

A more enlightened company recognised the skills I could bring them and offered me a role for 4-days a week. Even there I noticed how the odds were against people (not just women) who wanted to work flexibly.

On entry, I felt I had no room to negotiate on a salary or rank. How could I? My salary had been fixed for  2 years due to maternity leave. Working reduced hours often affected my utilisation and hence bonus pay.

The behaviours required to succeed were geared toward predominately male attributes. I worked happily there until setting-up my own company. Always working steadily to meet all work and client expectations. Through my flexibility (and probably unnecessary free working) very few people knew I worked less than full time.

I now run a successful Human Factors Consultancy specialising in medical device development and as the master of my own universe work to a different schedule. I get the client’s work done but I also make sure that I see my family during the day. Getting the work done to a deadline is far more important than long hours culture. Being in the office is not evidence of work.

If you want to see a good article on how to to convey authenticity in your online video content see this post from Radar Film.

Inspired Usability is working with Unitive Design & Analysis on an Innovate UK funded feasibility study (see the press release here). As a user researcher I often get a chance to observe the use of medical devices and talk to the clinicians and patients who interact them. In order to get firsthand experience of a MEG scanner I volunteered to take part in part of the University of Nottingham’s MEG research. Radar Film were there to document our visit

Welcome to our new website. We hope you enjoy having a look around. We look forward to hearing your comments. We will be posting articles and information on our blog about Human Factors and User research over time.