Episode 26 - Women in science: In their words

Océane (00:00)
When you are six years old your role model isn't Marie Curie. My role model was my mum, and she remains my role model to this day. 
She really had this huge impact on me where she gave me this almost absolute certainty that I could do anything. She told me every day: “There's nothing a boy can do that you cannot do and you owe it to yourself to do it”.

Intro (00:35)
Science on the Menu a podcast by the European Food Safety Authority.

Mariya (00:46)
Hello and welcome to Science on the Menu, the podcast of the European Food Safety Authority, EFSA. My name is Mariya, and I will be your host for this episode of our podcast dedicated to women in science. 
Joining me today is our very own Océane Albert, a scientific officer in EFSA’s novel food team. Welcome Océane.

Océane (01:05)
Thank you very much for having me, Mariya. I'm very happy to be here.

Mariya (01:09)
Thank you for coming! 
So together with Océane, we're going to dive into what it's really like to be a female scientist in Europe. We'll discuss the progress that we have made towards female representation in science. But also some of the many challenges that still remain. 
So Océane, quite a few big topics there to unpack.

Océane (01:29)
A lot to unpack. I'm here for it.

Mariya (01:32)
But before we dive in, we have a small surprise for you.

Océane (01:36)
A surprise?

Mariya (01:37)
We know that today is a special day.

Océane (01:39)
It is a big day for me. Yes.

Mariya (01:42)
It's your 40th birthday, if I may say. So, we wanted to just give you a little something to thank you for spending time with us.

Océane (01:48)
Oh my god! A cake!

Mariya (01:51)
Here is the magic hand.

Océane (01:53)
Thank you. Thank you very much. That's very cute. Thank you, guys. It's amazing.

Mariya (01:58)
For our listeners, we just brought a tiny cake for Océane. I think we have a cake, we have a birthday girl, so we need to probably also have a birthday a birthday song.

Océane (02:06)
I would recommend it.

Mariya and podcast team (02:10)
(singing ‘Happy birthday’) 
(clapping)

Mariya (02:20)
Enjoy your cake, but maybe before, I have a few questions for you and I think it's a great coincidence that you're here on your birthday, because I think the birthday is a really a time for reflection and looking back at things. 
My first question for you would be exactly how did you end up here Océane sitting in this chair?

Océane (02:39)
It's a very great question. 
I'm originally an agronomic engineer and very early on I realised I wasn’t so much interested in engineering than pure fundamental science. So, I went on to do a master’s in research and in toxicology, specifically.
I was studying the effects of chemicals in the environment on fertility for three years of doctorate studies and then four or five years in Canada as a postdoc. I decided it was time to make a decision about my life, staying in academia or doing regulatory science, which I was already interested in, so I applied to EFSA right at the end of my postdoc. It did not work out the first time around. I spent two years in a trade association in Brussels and then fortunately I made it here about five years ago, bit less than five years ago.

Mariya (03:30)
It was meant to be. I know that the topic of female empowerment and involvement of women in science is close to your heart. Can you tell us more about your activities around this topic?

Océane (03:35)
Yes, of course. 
Very early on when I was in research labs doing my doctorate already, and then my postdoc, I realised that there was this whole gender imbalance in science and in academia that was very present. It was in the little things like authorship, how representation occurred in general, lack of role models. But it was also in the lack of funding, the lack of women with full professorships, for example. So, I realised there was this imbalance and back in Canada when I was a postdoc, I decided to help put together a programme within the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University that was called Win for Science and the idea was really to educate younger women in academia to this gender imbalance, to provide them with role models, to provide them with mentoring. And that's what we did. 
That was just really a grassroots initiative at the beginning and when I left, it was still very young, let's say. And today it's still ongoing and it's become a great programme.

Mariya (04:48)
Do you have any successful stories from any of the alumni of the programme?

Océane (04:52)
Yes. The original idea came from a young professor who was a woman, and she's still there, she's followed up on the programme. I've heard that last year they fundraised some money to do a caretaker funding, travel in grants to help, for example, a breastfeeding woman go to a conference because of course, breastfeeding or having a baby involves a lot of spending that you need to do. You need to have a caretaker with you or someone to take care of your baby, that you need to pay while you're away, etc.
They managed to fund some grants and to help some women travel, whether they were caring for a baby or for an elderly person, which very often falls on women.

Mariya (05:35)
It’s also the case.

Océane (05:38)
I think that's a great success. 

Mariya (05:40)
That's great, amazing. 
Speaking of successful female scientists, we actually asked some other female colleagues at EFSA about their experiences and more about their inspiration, especially in early childhood, to become scientists. 
I would suggest we actually listen to their replies together now. I have it here on my phone.

Ewelina Czwienczek (06:02)
I remember these nice times in the garden of my parents, in the fresh air and then the insects were flying around, and I could chase butterflies. 
My parents liked particularly to bring us books and I could compare the insects which I saw in the field with the ones in the books. This caused the passion I have now to become an entomologist, a bug profession, which is quite rare for women. But I believe that this is something which destiny brought me.

Vittoria Flamini (06:33)
My earliest memory of wanting to be a scientist or an engineer was when in television there were showing ‘Esplorando il corpo umano’ it was a French TV show on medicine. And I got the books and I studied them to the extent that my grandmother once became scared and a little bit afraid of my knowledge of medicine. That kind of carried through with me until I had to decide what to be as an adult. 
I studied biomedical engineering and I ended up being a faculty professor, researcher in that field with some patents to my name.

Marta Hugas (07:10)
My dad had a farm and from time to time I heard them talking about the animals becoming sick and then they cured them. But my interest was not in understanding the development of the disease and the cure but understanding what was the cause of the disease. 
When I learned that those were little bugs that were causing the disease to the animals, I decided that I wanted to understand better what was the biology behind those little bugs.

Giorgia Zamariola (07:39)
When I was in high school, I used to sit on a bench with my friends and we were observing people. We were trying to understand the different groups, why they were in that group or why they were behaving like that. 
I thought: either I become a spy because I like to watch people, or I become a social scientist.
By the way, I'm a social scientist!

Mariya (08:06)
These were the contributions of some of our colleagues.
I would be curious to see how these resonated with you and if you have a similar childhood memory that really clicks for you.

Océane (08:18)
When I'm hearing these ladies here talking about this, I do remember a professor when I was in high school, first year of high school, and I was not so much interested in biology until then and she really opened my eyes to some topics. 
First, she was a woman, which hadn't been the case so far for my biology teachers. But also, I remember for the first time when she touched on cellular biology, we were learning about cancer, how they develop and how you could cure them, and we had to do this whole science project around it. I was amazed at the amount of things that you need to learn! 
She made me feel really good about that project. She told me that I did a great job, that I had understood something that was complicated and to me it felt really natural to go and ask the next question about this that we had learned, I had so many more questions, which is what science is really is: questions. 
From that point on, I decided that it would be my specialty. We have to pick a specialty in France for the two last years of high school and biology it was from that point on.

Mariya (09:24)
I think you're touching on something very important: how girls socialise versus boys. 
There is a lot of research on this and somehow, sometimes even without wanting, the parents, the peers can really influence them and influence their self-esteem and the career paths that they follow. 
You already mentioned this teacher. Do you have any other role models or really cheerleaders in your childhood and in the early years who shaped you?

Océane (09:52)
Yes. Of course, when you are six years old your role model isn't Marie Curie. 
My role model was my mum and she remains my role model to this day. She really had this huge impact on me where she gave me this almost absolute certainty that I could do anything. She told me every day: “There's nothing a boy can do that you cannot do, and you owe it to yourself to do it. You have to go and do what you can do because you can do anything. So go be a scientist, go be anything you want and do it well”.
That was really the message. She has championed me through my studies, which are very long in academia, 
(soft laugh)
every single step of the way. Props to my mum for really giving me this confidence that professionally speaking, I could really do anything that I wanted.

Mariya (10:47)
Well, what a supportive mum can do.
I'm sure she will be happy to listen to this podcast, to get a mention.

Océane (10:52) 
I hope she will! She knows. I hope she knows it.

Mariya (10:56)
I think in general, at least if we look at the statistics, but then you tell me from your experience if you think it's really so, things have been improving. If you look at numbers in Europe at least, the majority of students in science fields, both bachelors and masters, are female. 
But then something happens, the so-called ‘leaky pipeline phenomenon’ where this doesn't really result in the same employment levels. 
From your experience, why do you think that is so?

Océane (11:25)
That it's very well studied now and that has happened to me as well. That's a question that I have had to ask myself as well.
You have all of these graduates, so girls that are graduate in STEM (science technology engineering mathematics) about 50% of them, which is wonderful. Then the higher you go in the study, the longer they are, the less and less girls you find.
Then there's this drop around a time that you need to decide whether you want to become a full professor. That's because this moment coincides exactly with the moment women are also pressured or want to have a family. Establishing a laboratory and becoming a professor, right now in the conditions of academia, is absolutely incompatible with this. 
There's financial uncertainty. It's harder for them to get the funds because they're women. It's harder to get published. It's harder to get recommended by male peers. There's geographical uncertainty, you follow the money, so you don't know where you're going to end up and when you want to have a family, maybe you want to be close to your own family. 
There are so many questions, so many burdens for women at that point in their career that a lot of them end up taking a different pathway. 
When you look at the data at the full professorship, I think you end up at around 20% of female professors. You go from 50% of girls studying science to only 20% of them being actual professors, which is very sad and of course, we need to work to get better results for this.

Mariya (13:00)
Indeed. Do you have maybe a personal story or a friend or a colleague that was kind of in this situation?

Océane (13:09)
Definitely. I mean, I had to ask myself this question. I was encouraged by females to try and establish my own lab. I thought that I didn't want to have a family far from mine, so I wanted to go back to Europe. I could have tried to establish a lab in Europe as well, but then I was also interested in regulatory toxicology. I wanted to try that, I ended up being here and I love it. 
That's a success story. 
But definitely I have a friend who, after a Ph.D., she did not really get to the point where she could tell herself, “I need to go abroad, and I need to do some more studies and then I need to be far from my family and I cannot have children right away”. It was just too much, too many burdens, too many hindrances for her. 
She ended up choosing a completely different pathway, she's not working in science anymore. She had her family, which is a great success story, too. I'm not judging at all. But we lost a very smart woman there to something else that I hope she's really happy doing. I think that's the story of many women in academia, unfortunately.

Mariya (14:19)
Let's say every lost female scientist is, in a way, a lost role model for future females.

Océane (14:25)
Absolutely.

Mariya (14:26)
Indeed.
Let's imagine we were in the perfect world Océane and you could introduce one policy change or change in general which would make these compromises or would reduce the need for female scientists to make so many compromises. What would that be?

Océane (14:41)
That's a very easy one for me because that's a recent experience for me. Longer, equal parental leave between men and women.
The very fact that men are given just a few days after having a baby to bond with their kids and then they have to go back to work while a woman is supposed to stay there for five, eight months, a year to take care of the baby, it produces this imbalance right off the bat. 
The mental charge is on the women’s shoulders, the burden of raising the kids and all of the logistics that come with it, they come on our shoulders right away because men who, I guess suffer also a great deal from this injunction, have to be the provider and have to go back. 
I think if we manage to go to that position, some countries are there, I think in Sweden they have almost two years of leave to share between partners - that's absolutely amazing.
I would go with longer equal paternity leave in Europe - I don't know how many days they have right now, but that's pretty sad.

Mariya (15:46)
I think in many places in Europe, what you just mentioned, the example, Sweden is probably the exception rather than the norm. There’s still a long way to go. 
It's a very good point, because we can mention it also to our listeners and viewers, this is not an anti-men podcast by any means.

Océane (16:03)
No, by no means. 
I believe men do suffer a great deal from this and if you're a feminist you are very aware, very quickly that we need to get men on board with this discourse, with the change, because it's not a ‘you against me type of situation’. It's really believing in equal rights and working towards equal rights together because that's what we want to reach.

Mariya (16:34)
That’s what we want to do. 
You did mention motherhood a couple of times. I think it came up also especially at the beginning with the programmes. I know it's a topic that's very fresh for you.

Océane (16:44)
It's very fresh!
(soft laugh)

Mariya (16:45)
You just came back from maternity leave. How do you manage to juggle all the responsibilities?

Océane (16:52)
It's tough being a full-time working mum of two now and being a scientist, there's a lot of expectations at work which are amazing. It takes a lot of logistics. It takes a lot of money. You need money to be able to raise kids and have help. 
I also understand that a lot of women stop working because they cannot afford the childcare. That's definitely one point. It's renouncing perfection that you're not going to be a perfect mum and a perfect colleague and a perfect everything. That's not possible. So, it's also not lowering the bar, but being kind to yourself when you have bad days and reaching for some help. 
Unfortunately, in academia, but also in our modern world where we work from different countries and I'm very far from my own family, so it means I don't have help from my parents, for example, to raise my kids. That's logistics. 
I always say my second job starts at five every day. I have a full day of work from 8 to 5 and then the second one starting at five. It’s a full-time job. It does deserve some more attention for sure.

Mariya (18:13)
I would also be curious to know how do you find it at EFSA and how is it different than maybe other places that you've worked at?

Océane (18:20)
My first pregnancy was when I was in Brussels working for a trade association and I got pregnant and I said I got pregnant. I was asked right off the bat if I intended to have several because they needed to know. It was a man, of course who asked that.
Some of my funding, when I came back from maternity leave, had been taken away. When I confronted the boss of this association about it, he told me straight to my face you shouldn’t have gone about and had a baby, and maybe you would have been here to know. I was flabbergasted. 
I’m usually someone quite comfortable with speaking for myself and I was just speechless. I didn't know what to say right then and there. I was completely shocked because it was not 30 years ago. That was five years ago and that was quite terrible. 
Now, thankfully, I got offered this job at EFSA very quickly after and I had no doubt I wanted to take it. My experience here has been completely different. The announcement of my pregnancy has been taken … I was afraid, I have to say, to tell because of my previous experience and it was nothing but joy and congratulations and I was told I could take as much time as I needed. 
When I came back three weeks ago, I was welcome and my experience has been completely different. 
I want to tell women it's possible you have some very toxic workplaces, they exist, a lot of them are there, but you also have some good workplaces. They are not perfect probably, but it's possible, like we can thrive to reach and to aim for that standard, being absolutely fine, having a pregnancy in the middle of your career without any consequence. That's a possibility.

Mariya (20:12)
Without fearing that your livelihood would somehow be taken away from you.

Océane (20:15)
It would be taken away or your projects, your money, your credentials, your intellectual property of what you produce. Everything is there right like where I left it and that's been a relief, and I had no doubt could my experience have been great here. Not an advertisement for EFSA!

Mariya (20:34)
It’s your genuine opinion.

Océane (20:35)
It’s my genuine opinion, I wasn’t asked to say this.
(soft laughs)

Mariya (20:40)
I'm so relieved that you're saying that EFSA is providing what should be probably the adequate level across Europe.

Océane (20:48)
Absolutely.

Mariya (20:50)
Speaking of EFSA, we have a bit of a short quiz, a very short quiz for you

Océane (20:54)
Okay, I'm ready!

Mariya (20:55)
We love quizzes on this podcast. 
If you have to take a guess, what do you think is the percentage of female scientists at EFSA?

Océane (21:03)
I would guess maybe about 40%.

Mariya (21:11)
Actually, it’s 60%!

Océane (21:13)
It is?! As scientists? We are getting great.

Mariya (21:15)
It’s 60% of scientific staff in our two departments.

Océane (21:18)
Wow, we are taking over the world.

Mariya (21:19)
Absolutely. 
Assess, enable and chief scientist offices were mentioned. So, 60% of scientific staff are women. 
It really makes you wonder even are we may be a bit overly balanced?

Océane (21:30)
I think it's fine. I mean they’ll be fine.
(soft laugh)

Mariya (21:32)
Too female dominated, maybe. 
(soft laugh)

Océane (21:35)
It's an area, biology in general, food safety, maybe where there are more women than in other areas like mathematics you would find very few women. Coding and data are becoming less, let's say, biased. But in biology in general, I feel like you see more women than in some of those other scientific areas. 
It was earlier in my career it was harder to find role models. Now I feel like there are more and more professors, at least in toxicology, that you can look up to and you can talk to and that's great. 

Mariya (22:10)
Why do you think that is?

Océane (22:11)
I don't know, and again, that's a stereotype, right? I don't want to dive into stereotypes, but there's a more caring aspect to it. It's like nurses, there's a lot of female nurses you find very little male nurses. 
I think understanding the impact of our environment and what we eat, on our health – it’s something that I was very attracted to. Maybe somehow there's a bias that this is a safe place for a female biologist there. I did see a lot of women in my area, but there are some men as well. 
I really encourage women to do whatever they want, mathematics, if it is coding.
My girl, I will tell her every day. My boy can be a dancer and my girl can be anything.

Mariya (22:59)
Exactly. 
I assume for these things, it will take time for them to become less acceptable and maybe this is something to also to tell to aspiring female scientists to be prepared that there would be some preconceptions that they would need to be faced with and to kind of develop maybe even a thick skin against.

Océane (23:27)
Yes, absolutely. It's not easy being a girl out there and not being a woman. It's getting better. But I think it's also very fragile right now. 
We can see that with the MeToo movement, there's been a backlash, sort of with a raise of masculinist movements and we have some very strong political characters right now that are openly sexist and masculinist and that's a real issue to me. 
I would say that young women and girls need to be very aware that we're just one political crisis away from our rights being taken from us and that's one thing that we should tell them.

Mariya (24:08)
That’s a sad reality.

Océane (24:09)
Definitely.

Mariya (24:12)
Maybe to just end on a more positive note.
(soft laugh)
Would you have one piece of advice, though for an aspiring scientist or maybe a piece of advice that you wish you had received when you were just starting out.

Océane (24:25)
Yes, because, as you say, from a very young age, you get this idea that maybe math isn't for you, and this is for boys and this is for girls, and thankfully I had my mum to tell me otherwise. 
What I want to tell younger women and girls in general is that there's going to be so many injunctions towards you, so many demands. You cannot be too pretty because you're threatening, but you cannot be too ugly because you're not employable. You cannot be too loud, but you cannot be too quiet. You cannot have it all. 
In this society, women we can never win. So, my advice is: you do you, be comfortable with your paradoxes. Be comfortable with who you are. There's nothing a boy can do that you cannot do. I want to repeat that. 
Being yourself is your greatest strength, so go for it.

Mariya (25:13)
Great. Thank you. 
I think this is such a great note to end on.

Océane (25:18)
Yes, I can have my cake now. 
(soft laugh)

Mariya (25:20)
You can have your cake. Absolutely.
(soft laugh)
Thank you very much for taking the time. It was really a real pleasure to have you. Very insightful to share your kind of firsthand experience as a female scientist. I wish you all the best for the future and for your birthday once again.

Océane (25:35)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Mariya. It was an honour, really. Thank you for choosing me.

Mariya (25:46)
To our listeners and viewers, that's all for now. 
Remember, you can catch all episodes of Science on the Menu on whatever you get your podcasts. 
For more science content, make sure you follow EFSA on our social media channels and visit our website. From myself and the all-female crew behind this episode, we thank you once again for joining us and we hope to see you next time on Science on the Menu.