When American engineer Ashley Roach applied to a female-only recruitment round at the University of Sydney, its targeted nature made her “more comfortable” being ambitious.
The California-trained materials scientist had thrown her name in the ring for a few other positions as she considered “where to go next” from a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Cambridge.
“I think that this women-only call made me a better candidate, and maybe a better applicant…[because] I felt like I didn’t have to justify my existence in the space.
“It made me…more comfortable being honest. I’m excited about doing battery [and] renewable energy research, and these things can be very pie in the sky. It’s something that becomes so implicit for a lot of us in low-women fields. We go into rooms and feel we need to have a lot of evidence behind what we say, because there’s a chance that we’ll be questioned more.”
Roach is one of 16 mostly foreign academics selected from a recruitment round that attracted almost 600 applicants from more than 40 countries. The new recruits are expected to increase women’s share of continuing academics in Sydney’s engineering faculty to 25 per cent, up from about 22 per cent now.
