UK

Women and ethnic minorities face 'severe disadvantages' in reaching top rank among surgeons

by Tony Trueman, British Academy of Management

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Women and ethnic minority surgeons who want to reach the top rank of their profession face "severe disadvantages" and a glass ceiling, new research shows.

Even when they have a similar work history to male surgeons, they are consistently less likely to reach the top rank of consultant, the British Academy of Management online annual conference heard today.

Three academics analyzed data on 3,402 NHS junior surgeons in England from 2009–2010, studying how many had progressed to consultant level by 2020.

The three are: Professor Carol Woodhams, of the University of Surrey Business School, with Ira Parnerkar of Queen Mary University, and Mukunda Sharma of Exoduspoint Capital LLC.

The raw data, from the Electronic Staff Record for NHS staff, showed that rates of promotion for women and ethnic minority groups were lower than those for white men. Compared to the promotion rates to consultant from 2016–2020 of white men:

• Black women were 42 percentage points less likely to be promoted.
• Women of Indian and Pakistani ethnicity were 28 percentage points less likely to be promoted.
• White women were 21 percentage points behind.
• Women of Chinese and south east Asian ethnicity were 14 percentage points behind.
• Black men were 27 percentage points behind
• Indian and Pakistani men were 10 percentage points behind.
• Men of Chinese and south east Asian ethnicity were 6 percentage points behind.

The statistics also showed that in 2010, 57% of junior surgeons were men. By 2020 that had increased to 63% men as more women than men had dropped out of the career structure, and the proportion of men who had been promoted to consultant was 53.6%, and for women 36.5%.

Ethnic minority women comprised 15% of surgeons in 2020 but only 8% of trainees who were promoted to consultant were from this group.

Professor Woodhams adjusted the raw data to compare surgeons who were of similar age and background and who had worked a similar number of hours in training.

She found that taking maternity leave of any duration meant a 7 percentage points less chance of reaching consultant level by 2020. Taking any other kind of career break, such as working part-time, perhaps to look after their children, reduced chances of promotion by 8 percentage points.

Even when comparing groups with the same amount of training hours and same record of career interruptions, women and Black men were less likely to be promoted to consultant.

"The most striking finding is that even when Indian women, white women and Black men conform to white male patterns of working, the progression gap is wide and, in some cases, very wide," Professor Woodhams said.

"This is objective evidence that disadvantage against diverse groups in surgery is deep-rooted and a new progressive milieu in the NHS and the broader society has not yet translated into concrete and progressive outcomes.

"Women, and especially non-white women, are under-represented in senior ranks of consultant, making a prima facie case for the existence of a glass ceiling.

"Black male surgeons are severely disadvantaged. Black males work long hours, take very few part time or career interruptions and tend to work in most elite subspecialties of surgery. Yet they are one of the least likely to secure promotion." Non-white trainees were less likely to be promoted to consultant in hospitals where there was a high proportion of white men, she said.

Part of the reason for the high promotion rate of white men may be an old-boys' network, she said. "Women and ethnic minority junior surgeons may have less access to important informal networks that bestow the sponsorship and patronage that is so important in securing a consultant post."

She said that her research quantified the effects of previous surveys in which a third of trainee surgeons said they had experienced bullying, undermining and harassment from, in most cases, a consultant.

"In an elite profession, surgery is arguably the most elite of specialties. It is competitive, pressurized and receives the highest reward but it is consistently associated with a bullying culture that is especially hostile to women."

Black and Latinx surgeons continue to hit glass ceiling in America

Provided by British Academy of Management

 

Using DNA to search for the true origins of imported honey

by US Department of Homeland Security

Scientists at the BTI Willson Lab have collected a library of imported honey for the Honey

DNA project. Credit: BTI

Have you ever wondered where the honey you add to your morning tea and drizzle on your desserts or oatmeal comes from (besides bees)? The easy answer would be to check the label, which typically offers the country of origin along with all those wonderful nutritional benefits. Unfortunately, as the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) knows all too well, sometimes labels can be misleading, especially when it comes to honey imported into the U.S.

Honey imports have nearly doubled in the last decade—from 251 million pounds in 2010 to 416 million pounds in 2019—which is great news for consumers who now have more access to some of the sweetest stuff on earth. However, this tremendous growth in demand also has a dark side that many might not know about—adulteration and mislabeling of honey to hide its true origin have become a global issue.

What does this mean for shoppers and our economy? Well, illicit importers, who are economically motivated to evade tariffs or sanctions, have made it a practice to affix fake labels onto jars, indicating the honey is from a different country of origin or disguising cheaper honey as sought-after expensive types. Some illicit actors even dilute honey with ingredients like syrups and sugar. New Zealand manuka honey, for example, commands a high price on the market, up to 100 times higher than other honey types, as it is very in-demand for its putative health benefits. It is also one of the most adulterated types of honey. In a recent lawsuit, U.S. beekeepers claimed adulterated honey from Asia caused prices to plummet and forced them into financial ruin.

"Adulterated honey is a tremendous problem for the U.S. honey industry, because it drives the market price down, and U.S. producers can't compete with the lower market value of imported honey," said Stephen Cassata, a senior science officer and acting lab director of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) INTERDICT Science Center. "Dealing with this issue is a whole-of-government approach, and we are currently collaborating with other federal agencies (including the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture) on joint operations targeting honey enforcement."

CBP is tasked with enforcing hundreds of U.S. trade laws, including the proper classification of goods under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, and assessing applicable tariffs to ensure that importers pay the appropriate duties on entered goods. To help CBP determine the true sources of honey, S&T enlisted the expertise of the Borders, Trade, and Immigration Institute Center of Excellence (BTI), led by the University of Houston, for a project called Honey DNA. S&T invested in cutting-edge forensic science that can improve the speed and efficiency in verifying the country of origin of commercially available honey and its path to the supermarket shelves—specifically, S&T has been looking at how the unique makeups of products coming to the U.S. match how they are represented on the packaging.

"This project developed a means to identify honey countries of origin using the DNA in pollen and DNA dissolved in filtered honey," said BTI executive director Kurt Berens.

Honey is filtered for a variety of reasons, including the attempt to hide its source plant by making plant identification by pollen very challenging.

"BTI's testing method could potentially provide another capability for CBP to determine country or region of origin for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty enforcement," said CBP deputy director Patricia Hawes. "It complements testing capabilities we already employ to determine country of origin of honey."

BTI conducts research to enhance U.S. border security, facilitate legitimate trade and travel, and ensure immigration system integrity, and for several years this S&T Center of Excellence has been working on detecting the source country of honey by identifying the plant species via DNA from pollen. The Honey DNA project started in early 2020.

"The size of the available database of known DNA sequences from particular plants has exploded recently, making it more likely that any DNA sequence we find can be associated with a particular plant species or small group of plants," said BTI Honey DNA principal investigator Dr. Richard Willson, who is also Huffington-Woestemeyer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. "Over the past 15 to 20 years, the cost of DNA sequencing has collapsed by 10,000-fold, making DNA-sequencing-based technologies much more attractive for a wide variety of applications."

Through the Honey DNA project, BTI was able to leverage these technologies to establish techniques that will help mitigate fraud and provide authentic and safe food for consumers. BTI scientists developed methods for sequencing DNA not only from whole pollen grains in unfiltered honey but also from the small amounts of DNA leaked from broken pollen grains in filtered honey.

To study the true origin of honey, BTI scientists collected samples from a variety of places, including directly from apiaries in multiple countries, from small specialty providers and farmers' markets, from friends traveling overseas, and even from online specialty stores during the pandemic when travel wasn't possible.

"We analyzed 300 honey samples from which we assembled country-specific plant DNA sequences," said Willson. "We also successfully isolated soluble trace DNA from pollen-free, ultra-filtered honey and sequenced it."

To extract DNA from pollen, Willson and his team diluted small samples of honey with water, centrifuged them to help the pollen sink to the bottom of the test tubes, and extracted the DNA. To isolate trace DNA from filtered honey, the BTI scientists again diluted a small sample of pollen-free honey with water, and then extracted and purified the DNA. The extracted DNA was then amplified and sequenced. These findings were recently released in a report.

DNA sequencing is performed to find the sequence in which the building blocks of DNA, the nucleotides, are arranged in a given DNA strand, which can help identify a plant species.

When the BTI scientists tested the expensive New Zealand manuka honey, which is derived from the manuka plant, they found that many jar labels claiming to contain manuka honey were not accurate.

The BTI team believes that the Honey DNA tracing methods could find broad applications in other types of forensic cases, including identifying the species of other natural products, and even tracing the origins of imported goods and narcotics. "Also, the DNA sequences obtained from this project will enrich the public DNA database and help link occurrences of source plants across the world for a more precise identification of honey origin," said Willson.

"This new technology could potentially be one of the tools in CBP's toolbox to intercept illegal imports," said Hawes. "We are constantly looking at new ways to do our mission."

Origin of rare, healthy sugar found in stingless bee honey

More information: DNA Assays for Determining Honey Origins: uh.edu/bti/research/honey-dna/bti_honeydna.pdf

Provided by US Department of Homeland Security 

 

What's the point of homework?

by Katina Zammit, Western Sydney University

Credit: Shutterstock

Homework hasn't changed much in the past few decades. Most children are still sent home with about an hour's worth of homework each day, mostly practicing what they were taught in class.

If we look internationally, homework is assigned in every country that participated in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012.

Across the participating countries, 15-year-old students reported spending almost five hours per week doing homework in 2012. Australian students spent six hours per week on average on homework. Students in Singapore spent seven hours on homework, and in Shanghai, China they did homework for about 14 hours per week on average.

Shanghai and Singapore routinely score higher than Australia in the PISA maths, science and reading tests. But homework could just be one of the factors leading to higher results. In Finland, which also scores higher than Australia, students spent less than three hours on homework per week.

So, what's the purpose of homework and what does the evidence say about whether it fulfills its purpose?

Why do teachers set homework?

Each school in Australia has its own homework policy developed in consultation with teachers and parents or caregivers, under the guiding principles of state or regional education departments.

For instance, according to the New South Wales homework policy "… tasks should be assigned by teachers with a specific, explicit learning purpose."

Homework in NSW should also be "purposeful and designed to meet specific learning goals," and "built on knowledge, skills and understanding developed in class." But there is limited, if any, guidance on how often homework should be set.

Research based on teacher interviews shows they set homework for a range of reasons. These include to:

• establish and improve communication between parents and children about learning
• help children be more responsible, confident and disciplined
• practice or review material from class
• determine children's understanding of the lesson and/or skills
• introduce new material to be presented in class
• provide students with opportunities to apply and integrate skills to new situations or interest areas
• get students to use their own skills to create work.

So, does homework achieve what teachers intend it to?

Do we know if it 'works'?

Studies on homework are frequently quite general, and don't consider specific types of homework tasks. So it isn't easy to measure how effective homework could be, or to compare studies.

But there are several things we can say.

First, it's better if every student gets the kind of homework task that benefits them personally, such as one that helps them answer questions they had, or understand a problem they couldn't quite grasp in class. This promotes students' confidence and control of their own learning.

Giving students repetitive tasks may not have much value. For instance, calculating the answer to 120 similar algorithms, such as adding two different numbers 120 times may make the student think maths is irrelevant and boring. In this case, children are not being encouraged to find solutions but simply applying a formula they learnt in school.

In primary schools, homework that aims to improve children's confidence and learning discipline can be beneficial. For example, children can be asked to practice giving a presentation on a topic of their interest. This could help build their competence in speaking in front of a class.

Homework can also highlight equity issues. It can be particularly burdensome for socioeconomically disadvantaged students who may not have a space, the resources or as much time due to family and work commitments. Their parents may also not feel capable of supporting them or have their own work commitments.

According to the PISA studies mentioned earlier, socioeconomically disadvantaged 15 year olds spend nearly three hours less on homework each week than their advantaged peers.

What kind of homework is best?

Homework can be engaging and contribute to learning if it is more than just a sheet of maths or list of spelling words not linked to class learning. From summarizing various studies' findings, "good" homework should be:

• personalized to each child rather than the same for all students in the class. This is more likely to make a difference to a child's learning and performance
• achievable, so the child can complete it independently, building skills in managing their time and behavior
• aligned to the learning in the classroom.

If you aren't happy with the homework your child is given then approach the school. If your child is having difficulty with doing the homework, the teacher needs to know. It shouldn't be burdensome for you or your children.

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in

Provided by Western Sydney University 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How ant teeth cut like a scalpel

Atomic-scale imaging reveals tiny animals use zinc to sharpen their miniature tools

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: ARUN DEVARAJ AT WORK IN THE LAB. view more 

CREDIT: PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

Ever wonder how tiny creatures can so easily slice, puncture, or sting? New research reveals that ants, worms, spiders, and other tiny creatures have a built-in set of tools that would be the envy of any carpenter or surgeon.

A recent study, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, shows for the first time how individual atoms of zinc are arranged to maximize cutting efficiency and maintain the sharpness of these exquisitely constructed tiny animal tools. A collaboration between a research team at the University of Oregon and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) revealed nature’s solution to enable tiny creatures to cut and puncture with relative ease.

When the ant bites

Consider the ant tooth. Yes, ants have teeth, as anyone who has ever stepped on an ant mound can attest. These specialized structures, technically called “mandibular teeth” because they are attached outside of their mouths, are made of a network of material that tightly binds individual atoms of zinc. The total effect is a mandible that packs more than 8 percent of the tooth weight with zinc.

These kinds of specialized critter tools have been a decades-long fascination for University of Oregon associate professor Robert Schofield, who led this study. His team of biophysicists has developed techniques to measure the hardness, elasticity, energy of fracture, abrasion resistance, and impact resistance on a miniature scale.

But they couldn’t actually see the structure of the materials that make up ant teeth and other microscopic animal tools, especially at the atomic scale. That’s where PNNL materials scientist Arun Devaraj and doctoral intern Xiaoyue Wang entered the picture. Devaraj is an expert in the use of a specialized microscope technique called atom probe tomography. He used a focused ion beam microscope to take a tiny needle sample from the tip of an ant tooth and then imaged that needle sample using atom probe tomography, allowing the team to identify how individual atoms are arranged near the tip of an ant tooth.

Using this technique, Devaraj and Wang recorded for the first time the nanoscale distribution of zinc atoms in the ant tooth.

“We could see that the zinc is uniformly distributed in the tooth, which was a surprise,” said Devaraj. “We were expecting the zinc to be clustered in nano-nodules.”

The research team estimated that, because these biomaterials can be sharper, they make it possible for the animals to use 60 percent or even less of the force that they would have to use if their tools were made of materials similar to that found in human teeth. Because less force is required, their smaller muscles spend less energy. These advantages may explain why every spider, ant, other insects, worms, crustaceans, and many other groups of organisms have these specialized tools.

CAPTION

Ant mandibles pack a powerful bite, thanks to embedded atoms of zinc.

CREDIT

Robert Schofield | University of Oregon

Ouch! Ant teeth at work

“Human engineers might also learn from this biological trick,” said Schofield. “The hardness of ant teeth, for example, increases from about the hardness of plastic to the hardness of aluminum when the zinc is added. While there are much harder engineering materials, they are often more brittle.”

Learning from nature is one way of understanding what makes materials stronger and more damage-resistant, added Devaraj. He is currently using a DOE Early Career Award to study, at the atomic scale, principles that make some materials strong and damage resistant. “By studying steel microstructure also at the atomic scale, we can better understand how altering the composition of materials changes its damage resistance, specifically stress corrosion resistance and behavior over time,” he said. “This is especially important for designing structures like nuclear power plants that need to withstand aging for many decades.”

The research study was supported by the National Science Foundation-supported research Center for Advanced Materials Characterization, a University of Oregon-based facility. A portion of the work was conducted at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DOE Office of Science user facility at PNNL in Richland, Washington.

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-021-91795-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

The homogenous alternative to biomineralization: Znand Mn‑rich materials enable sharp organismal “tools” that reduce force requirements

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2021

Zinc-infused proteins are the secret that allows scorpions, spiders and ants to puncture tough skin

by Robert Schofield, The Conversation

A close-up of the head of a leafcutter ant, Atta cephalotes, showing the metal-infused 

teeth on its mandibles. Credit: Ryan Garrett, CC BY-ND

Many small animals grow their teeth, claws and other "tools" out of materials that are filled with zinc, bromine and manganese, reaching up to 20% of the material's weight. My colleagues and I call these "heavy element biomaterials," and in a new paper, we suggest that these materials make it possible for animals to grow scalpel-sharp and precisely shaped tools that are resistant to breaking, deformation and wear.

Because of the small size of things like ant teeth, it has been hard for biologists to test how well the materials they are made of resist fractures, impacts and abrasions. My research group developed machines and methods to test these and other properties, and along with our collaborators, we studied their composition and molecular structure.

We examined ant mandible teeth and found that they are a smooth mix of proteins and zinc, with single zinc atoms attached to about a quarter of the amino acid units that make up the proteins forming the teeth. In contrast, calcified tools—like human teeth—are made of relatively large chunks of calcium minerals. We think the lack of chunkiness in heavy element biomaterials makes them better than calcified materials at forming smooth, precisely shaped and extremely sharp tools.

To evaluate the advantages of heavy element biomaterials, we estimated the force, energy and muscle size required for cutting with tools made of different materials. Compared with other hard materials grown by these animals, the wear-resistant zinc material enables heavily used tools to puncture stiff substances using only one-fifth of the force. The estimated advantage is even greater relative to calcified materials that—since they can't be nearly as sharp as heavy element biomaterials—can require more than 100 times as much force.

It's not surprising that materials that could make sharp tools would evolve in small animals. A tick and a wolf both need to puncture the same elk skin, but the wolf has vastly stronger muscles. The tick can make up for its tiny muscles by using sharper tools that focus force onto smaller regions.

But, like a sharp pencil tip, sharper tool tips break more easily. The danger of fracture is made even worse by the tendency for small animals to extend their reach using long thin tools—like those pictured above. And a chipped claw or tooth may be fatal for a small animal that doesn't have the strength to cut with blunted tools.

Biomaterials that incorporate zinc (red) and manganese (orange) are located in the important cutting and piercing edges of ant mandibles, worm jaws and other 'tools.' Credit: Robert Schofield, CC BY-ND

But we found that heavy element biomaterials are also particularly hard and damage-resistant.

From an evolutionary perspective, these materials allow smaller animals to consume tougher foods. And the energy saved by using less force during cutting can be important for any animal. These advantages may explain the widespread use of heavy element biomaterials in nature—most ants, many other insects, spiders and their relatives, marine worms, crustaceans and many other types of organisms use them.

While my team's research has clarified the advantages of heavy element biomaterials, we still don't know exactly how zinc and manganese harden and protect the tools.

One possibility is that a small fraction of the zinc, for example, forms bridges between proteins, and these cross-links stiffen the material—like crossbeams stiffen a building. We also think that when a fang bangs into something hard, these zinc cross-links may break first, absorbing energy to keep the fang itself from chipping.

We speculate that the abundance of extra zinc is a ready supply for healing the material by quickly reestablishing the broken zinc-histidine cross-links between proteins.

The potential that these materials are self-healing makes them even more interesting, and our team's next step is to test this hypothesis. Eventually we may find that self-healing or other features of heavy element biomaterials could lead to improved materials for things like small medical devices

Atomic-scale imaging reveals ants use zinc to sharpen their teeth

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

UK

Cuts to housing benefits led to over 75,000 more overcrowded households during the pandemic

by Amy Clair, The Conversation

Credit: I Wei Huang/Shutterstock

COVID-19 has been described as a "housing disease". Overcrowded living conditions make it easier for the virus to spread, and statistics show a link between overcrowding and mortality from COVID.

In my new research published in the International Journal of Housing Policy, I found that reductions to housing benefits led to a significant increase in overcrowding among private renters in England in the years leading up to the pandemic. My analysis shows that more than 75,000 additional households were overcrowded during the pandemic because of these policies.

Changes to housing benefit

The local housing allowance (LHA) approach to calculating housing benefit for private renters was introduced by the Labour government in 2008. Previously, housing benefit was based on the actual rent paid by individual recipients. Arguing that this was undermining work incentives, the LHA approach instead meant recipient households could receive support up to the median rental prices for the relevant property size in their area. The median, or 50th percentile, represents the "middle" value between the lowest and highest values—in this case the lowest and highest rents, therefore making the cheapest half of housing in an area affordable to recipients.

After the 2010 election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government made further changes with the aim of reducing spending. From April 2011, LHA rates were reduced from the 50th to the 30th percentile, meaning that housing benefit would now only cover rents for the cheapest three out of 10 homes in an area. This resulted in an average loss of £1,220 per household per year. Caps depending on property size were also introduced.

The government argued that the lower levels of support would encourage lower rent levels. However, a government-commissioned review found that this was not the case: the vast majority (89%) of the effects fell on tenants who had to find money for their housing costs elsewhere, while just 11% of the effects fell on landlords via reducing rents.

In the years that followed this change, the way that LHA rates were updated to keep up with rising rents was also altered. Previously increased monthly according to rental prices, from April 2013 increases took place annually, capped at the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation. The Consumer Price Index calculates inflation based on the price of a range of goods and services, but does not include housing costs.

Annual increases were further restricted to 1% in 2014 and 2015 before being frozen for four years. This led to a widening gap between LHA rates and rents in the years leading up to the pandemic. For example, in the year to 2016 while increases were limited to just 1%, actual rents in England increased by 2.5%.

Figure showing the change in overcrowding for recipients and non-recipients of LHA, 

before and after the 2011 reduction. Author

Overcrowding

One potential way for renters to adapt to lower financial support is to move into smaller and less suitable homes. In my research, I compared trends in overcrowding both before and after the LHA reductions, as well as between private renters who do and do not receive support. By using this approach, I found a causal link between the policy changes and overcrowding.

My analysis first looked at the immediate effect of the cut to LHA rates from the 50th to 30th percentile of rents in an area, finding an increase in overcrowding of over 5% in England. This is equivalent to 75,000 additional households living in overcrowded homes.

I then looked at the longer-term effect of the changes, including the changes to to the way LHA rates were set, which undermined the link between allowances and actual rents. The results show further increases in overcrowding for recipients of housing benefit, while overcrowding for other private renters continued to decrease.

Spread within households has been one of the main routes of COVID-19 transmission, putting people in overcrowded homes at greater risk. Overcrowding makes self-isolation and reducing risk much harder and less pleasant, and is associated with poorer mental and physical health.

During the pandemic the government did increase the LHA levels back to the true 30th percentile of rents, reversing the effects of limits to increases. But failure to adjust the benefit cap in response will have significantly reduced any beneficial effect this may have had. Between February and May 2020 there was a near doubling of households who had their benefit income reduced by the cap, disproportionately affecting single-parent households. LHA rates have once again been frozen.

Moving forward

These findings support calls from housing organizations such as Shelter to increase the LHA back to the 50th percentile, and to once again increase allowances in line with rents. This would protect private renters from financial hardship in the short term while a more sustainable housing policy should be the longer-term goal. While this conflicts with government's approach of once again freezing LHA rates and reducing spending, three arguments against such an approach should be considered.

Firstly, the increased spending on renter support reflects government decisions more than it does excessive or frivolous spending by benefit recipients. Continuous reductions in support for the social rented sector have led to more people living in the private sector, where rents, and therefore housing benefit rates, are higher.

Secondly, many policies to "improve" access to home ownership have, at great cost, inflated housing prices and made accessing ownership more difficult for renters. These policies benefit large housebuilders, and those already in owner occupation. Given these impacts, support for renters should perhaps not be the main target of actions to reduce housing spending.

Finally, reducing LHA levels may have reduced government spending on housing, but its consequences will have led to increases in spending elsewhere, particularly health. A person's home is central to their broader health and wellbeing—in an era where low housing quality has been directly linked to the spread of a deadly disease, housing policy must take this into account.

Study: People who use food banks live in substandard and unaffordable homes

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Pregnant women victims of microaggressions in the workplace

by Tony Trueman, British Academy of Management

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Half of women questioned in a survey said that taking maternity leave had hurt their careers, new research says.

Many pregnant women had endured negative comments from colleagues about them needing to take time off work or having a "preggy brain," the British Academy of Management online annual conference heard today [Wednesday 1 September].

Dr. Yehia Nawar, of London South Bank University, carried out an online survey of 104 women, who were mostly graduates and included senior managers.

Around 50% said that said that taking maternity leave had a negative impact on their careers, while a third said it had not, and the remainder were undecided.

"All women that gave feedback about maternity said that since they become pregnant, men in their companies had treated them differently," Dr. Nawar told the conference.

"The most common microaggressions were discriminatory comments about the women having a 'preggy brain' when doing their work, or comments about their pregnancy, but there are also negative assumptions made about taking additional time off work upon return and being less available to attend meetings or conferences.

"A large number of women had experienced a more difficult situation at the workplace because of their pregnancy, such as missing promotions and no further pay-rise or bonus.

"This study revealed that glass ceiling still occurs in the UK and that women find difficult to reach top managerial positions due to microaggressions, discriminations, harassments, inequalities, stereotypes, prejudice, organizational culture and maternity."

They survey also asked the women if had felt any type of barrier or glass ceiling at their workplace and almost half said there was, while a quarter said denied it. A third of respondents said this had affected their career.

Over a third said their self-esteem had suffered as a result of discrimination, including disrespectful comments as being thought of as the "coffee lady," being mistaken for a personal assistant, being called "dramatic" when pointing out a problem. Some said men received larger bonuses for doing the same job.

"This demonstrates that a glass ceiling and gender bias is deep in the UK, and that it is affecting women's careers," said Dr. Nawar.

"More specifically, microaggressions, discriminations, harassments, inequalities, stereotypes, prejudice, organizational culture and maternity are destroying the women's career prospects."

Women and ethnic minorities face 'severe disadvantages' in reaching top rank among surgeons

Provided by British Academy of Management