Written evidence submitted by the British Society for Immunology (DIV0025)

The British Society for Immunology is the leading UK charity organisation representing scientists and clinicians who study the immune system in humans and animals. As a membership organisation, we act as a focal hub for the immunology community, supporting and empowering immunologists working in academic, industry and clinical settings to drive forward scientific discovery and application together.

The nature of extent to which women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are underrepresented in STEM in academia and industry;

In a 2017 survey of the UK  immunology community for the BSI report ‘Careers in immunology’, data was collected on gender and career level, finding that 55% of respondents were female, but only 4% of female respondents were at professorial/senior level, compared with 15% of men. There are inherent limitations to this data and its application to policy in the UK, however, especially were a government agency to do the same, since our membership is not restricted to those working or living in the UK. We look forward to updating this report later in 2022 to create a more accurate snapshot of the current UK immunology community, especially in a post-Brexit and post-pandemic world.

The demographics of STEM workers in the immunology sector remain largely unknown. The Royal Society’s report, ‘A picture of the UK scientific workforce’ discusses at length the definition of the scientific workforce and the opacity in how different STEM workers are defined continues as specialisation of expertise increases. For immunology, this means that there is not enough granularity in any of the data collected by central means, e.g., via the Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA), the Annual Population Survey, or via the Office for National Statistics. Data capture is incredibly important as it provides an evidence base for working from and current restrictions and limitations are hindering the objective of making science open and accessible for all. There is also a lack of data regarding socioeconomic background compared with characteristics that are protected under the Equality Act; rectification of this would be useful in capturing a fuller picture of the STEM workforce.

The reasons why these groups are underrepresented;

Our members have expressed concerns that in the UK, retention of scientists working in academia is being obstructed by ‘short termism’ which is a symptom of the grants-based research system in which we operate. Since grants are made for limited periods, e.g., two years, those who need to think longer term or require more job security or stability are forced from the sector in order to find positions that can offer those attributes. This is a potential reason for the demographic disparities we see between protected characteristics at a more senior level in academia. In our report ‘Careers in immunology’, we found that the biggest barrier faced by respondents in their careers was job security, even greater than lack of funding opportunities. Institutions should be proactive in addressing problems as well as simply identifying them.

We have also found a gender disparity in various barriers reported by the immunology community. E.g., 1 in 8 respondents (13%) stated that sexism, discrimination or bullying was a significant barrier they had faced during their career, with women reporting this as a factor twice as frequently compared with men (16% vs 7%). Further gender differences were identified with women reporting poor job security (51% vs 42%), work/life balance (44% vs 33%) and working long hours (28% vs 20%) as barriers to a greater extent than men. This suggests that work in tackling the barriers that researchers are facing in their careers needs to be targeted and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution that will ameliorate conditions for all underrepresented demographics.

The implications of these groups being underrepresented in STEM roles in academia and industry;

Recent statistics released by the HESA[i] have shown that there are glaring inequities in the academic sector, especially at senior levels of the workforce. These revealed that, out of the 22,810 academic staff employed at Professor level in the UK in 2019/20, only 28% were women, compared with 47% of academic staff as a whole and 51% of the UK population. Approximately 0.7% staff working at Professor level were black, compared with over 2% of academic staff overall and 3.3% of the UK population[ii].

Underrepresentation of women and the ethnic minorities can mean that science, especially biomedical science, is more focused towards a narrow section of the population. Widening the focus of research and pursuing questions that surpass the norm will be the key to ensuring that science is able to deliver the answers to improve the whole of society and begin to chip away at the inequalities that affect the world, especially in the arena of health. In contemporary science, research is most often carried out by teams rather than individuals, emphasising the importance that different perspectives and experiences can have on an enterprise in conferring different benefits. One study that examined 2.5 million scientific papers whose authors had US based addresses, found that papers with four or five authors of multiple ethnicities had, on average, one to two more citations than those written by authors all of the same ethnicity[iii]. The effects of a lack of diversity can extend even further, with a high proportion of research in the western world, for example, uses the tissue and blood of white people to investigate drugs and therapies for a much more diverse population[iv].

What has been done to address underrepresentation of particular groups in STEM roles; and

A good example of longer term investment in people and development of skills is the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and it is our hope that this scheme will be renewed.

The UKRI also recognises in its Research and Development Roadmap, published last year, that better research will be the product of a more diverse pool of talent. In that vein, we support efforts to diversify the STEM workforce such as through the R&D People and Culture Strategy and its new annual cross-sector R&D workforce survey, which will likely prove a key data asset beyond the work of the Strategy itself.

The BSI supports the UKRI’s collection of data on different protected characteristics of grant recipients and awardees; this transparency is essential in shining a light onto what can be an opaque process. More widely disseminating these diversity data would be beneficial, however. These data do not at the moment include any information on socioeconomic background, which could be a useful category of information to collect also.

More recently, UKRI have announced thirteen projects to increase postgraduate education access for ethnic minority students across a large number of UK universities, ranging from studying admissions criteria which may be systemically biased to initiating mentoring schemes to help break down barriers.

There is also a role to be played here by learned societies and membership organisations, such as the BSI. They serve as community hubs which can work within a specific sector or area of science to identify and then tackle barriers at a broader level, and also to serve as meeting space for researchers with similar backgrounds and/or who have had similar experiences. We are also able to serve as a central organisation that is able to fund activities to increase diversity, for example, we run grant schemes both to increase representation by traditionally unrepresented communities and also award grants to increase the resources available to both organisations and individuals to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) activities themselves.

What could and should be done by the UK Government, UK Research and Innovation, other funding bodies, industry and academia to address the issues identified.

The United States has ‘staff scientist’ positions where jobs are attached to institutions rather than to grants or specific projects. These are separate from lectureships and confer a much greater degree of security to the researcher whilst allowing them to remain working in a lab environment. The advent of these positions on a similar scale in the UK, in our view, would have a significant part to play in tackling the systemic flaws in our research system which discourage retention of staff.

Our members report that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a large impact on equity in STEM workers. In the publication of papers, for example, it has been reported that men have found an increase in time and this has allowed them to be more prolific in their writing and publication. Women, however, have tended, generally, to shoulder more caregiving responsibilities, be this home-schooling children or providing valuable help to elderly or vulnerable relatives and/or neighbours. These anecdotal reports have also been recounted in academic literature, including the BMJ and Nature, with the latter reporting that between January and July 2020, women accounted for only one third of authors of papers published on COVID-19 itself. Institutions should be proactive in reaching out to researchers that could have been or are being impacted in order to offer additional support. Indeed, strengthening flexible working practices should be on the agenda of industry and academic employers in order to support scientists and researchers at all stages of their careers.

There has also been particular concern from early career researchers, particularly PhD students and postdocs who may not be able to access labs and/or carry out the experiments that they need to conduct in the timeframe that has been allotted. There could be serious ramifications for the funding that is supporting their positions and/or for future career prospects. This is an issue which needs to be addressed urgently by some sort of catch up programme being offered to those affected.

Organisations, from the Government through to funding bodies and individual academic institutions have a role to play in widening participation in all areas of science throughout the career pipeline. Part of this will be changing the way that science is portrayed and challenging its traditional depiction as a career path for those who are white and male, whilst affirming the message that in science, along with other disciplines, that the idea that success is based solely on ‘natural talent’ is dispelled, and that science is open to all. The role that a diverse range of positive role models that are visible to those in education or in the early years of their careers cannot be underestimated.

January 2022