The Female Lead Read online

  I spent the next year figuring out how to share my experience, and change people’s views of themselves, and I thought about what issues I could add my voice to. At the time, I was getting connected to the Rotary organisation. I was invited to speak at World Polio Day, and I’m really glad to be part of the effort to eradicate polio. Part of my inspiration comes from my own family. I look at my daughter and I want the best for her. I want the world to be a great place for her. I want her to have the healthiest life possible, and if I can influence other mothers to make decisions that are best for their children, I want to do that. Had I not been adopted, I know I wouldn’t be alive. In India, if you have a physical disability, such as polio, your life expectancy is not very high. I have had the surgery I needed, and I now have a responsibility to try to help others.

  I look at my daughter and I want the best for her. I want the world to be a great place for her. I want her to have the healthiest life possible, and if I can influence other mothers to make decisions that are best for their children, I want to do that.

  When I was first asked to give an account of my experiences at Kona, I felt quite challenged as I’m kind of an introvert. I tried to figure out what I could share – and what I could learn. Even though my story is personal to me, people can relate to the struggle towards a goal that seems out of reach. Using the tools I talk about in my own journey, I think it’s possible to achieve any goal, be it a work goal or a personal goal. I get so much energy from the audience when I share my experience. I can see people processing what I’m saying and know that my words are making a difference. I hope I can inspire others – I really enjoy doing it, and I get something out of it, too. People share their stories with me afterwards, and I’m blown away by that.

  As a teenager with a disability, I had a hard time feeling as though I fitted in. If I could go back, this is what I would like to say to that teenaged girl. Never lose your drive and determination, because these will help you overcome any and all challenges that will eventually come your way, especially navigating life as a woman of colour and with a disability. Life isn’t easy or perfect. Have faith that setting your goals and working towards achieving them will pay off in the end. Continue to be adventurous and curious, as each experience you have will help you to become more comfortable with yourself. Heed the advice of those you trust, and cherish the friendships that you make in your early adult years, because they will be there for you for life. And don’t waste time being negative, or being with negative people. It’s just not worth it.

  Minda’s Object

  My handcycle. It represents a turning point for me. I was able to transition from being a sports spectator to being in the game. Learning how to handcycle became a gate to triathlon, which has given me an amazing outlet to achieve something outside my work and my family.

  I can push myself and I’ve been introduced to a whole community of athletes. I’m excited to be a part of it. In sports, I’m not judged by how I look – I’m respected for the effort I put in, and what I achieve. In triathlon I’m competing alongside able-bodied athletes every step of the way. I see sport as an equaliser.

  MINDA DENTLER

  Athlete and activist

  DAME ATHENE DONALD

  Dame Athene Donald is professor of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge. After grammar school (Camden School for Girls) she studied for her first and second degrees at Girton College, Cambridge. Aside from four years’ postdoctoral experience at Cornell in the USA, it is the university where she has worked all her life. Her work has focused on ‘soft matter physics’, which she has explained as the physics ‘of things like cells and food, that a non-scientist would think of as “squishy”’. She was made a professor in 1998, a dame in 2010 and she became master of Churchill College in 2014. Professor Donald is a trustee of the Science Museum, has served as Cambridge University’s Gender Equality Champion and is active in promoting diversity in science.

  * * *

  If my younger self could see me now, she would view the life I have had with total incredulity. I was very shy. I didn’t expect anything. How could I have imagined I would end up as Master of a Cambridge college? When I was at school, girls weren’t expected to have careers. I assumed that after university I’d get a job and then get married. Careers advice was non-existent. I have always just done the next thing. So I try to say to those who are setting out now that it’s fine not to know what you want to do with your life.

  When I arrived at Cambridge, I consciously worked to stop being so shy. I’d had what would now be called a gap year when I lived away from home and that helped me to practise overcoming my shyness in quite a conscious way and allowed me to appear more confident.

  There is still a presumption among many people that childcare is the woman’s problem, when it’s not – it’s the couple’s problem.

  Marriage gives you what a physicist would call a ‘two-body problem’ – in other words, two people trying to find a job in the same place. I got married when I was doing my PhD. My husband had a couple of fellowships but I was the one who got the permanent position. He stood back and stopped working for a long time, although it wasn’t necessarily what he wanted to do. [They have two children, now grown up.] I have always been uncomfortable being held up as the woman who has done it all – I know what costs were involved.

  There is a feeling that science is just a bunch of geeks in a corner, but it’s integral to all our lives and the decisions that have to be made.

  You do need to marry the right person. I would hope that it isn’t the case for all couples that the man needs to give up work – and, of course, it’s not really a problem until you have children. But I do think that there is still a presumption among many people that childcare is the woman’s problem, when it’s not – it’s the couple’s problem.

  There were certainly subtle gender-stereotyping pressures against physics when I was young. In that sense, a single-sex education did help, and I didn’t have any brothers to say that physics wasn’t for girls. Nowadays, numerous initiatives exist to encourage more girls into science, and people are trying to evaluate them. Bad teaching is a real deterrent, although of course that affects boys and girls. I’m not sure about the importance of role models, not least because I didn’t really have any. Talking about the fact that girls are in a minority can help, and focusing on skills, such as being creative. Adjectives are helpful for girls.

  But we’re all different. The idea of trying to make physics attractive to women by having advocates wearing short dresses and make-up saying that you can do physics and be feminine would have completely backfired with me. Talking about the issues generally is helpful, pointing out that science is the route to a good job. It’s partly just a question of constantly pushing back against the idea that girls do certain things and boys do other things.

  It’s partly just a question of constantly pushing back against the idea that girls do certain things and boys do other things.

  At times, I still feel in the minority. Then finding allies helps. I sat on one very high-level committee chaired by a man who insisted on addressing the group as ‘gentlemen’ even though two of us were women. I didn’t say anything at the time but afterwards I wrote to him pointing out the discourtesy, and I copied in the other woman and the men who’d come up to me afterwards to say how disgraceful it was. The chair replied saying it was just the terminology he was used to and it didn’t mean anything. The next time he did it, though, one of the men pulled him up and he never did it again. That was probably more effective than if I’d made a fuss there and then.

  I decided to take the job as Master of Churchill because I believe in the Cambridge college system, in the idea of small-group teaching, and I think that it’s not for the élite but for the smartest. Churchill is unique in being the only Cambridge college where, by statute, 70 per cent of students read STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics]. Each Cambridge college has its own character and, when I visi
ted, I felt I would fit. Some colleges are much more traditional.

  Our intake of young women is less than I would like. It’s nothing like 50-50 and I would very much like to improve the ratio, but girls don’t do physics A level so they can’t apply for physics and engineering. We need to work at all levels. We already do an enormous amount of outreach, and we’re changing our face a little, I hope – we look as if women are welcome, rather than just being a place where women are welcome.

  I blog and I’m on Twitter because it enables me to reach more people. Some people have referred to the blog as online mentoring. I wrote about non-standard careers, for example, which people said they found helpful. I also try to write in the media about science policy. In science, we’re always saying we don’t have enough money and it’s hugely important to remind the government how much it matters to the future health of the economy. We don’t have North Sea oil any more and the banking industry is falling to pieces. Science and engineering is at the heart of our capacity to innovate and grow.

  There is a feeling that science is just a bunch of geeks in a corner, but it’s integral to all our lives and the decisions that have to be made – whether those are about vaccinations or energy. It’s quite important to make sure the information we’re getting is accurate.

  Athene’s Object

  A battered collected volume of the novels of Jane Austen. It’s a fat tome and it was already pretty well used when I bought it as a teenager at a jumble sale. I have a set of the novels now in smart, single-volume format, but there is something nostalgic and special about this much older, much-loved copy. The novels of Jane Austen are something I turn to, still, in times of stress. There is something about the way she writes that I find soothing. I try to restrict how often I open the pages because there is always the danger that familiarity will breed contempt. But when the science is going badly, colleagues seem to be getting in the way of progress or I’m exhausted from travelling, a little light Austen-reading never goes amiss.

  DAME ATHENE DONALD

  Professor of experimental physics and master of Churchill College, Cambridge

  MASHA GESSEN

  Russian-American journalist, author and activist Masha Gessen is known for her outspoken criticism of Russian president Vladimir Putin, about whom she wrote a book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She is also known for her equally determined championing of human and LGBT rights. Masha grew up in Moscow but her family moved to the US in 1981 when she was 14. She returned to Russia as a reporter in the early 1990s, and is the founder of Russia’s Pink Triangle campaign, which encourages supporters of LGBT rights to wear a pink triangle to show their solidarity. Her other books include Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, which profiles the Russian dissident art-punk group, some of whose members were jailed in 2012 for protesting against the Putin regime. Now back in the US, she writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Granta and Vanity Fair, among many other publications.

  * * *

  For me to become a writer was sort of inevitable. I’m the fifth or sixth generation of writers in my family; I grew up in the Writers’ Union building in Moscow! On the one hand choosing writing as a career seemed very glamorous, but it also seemed pre-ordained. I went to architecture school, but between high school and college, I got a job for a newspaper and I was hooked. I wasn’t writing, though. It was only my third year in the US and my English wasn’t good enough, so I was doing layout. It was so exciting, seeing the paper come out. I still get a thrill from the physicality of print journalism – having to edit the proofs, taking out a word here, a word there. That’s not something you have to do online and it gives you a whole different sense of words. They become objects; they take up space.

  Writing gives me a sense – maybe illusory – of acting and it’s a huge part of what allows me to keep going.

  Our world in general, certainly in a repressive country such as Russia, is constructed in a way that constantly makes you feel helpless. It’s a poisonous, horrible way to live. Writing gives me a sense – maybe illusory – of acting and it’s a huge part of what allows me to keep going. If I didn’t have the outlet of writing and saying what I think, I’d probably be depressed.

  I don’t think of myself as a particularly courageous person. That’s not me being coy. I think it’s common in many people who may outwardly seem brave. I’ve seen it a lot in war correspondents. When I was a war correspondent, I would try to hang back. I never felt an urge to be out there where you might actually get hit, and when I was out there, I tried to get away from those places and talk to people in safer surroundings. I think that’s generally a good policy. With my Putin book, I didn’t tell anyone I was writing it. My partner, my editor and my research assistant were the only people who knew. Even my best friends and the people I interviewed thought I was writing something about Russian politics in general. That was a reasoned decision. I figured by the time information about the book was available, it would be too late to get rid of me, and they couldn’t get rid of the book. Considering I’m walking around, that seems a well-calculated decision.

  It’s not that I never feel afraid. When Putin first came in, I was harassed really quickly, and it was frightening. The harassment is coordinated and calculated to discombobulate you. The other thing that really frightened me was that my kids were threatened. It’s a classic tack and it does work beautifully. I felt a kind of visceral fear and horror I’d never felt before. The risk of my kids being taken away was very small, but I couldn’t live with any risk at all, however tiny, so we packed up and moved to the US. It’s been a very odd experience to watch my kids and partner go through the experience of immigration. I know how difficult it is; my parents migrated with me when I was 14 and it was very hard. And I see how fast the process is now. We’re two years out of Russia and the two older kids are New York teenagers. Something did happen to them, though. Immigration is a loss of innocence. It becomes a part of you that confirms nothing is to be taken for granted. The landscape of our lives was gone overnight and nothing will ever be quite as permanent again.

  Immigration is a loss of innocence. It becomes a part of you that confirms nothing is to be taken for granted.

  I want regime change in Russia. It will happen, although I don’t think my contribution to it will be considerable. Many people are working towards the same end, and eventually the regime will implode but it’s not going to be taken down by us. A smaller goal is to get safe havens and refugee status for LGBT people around the world. There’s a worldwide cultural war going on and the refugees from that world are LGBT people. The only places reliably granting them refugee status are the US and South Africa – which is a lifeline for people fleeing African regimes. It’s difficult to come to the US from Russia if you are LGBT, and until your refugee status is confirmed, you have no rights, no public assistance. It’s a brutal system. A lot of European countries have better systems but don’t offer asylum to LGBT people. If they did, the physical proximity of Europe to Russia would make the difference between death and life, safety and security for a lot of people.

  Of the things I regret, it’s times when I’ve tried to be cautious and relied on what seemed to be grown-up decisions – not taking a job, not taking an opportunity. So long as you look after your physical safety, which is really important, no opportunity should seem unreasonable. Take anything that seems exciting! Don’t play it safe. Things are less predictable than we like to think. In the 1990s, I was living in Moscow, freelancing for some really good American magazines, but I felt that if I was going to be a real journalist and have a proper career, then I should get a newspaper job. Newspaper jobs were safe and secure! It seems ridiculous to think about now, because I was young and single, so what the heck – and where are those newspapers now?

  No opportunity should seem unreasonable. Take anything that seems exciting! Don’t play it safe. Things are less predictable than we like to think.

  It’s been
an object lesson in how unpredictable things are, and how other people’s scenarios aren’t right for you. I couldn’t get a newspaper job and the reason was because I was queer. They couldn’t hire someone who looked like me, and who had worked for the gay press. And in fact that was my lucky break. I’ve built a career that seems sustainable – and seems so much more exciting, so much more my own, than if I’d taken a bureau job.

  Masha’s Object

  A bicycle. I have several, and to call me an avid bicyclist would be an understatement. I cycle a couple of hours a day when I can, and when I travel, I carry a folding bicycle with me. I even have an Instagram devoted to finding the perfect bag for my folding bike. I have a summer bike and a winter bike as well as a folding bike. They give me a sense of freedom and a time when I can be alone and think. And a bicycle is an incredible way to see all the cities I travel to.

  MASHA GESSEN

  Journalist, author and activist

  DR VANESSA OGDEN

  Vanessa Ogden was born in London. She read theology and religious studies at Manchester University, and then went into banking. In the early 90s she changed career, training as a teacher at the Institute of Education in London. Over the past 20 years, Ogden has improved the standard of education in dozens of London’s challenging inner-city schools and she won the Women of the Future Inspirational Educator Award in 2009. Since 2006, Ogden has been head teacher at Mulberry School in Tower Hamlets, London’s most deprived borough. She has transformed the school into an over-subscribed beacon of education – twice rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. In June 2015 the school was chosen by Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, as the place to launch her Let Girls Learn initiative in the UK.