Using Science To Tackle Racism

Last week I received an email from an old friend and cameraman that I used to work with when I was a director. The email was asking for copies of a series that we had worked on together.

The programmes in question were part of a documentary series aired over ten years ago with a black focus and the majority of the production team who made it were also black. That’s when I realised that I was actually the only person from the old production team the cameraman could ask for copies of the series. All my black colleagues had either left television completely (two have become teachers) or at least left production.

The issue of retention of talented black and minority ethnic staff is one of the biggest problems when it comes to addressing problems of prejudice and under representation in television. But could we learn from other industries that also suffer from a lack of diversity.

This week Professor Lesley Yellowlees, the first female President of the Royal Society of Chemistry said the UK was 50 years behind the US when it comes to women working in science. She also has the figures to back it up. For example when the National Academy of Science (a preeminent American institution) announced their 2012 electees last week, 24 of the 84 – more than one in four – were women. Compare that to the Royal Society (The British equivalent of the N.A.S.) where the figure was 2 women out of 44. These figures were part of a study done by the Royal Society called “Tapping All Our Talents”.

What was interesting is that like my experience in television the biggest problem is not getting minorities into the science where they are under-represented but keeping them there. For example in subjects such as Biology, Maths and Chemistry women make up around 50% or more of people studying it at undergraduate level. At entry level jobs women still make up around 50% for Biology but as the years progress you find that by the time you reach professor level less than 20% of all people working in science are women. It is not that women are still working in the respective sciences but at lower levels, the evidence seems to suggest that they just leave.

In the Royal Society study motherhood is seen as possibly the largest factor contributing to the lack of women staying in science. Scientists are meant to work long unsocial hours in labs and often have to travel around the country leaving their families and children. With mothers still often the primary child care providers in a family these unfriendly family working practices are thought to hit women particularly hard and cause them to leave the industry. If they want to address the lack of women in science they need to make it easier for people to balance work and parenthood. In typically scientific fashion the Royal Society had identified a phenomenon (lack of women) analysed the data (women are there at the beginning of their careers and then leave) found a cause (unfriendly family working practices) and decided what needs to be addressed.

There is no doubt that television suffers from many of the same working practices as the sciences; long unpredictable working hours and often working all around the country. And I’ve heard these same reasons given as to why there are not more women in management positions in television News and Current Affairs.

While this may be true it fails to explain why BME staff (many of whom are men) do not manage to have long careers in television.

Large media institutions who, with the best of intentions, often want to address the under-representation of their BME staff invariably devise programmes to encourage more BME people to enter the industry or to arrange mentor programmes for people already in the industry. While these initiatives are welcome what The Royal Society study teaches us is that no number of mentoring schemes or entry level programmes will help increase the number of women in science in the long run, for the sciences what needs to be done is address unfriendly family working practices.

In the same way the television industry needs to clearly identify the exact factors that stop BME staff from having long and fruitful careers. Until we do that we do not know if we are using the right tools to address the problem. Mentoring schemes and entry level programmes might end up being the best solution but the only way we’ll know for sure is if we follow the Royal Society's example and take a more “scientific approach” to analysing the problem.