Blog7 March 2023
‘Recognise your influences’ ~ For me, this process has been vital to building a life and leadership in the people-centred world of higher education. Recognising who and what has influenced you, choosing what to take forward and avoiding making assumptions about others’ paths becomes easier with hindsight. But this reflective process can be a guide for us at every stage, empowering us to shape our careers and collaborations around the values, interests and skills that we discover along the way.
I was lucky to learn this early on. My working class father left school at fourteen, before the Air Force and night classes led to a meteorological career that took him across the world. My mother, although coming from more advantage, wasn’t expected to deploy her talents in a professional career beyond marriage and worked tirelessly at roles that didn’t always meet her abilities or interests. From them, I learnt both the importance of education and hard work but also the power of expectations – those you have and those you have placed on you.
My formative experiences continued to shape me in this regard. I attended five schools across three continents, showing me the breadth of experience and possibility for women in the world. From church attendance, I expanded my sense of awe and fostered a growing awareness of social justice. Living in nature-rich places, from Singapore to the Chilterns, I developed a love of landscape and wildlife which gave me my career but also a sense of the power we have to shape our environments.
So what to do with all these influences – a teenage tapestry of views on the world and on womanhood? Like so many, my answer was to go to university. To become a first-generation student along with all my siblings. At this stage I knew I wanted to study Biology, and to escape the boring, macho, military base where I found myself for A Levels. I escaped into part-time jobs and had fun co-leading the Girl Guides; trying to strengthen their sense of identity in a place where their mothers were officially recorded as w/o or Wife Of.
After doing a BSc in Biology in Manchester my guiding stood me in good stead as, following a PGCE, I taught secondary school science for a couple of years. I loved teaching but not repeating the same syllabus so went on to win funding for an MSc Scholarship in the Conservation of Soil Fertility run jointly between the universities of Kent and London.
My plan was to go abroad and solve world hunger but, instead, I found a mentor and a mission closer to home, deputising for a wonderful tutor and taking on a lectureship at the University of London. Having her support became even more important as I began to juggle course leadership with running a large student hall with my husband and one year old son.
I still meet many of those students in my personal and professional life today and the experience was invaluable. However, my tutor warned me to be careful of responsibilities that were perceived more as ‘women’s work’ which had stalled her career and she impressed on me the importance of progressing with a PhD. A well-respected male colleague also inadvertently set off alarm bells when he returned from field work abroad and thanked me for keeping an eye on his students at home!
This was a turning point, as I moved from recognising the influences that mattered to me to discriminating and choosing what to take forward. Living at a historic university college outside London close to the new Eurostar meant my sense of history and the future collided. I worked on the ecology of the ‘Trans Manche’ rail route while beginning a tradition of family camping trips to the continent tracing the footsteps of influential women like Eleanor of Aquitaine. My sons tease me to this day over Joan of Arc being an early figure in their lives!
These influences were part of a new expeditionary stage of my career. I went out to Sabah several times to research and support fantastic female forest researchers. A Commonwealth Scholarship in Belize found me pregnant with my second son and leaving a message for my husband that I was heading into the forest and would be back in a few days. It turned out I needed to channel Joan of Arc when wielding the umbrella I was given to scare away jaguars that sometimes prowled these mahogany forests.
I was invited to apply for a PhD in forest ecology, funded by the Forestry Commission and enthusiastically landed with both booted feet into a man’s world full of big kit, army trousers and lots of jargon. Navigating all this was rewarding and gave me the confidence to move 350 miles north to a new role as Head of the National School of Forestry accompanied by my husband and now two young boys. Learning to operate successfully as a woman in the worlds of forestry and agriculture was at times a jungle of its own but I was sustained by how my values and interests aligned with those of colleagues and institutional partners.
Since then, leadership roles in Nottingham Trent and Chester have further broadened my awareness of what it means to be a woman in British higher education. Today, more women attend university than men and the focus of inclusion in our academic communities has rightly widened. Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky to have had strong mentors, friends and colleagues of different genders and backgrounds and I’m grateful that my roles at Chester and TASO give me the opportunity to help tackle all sorts of different and overlapping equality gaps in higher education.
So for International Women’s Day 2023 I encourage you to look forward – and back – on your own path and think about the women who have helped you along it. At Chester, I have alongside me many women in senior leadership positions, there not because of their gender but because of their abilities. Unfortunately a comment is made about this now and again that reminds me that we still have some way to go before the ideals of International Women’s Day are made a reality. In the meantime, by fully recognising all our influences I believe we find inspiration to better recognise ourselves, and the talents in one another.