Women's leadership is needed more than ever, says University of Canberra's new executive dean of science and technology.
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Professor Janine Deakin has embarked on her new role by listening to members of the faculty and responding to their needs.
"Talking about the post-COVID world, I think the female style of leadership is probably what's needed because I think we, and this is generalising, but women generally are better at the soft skills and then more nurturing behaviour and I think that's what people need at the moment," she said.
"People are sort of fragile and I know that people are getting stressed probably more easily than they have in the past, so their resilience is kind of low."
COVID-19 has forced educators to completely rethink their teaching methods, especially the large-scale lecture.
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"I think there's a lot of different options out there now because there's different technology that wasn't around 10 years ago, that COVID has kind of pushed us into using or starting to look into using, because it was a really tough transition last year going from face-to-face, and then suddenly, in a week going to all-online delivery," Prof Deakin said.
Prof Deakin had a love of animals from a young age and became interested in genetics during her undergraduate degree.
She was surrounded by supportive women throughout her career but noticed the numbers dwindle as she made her way through the university leadership ranks.
"It's only been since I've entered the high levels of leadership that you sort of go to meetings and all the people around the table would be men, and I remember looking around and going 'where are the other women'?" she said.
Things were improving. In February last year, the University of Canberra was awarded the Athena SWAN Bronze Award for their efforts to promote gender equity and diversity in STEM.
A new student club called UCSWIS was formed with a mission to support and empower women in the faculty.
For researchers, gaps in their career due to family responsibilities no longer counted as a black mark against them when applying for grants.
Prof Deakin's advice for young scientist was to follow their passion and seek out mentors.
"I have three friends and we're all in different institutions at the moment but we've all managed to get to those leadership leadership roles and we've all support each other along the way," she said.
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