Professorial Research Fellow, London School of Economics
On a personal career path: “I never had a plan and I never had a career path, so some of the places I found myself in surprised me.”
Balancing academic life with children: “It was made pretty clear to me when I transferred to the LSE from King’s College London that it would be very difficult to become a full Professor and remain a part-timer. With the encouragement of some key colleagues, I did achieve promotion to a Professorial grade (as a Professorial Research Fellow) but I am conscious that it is when you have a child that you really notice gender differences. Unless your partner is going to be the one with the main childcare responsibilities (and his job made this impossible), your life changes dramatically, if you believe, as I do, that a child needs to see their parents, or at least one parent, before they go to bed!”
Reflections on the working week: “What needs to change is the whole concept of the working week, so that partners can divide their working life between them, and there is no job that you can’t job share, no matter what it is or how complicated it is. We’re a long way from this. We’ve stalled to some extent.”
Lessons for aspiring academics: “I suppose my advice would be to have a sense of your career and career path. I don’t recommend anybody to follow my example. Things have happened by chance and I have had certain opportunities and been very blessed with certain people I’ve known. So I think if you really are serious and you know what you want to do, which is to be a senior female academic, you need to think about how you are going to go about it. What are the steps? What do you need to do?”
