Remembering the role of luck and privilege in academic achievement
This week I woke up to the announcement by my alma mater — The University of Auckland — of its 2023 cohort of ’40 under 40’ that listed me as one of their recognized ‘Disruptors and Innovators’. As problematic as the age-specific awards are, there are not very many honours greater than being recognized by one’s home university. Auckland was a happy place for me for over nine years as an undergraduate and PhD student. While I managed to slide into the ‘Under 40’ label when they first contacted me about this award (I have since passed that milestone) I am acutely reminded of the role of luck and privilege in any career success. I thank my lucky stars, my colleagues, loved ones and ancestors for the sacrifices they have made to bring me here. In the same breath, I feel this is a story that needs to be told now more than ever before.
When I left my alma mater and flew to Australia to embark on a postdoctoral career, I found that journey incredibly lonely and confronting. Two years prior to that, I had come out to my closest PhD friends — Drs Cherrie Kong and Lin-Chien Huang. Yet, moving to Australia felt like a step back into the closet. Whilst I was excited about the science that was ahead of me, I did not feel like I fully belonged in the workplace I had literally flown into. I suffered quietly; however, my luck came in the shape of my now partner of 12 years, Jess, who saw me for who I am from the very beginning.
Despite a cultural mismatch, I had free rein to be productive in that workplace. I was privileged to have that — especially knowing how demanding and conformist postdoc life can be for some people. The greatest stroke of luck was when Jess agreed to come on an adventure with me to the UK to chase my microscopy dreams, less than two years after meeting. A decision that set us embarking on the greatest rollercoaster adventure of our lives — details for another time. In a nutshell though, our eligibility to immigrate to the UK with relative ease (a privilege afforded to so few people) opened up a rich academic experience that we had not enjoyed previously. The access to academic jobs, funding and recognition, the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the greatest minds and forge life-long friendships with amazing scientists and to be embedded in a fast-paced scientific community (much more than our previous settings) propelled our careers.
As a new PI, I was lucky to have two of (arguably) the most talented and driven researchers that I have ever met as my first two PhD students — Drs Miriam Hurley and Tom Sheard. Even though I struggled, and on numerous occasions nearly gave up on funding bids after many consecutive and bitter rejections, having these two dedicated colleagues in my team at a formative stage of this journey meant that I was never out of the game. I also had the best mentors and colleagues who consoled me when I struggled. When I eventually came out at work, these colleagues rallied around me — something that I never thought would happen. Whilst this should not be a thing in the 21st century, I had more horror stories about workplace discrimination and harassment experienced by queer, Black, and brown friends and peers than I did happy stories. I do therefore consider myself immensely lucky to have my allies around me.
Eventually when my fortunes changed with research funding, I leant heavily on my privilege. I had a permanent job in my then-university, which meant that they let me apply for the fellowships that many of my precarious colleagues were not underwritten for. At interviews, lectures, and conference talks, I spoke English with relative fluency and in a neutral accent which helped me navigate around classist prejudices in the highly tribal arena that is British academia. This was a significant privilege I enjoyed in spite of being born with a stutter in a non-English speaking society, largely thanks to the immense devotion that my parents made to coaching and refining my language skills. They observed time, and time again, that career opportunities were gatekept by those who judged the book by the cover. Their prediction was certainly true for some of the academic communities that I have worked in. However, with some of my mentors, I learned to wield my language skills and to deflect backhanded compliments such as, “you speak English so well”. I was lucky to be able to access coaching and opportunities that turned out to be crucial escape routes from potential career dead-ends. None of these should be ingredients of a successful and satisfying scientific careers. What I undoubtedly *needed* was broad recognition by my communities of the urgency to dismantle such barriers.
In so many industries including academia, we are always judged by our covers. Robert H. Frank, in his bestseller book ‘Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy’ spells out this reality that one’s fortunes are primarily determined by where one is born. This would have been true for me as I stumbled through my secondary school years, largely disinterested in passing the exams that would have paved my way to higher education. My lowest point came when I failed my physics exam in year 12. In my mid-teens, my parents made the ultimate sacrifice in uprooting our whole family and bringing me and my siblings to our future home and alma mater in Auckland. Overnight, they went from established workers in their own professions — a consultant radiologist and a vice president in a new startup bank — to being unemployed. For two years, they woke up every morning at 04:00 to deliver the New Zealand Herald newspaper for a combined daily earning of < $40. Not only did they shield me and my siblings from the financial bottlenecks, but they also showed us how to recover from career breaks. Their actions to move us to New Zealand gave us a fresh start; it gave me a second chance at finishing school — one that I probably did not deserve, but relished as I discovered my love of physics.
Moving to the UK in pursuit of continuity for my postdoctoral career gave me chance to heal, to be and work amongst people that I felt safe with. I am glad however to have the hindsight to reflect the tough times in the decade that we lived in the UK, not least because of the poor academic pay, precarity in jobs and pensions, systemic biases, and menacing political climate that saw over 230,000 British citizens and residents perish between 2020 and 2022 due to COVID19. Whilst I could not evade COVID in its initial waves, I am incredibly lucky to be alive and healthy. We had complete gratitude when we eventually got to come back home and embrace our parents and siblings, all alive and well. Not every one of my immigrant colleagues had that good fortune. My academic outputs dwindled and research productivity took a major hit during the pandemic years (similar to so many women in science across the world). Yet, I was lucky to hold a prestigious UKRI Future Leader Fellowship which protected me from some of the backbreaking workloads, especially teaching, that many of my contemporaries and colleagues experienced. Privilege breeds privilege — something that we in the ED&I spheres call ‘the Matthew effect’.
Fast forward to present day, I consider myself incredibly lucky to remain in the primary career path that I chose when I graduated from Auckland with a PhD. Along the way, there were numerous moments when I came close to throwing the towel in, but for some reason I am still here. A big part of that reason is luck. Luck has come in the shape of colleagues who have worked hard to support me, those who have consoled me and given me opportunities.
As academic careers have become more and more precarious, I have also come to learn the limitations in the way the academic community measures excellence. Every time a funder looks at the journal impact factors of someone’s research papers, or every time a funding reviewer counts the number of first or senior author papers their reviewee has published, they fail to measure the role of luck and privilege. They fail to recognise that if their reviewee is a woman academic in physics based in India, they have less than 1 in 5 chance of being a lead author in a paper compared to a man in the same discipline in the same country (see analysis by Holman et al), and only half the odds of a woman academic in the same discipline based in Australia. All the other consequent career yardsticks such as citation counts, funding outcomes, awards, leadership opportunities, and teaching evaluations encode penalties to the tune of compounding biases against women, people of colour, non-typical gender identity and sexual orientation, age, class, and people with visible and invisible disabilities.
I pinch myself every day to be where I am. The fuel that gets me through the day every day is gratitude and the opportunity to open doors for others, in particular peers who bear down the hemorrhaging academic pipeline. Recognition of the roles of luck and privilege in our industry can bring much needed humility and kindness to our scientific community — I live for this day. However, this requires buy-in from everyone to reject metric-based measurement of scientists’ contributions to the field. It will require an acknowledgement that the much aspired (true) diversity in STEM may never arrive until our narrow definitions of excellence as well as the myopia that leads us overlook systemic inequalities are corrected.
