Julie Jebsen

Lecturer in Organisational Psychology

One of Julie's main research interests is the career progression of women, and specifically the challenges they face around promotion in the workplace and the so-called ‘leaky pipeline' effect which sees women and minority groups leave academia before reaching senior career stages.

In particular she has researched these trends in the science sector, and before joining The University of Manchester in 2022 worked as part of the research team on the EPSRC-funded VisNET project hosted at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde.

This project specifically investigated the networking behaviour and career progression of early-career women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, and this was also the subject of Julie's PhD in Occupational Psychology.

As she explains: "My PhD investigated the individual and organisational factors that contribute to UK-based women achieving Professor status in STEM. What you find is that this leaky pipeline effect actually exists in many subjects, but it is most pronounced in STEM subjects."

"In terms of careers in science, women and men often start with a fairly equal representation at the undergraduate level but not at senior career stages. There appear to be systemic factors that contribute to why these women are not retained and progressed to the same extent as men."

Applied research

Julie says her aim was to really try and find out exactly what is working and what isn't, and then offer practical and evidence-based solutions.

"I always want my research to be applied and have real-world relevance. Yes, it's important to identify the barriers. But then it's just as important to look at what we can then do about a specific problem."

After carrying out more than 70 interviews with academics across the country, Julie says the picture regards the progression of women in STEM subjects is actually a very complicated one.

"One of my main findings was that a lot of the workplace systems that are described as formal are actually not at all in practice. For instance, in areas such as performance management and appraisals I found huge discrepancies between policies and practice."

"None of the women I interviewed said they had received consistent and meaningful appraisals, which was a rather shocking finding. Ultimately this often came down to specific workplace structures, specifically a culture of informal approaches to interpreting and judging performance criteria that lack transparency and scrutiny."

Organisational processes

Julie says the findings strike to the heart of the tension that can often be seen between ‘psychological' processes which can be explained, and ‘organisational' processes which often cannot.

"You see this if you return to my central research question, namely why the careers of some women progress and others do not. But these issues are not just relevant to debates over the progression of women in the workplace. They are just as relevant to the progression of, for instance, ethnic minorities in the workplace too. Ultimately, I am interested in why any social group becomes marginalised in the workplace."

Julie is now writing up the findings from her PhD, after which she plans to do more research on related topics.

"The WEI and Manchester is a great place for me to be working. I come from a background of Psychology where there are lots of specialisms. This is a fantastic opportunity to work with a range of other Organisational Psychologists and researchers in equality, diversity, and inclusion."