The Leadership: 76 female scientists on an expedition to Antarctica
Seventy-six female scientists on an expedition to Antarctica. What could possibly go wrong?
An expedition to Antarctica. Seventy-six female scientists from across the world, brought together on a project that promotes leadership, in an enterprise, the organiser insists, in which “there is high tolerance for things not going to plan. Because the greatest learning anybody will ever have is from the mistakes they make, not from getting everything right.”
What could possibly go wrong?
As Ili Bare’s engrossing documentary, The Leadership, shows in closely observed and revealing detail, things did go wrong. There was tension, discomfort and dissent during the journey. And in the aftermath some distressing additional details emerged. Yet many things went right. The Leadership explores the complex interplay of expectations and demands, conflict and collaboration, that has allowed the project to continue and develop.
The expedition, called Homeward Bound, was initiated by Melbourne entrepreneur Fabian Dattner, who has long been focused on the business of exploring and teaching ideas about leadership. Several years ago she was in Tasmania running some workshops for female scientists when, as she tells it, she had a dream.
The dream placed her on a boat, taking a group of women on a journey. “I saw the word Homeward Bound over my left shoulder, a huge banner,” she recalls. “I knew exactly what the content was … I knew where we were. I saw Antarctica through the windows.”
Her epiphany was soon translated into action. It gave rise to the idea for a series of expeditions that across the course of several years would involve 1000 women working in science. It grew out of her belief that the world desperately needed new kinds of leadership and that women should be at the forefront; above all, women with a science background. Making a film about the experience also was part of the vision, she says.
The project took off quickly. And in 2016 the first Homeward Bound expedition set out, amid high hopes and great excitement, for a 20-day journey to Antarctica. Bare was there, too, with her film crew.
As a destination and a backdrop, Antarctica was significant for all kinds of reasons. “Antarctica is what we’re fighting for,” Dattner says. It’s a location undergoing dramatic transformation as a result of climate change.
For the participants, most of whom had to make sacrifices and considerable efforts to raise the funds to take part in Homeward Bound, Antarctica was an additional inducement to be there. And for some it had particular significance.
For science communicator Fern Hames, for example, the journey represents the opportunity she was denied decades earlier when she was doing research on Antarctic algae and applied three years in a row to go there. She couldn’t, she was told, because there were no facilities for women.
For educator and explorer Songqiao Yao, who came on board as a member of the Homeward Bound communications team, the inspiration for her research and activism came from a childhood gift, a collection of Antarctic postcards given to her by one of her mother’s colleagues. For the participants, Antarctic experiences are a source of scientific curiosity, diversion and distraction all at once. Whether it’s the sight of chinstrap penguins on an ice floe or a pod of whales to starboard, or the chance to inspect moss at close quarters or the glimpse of a leopard seal, it is a place of wonders.
For Bare, going to Antarctica was definitely an exhilarating proposition. “I had that in common with everyone on the ship,” she says. There were some disconcerting aspects of the environment, however. There was no real privacy or solitude possible on board. And, Bare recalls, “I didn’t see night-time the whole time I was there. There were perhaps a couple of hours of darkness in the wee hours. It was quite disorienting in and of itself.”
The participants in the first Homeward Bound expedition came from many disciplines, but one thing they had common was their isolation. They were often the only women in the lab, the department, the school or on the work site. One striking detail: this is the first time for almost everyone that they have been with so many other female scientists in a room.
Bare says she was aware that many “had encountered significant obstacles in their careers … And there are a vast array of different complex kind of cultural and systemic reasons for that. Obviously I think we can see that those gender issues are not unique to women in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine).”
Part of the process involved sharing stories and experiences.
“They all had really significant stories that were quite emotional for many of them and really personal,” Bare says. If the documentary was to show the vulnerability that these women felt, “I also wanted to be able to pair that with strength”, with a sense of the determination and commitment that’s readily apparent, whatever their field or discipline.
The accounts are of obstacles, sidelining, frustration and sometimes intimidation and violence. Some describe uncertainty or self-doubt; some speak of difficulties asking for a promotion or a raise. Pregnancies can put an end to careers. Some describe threats, bullying, sexual harassment. There is a high dropout rate for women in STEMM. As their stories are shared, however, one of the questions the film provokes is, “Where does the idea of leadership fit into this narrative?”
It soon becomes clear that the kinds of exercises, assumptions and approaches that underpinned Dattner’s modus operandi did not always fit the needs or expectations of this group.
“All of you are going to feel uncomfortable at one point or another, and if you don’t we have in some way or another failed you,” Dattner told the participants, but the uncomfortable reactions did not occur in ways she expected.
Objections are raised, observations are made, individually and in front of the group, on everything from Dattner’s demeanour to the whiteness of the cohort to the absence of real strategic options to the lack of support for vulnerable participants who were being invited to explore traumatic experiences.
What happens in the aftermath of the first journey is an essential part of the story of The Leadership and the experiment it recorded. “The experiment and the story ask age-old questions about how you achieve social change, and whether or not changing the individual is enough, or whether you need to try and change systems,” Bare says.
The Leadership shows what happened to some of the participants on their return, and indicates how Dattner and the Homeward Bound team responded to the issues laid bare.
The Leadership needed that longer view, Bare says, “And I think as well, that it’s always rewarding in a story when you can see how people change and what they learned.”
Despite the problems on the journey, the ultimate reaction is positive. Bare shows individual examples of progress among participants, and the development of a supportive network, as well as new approach from the Homeward Bound team. The issues they deal with also included two accounts that emerged of alleged sexual harassment and assault.
For Dattner, the project could potentially have ended with the first trip, and all its difficulties and differences. But the organisation responded to feedback and set in place a detailed series of changes, more than 60 in number. A second expedition sailed in 2017.
“Oh god, I think if Homeward Bound 2 had not worked we would have packed up our lunch boxes and gone home from the playground,” Dattner says. They wanted to find a way to make it work. “Because we are all — and this is everyone involved with Homeward Bound — deeply cause-driven.”
So Homeward Bound continues, with a wider reach, a more diverse line-up of participants and faculty, and considerable adjustments to the course. Dattner is no longer a facilitator. There have been four expeditions so far; the fifth, due to leave next month, has been postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The documentary has a strong effect on viewers, Bare says, judging by the feedback she has received after screenings.
“What I have really noticed is that people have very emotional responses,” she says. “There’s definitely a conversation at the end of it. And that’s what we were hoping for.”
For Dattner, The Leadership is about a project whose outcomes she remains proud of. “I had the dream. But it’s not the film I dreamt of,” she says.
“I think it was the right film at the time. I will make the other film, I hope within the next five years.”
The Leadership is screening in selected cinemas.
