The first option simply shares with you the PWIA Assessment Tool © to give you the chance to clear your head on your own. With this ‘worksheet’, you have access to a comprehensive list of prompt questions you can work through to help finally decide at your discretion how you would like to present your case for promotion and ‘equity statement’.

The second option shares with you the PWIA Assessment Tool ©, and then follows up with an over-the-screen 1 hour discussion about your responses to the questions to further help clarify your professional goals. Before our meeting, I will carefully read your responses and ear mark questions for you too. One ‘solidly prepared’ draft of your current application for promotion will also be reviewed with detailed written feedback provided to assist you in best conveying your worth. This review will also include becoming thoroughly familiar with your university’s gender policies and criteria for promotion to gauge expectations at each level, and reading 1-2 of your best publications and 1-2 of your full recent teaching evaluations to ensure what I see as great about your work as an independent is included in your final application.

The third option is similar to the ‘Standard’ package, except that it offers 2 x 1 hr discussions and 2 x reviews of draft applications.

If you begin with the ‘Starter’ package but then decide you would like a 1 hour over-the-screen conversation to further talk through what your initial responses to the questions have unearthed ($630 AUD), or one review of your ‘solidly prepared’ draft ($1,260 AUD), we can do that. Similarly, if you begin with the ‘Standard’ package, but then would like to add on either one more over-the-screen conversation ($210 AUD) or one more review of your draft ($420 AUD) but not both, we can do that too. We will work flexibly to meet your specific and emerging needs.

Given the general paucity of professional development funds within the international university sector that could otherwise cover the cost of the ‘Standard’ or ‘Premium’ packages - leaving women out of pocket to cover this service - it is possible to design personalised packages around your available budget. For example, you may opt for a 'solid once-over' of your final application ($450 AUD), or a general over-the-screen chat about your professional experiences (not centred around the PWIA Assessment Tool ©; $250 AUD). Pick and choose the elements that best suit your needs, interests, and budget and we’ll design a purpose-built plan for you.

If you and some of your colleagues would like the opportunity to discuss the general expectations for promotion within academia, get some tips for writing applications, and share experiences to help understand yours better, please contact me to arrange a 2-hour group webinar. You will each receive the PWIA Assessment Tool © prior to and in preparation for our group chat. Smaller groups of 5-7 work well, but this is flexible so we can discuss to arrange what meets your group’s needs. This option is best for those looking for general information first, before possibly considering in-depth personalised assistance with their application or requesting their university to have their application independently reviewed later. You do not all need to be imminently thinking about promotion or be at the same academic level. Men with hearts for social justice are welcome.

The first option involves assessment of the applicant’s research performance relative to opportunity. The comments of the other reviewers will not be read to ensure it is completely independent. A brief report explaining the decision making around gendered track record (that is, performance relative to opportunity among women) will also be provided. The full grant application will be read for context, but close attention will be paid to the ROPE section. This option is best when the applicant has received unanimous favourable ratings for their project proposal, but varying degrees of support for their track record.

The second option is similar to the first except it will additionally include a careful reading of 1-2 of the sole or lead CI’s recent best publications, to further help gauge the quality of their contribution to knowledge in their field. This option is best when the applicant has received unanimous favourable ratings for their project proposal, but varying degrees of support for their track record, within particularly prestigious and competitive award schemes.

In addition to the activities offered in Option B, this package will contact the applicant, inviting them to complete the in-depth PWIA Assessment Tool © to give them the opportunity to safely and privately share their professional setbacks, not apparent in the submitted grant application. This way, a truly well-informed comment about their performance relative to opportunity can be provided. This option is best when the applicant has received unanimous favourable ratings for their project proposal, but varying degrees of support for their track record, within extremely prestigious and competitive award schemes.

Copy and forward the anonymised email you have received, with your reflections on how you feel about it and where you think those feelings are coming from. I will reply either via email or organise to converse over a screen, so that you can safely debrief on your experience and help clarify the final decision you would like to make. This extends to research grant board members who have similarly received contact from a woman applicant for funding.

Forward the anonymised manuscript you have received for an independent cursory check on whether it is suitable for full peer review.

In advance, it may help to know that my leaning is to send all manuscripts out for full review that have basic readability. Reviewers themselves can be very harsh, out to prove their own knowledge base in a business that fundamentally depends on criticism, and who also differ greatly among themselves about what is worthy of being published. Indeed, the more diverse the views from reviewers, the more likely the paper has something important to say. As such, unless there is unanimous rejection of the work because it is unethical or does not read well at all, there would be grounds to give the authors a chance to improve the manuscript in ways that address concerns about empirical rigour while simultaneously respecting their right to self-determination, and then accept it for publication. Nothing is perfect, there’s no such thing, and consensus among reviewers should not be a final indicator of the merit of the work - society has long been plagued by lack of consensus, and the peer-review system, being a microcosm of it, is no different.

When I review articles, I begin where the author is, not where I am. That way, they do not need to meet some idiosyncratic subjective benchmark about how ‘I would have done their work’, but rather see where they were coming from and make suggestions on how to improve it from there. This mindset is respectful of the fact that they have done the work, that all knowledge (in the social sciences) is ultimately opinion, that informed opinion should always be welcome, that the knowledge of women is typically written off as mere opinion, and that every perspective matters if we are working toward the goal of knowledge accuracy. Perhaps read this Editorial too. Status quo hierarchies of evidence need challenging; each methodology has its strengths and weaknesses, no more or less than any other, and which method is picked comes down to ‘fit’ with the research question. RCTs and meta-analyses are not inherently better than focus groups and autoethnographies.

These preliminary reflections may help you decide about whether to send an article out for full peer review without having to contact me, and the power of biased inference from an author’s name for gender and race needs triple self-checking. If you regard the knowledge within each paper the way you unconsciously and positively regard the presumed knowledge of an author with a white man’s name (or any part of the author’s name that appears male/androgynous or Anglicised), you will be increasing the representation of women’s knowledge. If you are still unsure, I welcome your contact and am happy to have a quick look at a paper that has come your way.

$2,100 p.p. n < 10

$1,850 p.p. n < 20

$1,680 p.p. n < 30

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$1,390 p.p. n < 50

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$950 p.p. n < 90

$865 p.p. n < 100

While applicants are completing the in-depth PWIA Assessment Tool ©, I will carefully read the university’s gender policies and criteria for promotion, and each application commissioned for review including 1-2 of their best publications and 1-2 of their full teaching evaluations. These will then be merged together to write a final report with a recommendation about whether they be promoted in the current round with sufficient contextualising information provided. Opportunity for follow-up discussions to help clarify any specific or outstanding queries, will remain open until the university has reached their final decision. In all, the process will help protect the best interest of individual women scholars, and collectively gender equity in academia. Note: Universities looking to include me in the decision-making panel for most or all women applicants so that an independent voice is represented throughout their process, will attract discounts. Also, all universities who access this service (for any number of reviews) can place the PWIA company logo on their university’s ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion’ web page as a visual indicator to staff and students of their commitment to gender equity.

Universities can contact me at any time to get started with being a brave, trustworthy, socially just, respected organisation.

Women can help get that ball rolling by asking me to contact their university for an independent review of their application. If their university’s promotion policies do not allow this, a request to repeal this exclusion can be made in line with the AVCC recommendation an ‘equity and diversity’ representative monitor the process.

Requests from universities to pass the cost back onto women by asking them to engage the coaching instead will not be honoured.

Applicants for whom coaching was obtained will not be independently reviewed to protect universities from unethical ‘double dipping’.

Disclosures of potential conflict of interest will also be made.