In many undergrad STEM courses, high-stakes exams — such as mid-terms and finals — determine as much as 60-70% of the student’s overall grade. However, this emphasis on tests may be inadvertently putting some students at a disadvantage. Read more
The analysis—which covered 486,644 biomedical articles with two to nine authors published between 1946 and 2009—found that female, black and Hispanic authors were less likely than were white men to hold prestigious last-author spots. And while all scientists tended to land more last-author spots as their careers went on, that trend was slower for women and minorities. “There’s a lack of progression for those groups,” says Bruce Weinberg, a co-author of the study and an economist at Ohio State University in Columbus. Read more
Just 34 of leading universities named in this year’s annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have female presidents, down 1% from the 36 that were led by women in 2017. Read more
Calisi, a behavioural neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, and a group of 45 other scientist-parents, have turned their frustrations into a call for action. In a paper published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers detail the shortcomings of past conferences and offer a blueprint for making conferences more welcoming and accessible to parents of young children. Read more
A study involving interviews and online posts of 28 women in the later stages of PhD studies in engineering and physical sciences in the United States, published 31 January in the journal Social Sciences, revealed many day-to-day slights that left them feeling alienated and undervalued. Some said they were contemplating leaving research as a result. “There’s a culture in male-dominated environments,” says Bianca Bernstein, a co-author of the study and a psychologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. “Some women feel it’s not for them.” … Read more
A report, out on 7 February in Information Systems Journal, examines the results of in-depth interviews with 23 women in information-technology jobs across nine US firms, including consultancies, a bank and an insurance company. Study authors sought to identify the challenges faced by female researchers in industrial technology positions. Read more
Donald Trump’s “America first but not alone” speech at last month’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos may have hogged the headlines, but the meeting of world leaders was also chosen to launch the largest ever global survey of primary schoolchildren’s career aspirations. Read more
One study suggests that the concept of “brilliance” in science might discourage some women from following certain career paths or education opportunities. Another found that women are more likely than men to offer “honorary authorships” to scientists who may not or do not deserve it—a courtesy that might obscure the magnitude of their own contributions. Read more
This guest blog comes from Elizabeth Moylan, Senior Editor, Peer Review Strategy and Innovation BMC at Springer Nature, and Elisa de Ranieri, Head of Editorial Process and Data Analytics, Nature journals at Springer Nature. Read more
The study, the latest in a lengthy string of gender-disparity findings in academia, quantifies a type of discrimination to which female scientists have long objected—the low number of speaker invitations that they receive compared with male scientists. One of the most egregious examples—speaker panels comprised solely of Caucasian males—has spawned the hashtag #manel (for ‘male panel’) on Twitter. Read more
