Lowering the stakes on exams could help close the gender gap in STEM classes
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
How to mentor undergraduates as a postgraduate, and why it’s important
There’s a difference between mentoring and doling out to-do lists. This is something I’ve learned over the past year, my first as a mentor. Mentoring undergrads became part of my job only recently – in the past, research came first. Most advisors value research outcomes over mentoring, and departments certainly place more value on publications. Before this past year, I was used to just a single undergrad working in my lab, and I thought of them as worker bees, not as future colleagues. Read more
Universities struggle to offer crucial mental-health support to PhD students
A report from Vitae, a non-profit science-career advocacy organization in Cambridge, UK, found that while UK universities are seriously considering the mental health of PhD researchers, gaps and shortcomings in the graduate-programme system continue to keep many students from getting help. Read more
Last-author spot tough to nail for scientists who are not white or male
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
Gender inequality in the sciences: Why is it still with us?
When I was struggling though my double major in chemistry back in the early 1970s I was a rarity. I was one of two women. On the more difficult days, when the environment was feeling particularly male dominated or when I was being particularly patronized, I would try to imagine what it had been like for my grandmother when she was studying to be a doctor at the University of Sydney, straight after World War 1, or for her five sisters, who all trained for professional jobs. Compared to theirs, my situation was a breeze. Read more
Women in science: Building (and drawing) the right role models
Amy Austin has spent her life in the sun. She grew up in Florida, studied for her PhD in Hawaii, and worked in California before moving to Argentina to continue her research. Read more
Fewer women lead top universities
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
Where are the female first and last authors?
Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle gathered names of first and last authors from papers published from 2005-2017 in 15 major science and neuroscience journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, Nature Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Review. Nearly 10% of the names were excluded because they were relatively gender neutral, but the rest told a clear story: In these journals, authorship is a male-dominated enterprise. Read more
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2018: A Naturejobs roundup
Gender pay gap persists … Read more