Tag Archives: gender

Lowering the stakes on exams could help close the gender gap in STEM classes

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Women tend to underperform in introductory STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses, but tweaking how courses are graded could help change that.

By Diana Crow

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.

An emphasis on high-stakes exams at undergraduate level may be a contributor to the gender gap

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Last-author spot tough to nail for scientists who are not white or male

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Many scientists mark the evolution of their careers by publications: Their first paper, their first stint as a lead author, the first time they earn a final or senior spot. But for women and members of some minority groups, those benchmarks can be especially hard to reach, according to a study published in the May 2018 issue of AEA Papers and Proceedings.

By Chris Woolston

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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. Continue reading →

Fewer women lead top universities

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Female leadership at the world’s top 200 universities in an international ranking fell this year to 17%, according to a report – a reminder that gender equity in science remains a distant goal.

The University of Oxford has had a female vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, who took up the post in January 2016.

The University of Oxford has a female vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, who took up the post in January 2016. {credit}Getty{/credit}

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. Continue reading →

When conferences collide with family needs

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As a busy scientist with two young children, one of Rebecca Calisi’s most vexing challenges is figuring out how to attend scientific conferences without a huge disruption in family life. Bringing children to conferences is an option, but not all are especially welcoming to the needs of families, especially to mothers with young children.

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Rebecca and her daughter at the annual conference for the Animal Behavior Society at the University of Colorado in 2013

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.

By not providing accommodations for children, Calisi says, conferences can unintentionally create barriers that exclude large swaths of scientists—especially early-career scientist-mothers who may not be able to afford childcare. “One part of promoting diversity is supporting women with children,” Calisi says. “If institutions say they want to support diversity, they should put their money where there mouth is.”

In the paper, Calisi and co-authors suggest that conferences could fund on-site childcare services, lactation rooms and other amenities by asking for voluntary donations during registration. Exhibitors who make a donation could receive a sign or emblem that show their support. “I guarantee you they would get more foot traffic,” Calisi tells Nature. The paper also calls for all conferences to clearly state that parents are allowed to bring babies to talks and poster sessions. For now, she says, rules about children seem to change from conference to conference and even from hour to hour. She notes that researchers with babies were recently turned away from a poster session at a large conference even though the official policy permitted children in the exhibit area.

A practical, comfortable space for breastfeeding or pumping breast milk is an especially important accommodation, Calisi says. “A lactation room tells you a lot about how much a [scientific] society values women,” she says. In November, she turned to Twitter to complain about the facilities at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting, held last year in Washington DC.  Within hours of that tweet, the society provided more comfortable lounge chairs for mothers. “It’s not that the society was anti-women,” she says. “They just didn’t know.”

SfN, for its part, aims to become more inclusive. “The society is actively exploring ways to continue to enhance the spaces for nursing mothers in San Diego [California] this year and at SfN’s future meetings,” says society spokesperson Kara Flynn in a statement to Nature. She adds that the society is committed to “fostering a welcome and diverse community in which all scientists are able to contribute fully.”

Some conferences are already parent-friendly, Calisi says. She recently attended the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement in Science in Austin, Texas, where the lactation room was comfortable and easily accessible. “I gave them two thumbs up,” she says.

Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

 

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The leaky pipeline: Thank putdowns, slights

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Searches for the reasons behind the ‘leaky pipeline’—the structural failures, such as equal representation, that drive women out of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM)—often focus on large-scale problems such as work-family or work-life balance. But insidious psychological strikes also contribute to the outflow.

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.”

Even though they were already deep into their PhD studies, 12 of the 28 women indicated that they didn’t want to pursue research careers. Five cited personal or work-life balance reasons, but six chalked up their decision to change course to the workplace environment and culture, including two who specifically expressed a desire to escape a male-dominated field. Hypothetically, Bernstein says, more women would finish graduate school and remain in research careers if the gender balance wasn’t already so skewed, but noted that any such scenario is difficult to test.

The interviews and posts, which took place over seven months, highlighted many of the positive aspects of the scientific life, including feelings of accomplishment and mastery. But the women in the study also reported “frequent” instances of feeling ignored, dismissed or excluded. One woman reported that a male colleague reacted rudely when she won a scholarship. “He blamed it on the fact that I was a woman and that they probably gave me a scholarship to fulfill a quota,” she said in an interview as part of the study.

The women reported that they were disproportionately asked to perform “women’s work” such as cleaning up the lab or performing clerical duties. “We’ve been hearing that complaint for decades now,” says Bernstein, who is also a principal investigator with the US National Science Foundation’s CareerWISE programme, a coaching initiative for graduate-level women in science and engineering. “It’s surprising that it hasn’t changed.”

A few women reported unwanted sexual advances in the workplace. Bernstein notes that the interviews and posts tracked only study subjects’ recent experiences, not everything that had ever happened with them during their graduate programme. Also, the interviews and posts took place before the rise of the #metoo movement, so women may have been more reluctant to report such events than they would be today.

Kevin Miller, a researcher with the American Association of University Women based in Washington DC, says that even seemingly minor grievances can add up. “Women in STEM have to fight an uphill battle that starts when they are girls and their interest in the sciences may be discouraged or ignored,” he says. “The experiences described in this study show that women face bias both subtle and overt as well as systemic factors that make them more likely to exit STEM fields.”

 

Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

 

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Isolation and alienation force female researchers out of US tech jobs

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US corporate training programmes aimed at retaining female researchers in technology may be focussing on the wrong targets.

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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. Continue reading →

Still more gender differences are identified

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Gender gaps in science continue to exist, and a pair of recent studies highlights yet another set of differences between female and male researchers.

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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. Continue reading →

Are you aware of gender bias in peer review?

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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.

Last month, Dina Balabanova, (Associate Professor in Health Systems Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM); Section Editor for BMC Health Services Research) and Jamie Lundine (Research Fellow at LSHTM), hosted a workshop at LSHTM to discuss gender equality in peer review. The specific aim was to discuss ways to address women’s equal participation in the peer review process as authors, peer reviewers and editors in health journals. The workshop was attended by a diverse group of people with a range of backgrounds and experience including PhD students, researchers, editors, publishers and funders.

Dina set the scene by referring to one of the main messages from the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research that we can “learn lessons both from poor and rich nations to address the inequities that exist in all communities”. This was with respect to building strong health systems which protect the poor and promote equity. The message struck a chord for Dina, not only in terms of her own experience in health systems and policy research, but also in terms of parallel issues with respect to gender in peer review.

Gender bias in journals

Gender bias is a potential issue for journals across a range of different fields, not just health journals. A recent study of gender bias by Markus Helmer and colleagues on the Frontiers family of journals (which disclose the names of the handling editor and reviewers on published articles) found that while for some journals the proportion of women as authors could be as high as 48%, on average only 38% of peer reviewers are women and only 28% of editors are women. Of course, the final proportion of women who were named as peer reviewers may not have been representative of the proportion of women initially invited to peer review, but it seems that women are underrepresented in the peer review process, especially at editor level.

Jamie explained some fascinating insights she had obtained by interviewing a range of editors for their thoughts on gender. Many of the editors she spoke with appeared unaware of any gender bias and felt that their editorial boards were gender balanced (when in fact they were not!). So how widespread is the problem? And how can we fix it?

From an individual journal’s perspective, sadly we are mostly in the dark, as the majority of journals do not collect data on sex, let alone gender. But given the evidence so far that change is needed, how can journals help promote women’s equal participation in peer review – as authors, reviewers and editors?

An intense sharing of ideas followed, facilitated by group discussion and consensus-building to see if we could agree which activities could have most impact, and which could be most feasible. But a first step could be for journals to actually collect some gender statistics for authors, peer reviewers and editors. It’s also heartening to see that something as simple as suggesting to authors that they can help the journal improve the diversity of its reviewer pool by including women (as well as young scientists, and members of other under-represented groups) as their “suggested reviewers” can have a positive effect.

We shall be taking back these, and other, ideas to Springer Nature for further discussion with colleagues. Thank you Dina and Jamie, and the facilitators Eleanor Hutchinson and Keti Glonti for a truly thought-provoking day. We look forward to seeing what we can collectively do to make a difference.