Tag Archives: sexism

Boyfriends and husbands may put female researchers at a hiring disadvantage

Posted on by

Married and partnered female researchers may be less likely than their male counterparts to land a junior-faculty position at US universities, finds a study.

Divorce wedding cake

By Paul Smaglik

Female candidates’ – but not male candidates’ — relationship status was a primary consideration in hiring committees’ discussions and decisions, according to study co-author Lauren Rivera, an associate professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She found that committee members assumed that heterosexual female candidates whose partners or husbands held academic or high-status jobs could not relocate for the job, and excluded them from offers when the committee had viable male or unpartnered female options. Yet, she says, committees — whose members included women — rarely discussed male applicants’ relationship status and assumed that those candidates’ partners or wives would be able to move for the position if an offer were made.

Continue reading →

Do you think your career was harder as a woman in science?

Posted on by

Academic speakers at the Naturejobs Career Expo, London, 2016, discuss sexism in academia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdfqXdibc0k

Continue reading →

How to combat implicit bias

Posted on by

The habit of implicit bias can be broken, but it takes awareness and behavioural strategies, says a new study.

Guest contributor Viviane Callier

Gender stereotypes affect our attitudes and behaviours, even if we’re unaware of them. But the habit of implicit bias can be broken: an intervention with faculty at the University of Wisconsin helped to break the bias habit, led to an improved department climate for everyone, and increased faculty hires of women and underrepresented minorities, a new study shows.

Bias, perhaps?

Continue reading →

Social media: Handling casual sexism

Posted on by
Reply

Don’t let unwelcome comments muffle your voice, instead speak out about your experiences, says Virginia Schutte.

Guest contributor Virginia Schutte 

virginia-schutte-naturejobs-blog

Virginia Schutte studying fiddler crabs in Taiwan’s salt marshes {credit}Virginia Schutte{/credit}

As scientists increasingly use social media for outreach, they open themselves to interactions with anyone who has access to the internet. This contact isn’t always going to be positive and may get personal. I recently had to decide what to do after someone said some unsavory things on my science website.

What I experienced is “casual” or “everyday” sexism. Sometimes sexism is so blatant or is acted upon in such a way that it has big repercussions (#distractinglysexy, I’m looking at you). This wasn’t that – this was a thought just about me that wasn’t particularly vulgar. But this kind of passing thought is common, even for scientists. For example, the Field Museum’s Emily Graslie devotes an episode of The Brain Scoop to discussing the frustrating comments she deals with “on a daily basis”. Some people are shocked less by casual sexism itself and more by the fact that people may not even react to it because it is so pervasive.

This person made it clear why he was visiting my website: it had nothing to do with my science and everything to do with my appearance. But this comment revealed his focus without damaging mine, so it didn’t rile me like his next assertion did: “[It’s] good to feel sexy, but it’s bad to mask it behind other means”. He implied that the only reason I have a science website at all is to give myself a place on the internet to post sexy pictures of myself. As if my site’s real purpose is so ludicrous as to be unbelievable.

I’m a marine ecologist. I’ve worked with everything from whales to fiddler crabs, but I’m pursuing a career in science communication. I want to connect people with science. Engaging non-scientists with the right information is the key to helping them make informed decisions that limit environmental impacts, therefore increasing quality of life.

I regularly post about my research and science in general on my professional Facebook page, “Virginia talks science with you”. The page is an outlet for my passion for science education and is also a way for me to gain experience communicating science. His comments popped up on my Facebook page after a post about Discovery’s Shark Week, so I can only assume he was reacting to photos of me around the site wearing a wetsuit. I’ll skip discussing most of my initial emotional reactions and focus on those that have risen to the fore now that more time has passed. Continue reading →

Reviewing gender

Posted on by
Reply
Original image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We’re back! Apologies for the long radio silence – day job, what can I say.

Last week Nature published a leader reflecting upon our performance as editors and journalists in the gender balance of our referees, commissioned authors, and journalistic profiles. The verdict?  Plenty of room for improvement – in 2011, only 14% of Nature’s 5,514 manuscript referees were women.  Those numbers are for all areas, both physical and life sciences. I don’t have the exact number for just neuroscientists but a quick partial analysis suggests it is in the same ballpark. How good/bad is 14%? According to a 2007 survey of North American neuroscience programs, 36% of neuroscience assistant professors, 28% of associate, and 21% of full professors are women. I don’t know what those percentages would be if you included neuroscientists from the rest of the the world (I’m guessing they would be lower), but I am fairly confident in saying we haven’t been grossly overrepresenting women in our referee picks.

So how do we choose our referees?  Continue reading →

Sexism in science means men more likely to get hired

Posted on by
Reply

It is no secret that women are vastly underrepresented in many scientific fields, particularly the further you look up the career ladder. The explanations for this disparity vary, but perhaps one of the most common arguments is that women feel forced to choose between a family and their career, and leave science early whilst men continue to progress.

But a new piece of research suggests this reasoning may only be part of the story, instead pointing the finger at a subtle yet pervasive gender bias in the scientific community which is working against women – making them miss out not only on jobs, but also on financial and professional support when they are hired.

Corinne Moss-Racusin, a psychology postdoc at Yale University, and her colleagues, devised a simple test to work out whether there is any bias against women applying for a job in science.

The team got 127 university professors working across biology, chemistry and physics, to give feedback on what they believed were the application materials from a real student applying for a job as a laboratory manager.

Each professor received exactly the same application materials, except for the name of the applicant. Half of the professors were told they were reviewing an application from somebody called John, whilst the other half were told the applicant’s name was Jennifer. Apart from the name, all the other information was identical.

The professors were asked to rate how likely they would be to hire the applicant, as well as how competent they thought the applicant was. They were also asked to suggest a starting salary  and say how much mentoring they would offer the applicant in their new role.

Despite the fact that the application materials were identical apart from the applicant’s name, the professors – regardless of whether they were men or women – were significantly more likely to hire the applicant when they thought he was called John. Although they said they liked the female applicant, the scores suggest she was rated as less competent than the man, even though they had identical skills.

Continue reading →