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
When conferences collide with family needs
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
The leaky pipeline: Thank putdowns, slights
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
Isolation and alienation force female researchers out of US tech jobs
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
Still more gender differences are identified
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
Tackling the #manel problem
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
The struggles of female and underrepresented scientists
Female and Hispanic faculty representation in the United States increased significantly between 1992 and 2015, but more slowly for black and indigenous faculty members, according to a review study of personnel records from four large US land-grant institutions published in PLoS One . The small numbers of URM lack the data necessary to draw valid conclusions about retention. However, the study found, URM hiring is increasing, but not at the rate expected for the number of STEM doctoral degrees earned by the populations. Read more
Harassment and assault: ‘Disheartening’ trends
The attitude means that workplace regulations around assault or harassment either don’t exist in the field or aren’t enforced, says Robin Nelson, an anthropologist at Santa Clara University in California. The study follows on from one conducted in 2013 that found that about two-thirds of the 666 women who were surveyed experienced some sort of assault or harassment in the field during their career. Read more
Diversity: Reasons to be cheerful, part 1
A Google Doodle earlier this month celebrated the 100th birthday of Sir John Cornforth, the organic chemist whose work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions earned him a Nobel Prize in 1975. Read more
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