Gender issues related to graduate student attrition in two science departments
This study explored the gender issues that contributed to the differential attrition rate of men and women graduate students in two science departments (biology and chemistry) at a large research university. Departmental records were used to compute the student attrition …
Read MoreGender differences in conference presentations: a consequence of self-selection?
Women continue to be under-represented in the sciences, with their representation declining at each progressive academic level. These differences persist despite long- running policies to ameliorate gender inequity. We compared gender differences in exposure and visibility at an evolutionary biology …
Read MoreGender and Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Agentic and Communal Differences
In 2 studies that draw from the social role theory of sex differences, the authors investigated differences in agentic and communal characteristics in letters of recommendation for men and women for academic positions and whether such differences influenced selection decisions …
Read MoreFrom Summers to Sommers
Lest anyone think the academic world has settled into a consensus on the status of women in the sciences during the two years since a very public controversy thrust the issue onto the national stage, Christina Hoff Sommers all but …
Read MoreGender imbalance in US geoscience academia
Geoscientists explain women’s under-representation in our field along three dominant themes: the structure of academia, historically low numbers of women, and women’s views and choices. Which factor they perceive as most important depends overwhelmingly on their gender.…
Read MoreGender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty
The 1999 report, A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT, created a new level of awareness of the special challenges faced by women faculty in the sciences. Although not the first examination of the treatment …
Read MoreFor gender equity at scholarly conferences
Check out this interesting Q&A about striving for gender equality at scientific conferences.…
Read MoreExpectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines
The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in …
Read MoreFour Ways Women Stunt Their Careers Unintentionally
Looking back through scores of interviews we’ve conducted in the course of training and coaching engagements, and returning to the 360 reports, these are the four specific low-confidence behaviors cited by managers (male and female alike):
-Being overly modest
-Not …
Feminism & Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge
Geography is a subject that throughout its history has been dominated by men; men have undertaken the heroic explorations that form the mythology of its foundation, men have written most of its texts, and, as many feminist geographers have remarked, …
Read MoreElite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women
Women make up over one-half of all doctoral recipients in biology-related fields but are vastly underrepresented at the faculty level in the life sciences. To explore the current causes of women’s underrepresentation in biology, we collected publicly accessible data from …
Read MoreEl tesoro de una científica rebelde
Ana Roqué de Duprey (1853-1933) was an educator, suffragist, and one of the founders of the University of Puerto Rico. This article talks about her book “Botánica antillana” in which she described more than 6,000 species of plants and trees. …
Read MoreEnough is Enough
Power differentials among individuals are inevitable and they certainly exist in academia, where power comes from the perception that an individual is more influential and has greater access to resources than the majority of their peer group. This influence then …
Read MoreDon’t be that dude: Handy tips for the male academic
There is a plethora of research on the causes of hostile environments for women in academia, and on why we have an underrepresentation of women in many fields. There are support groups for women, societies entirely devoted to women academics …
Read MoreDouble Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science
This report asks a long-standing question: do the patterns documented in experimental social psychologists’ labs reflect what is actually occurring at work for women in the STEM fields? (Mitchell & Tetlock, 2006). The answer is yes. Gender bias exists, and …
Read MoreDual-Career Couples and Academic Science
Society is increasingly accepting women in the work force, couples are having fewer children and sharing more responsibilities, and employers are increasingly faced with the task of recruiting and accommodating both men and women who are making career decisions constrained …
Read MoreDoes gender matter?
The suggestion that women are not advancing in science because of innate inability is being taken seriously by some high-profile academics. Ben A. Barres explains what is wrong with the hypothesis.…
Read MoreDouble-blind review favours increased representation of female authors
Double-blind peer review, in which neither author nor reviewer identity are revealed, is rarely practised in eco- logy or evolution journals. However, in 2001, double-blind review was introduced by the journal Behavioral Ecology. Following this policy change, there was a …
Read Moreeaks in the pipeline: separating demographic inertia from ongoing gender differences in academia
Identification of the causes underlying the under-representation of women and minorities in academia is a source of ongoing concern and controversy. This is a critical issue in ensuring the openness and diversity of academia; yet differences in personal experiences and …
Read MoreDoes gender bias influence awards given by societies?
AGU is a participant in a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded project called Advancing Ways of Awarding Recognition in Disciplinary Societies (AWARDS), which seeks to examine whether gender bias affects selection of recipients of society awards. AGU is interested in …
Read MoreDo Babies Matter in Science?
Federal investigators of Title IX, the law that forbids sexual discrimination in education, have only recently discovered that there may be a problem for women in science.
Investigators for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and …
Read MoreDo women have less success in peer review?
Peer review assesses what is of value in science, yet it has been widely criticized for biases. One such perceived bias is gender. But evidence for such a bias has been contradictory.…
Read MoreDiversity at 100: women and underrepresented minorities in the ESA
The 2015 Ecological Society of America (ESA) centennial celebration will recognize important efforts to recruit both women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities in the field of ecology. To determine the impact of these efforts, we evaluated the degree to …
Read MoreDiversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It?
Back in the bad old days, the workplace was a battleground, where sexist jokes and assumptions
were the norm.
Women were shut off from promotion by an old boys’ network that favored its own. They went to meetings and were …
Read MoreCoaching Service: Escaping the Ivory Tower
Is academia making you miserable?
Are you becoming restless, depressed, apathetic, or cynical? Are you struggling to find a job or finish your degree? Is your teaching feeling rote? Have you lost your enthusiasm for research? Are you resenting your …
Read MoreCorrespondence: Gender Bias
Correspondence about multiple perspectives on gender bias.…
Read MoreCompetition and Careers in Biosciences
The rapid progress of biomedical research should be rewarding young scientists with bright careers. Instead, the National Research Council (NRC) reports a “crisis of expectations” as career opportunities fall short of those in comparable occupations. Our analysis suggests that the …
Read MoreCombining Intercontinental Parenting and Research: Dilemmas and Strategies for Women
One of the biggest challenges for parents conducting research abroad is how to manage either with one’s children or without them during that time. These days, the pressures of dual-career marriages have meant that it is rare to find a …
Read MoreBroadening Participation at the National Science Foundation: A Framework for Action
The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports the best ideas from the most capable researchers and educators in all fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Creating opportunities and developing innovative strategies to broaden participation among diverse individuals, institutions, and …
Read MoreChild Care, Research Collaboration, and Gender Differences in Scientific Productivity
Large differences in scientific productivity between male and female researchers have not yet been explained satisfactorily. This study finds that childcare and lack of research
collaboration are the two factors that cause significant gender differences in scientific publishing. Women with …
Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds
Science professors at American universities widely regard female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same accomplishments and skills, a new study by researchers at Yale concluded.
As a result, the report found, the professors were less likely …
Read MoreBalancing the Scale: NSF’s Career-Life Balance Initiative
At a time when other nations are increasingly developing and retaining their own science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent, it is critical that the United States develops its own globally competitive, domestic STEM talent in order to ensure future …
Read MoreBeyond Patriarch: A Class-Based Explanation of Women’s Subordination
In the last five years or so, one of the major challenges to conventional thinking in geography has come from feminism. Feminist scholars have forced many geographers into an uneasy rethinking not only of their ways of seeing and analysing …
Read MoreBarbie: I can be a computer engineer. (The Remix)
A short story was written about Barbie becoming a computer engineer, but it was sexist in that the boys needed to come to the rescue to fix Barbie’s mistakes and the assumption that Barbie would only design the games and …
Read MoreAuthorship, Collaboration, and Gender: Fifteen Years of Publication Productivity in Selected Geography Journals
In academia, publication productivity, defined as the number of peer-reviewed articles published and the frequency of citations, is a primary factor in the assessment of tenure and promotion. One of the most cited gender differences in academia is the “productivity …
Read MoreArticles from Nature about women in science
Science remains institutionally sexist. Despite some progress, women scientists are still paid less, promoted less frequently, win fewer grants and are more likely to leave research than similarly qualified men. This special issue of Nature takes a hard look at …
Read MoreAn international study of the gendered nature of academic work: Some cross-cultural explorations
This study explores the gendered nature of academic work based on the Carnegie Foundation’s International Survey of the Academic Profession. Characterisation of related yet discrete aspects of academic work describes commonalities between men and women, and in particular, highlights the …
Read MoreArticle about The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research
Understanding how a species battles to sustain itself in a challenging habitat is a cornerstone of ecological research; now scientists have applied this approach to science itself to discover why women are being driven out of academia. Their results, published …
Read MoreAlternative Careers in Science, Second Edition: Leaving the Ivory Tower (Scientific Survival Skills)
Book by Cynthia Robbins-Roth containing advice for those dissatisfied with work, but not with science.
* An insider’s look at the wide range of job opportunities for scientists yearning to leave the lab
* First-person stories from researchers who successfully …
Advancing Institutional Transformation for Minority Women in Academia: A Conference
While the numbers of women pursuing higher education in science, engineering and medicine has grown (including the number of minority women) there is still a relatively small number of minority women faculty in all institutions of higher education including minority …
Read MoreAll About That Space
Video on NASA Youtube channel “ReelNASA” set to music from musician Meghan Trainor’s mega hit “All About That Bass”. Includes shots of space and dance routines featuring interns at NASA’s Johnson Space Center…
Read MoreAchieving Broader Impacts in the National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology
Since 1997, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has guided reviewers to use two criteria to evaluate proposals: intellectual merit (the potential to advance scientific knowledge) and broader impacts (the potential to benefit society). The introduction of the Broader Impacts Criterion …
Read MoreA Test Case for Sexual Harassment
Philosophy professors at the University of Colorado’s flagship campus here thought they were taking a bold step.
They wanted to help solve their field’s longstanding problems over the treatment of women and find ways to improve the climate on their …
Read More6 steps for nominating a colleague for a professional award
Article by ESWN member Tracey Holloway on how to go about nominating a colleague for a professional award…
Read MoreA Lab of Their Own
Attract them as students and recruit them as faculty. Do what you can to keep them in the academy. That’s generally been the mantra of those who are concerned about the dearth of women in university science.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute …
Read More2009 Nobels: Break or Breakthrough for Women?
Article from 2009
“The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. But this is the first year that more than one woman has been chosen as a science laureate. Indeed, the four distinguished scientists in the class of 2009—Elizabeth Blackburn …
Read MoreA Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy”
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If …
Read MoreA Bad Reputation for Academic Careers
Why are more and more graduate students turning away from careers at research universities?…
Read MoreA New Frontier for Title IX: Science
Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.
The National Science Foundation, …
Read More10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields
There is growing concern at American colleges about why so few women study science, technology, engineering, or math (the so-called “STEM” fields). Though women constitute more than half of undergraduates, according to a study of college students in 2009, 138,000 …
Read More10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields
A recent and quite interesting meta-study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of University Women (AAUW), located eight factors that contribute to the disparity between the number of female and male college students electing the sciences: …
Read More“Why Aren’t More Women in Science?
The year 2006 may be remembered for unprecedented attention given to issues related to women in science. Numerous expert panels — most notably one appointed by the National Academies — examined barriers facing female scientists. A new collection published by …
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