For Gender Parity in Science: Fix the STEM Institutions Not Scientists

Image by Selver Učanbarlić from Pixabay

After decades of pushing to increase female representation in science, women still remain significantly underrepresented at the highest levels, particularly in the ranks of full professors and leadership at top research universities. In my field of Biomedical Science, women have comprised the majority of PhD students for more than a decade, but make up only a quarter of full professors at U.S. medical schools. If you are a woman in science, you have almost certainly attended a workshop where you were given tips for success that boiled down to making you believe you needed to change something fundamental about your identity: Make sure to be confident, but not too bossy. Look professional, but not too fashionable, so people will take you seriously. The unspoken yet inaccurate premise is that it is women scientists who need to be fixed. This tired argument allows people in power at scientific institutions to abdicate their responsibility for devoting meaningful resources or making uncomfortable sacrifices and changes in order to actually achieve equitable representation. This need for radical change has been long in coming, so let’s begin 2021 with a commitment to change the structural conditions that led to the gender imbalances in science. That means we need to see more results and less talk about hiring more women. We need universities to invest money and resources into recruiting, hiring, and promoting women and we need tough penalties for those institutions that don’t show results.

When representatives from universities, awards committees, or granting agencies are questioned about why women are underrepresented in terms of being hired or winning the awards or grants, the most common response is that there were fewer female applicants. Or they say that those women who applied were not as qualified as the men, and of course, they can’t sacrifice quality when making their decisions. These arguments are smoke and mirrors. They place the blame on the women scientists for not applying or achieving as much as their male counterparts and ignore the many structural obstacles female scientists face. 

At the most basic level, women, especially women of color, face gender and sexual harassment at staggering rates. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently found that 50 percent of women faculty and staff reported gender or sexual harassment. All the professional development in the world cannot help you succeed if you are in an unsafe environment or face retaliation from people with more power.

There is evidence at almost every step of the career pathway that women face discrimination that hinders their ability to rack up the publications, grants, and awards necessary to reach the highest levels of academia. New assistant professors at research-intensive universities are primarily trained as postdoctoral fellows in elite labs run by principal investigators that have Howard Hughes Medical Institute funding, are members of the National Academies of Science, or have won major career awards such as the Nobel prize. However, elite labs run by male professors hire fewer female postdocs than other investigators, thereby limiting the number of female job applicants from this highly competitive pool. 

Identical resumes with a male name were rated as more competent and would have been offered a higher starting salary and more career mentoring by scientists of both genders in a randomized double-blind study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Women are less likely to be invited to author commentaries in medical journals, even when scientific expertise, seniority, and publication metrics are taken into consideration. Similarly, women with previous NIH grants are less likely to receive additional grants than their male counterparts. Even in areas like teaching, women face bias in student evaluation ratings. At an institution like mine where student evaluations are used as one component to judge teaching quality for tenure and promotion, these biases can contribute to underrepresentation of women at the full professor level. Study after study shows structural barriers to success in science that contribute to the persistent underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of academia.

While individual scientists from all backgrounds can benefit from professional development, changing individual behavior alone will not lead to equity. As scientists, we are trained to look at data to make our conclusions, and the data by and large don’t support the claim that hiring, promotion, funding, and award decisions are being made solely on applicant merit. There are many obstacles facing women in science and no single intervention will lead to equitable representation, but we need to start shifting the burden of fixing this problem from individual scientists to their institutions.

Here is where we can start today: Structural changes are unlikely to occur unless there are consequences for continued inequity and rewards for making significant progress. As then Vice-President Biden put it “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Institutions need to move from statements affirming their commitment to diversity to more concrete actions. As suggested by the National Academies, 500 Women Scientists, and others, actual resources need to be devoted to changing institutional environments in order to prevent harassment and protect the victims of harassment. Universities need to invest money to ensure that departments can recruit, support, and retain female scientists and impose penalties on those that are unsuccessful. Similarly, funding agencies can incentivize equitable representation by adding explicit review criteria and expected outcomes. Our professional societies also play a role in ensuring that female scientists are represented in their leadership and the pages of their journals, and benefit from their advocacy. Importantly, we must also ensure that white women are not the only beneficiaries of these programs, and that similar initiatives are in place to support equitable representation of scientists from all backgrounds.

When my mother was in college in the 1970s, only 15 percent of Biomedical PhD students were women. By the time I entered graduate school in 2004, women were the majority. This remarkable progress at the graduate level has not translated to equity at the highest levels of academia yet. My hope is that a concerted focus on removing institutional barriers will mean that by the time the students in my research lab are evaluated for tenure in the coming decade or so that their departments will have equal numbers of women at the full professor level.

References Cited

Sheltzer JM, Smith JC. Elite male biologists hire fewer women, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1403334111 

“Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, 2019”, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

“US Medical Schools Faculty Trends,” 2019 Report, American Association of Medical Colleges.

“Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine”, 2018, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

Moss-Racusin CA, Dovidio JF, Brescoll VL, Graham MJ, Handelsman J. Faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1211286109 

Thomas EG, Jayabalasingham B, Collins T, Geertzen J, Bui C, Dominici F. Gender Disparities in Invited Commentary Authorship in 2459 Medical Journals. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(10):e1913682. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.13682

Pohlhaus JR, Jiang H, Wagner RM, Schaffer WT, Pinn VW. Sex differences in application, success, and funding rates for NIH extramural programs. Acad Med. 2011;86(6):759-767. doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e31821836ff

MacNell, L., Driscoll, A. & Hunt, A.N. What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching. Innov High Educ 40, 291–303 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4

Vijayaraghavan, R, Duran, KL, Ramirez K, Zelikova J, Lescak E, 500 Women Scientists. It’s Time for Science and Academia to Address Scientific Misconduct, Scientific American, December 12, 2017.

Katherine A. Wilkinson is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. Her research lab studies sensory neurons in the muscle that are important for motor control and balance.

(c) 2021 Katherine A. Wilkinson