Tag Archives: gender and science

Science Fuse: a STEM initiative for children in Pakistan and beyond

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A June 3, 2022 article by Abdullahi Tsanni for Nature journal features an interview with Lalah Rukh, founder of Science Fuse, a non-governmental agency dedicated to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education for youth and which is located in Lahore, Pakistan, Note: Links have been removed,

My interest in science began when I was 12, after reading an article about personalized medicine in a children’s magazine published by a leading newspaper in Pakistan. I was fascinated by this idea, and I cut out the article and pasted it by my bedside so that I could see it every morning when I woke up.

In 2003, I moved back to Norway, where I was born, and studied molecular biology and biotechnology at university. But I realized that I didn’t enjoy doing science in the laboratory as much as I enjoyed engaging people with science. So, I joined Forskerfabrikken, a non-profit organization based in Oslo that encourages children to engage with science. We organized hands-on science programmes for schoolchildren. I worked there for five years as a science communicator, and I learnt about science engagement and social entrepreneurship. I discovered the core features that make for great small-scale school exhibits, and I saw how the organization established revenue streams and structures to expand its team and expertise across Norway. And I realized that science communication is where my passion truly lies.

…

In summer 2013, when I was in Pakistan to get married, I visited a small charity-run school for children living in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Karachi. I did a 3-hour science workshop for the children with fun demonstrations — from creating giant bubbles to making beads that change colour under sunlight, and chemical reactions that make water ‘pop’. There were big smiles on the children’s faces and the experiments sparked their curiosity. It felt more meaningful for me to do this kind of work in Pakistan. Since 2016, Science Fuse has reached more than 45,000 children, trained 650 teachers and nurtured a community of more than 200 science communicators. We have worked closely with about 250 schools and partner organizations to deliver world-class science education across the country.

…

In Pakistan, 44% of children are out of school, one of the highest percentages in the world — and the majority of those who do go to school attend low-income private or government schools. Many low-income families don’t have access to good-quality STEM education. …

Tsanni’s June 3, 2022 article is a short read that offers insight into STEM, youth, girls,and science in Pakistan, if you have the time.

Science Fuse creates posters featuring Pakistani women in science to break stereotypes and encourage children to follow their science passion.Credit: Sana Nasir, Maria Riaz & Sana Kirmani/Science Fuse [downloaded from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01566-6]

You can find Science Fuse here. At a guess, they, along with so many other groups, were affected by COVID and this interview in Nature is intended as a relaunch of their programmes. It’s good to see these initiatives coming back and, in the meantime, you can access their older (the most recent being from November 2020) ‘Incredible Questions of Science’ podcasts here or here at Anchor.fm.

H/t to Gary McFarlane (@GaryM) for his tweet about the interview.

Two cultures: the open science movement and the reproducibility movement

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It’s C. P. Snow who comes to mind on seeing the words ‘science and two cultures’ (for anyone unfamiliar with the lecture and/or book see The Two Cultures Wikipedia entry).

This Sept. 14, 2020 news item on phys.org puts forward an entirely different concept concerning two cultures and science (Note: Links have been removed),

In the world of scientific research today, there’s a revolution going on—over the last decade or so, scientists across many disciplines have been seeking to improve the workings of science and its methods.

To do this, scientists are largely following one of two paths: the movement for reproducibility and the movement for open science. Both movements aim to create centralized archives for data, computer code and other resources, but from there, the paths diverge. The movement for reproducibility calls on scientists to reproduce the results of past experiments to verify earlier results, while open science calls on scientists to share resources so that future research can build on what has been done, ask new questions and advance science.

…

A Sept. 14, 2020 Indiana University (IU) news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, explains the research findings, which unexpectedly (for me) led to some conclusions about diversity with regard to gender in particular,

Now, an international research team led by IU’s Mary Murphy, Amanda Mejia, Jorge Mejia, Yan Xiaoran, Patty Mabry, Susanne Ressl, Amanda Diekman, and Franco Pestilli, finds the two movements do more than diverge. They have very distinct cultures, with two distinct literatures produced by two groups of researchers with little crossover. Their investigation also suggests that one of the movements — open science — promotes greater equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Their findings were recently reported in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS].

The team of researchers on the study, whose fields range widely – from social psychology, network science, neuroscience, structural biology, biochemistry, statistics, business, and education, among others – were taken by surprise by the results.

“The two movements have very few crossovers, shared authors or collaborations,” said Murphy. “They operate relatively independently. And this distinction between the two approaches is replicated across all scientific fields we examined.”

In other words, whether in biology, psychology or physics, scientists working in the open science participate in a different scientific culture than those working within the reproducibility culture, even if they work in the same disciplinary field. And which culture a scientist works in determines a lot about access and participation, particularly for women.

IU cognitive scientist Richard Shiffrin, who has previously been involved in efforts to improve science but did not participate in the current study, says the new study by Murphy and her colleagues provides a remarkable look into the way that current science operates. “There are two quite distinct cultures, one more inclusive, that promotes transparency of reporting and open science, and another, less inclusive, that promotes reproducibility as a remedy to the current practice of science,” he said.

A Tale of Two Sciences

To investigate the fault lines between the two movements, the team, led by network scientists Xiaoran Yan and Patricia Mabry, first conducted a network analysis of papers published from 2010-2017 identified with one of the two movements. The analysis showed that even though both movements span widely across STEM fields, the authors within them occupy two largely distinct networks. Authors who publish open science research, in other words, rarely produce research within reproducibility, and very few reproducibility researchers conduct open science research.

Next, information systems analyst Jorge Mejia and statistician Amanda Mejia applied a semantic text analysis to the abstracts of the papers to determine the values implicit in the language used to define the research. Specifically they looked at the degree to which the research was prosocial, that is, oriented toward helping others by seeking to solve large social problems.

“This is significant,” Murphy explained, “insofar as previous studies have shown that women often gravitate toward science that has more socially oriented goals and aims to improve the health and well-being of people and society. We found that open science has more prosocial language in its abstracts than reproducibility does.”

With respect to gender, the team found that “women publish more often in high-status authorship positions in open science, and that participation in high-status authorship positions has been increasing over time in open science, while in reproducibility women’s participation in high-status authorship positions is decreasing over time,” Murphy said.

The researchers are careful to point out that the link they found between women and open science is so far a correlation, not a causal connection.

“It could be that as more women join these movements, the science becomes more prosocial. But women could also be drawn to this prosocial model because that’s what they value in science, which in turn strengthens the prosocial quality of open science,” Murphy noted. “It’s likely to be an iterative cultural cycle, which starts one way, attracts people who are attracted to that culture, and consequently further builds and supports that culture.”

Diekman, a social psychologist and senior author on the paper, noted these patterns might help open more doors to science. “What we know from previous research is that when science conveys a more prosocial culture, it tends to attract not only more women, but also people of color and prosocially oriented men,” she said.

The distinctions traced in the study are also reflected in the scientific processes employed by the research team itself. As one of the most diverse teams to publish in the pages of PNAS, the research team used open science practices.

“The initial intuition, before the project started, was that investigators have come to this debate from very different perspectives and with different intellectual interests. These interests might attract different categories of researchers.” says Pestilli, an IU neuroscientist. “Some of us are working on improving science by providing new technology and opportunities to reduce human mistakes and promote teamwork. Yet we also like to focus on the greater good science does for society, every day. We are perhaps seeing more of this now in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

With a core of eight lead scientists at IU, the team also included 20 more co-authors, mostly women and people of color who are experts on how to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in science; diversity and inclusion; and the movements to improve science.

Research team leader Mary Murphy noted that in this cultural moment of examining inequality throughout our institutions, looking at who gets to participate in science can yield great benefit.

“Trying to understand inequality in science has the potential to benefit society now more than ever. Understanding how the culture of science can compound problems of inequality or mitigate them could be a real advance in this moment when long-standing inequalities are being recognized–and when there is momentum to act and create a more equitable science.”

I think someone had a little fun writing the news release. First, there’s a possible reference to C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and, then, a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (Wikipedia entry here) along with, possibly, an allusion to the French Revolution (liberté, égalité, et fraternité). Going even further afield, is there also an allusion to a science revolution? Certainly the values of liberty and equality would seem to fit in with the findings.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Open science, communal culture, and women’s participation in the movement to improve science by Mary C. Murphy, Amanda F. Mejia, Jorge Mejia, Xiaoran Yan, Sapna Cheryan, Nilanjana Dasgupta, Mesmin Destin, Stephanie A. Fryberg, Julie A. Garcia, Elizabeth L. Haines, Judith M. Harackiewicz, Alison Ledgerwood, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, Lora E. Park, Sylvia P. Perry, Kate A. Ratliff, Aneeta Rattan, Diana T. Sanchez, Krishna Savani, Denise Sekaquaptewa, Jessi L. Smith, Valerie Jones Taylor, Dustin B. Thoman, Daryl A. Wout, Patricia L. Mabry, Susanne Ressl, Amanda B. Diekman, and Franco Pestilli PNAS DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921320117 First published September 14, 2020

This paper appears to be open access.

Here’s an image representing the researchers’ findings,

Caption: Figure 1. From “I” science to team science. Moving from an ‘!’-focused, independent, lab-centric approach to science to a more collaborative team science that promotes communal values, sharing, education, and training. Teamwork is a strength for scientific work and discovery; the total is more than the sum of the individual part contributions. Credit: Indiana University

eXXpedition Great Lakes 2016: hunting for plastic debris

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An all woman expedition set sail on Aug. 20, 2016 for a journey across the five Great Lakes in search of plastic debris according to an Aug. 16, 2016 news item on phys.org,

Female scientists from the U.S. and Canada will set sail Aug. 20 [2016] on all five Great Lakes and connecting waterways to sample plastic debris pollution and to raise public awareness about the issue.

Event organizers say eXXpedition Great Lakes 2016 will include the largest number of simultaneous samplings for aquatic plastic debris in history. [emphasis mine] The all-female crew members on the seven lead research vessels also aim to inspire young women to pursue careers in science and engineering.

An Aug. 15, 2016 University of Michigan news release, which originated the news item, provides more details,

Teams of researchers will collect plastic debris on the five Great Lakes, as well Lake St. Clair-Detroit River and the Saint Lawrence River. Data collected will contribute to growing open-source databases documenting plastic and toxic pollution and their impacts on biodiversity and waterway health, according to event organizers.

Two University of Michigan faculty members, biologist Melissa Duhaime and Laura Alford of the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, will lead the Lake St. Clair-Detroit River team, aboard a 30-foot sailboat.

The crew of up to eight people will include an Ann Arbor middle school teacher, an artist and student at the Great Lakes Boat Building School, and girls from Detroit-area schools. Onboard activities will include water sampling and trawling for plastic debris using protocols developed by the 5 Gyres Institute.

“There is a place for scientists in this type of public outreach, and it is a complement to the research that we do,” said Duhaime, an assistant research scientist in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

“In a single day through an event like this, we can potentially reach orders of magnitude more people than we do when we publish our scientific papers, which are read mainly by other scientists. And greater public awareness about this topic, rooted in rigorously collected and interpreted data, can certainly lead to changed behavior in our relationships with plastics.”

Duhaime’s lab studies the sources of Great Lakes plastics, as well as how they are transported within the lakes and where they end up. The work has involved a summer on three of the Great Lakes, trips to Detroit-area wastewater treatment plants, and the sampling of fish and mussels.

The group’s first Great Lakes project included multiple U-M labs, one of which analyzed the stomach contents of fish and mussels, looking for tiny plastic beads, fibers and fragments. They found no plastic “microbeads”—spheres typically less than 1 millimeter in diameter—but plastic fibers were present in a third of the zebra and quagga mussels and at various levels in all the fish species they checked: 15 percent of emerald shiners and bloaters, 20 percent of round gobies, and 26 percent of rainbow smelt, according to Duhaime.

The stomach-content study, which will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, was based on work done in lakes Erie and Huron and was led by Larissa Sano, who is now at U-M’s Sweetland Center for Writing.

For years, plastic microbeads were added as abrasives to beauty and health products like exfoliating facial scrubs and toothpaste. But the federal Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 28, bans the manufacture of microbeads beginning next year.

Sources of tiny plastic fibers that make it into the Great Lakes include fleece jackets and other types of synthetic clothing. These microfibers are released during laundering, then slip through wastewater treatment plants and into waterways. Fibers found in common household textiles such as carpets, upholstered furniture and curtains also make their way into the environment and can end up in the lakes.

“Microbeads were just the tip of the iceberg,” Duhaime said. “I think fibers are the future of this research and a much more important issue than microbeads, because of the prevalence and the pervasiveness of these plastic textiles in our lives.”

Researchers like Duhaime are also investigating the possibility that tiny bits of Great Lakes plastics can transfer toxic pollutants from the water into fish and other aquatic organisms. It is unclear what level of human health risk, if any, these microplastics pose to people who eat Great Lakes fish; it is a topic of active research.

On Aug. 20 [2016], the team led by Duhaime and Alford will sail up the Detroit River to Lake St. Clair, sampling water and trawling for plastics along the way. Throughout the day at Detroit’s Belle Isle, members of their team will host a beach cleanup and data collection. In addition, a free public-awareness event will be held throughout the day outside Belle Isle Aquarium, followed by a plastic-free community picnic with live music.

Members of the general public are also encouraged to collect Great Lakes water samples and to participate in shoreline cleanup events on the 20th [Aug. 20, 2016].

The mission leaders for eXXpedition Great Lakes 2016 event are two women who met during an all-female voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 2014. Jennifer Pate is a filmmaker, and Elaine McKinnon is a clinical neuropsychologist. Pate plans to use video footage and photographs gathered during the Aug. 20 [2016] event to create a film called “Love Your Greats.”

“In parts of the Great Lakes, we have a higher density of microplastics than in any of the ocean gyres,” Pate said. “So the problem isn’t just out there in the oceans. It’s right here in our backyard, in our lakes and on our dinner plates.

“We are all a part of the problem, but that means we are also all part of the solution. That’s why we are holding this event, to give people an opportunity to change the story and create a healthier future.”

Partners in the eXXpedition Great Lakes 2016 event include Adventurers & Scientists for Conservation, the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup in Canada and the Alliance for the Great Lakes’ Adopt-a-Beach program in the United States.

What a great idea! I wonder if this might inspire an annual event.

NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration), one of the world’s largest hackathons, and women

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Elizabeth Segran’s April 19, 2016 article for Fast Company profiles some work being done at NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to encourage more women to participate in their hackathons (Note: A link has been removed),

For the past four years, NASA has hosted the Space Apps Challenge, one of the biggest hackathons on the planet. Last year, 14,264 people gathered in 133 locations for 48 to 72 hours to create apps using NASA’s data. A team in Lome, Togo, built a clean water mapping app; one in Bangalore, India, created a desktop planetarium; another in Pasadena, California, created a pocket assistant for astronauts. This year’s hackathon happens this upcoming weekend [April 22 – 24, 2016].

While NASA has been able to attract participants from all corners of the globe, it has consistently struggled to get women involved. NASA is working very hard to change this. “The attendance is generally 80% male,” says Beth Beck, NASA’s open innovation project manager, who runs the Space Apps Hackathon. “It’s more everyman than everywoman.”

There is a mention of a 2015 Canadian hackathon and an observation Beth Beck made at the time (from the Segran article),

Beck noticed that female participation in hackathons seemed to drop after the middle school years. At last year’s hackathon in Toronto, for instance, there were two sections: one for students and one for adults. Girls made up at least half of the student participants. “The middle school girls looked like honey bees, running around in little packs to learn about the technology,” she says. “But in the main hacking area, it was all guys. I wanted to know what happens that makes them lose their curiosity and enthusiasm.”

Beck’s further observations led to these conclusions,

It turns out that women are not significantly more interested in certain subjects than others. What they cared about most was being able to explore these topics in a space that felt friendly and supportive. “They are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong,” Beck says. Often, these signals are very straightforward: they seek out pictures of women on the event’s webpage and look for women’s names on the speaker panels and planning committees. …

Another interesting thing that Beck discovered is that women who are brave enough to attend these events want to go a day early to get the lay of the land and perhaps form a team in advance. They want to become more comfortable with the physical space where the hackathon will take place and learn as much as possible about the topics. “When the hackathon then becomes flooded with men, they feel ready for it,” she says.

…

While men described hacking as something that they did in their spare time, the research showed that many women often had many other family responsibilities and couldn’t just attend a hackathon for fun. And this wasn’t just true in developing countries, where girls were often tasked with childcare and chores, while boys could focus on science. In the U.S., events where there was childcare provided were much more highly attended by women than those that did not have that option. …

NASA’s hackathons are open to people with diverse skill sets—not just people who know code. Beck has found that men are more likely to participate because they are interested in space; they simply show up with ideas. Women, on the other hand, need to feel like they have the appropriate battery of skills to contribute. With this knowledge, Beck has found it helpful to make it clear that each team needs strong storytellers who can explain the value of the app. …

The folks at NASA are still working at implementing these ideas and Segran’s article describes the initiatives and includes this story (Note: A link has been removed),

Last year [2015], for instance, two female students in Cairo noticed that the hackathon has specifically called out to women and they wanted to host a local chapter of the hackathon. Their professor, however, told them that women could not host the event. The women reached out to NASA themselves and Beck wrote to them personally, saying that she highly encouraged them to create their own event. That Cairo event ended up being the largest Space Apps hackathon in the world, with 700 participants and a wait list of 300. …

Kudos to Beth Beck, NASA, and those two women in Cairo.

For anyone (male/female) interested in the 2016 hackathon, it’s being held this weekend (April 22 – 24, 2016), from the NASA Space Apps Challenge homepage,

For 48-72 hours across the world, problem solvers like you join us for NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge, one of the largest hackathons in the universe. Empowered by open data, you collaborate with strangers, colleagues, friends, and family to solve perplexing challenges in new and unexpected ways — from designing an interactive space glove to natural language processing to clean water mapping. Join us on our open data mission, and show us how you innovate.

Not Just For Coders

Beginners, students, experts, engineers, makers, artists, storytellers — Space Apps is for you! We welcome all passionate problem solvers to join our community of innovators. Citizens like you have already created thousands of open-source solutions together through code, data visualizations, hardware and design. How will you make your global impact?

It’s too late to become a host for the hackathon but you may be able to find a location for one somewhere near you on the hackathon website’s Locations page. There are three locations in Canada for the 2016 edition: Toronto (waitlist), Winnipeg (still open), and Waterloo (waitlist).

Gender gaps in science and how statistics prove and disprove the finding

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A Feb. 17, 2015 Northwestern University news release by Hilary Hurd Anyaso (also on EurekAlert) features research suggesting that parity in the numbers of men and women students pursuing science degrees is being achieved,

Scholars from diverse fields have long proposed that interlocking factors such as cognitive abilities, discrimination and interests may cause more women than men to leave the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pipeline after entering college.

Now a new Northwestern University analysis has poked holes in the much referenced “leaky pipeline” metaphor.

The research shows that the bachelor’s-to-Ph.D. pipeline in science and engineering fields no longer leaks more women than men as it did in the past

Curt Rice, a professor at Norway’s University of Tromsø, has challenged the findings in a Feb. 18, 2015 post on his eponymous website (more about that later).

The news release goes on to describe how the research was conducted and the conclusions researchers drew from the data,

The researchers used data from two large nationally representative research samples to reconstruct a 30-year portrait of how bachelor’s-to-Ph.D. persistence rates for men and women have changed in the United States since the 1970s. For this study, the term STEM persistence rate refers to the proportion of students who earned a Ph.D. in a particular STEM field (e.g. engineering) among students who had earlier received bachelor’s degrees in that same field.

They were particularly surprised that the gender persistence gap completely closed in pSTEM fields (physical science, technology, engineering and mathematics) — the fields in which women are most underrepresented.

Among students earning pSTEM bachelor’s degrees in the 1970s, men were 1.6 to 1.7 times as likely as women to later earn a pSTEM Ph.D. However, this gap completely closed by the 1990s.

Men still outnumber women by approximately three to one among pSTEM Ph.D. earners. But those differences in representation are not explained by differences in persistence from the bachelor’s to Ph.D. degree, said David Miller, an advanced doctoral student in psychology at Northwestern and lead author of the study.

“Our analysis shows that women are overcoming any potential gender biases that may exist in graduate school or undergraduate mentoring about pursing graduate school,” Miller said. “In fact, the percentage of women among pSTEM degree earners is now higher at the Ph.D. level than at the bachelor’s, 27 percent versus 25 percent.”

Jonathan Wai, a Duke University Talent Identification Program research scientist and co-author of the study, said a narrowing of gender gaps makes sense given increased efforts to promote gender diversity in science and engineering.

“But a complete closing of the gap was unexpected, especially given recent evidence of gender bias in science mentoring,” Wai said.

Consequently, the widely used leaky pipeline metaphor is a dated description of gender differences in postsecondary STEM education, Wai added.

Other research shows that gaps in persistence rates are also small to nonexistent past the Ph.D., Miller said.

“For instance, in physical science and engineering fields, male and female Ph.D. holders are equally likely to earn assistant professorships and academic tenure,” Miller said.

The leaky pipeline metaphor is inaccurate for nearly all postsecondary pathways in STEM, Miller said, with two important exceptions.

“The Ph.D.-to-assistant-professor pipeline leaks more women than men in life science and economics,” he said. “Differences in those fields are large and important.”

The implications of the research, Miller said, are important in guiding research, resources and strategies to explain and change gender imbalances in science.

“The leaking pipeline metaphor could potentially direct thought and resources away from other strategies that could more potently increase women’s representation in STEM,” he said.

For instance, plugging leaks in the pipeline from the beginning of college to the bachelor’s degree would fail to substantially increase women’s representation among U.S. undergraduates in the pSTEM fields, Miller said.

Of concern, women’s representation among pSTEM bachelor’s degrees has been decreasing during the past decade, Miller noted. “Our analyses indicate that women’s representation at the Ph.D. level is starting to follow suit by declining for the first time in over 40 years,” he said.

“This recent decline at the Ph.D. level could likely mean that women’s progress at the assistant professor level might also slow down or reverse in future years, so these trends will need to be watched closely,” Wai said.

While the researchers are encouraged that gender gaps in doctoral persistence have closed, they stressed that accurately assessing and changing gender biases in science should remain an important goal for educators and policy makers.

Before moving on to Rice’s comments, here’s a link to and citation for the paper,

The bachelor’s to Ph.D. STEM pipeline no longer leaks more women than men: a 30-year analysis by David I. Miller and Jonathan Wai. Front. Psychol., 17 February 2015, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00037

This paper is open access (at least for now).

Maybe the situation isn’t improving after all

Curt Rice’s response titled, The incontinent pipeline: it’s not just women leaving higher education, suggests this latest research has unmasked a problem (Note: Links have been removed),

Freshly published research gives a more nuanced picture. The traditional recitation of percentages at various points along the pipeline provides a snapshot. The new research is more like a time-lapse film.

…

Unfortunately, the new study doesn’t actually show a pipeline being tightened up to leak less. Instead, it shows a pipeline that is leaking even more! The convergence in persistence rates for men and women is not a result of an increase in the rate of women taking a PhD; it’s the result of a decline in the rate of men doing so. It’s as though the holes have gotten bigger — they used to be so small that only women slipped through, but now men slide out, too.

Rice believes  that this improvement is ‘relative improvement’ i.e. the improvement exists in relation to declining numbers of men, a statistic that Rice gives more weight to than the Northwestern researchers appear to have done. ‘Absolute improvement’ would mean that numbers of women studying in the field had improved while men’s numbers had held steady or improved for them too.

To be fair, the authors of the paper seem to have taken at least some of this decline in men’s numbers into account (from the research paper),,

Reasons for the convergences in persistence rates remain unclear. Sometimes the convergence was driven by declines in men’s rates (e.g., in mathematics/computer science), increases in women’s rates (e.g., in physical science), or both (e.g., in engineering). help account for the changes in persistence rates. …

Overenthusiasm in the news release

Unfortunately, the headline and bullet list of highlights suggest a more ebullient research conclusion than seems warranted by the actual research results.

Think again about gender gap in science
Bachelor’s-to-Ph.D. pipeline in science, engineering no longer ‘leaks’ more women than men, new 30-year analysis finds

Research shows dated ‘leaky pipeline’ assumptions about gender imbalances in science

  • Men outnumber women as Ph.D. earners in science but no longer in doctoral persistence
  • Dramatic increase of women in science at Ph.D., assistant professorship levels since 1970s, but recent decline since 2010 may be of concern for future supply of female scientists
  • Assessing inaccurate assumptions key to correcting gender biases in science

Here’s the researchers’ conclusion,

Overall, these results and supporting literature point to the need to understand gender differences at the bachelor’s level and below to understand women’s representation in STEM at the Ph.D. level and above. Women’s representation in computer science, engineering, and physical science (pSTEM) fields has been decreasing at the bachelor’s level during the past decade. Our analyses indicate that women’s representation at the Ph.D. level is starting to follow suit by declining for the first time in over 40 years (Figure 2). This recent decline may also cause women’s gains at the assistant professor level and beyond to also slow down or reverse in the next few years. Fortunately, however, pathways for entering STEM are considerably diverse at the bachelor’s level and below. For instance, our prior research indicates that undergraduates who join STEM from a non-STEM field can substantially help the U.S. meet needs for more well-trained STEM graduates (Miller et al., under review). Addressing gender differences at the bachelor’s level could have potent effects at the Ph.D. level, especially now that women and men are equally likely to later earn STEM Ph.D.’s after the bachelor’s.

The conclusion seems to contradict the researchers’ statements in the news release,

“But a complete closing of the gap was unexpected, especially given recent evidence of gender bias in science mentoring,” Wai said.

Consequently, the widely used leaky pipeline metaphor is a dated description of gender differences in postsecondary STEM education, Wai added.

Other research shows that gaps in persistence rates are also small to nonexistent past the Ph.D., Miller said.

Incomplete pipeline

Getting back to Rice, he notes the pipeline in the Northwestern paper is incomplete (Note: Links have been removed),

In addition to the dubious celebration of the decline of persistence rates of men, the new research article also looks at an incomplete pipeline. In particular, it leaves aside the important issue of which PhD institutions students get into. For young researchers moving towards academic careers, we know that a few high-prestige universities are responsible for training future faculty members at nearly all other research universities. Are women and men getting into those high prestige universities in the same numbers? Or do women go to lower prestige institutions?

Following on that thought about lower prestige institutions and their impact on your career, there’s a Feb. 23, 2015 article by Joel Warner and Aaron Clauset in Slate investigating the situation, which applies to both men and women,

The United States prides itself on offering broad access to higher education, and thanks to merit-based admissions, ample financial aid, and emphasis on diverse student bodies, our country can claim some success in realizing this ideal.

The situation for aspiring professors is far grimmer. Aaron Clauset, a co-author of this article, is the lead author of a new study published in Science Advances that scrutinized more than 16,000 faculty members in the fields of business, computer science, and history at 242 schools. He and his colleagues found, as the paper puts it, a “steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality.” The data revealed that just a quarter of all universities account for 71 to 86 percent of all tenure-track faculty in the U.S. and Canada in these three fields. Just 18 elite universities produce half of all computer science professors, 16 schools produce half of all business professors, and eight schools account for half of all history professors.

Then, Warner and Clauset said this about gender bias,

Here’s further evidence that the current system isn’t merely sorting the best of the best from the merely good. Female graduates of elite institutions tend to slip 15 percent further down the academic hierarchy than do men from the same institutions, evidence of gender bias to go along with the bias toward the top schools.

I suggest reading the Slate article, Rice’s post, and, if you have time, the Northwestern University research paper.

Coda: All about Curt Rice

Finally, this is for anyone who’s unfamiliar with Curt Rice (from the About page on his website; Note: Links have been removed),

In addition to my work as a professor at the University of Tromsø, I have three other roles that are closely related to the content on this website. I was elected by the permanent faculty to sit on the university board, I lead Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity in Research, and I am the head of the Board for Current Research Information System in Norway (CRIStin). In all of these roles, I work to pursue my conviction that research and education are essential to improving society, and that making universities better therefore has the potential to make societies better.

I’m currently writing a book on gender balance. Why do men and women have different career paths? Why should we care? How can we start to make things better? Why is improving gender balance not only the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do? For a taste of my approach, grab a copy of my free ebook on gender equality.

Beyond this book project, I use my speaking and writing engagements to reach audiences on the topics that excite me the most: gender balance, open access, leadership issues and more. These interests have grown during the past decade while I’ve had the privilege to occupy what were then two brand new leadership positions at the University of Tromsø.

From 2009–2013, I served as the elected Vice Rector for Research & Development (prorektor for forskning og utvikling). Before that, from 2002–2008, I was the founding director of my university’s first Norwegian Center of Excellence, the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL). Given the luxury of being able to define those positions, I was able to pursue my passion for improving academic life by working to enhance conditions for education and research.

I’m part of the European Science Foundation’s genderSTE COST action (Gender, Science, Technology and Environment); I helped create the BALANSE program at the Research Council of Norway, which is designed to increase the numbers of women at the highest levels of research organizations. I am on the Advisory Board of the European Commission project EGERA (Effective Gender Equality in Research and Academia); I was on the Science Leaders Panel of the genSET project, in which we advised the European Commission about gender in science; I am a member of the Steering Committee for the Gender Summits.

I also led a national task force on research-based education that issued many suggestions for Norwegian institutions.

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Rachel Carson (Silent Spring), the Royal Society, and men

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Silent Spring, the book by Rachel Carson, has had an extraordinary impact in Canada, the US, and many other parts of the world. The 1962 publication of the book effectively launched the environmental movement.

Carson died two years after publication with the consequences that 2014 is the 50th anniversary of her death. Britain’s The Royal Society in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature is marking this anniversary with a public lecture and panel discussion on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014 (6:30 – 7:30 pm at The Royal Society, London). This is an astonishing event for reasons to be discussed after reading a description: Writing Wrongs,

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Rachel Carson, the American conservationist responsible for putting the environment on the political agenda. When her masterpiece Silent Spring was published in 1962, she was attacked as savagely as Darwin on the publication of The Origin of the Species, but the book spurred a reversal in US pesticide policy and led to a ban on DDT and other pesticides. But does Silent Spring persuade because of the strength of its arguments, or the beauty of its language? And have Carson’s warnings been sufficiently heeded? John Burnside FRSL is a prize-winning poet, short-story writer and novelist. A passionate environmentalist, he contributes a regular nature column to the New Scientist. Professor John Pickett FRS is Scientific Leader of Chemical Ecology at Rothampstead Research, and a world authority on pest control. In a conversation chaired by Damian Carrington, Head of Environment at the Guardian, they will discuss the complementary roles of literature and science in saving the planet.

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This event is free to attend and open to all. No tickets are required. Doors open at 6pm and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Speech-to-text interpretation will be provided at this event.

If you require British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation please contact the events team no later than 2 weeks prior to the event and we would be happy to arrange an interpreter.

A live video will be available on this page when the event starts and a recorded video will be available a few days afterwards.

You’ll note that this is an all male panel, which is astonishing, given the number of female scientists working in the fields of environmental science and female writers of all stripes, especially in light of the raw sexism Carson was subjected to at the time her book was published. Victoria Johnson in her Aug. 7, 2014 posting on the Guardian science blog network supplies some context for concern not only about this particular event but others too (Note Links have been removed),

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The problem is, Writing Wrongs has an all-male panel.

Debates about gender-balanced panels at conferences and public events are not new. In 2009 the group Feminist Philosophers set up a Gendered Conference Campaign, challenging the prevalence of all-male conferences in their field. In 2011, a group of gender equality advocates and activists pledged to boycott events with all-male panels. Then, in early 2013, journalist Rebecca Rosen took the rather novel step of asking men to sign a pledge to refuse speaking at or moderating events dominated by male contributors. More than 300 people signed the online pledge. But, within hours, it had to be anonymised because of the torrent of abusive comments.

Johnson then focuses specifically on Writing Wrongs event (Note: A link has been removed),

Earlier this week I wrote to the Royal Society asking why Writing Wrongs had an all-male panel. I even offered some suggestions for female speakers they might like to ask. My argument was that Carson is not only the most famous environmentalist and nature writer of the 20th century; she was also a female scientist who faced gender-based slurs from the mainstream media and naturally, vested interests, on the publication of Silent Spring. Keen to discredit the conclusions of her detailed analysis they dismissed her as a hysterical woman, unable to conduct objective research.

Not only was it strange to see an all-male panel, especially when I knew plenty of female science writers, academics and environmental journalists who would have been equally qualified to speak, it seemed entirely inappropriate given who had apparently inspired this event.

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The Royal Society responded to my email. They’d asked a female chair, but she was unavailable. I was then told they were looking into other female speakers, but had needed to proceed with promotion of the event. Is it really that hard to find a female science writer or a leading academic working on pesticides? Not if you live in the 21st century and know how to use the Internet, write an email or operate a phone. I was then reassured, that sometimes; the Royal Society does have female representation on at important events. This was followed by some blurb and a link to their Equality and Diversity policy. Unfortunately, whenever I have challenged other event organisers on the lack of gender-balance, I have pretty much had the same response.

To get a sense for the quality of the vituperation that Carson experienced in 1962, there’s this from her Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Carson and the others involved with publication of Silent Spring expected fierce criticism. They were particularly concerned about the possibility of being sued for libel. Carson was also undergoing radiation therapy to combat her spreading cancer, and expected to have little energy to devote to defending her work and responding to critics. In preparation for the anticipated attacks, Carson and her agent attempted to amass as many prominent supporters as possible before the book’s release.[54]

Most of the book’s scientific chapters were reviewed by scientists with relevant expertise, among whom Carson found strong support. …

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American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes were among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson’s analysis of DDT.[60] According to White-Stevens, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”[61] Others went further, attacking Carson’s scientific credentials (because her training was in marine biology rather than biochemistry) and her personal character. White-Stevens labeled her “a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature”,[62] while former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson—in a letter to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower—reportedly concluded that because she was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was “probably a Communist.”[63] [emphasis mine]

Many critics repeatedly asserted that she was calling for the elimination of all pesticides. Yet Carson had made it clear she was not advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals’ impact on the entire ecosystem.[64]  …

In the US (and elsewhere), an accusation of being a ‘communist’ particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s could destroy your career.

Getting back to the modern day, having organized panels in the past, I appreciate how very challenging it is to get a diverse set of people on a panel but as Johnson notes, it shouldn’t be all that difficult in 2014.

Abandoning the effort to find a female speaker after what was apparently a single attempt seems a bit chicken-hearted. Were the event organizers concerned about avoiding rejection? If so, they should perhaps consider other job or volunteer activities as rejections are pretty common when trying to attract panel members.

Should the organizers try again, I have some advice: “Try to get more than one female speaker on your panel as cancellations are also common in these endeavours.” Of course, the organizers may end up with an female panel in the end as bizarre things can happen at the last minute to your carefully planned panel. I wish the event organizers good luck!

Science…For Her!—a book for those of us who like our science to be funny

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The book, Science…For Her!, written by Megan Amram, a comedy writer whose credits include the Kroll Show and Parks and Recreation (US television programmes, won’t be available until Nov. 4, 2014 but it can be pre-ordered at Barnes & Noble or Powell’s (I figure Amazon gets enough advertising and I want to help bookstores that have a bricks & mortar presence, as well as, an online presence).

Thanks to David Bruggeman and the April 23, 2014 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog where I first learned of this upcoming book (Note: Links have been removed),

There’s another science mashup coming your way later this year.  It’s a textbook written by comedy writer (Parks and Recreation) Megan Amram.  Science…For Her! comes out November 4, and stands a chance of provoking the same kind of reaction as the initial video for the European Commission’s campaign – ‘Science, it’s a girl thing‘.

For anyone unfamiliar with the European Commission’s campaign, check out Olga Khazan’s June 22, 2012 Washington Post story (h/t David Bruggeman) which is a relatively kind comment in comparison to some of the other responses to the campaign some of which I chronicled in my July 6, 2012 posting about it.

Getting back to Science…For Her!, here’s a bit more about the book from an April 22, 2014 posting by Madeleine Davies for Jezebel,

Of the book, Amram writes:

Science…For Her! is a science textbook written by a lady (me) for other ladies (you, the Spice Girls, etc.) It has been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history: female brains aren’t biologically constructed to understand scientific concepts, and tiny female hands aren’t constructed to turn most textbooks’ large, extra-heavy covers.

Finally, a science textbook for us.

[downloaded from http://meganamram.tumblr.com/post/83522299626/science-for-her]

[downloaded from http://meganamram.tumblr.com/post/83522299626/science-for-her]

As David notes elsewhere in his April 23, 2014 posting, the cover has a very ‘Cosmo’ feel with titles such as ‘orgasms vs. organisms’ and ‘sexiest molecules’. The Barnes & Noble ‘Science…For Her Page!, offers more details,

Megan Amram, one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment,” Rolling Stone’s “25 Funniest People on Twitter,” and a writer for NBC’s hit show Parks and Recreation, delivers a politically, scientifically, and anatomically incorrect “textbook” that will have women screaming with laughter, and men dying to know what the noise is about.

In the vein of faux expert books by John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris, Science…for Her! is ostensibly a book of science written by a denizen of women’s magazines. Comedy writer and Twitter sensation Megan Amram showcases her fiendish wit with a pitch-perfect attack on everything from those insanely perky tips for self-improvement to our bizarre shopaholic dating culture to the socially mandated pursuit of mind-blowing sex to the cringe-worthy secret codes of food and body issues.

Part hilarious farce, part biting gender commentary, Amram blends Cosmo and science to highlight absurdities with a machine-gun of laugh-inducing lines that leave nothing and no one unscathed. Subjects include: this Spring’s ten most glamorous ways to die; tips for hosting your own big bang; what religion is right for your body type; and the most pressing issue facing women today: kale!!!

I appreciate the humour and applaud Amram’s wit. I also feel it should be noted that there is some very good science writing to be found (occasionally) in women’s magazines (e.g. Tracy Picha’s article ‘The Future of Our Body’ in an August 2009 issue  of Flare magazine [mentioned in my July 24, 2009 posting featuring human enhancement technologies’). As well, Andrew Maynard, physicist and then chief science advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, now NSF (US National Science Foundation) International Chair of Environmental Health Sciences and Director, University of Michigan Risk Science Center, once commented that one of the best descriptions of nanotechnology that he’d ever read was in an issue of Elle magazine.

Gender, science, science policy, and an update on Science: it’s (formerly, a girl) your thing

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After describing the NDP (New Democrat Party) science policy launch/discussion as a bit of a ‘sausage fest’ in my Nov. 14, 2012 posting about being at the Canadian Science Policy Conference (part 2 of a 2-part series), I realized (very early this morning [Nov. 15, 2012]) that I could have described my own panel presentation in those terms since the majority of the response (if memory serves, 100% or thereabouts) was from the male members of the audience.

My interest is not a discussion about the rights or wrongs of this state of affairs but to find new ways to encourage engagement/discussion with everyone. Thrillingly and also this morning, I found a notice of a Nov. 14, 2012 blog posting by Curt Rice titled, “Gendered Innovations: Making research better” which touches on the topic (how do we better integrate gender into the discussion) and applies the thinking to research,

Could your research be better if you thought more about gender? I’m not asking if you could say more about gender if you thought about gender; that much is obvious. No, I’m asking if the quality of your research results more broadly could be improved if issues of gender informed the methods you use and the questions you ask. [emphasis mine]

At the University of Tromsø, we suspect that gendered perspectives could make your research better, and so we’re kicking off a new project to explore these issues and to better communicate them to our students. We’re doing this to improve the quality of our science — anything that might have that effect, after all, deserves careful exploration.

We’re also doing it because our primary funding agencies will reward grants that include gendered perspectives, regardless of the field of the grant. This is true of the Research Council of Norway and it’s true of the EU’s upcoming Horizon 2020 program [major European Union-funded science programming]. Arvid Hallén, the Director of our Research Council, tells us* how important this has become.

A gendered perspective is a criterium for all applications being evaluated by the Research Council of Norway.

Our project draws inspiration from an international enterprise drawing the connection between overall research quality and the presence of gender-related questions and methods. [emphasis mine]

Rice is referring to Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment based at Stanford University in California. Here’s more from the What is Gendered Innovations? page,

Gendered Innovations employ sex and gender analysis as a resource to create new knowledge and technology.

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This website has six interactive main portals:

1. Methods of sex and gender analysis for research and engineering
2. Case studies illustrate how sex and gender analysis leads to innovation
3. Terms address key concepts used throughout the site
4. Checklists for researchers, engineers, and evaluators
5. Policy provides recommendations in addition to links to key national and international policies that support Gendered Innovations
6. Institutional Transformation summarizes current literature on: 1) increasing the numbers of women in science, health & medicine, and engineering; 2) removing subtle gender bias from research institutions; and 3) solutions and best practices.

I’m going to check this Gendered Innovations website for any information that can help  me develop sessions that encourage more participation from women and who knows? Maybe next year we can have a session at the Canadian Science Policy Conference where we discuss some of this thinking about gender issues, i.e., using information about gender bias and information about how it functions in real life situations for designing new research and policies.

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned Curt Rice. He featured in a July 6, 2012 posting about the European Union campaign to encourage more girls to take an interest in science careers. The video produced by the project’s marketing communications team caused a sensation and a huge amount of criticism,

I find the June 29, 2012 posting by Curt Rice at the Guardian Science blogs gives insight into some of the current response (condemnation and support from an unexpected source) to and the prior planning that went into the campaign,

Advertising professors everywhere must be thanking the European Commission for their new campaign, Science: it’s a girl thing! This campaign – designed to convince high school girls to pursue careers in science – had such a badly bungled launch that it’s sure to become the topic of lectures and exam questions for communications students throughout Europe and beyond.

The problem lies in the “teaser” video, which went viral last week for all the wrong reasons. It was put up on the campaign website, disliked, criticised, mocked and then pulled down faster than the gaga male scientist in the video could open his zipper.

As a consequence, Rice created a contest for a new video and invited anyone to submit. Since July 2012, the European Science Foundation took on the project which offers three money prizes and the opportunity to have your video seen at the 2nd European Gender Summit, Nov. 29-30, 2012. Science: it’s a girl thing! has been renamed to Science: it’s your thing!  Here’s more from the Oct. 18, 2012 European Science Foundation news release,

This contest, co-organized by the European Science Foundation and Curt Rice (check his excellent blog: curt-rice.com) offers you the chance to highlight the diverse career options that science offers to young women everywhere.

This contest follows a campaign recently launched by the launched European Commission to encourage more young women to choose science in their future careers. With several countries taking part, the cornerstone of the campaign is a fresh and lively webpage, called Science: It’s a girl thing!

A video of the same name was made to raise awareness of the campaign. And indeed it did! The video was successful in creating discussion and engagement, triggering an animated debate on how to promote science to young women – a crucial element in bringing the campaign to life. However, feedback about the contents of the film was mixed so the Commission decided to remove it.

Since the original video is no longer being used but the excellent campaign remains, we have devised a contest to make a new video for it. By entering the competition you can help the European Commission better understand how the issue should be communicated and you get a chance to win €1500 if your video is selected as one of the 3 winning videos.

The contest is being promoted by a number of science bloggers and tweeters. And Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt (Physics, 2011) has made a donation for the cash prize!

The winning videos will be shown at the European Gender Summit Networking Event 2012, November 29 at the Science14 in Brussels.

Here’s more about the contest which appears to be open to anyone from anywhere in the world, from the Contest* page,

Contest Instructions
  1. Visit the Science, It’s a Girl Thing website.
  2. Create a one minute (or less) video (in english) designed to create awareness for the initiative and to encourage young women to consider scientific careers.
  3. Upload your video to YouTube or Facebook.
  4. Follow the instructions on this site to submit your video.
  5. Tweet to @gendersummit with a link to your video using the hashtag #ScienceItsYourThing. We will promote your videos on this site and on Twitter.
  6. Encourage people to vote for your video from 19 November 2012, 18:01 Central European Time to 28 November 2012, 12:00 Central European Time .
  7. The video with the most votes on 28 November at 12 noon Central European Time, will be one of the winners.
  8. The other two winning videos will be determined by a panel of judges from the European Science Community & Industry.
  9. All three winning videos will receive a cash prize of 1500 euros and will be screened at the European Gender Summit networking event 2012, November 29 at the Science14 in Brussels..

Still have questions? Email us at gendersummit@esf.org

The final deadline for the contest is Nov. 19, 2012 at 6 pm CET. Good luck!

*As of February 20,2018, links have been removed as the pages are no longer available.

‘Girly’ girls aren’t motivated to study science by ‘girly’ scientists

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Liz Else in a June 22, 2012 article for New Scientist discusses, in light of the recent  ‘Science: It’s a Girl Thing’ campaign video/debacle (mentioned in my July 6, 2012 posting), some recent research which suggests that ‘girly’ or ‘feminine’ scientist role models are demotivating (Note: I have removed links),

But the team really should have done some background before launching the teaser video for the initiative (above). If they had, they would have probably come across some recent research by University of Michigan psychologists Diana Betz and Denise Sekaquaptewa that would have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Betz and Sekaquaptewa recruited 142 girls aged 11 to 13 and showed them mocked-up magazine articles about three female university students who were either described as doing well in science, engineering, technology or mathematics (STEM), or as rising stars in unspecified fields. The three also either displayed overtly feminine characteristics or gender-neutral traits.

Oddly, the researchers found that girls who read about the feminine science students decreased their self-rated interest in maths ability and short-term expectations of success. [emphasis mine]

Else’s article describes other related outcomes and provides a link to the research article (which is behind a paywall).

This research contrasts with the response from the Australian teen science bloggers (in my July 6, 2012 posting) who were very enthusiastic about this more girly approach.

In conjunction with the material in my previous posting on this topic,  it seems this whole incident has sparked an extraordinary conversation taking place internationally and across various social media. For those on Twitter, I recommend the #ScienceGirlThing discussion. Locally (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), I believe the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) is considering an event focused on the ‘Science: It’s a Girl Thing’. I’ll let you know more as this evolves.

Thanks to @CarlsonEngineer for the link to article by Else.