TECTONIC MOVEMENTS

How cultural shifts
can lift up
women in science

TECTONIC MOVEMENTS
How cultural shifts can lift up women in science

FOREWORD

3

The world needs science and science needs women
INTRODUCTION

5WHY THE WORLD NEEDS MORE WOMEN IN SCIENCE

6

How gender diversity leads to better science and stronger institutions

6

IS THE LEAKY PIPELINE A USEFUL VISUAL CONSTRUCT ?

9CULTURE CREATES PIPELINE STRESSES

11

Science culture: the one-track mind

11

Academic culture: inside the ivory tower

12

Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum: milieu matters

13

Developing & non-Western economies: the picture for women in science15

How cultural clashes magnify inequity

16

POSITIVE ANTIDOTES: SOLVING THE GENDER EQUATION

2

19

Visibility, advocacy and women’s networks

21

Hiring and retention

23

Funding and power

25

Scientific professional societies: policy changes

29

Cultivating flexibility

31

CONCLUSION34ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

35

ABOUT THE L’ORÉAL FOUNDATION

36

FOREWORD
The world needs science and science needs women
Alexandra Palt,
Executive Vice Presidentof the L’Oréal Foundation
have ever been awarded to women scientists. How
can we explain that after years of fighting for gender equality, the under-representation of womenin science should still be so glaring, and above all,what are the consequences for our world?

© Philippe Calandre for L’Oréal

They are numerous and we must collectively seek
to understand them, as much for the society that
we want to build, as for the advance of scientificprogress and knowledge, which is critical to solving the great challenges of our time.
The absence of women has had and will have major consequences. Let’s take two fields of scientificapplication.

These past few months will be recorded in history
as a time when the global liberation of women’svoices accelerated in the worlds of cinema, politics, the not-for-profit sector and even business.
Yet, there is one sector where women’s voices
have remained astonishingly silent: science. This
despite the fact that science faces the kind of disparity about which we should all, as a society, beconcerned.

First, in the area of health care, there are many
examples of the consequences of under-representation. Have we finally gotten over, for example,
the idea that cardiovascular illnesses are a mas-

culine issue? As recently as 1999, doctors examined half as many women for cardiac illness
as men. What’s more, many clinical trials on
reducing risk factors have been led exclusively by men. The result? The landmark study
on aspirin as a means of reducing the risk ofcardiac arrest included more than 22,000 men
The proportion of women engaged in scientific ca- and not a single woman¹. Sadly, this led to inreers has grown, albeit too slowly. Many still come appropriate treatment for women.
up against obstacles to accomplishing long andflourishing careers, achieving positions of responsibility or gaining access to funding. As a result,in the European Union, for example, only 11% ofsenior roles in academic institutions are currently
held by women. Less than 30% of researchers are
women and only 3% of Nobel Prizes for Science
3

Second, and just as concerning, is the digital revolution. Men’s control over key technologies has implications for women. In theearly stages of voice recognition, for example,
men dominated software development. Consequently, the number of transcription errorswhen women used voice recognition applicautions was considerably higher than amongst

Alexandra Palt

their male counterparts. Now, along comes artificial intelligence (AI), which will have a profoundeffect on our future. We haven’t learnt from our
mistakes. Sure enough, studies have shown that
AI-powered image banks, developed mostly bymen, associate women with domestic tasks andmen with sport². Indeed, image recognition software not only reproduces these prejudices; it amplifies them. Unlike a person, an algorithm cannot
fight consciously against acquired prejudices. As
AI gradually pervades our lives, the issues will only
become more acute. If we use robots to shape ourworld in the near future, it is vital that they should
be programmed by men and women.

Executive Vice President of the
L’Oréal Foundation.

The takeaway is not that women would be betterscientists than men, but rather that we have to be
conscious of our need for a more gender balanced
scientific community. The decision is between depriving ourselves of valuable creativity and talent, or designing a more inclusive society throughscientific progress. The choice is clear.
We commissioned this report with that choice in
mind, to inform the future focus of the L’Oréal
Foundation’s work. We reached out to over a dozen experts around the world to inform this reportin the spirit of building coalitions. We owe a debt
of gratitude to all of them. Creating coalitions fora more inclusive science is urgent, in order to best
address the challenges facing the world, while advancing knowledge for the benefit of all.
The world needs science, and science, more thanever, needs women.

4

For 20 years, the L’Oréal Foundation has
worked to empower women in science,
through a programme of recognition for brilliant women scientists called ‘For Womenin Science’. The programme is implemented
globally in partnership with UNESCO. The
Foundation also raises awareness of scientific careers amongst school pupils in France.
In March 2018, the L’Oréal Foundation islaunching an initiative called ‘Men for Women in Science’, calling male scientists to takeaction to empower women in their institutions by signing a charter. More than 25
male scientists occupying key positions within the scientific world have already joined
the initiative.

INTRODUCTION
How cultural shifts can lift up women in science

This report, commissioned by the L’Oréal Foundation, examines the state of gender balancein science, taking stock of emerging solutions and promising areas of further investigation. It
supports with empirical research the programmes of the L’Oréal Foundation, including the
L’Oréal-UNESCO FWIS scheme.

The Age of Enlightenment brought a scientificrevolution that led to our modern practice of science. It was accompanied by the important notionthat humanity could improve itself by responding
to rational thought.
Lately, however, our scientific output has begun toflag, at a time when the stakes for humanity growlarger. We’re relying on the scientific community tohelp solve existential crises. For example, anti-microbial resistance threatens modern medicine.
And the climate change we’ve effected throughour industrial economies may surpass humanity’scapacity to cope, as the atmosphere warms to levels never experienced by modern civilisations. It isa moral imperative for us to raise the effectivenessof our scientific research and spark a new scientific revolution to help humanity improve itself once
again through rational thought.
That revolution will require us to unleash all of
human potential on scientific endeavour. And yet,
we are currently struggling to resolve one of themore obvious imbalances in science: the gender
gap. Girls and women are entering scientific study
at rates similar to their brothers, but they systematically leave at critical junctures of the educationand scientific careers pipeline at higher rates. How
can we hope to spark a scientific revolution if we
continue to push away half of humanity?

5

Research on gender imbalance in science has
tended to focus on those critical junctures and on
important issues of bias. But despite the best intentions of leaders and scientists, the imbalancesof our scientific research institutions have persisted. Cultures are slow to change.
Addressing culture change is the key to addressing
gender imbalances in science. Our own research
revealed that, rather than focusing on cultural biases at critical junctures, change is more likely tooccur when scientific institutions take a systems
view of the imbalances. It’s not enough to point
to self-confidence issues, harassment or bias at
discrete parts of the career track. Academia’s gender imbalances stem from the interaction of manyfactors: some unique to science, such as highly
structured and closed career paths; others specificto academia, like rigid hierarchies; and still others,
like unconscious bias, found across society.
The interactions amongst cultural biases need tobe addressed simultaneously. Strategies and initiatives that have been successful, to a degree, canbe combined in the right measures within an institution. Initiatives designed to combat combinations of cultural factors, some of which we outline
here, can be successful in re-balancing the genderequation in science.

Why the world needs
More women in science

glect the talents of half their population. In
India, for instance, women make up only
14% of researchers6. Research done by BCG
and the L’Oréal Foundation finds that there
are 300,000 ‘missing’ doctoral degree holdScience and technology, and in particular ers a year across 14 developed and developbasic research, are part of the foundation for ing countries studied. If women began to earn
economic development and societal well-being. doctorates at the same rate as men, within 15Recent evidence suggests however, that innova- 20 years there would be 3 million more PhDtion and technological progress are becoming holders contributing their skills to progress.
more expensive and labour-intensive, requiring
more researchers to achieve the same degree of
breakthroughs than in the past. Research productivity is falling by half every 13 years3. Put
differently, we need to double the number of
researchers every dozen years if we are to improve our scientific output.
Scientific research doesn’t occur in a vacuum.
It’s directed not only to advance our basic
understanding of how the universe operates,
but also to achieve normative outcomes that
benefit society and humanity. The challenges
facing society and humanity are enormousin the life sciences, in physical sciences andin other disciplines.
Research also drives the economy. The OECD
found that the long-term elasticity of government and university-performed research on
multi-factor productivity is 17%, even higher
than for business R&D4. In the United States,
as in many other countries, science and technology-related employment is growing fasterthan the overall job market. The U.S. Bureauof Labor Statistics projects that 853,600 new
science and technology jobs will be added between 2016 and 2026, a growth rate roughly 1.5 times faster than that of the overall
workforce5.
To boost their research and meet their employment goals, countries can’t afford to ne-

6Why the world needs more women in scienceHow gender diversity
leads to better science& stronger institutions

with known causes result from motor vehicle
collisions13. Medical science failed to realise until
the last few decades that heart disease in women
looks different from that in men, leading to misdiagnosis or under-diagnosis15. And because clinNeglecting talent has real consequences for sci- ical trials do not always include equal numbers
entific innovation and economic productivity7 of men and women, the effects of new drugs on
For example, women held fewer than one in five women may not be adequately studied. Between
patents – a measure of scientific output – in 2010 1997 and 2001, eight of the 10 prescription drugs
according to a 2016 report from the Institute for released in the US had to be recalled because they
Women’s Policy Research. And they made up just posed greater health risks for women than men15.
8% of primary inventors8. Globally, women makeOf course, there’s nothing stopping male-domiup less than 30% of workers in STEM fields9.
nated research teams from considering gender inThis imbalance of women as researchers and in- their design of scientific studies, products or sernovators represents more than a loss of talent and vices. But this has historically not been true. And
skilled labour. There’s also evidence that gender there is a clear link between increased women’s
diversity tends to coincide with better science. authorship on studies and the integration of genPeer-reviewed ecology publications with gen- der and sex analysis into medical research. When
der-diverse teams of co-authors received 34% researchers examined more than 1.5 million
more citations than publications by more gen- medical research papers, they found that papers
der-homogenous teams, suggesting that scientists with women authors were more likely to include
judged the former papers were higher quality10. gender and sex-related factors in their analysis16.
That effect could come down to diversity in theteams. Or, it could be due to underlying causes; Finally, even though plenty of evidence supports
academic institutions that do well on representa- the merits of bringing more women in science,tion and fairness may be likely to perform strongly programmes that overtly support women are often
elsewhere too. In R&D, too, gender-diverse teams perceived – by both men and women – as tokenare more innovative: a Spanish study of 4,277 ism, diffusing or sacrificing scientific excellencecompanies found that those with more gender-di- for diversity. However, we argue that supporting
verse R&D teams were more likely to put radical women in science simply levels a playing field thatnew innovations on the market in a two-year pe- has long been greatly skewed, and correcting thisriod11. The overall evidence for a business case for imbalance helps drive scientific excellence.
diversity in STEM is mixed, a 2014 Royal Society
report finds; the impacts of increasing diversity
More visibility and representaare contextual, and research quality may improvetion may lead to greater divernot by increasing diversity per se, but through thechanges in culture, leadership, behaviour, norms
sity in public support as more
and values that underpin successful diversity inipeople see themselves repretiatives12. Gender imbalances also perpetuate thesented in science.
gender biases built into research and testing. For
example, US and European automobile crash– Dr Maryam Zaringhalamtests do not require the use of pregnant crash testof the US grassroots network 500 Women Scientists,
which is dedicated to training diverse leaders in science
dummies, even when 82% of US foetal deaths

“

7

„

source: L’Oreal Foundation 2018

Is the leaky pipeline a useful visual construct ?

Is the leaky pipeline a
useful visual construct?

•

The image of a pipeline with ‘leaks’ at various
points along the way is often used to describe
the problem of achieving gender equality in
STEM. The pipeline metaphor has long beenused to describe STEM careers, implying thata certain quantity of entering students is needed at one end to produce sufficient graduates
or researchers at the other. Girls and women•
are thought to drop out at various stages ofan academic science career, pushed out by abuffet of challenges, from internalised stereotypes about scientists, to unconscious bias in
hiring or publishing, to the opacity of the tenure process itself.
•
The pipeline model is a useful construct to allow us to visualise the critical junctures in acareer at which women tend to leave:•9

At the secondary education level: In
secondary school, by the OECD’s PISA•
(Programme for International Student Assessment) test results, girls and boys areequally prepared and qualified in STEM
subjects. Indeed, they outperformed boys
in 22 of 72 countries where the PISA tests
were administered. However, an OECD
study found girls and boys had different
expectations about their future careers;
girls were more than three times as likely
as boys to expect to work in health professions, while boys were twice as likely to
expect to become engineers, scientists orarchitects17.

Entering higher education: Women receive 32% of STEM Bachelor’s degrees
around the world, according to a BCGL’Oréal study. That figure differs acrossdisciplines; in many biological and medical subjects, women outnumber men. Justa quarter of STEM PhDs are awarded to
women. That research also found that the
gap between men and women studying
STEM subjects begins roughly when students transition to university, dependingon the discipline.
Entering a research career: Women are
also more likely to leave STEM after receiving their doctorates. Globally, womenmake up less than 30% of those in research careers.
After postdoctoral training: In the biomedical sciences, women constitute approximately 45% of postdoctoral fellows
at universities and research institutions in
the United States, but only 29% of tenure-track principal investigators18.
Tenure and beyond: Women may not
drop out of science while and after they
get tenure, but they may not thrive, either. In US universities, women make up
43% of doctorates working in science,engineering and health roles 10-14 years
after receiving their degrees. That figure
drops to 29% for those 15 years after
their doctorate19.

Is the leaky pipeline a useful visual construct ?

The pipeline model has its uses, in helping
to imagine the points where women leave
the traditional scientific career track and to
be able to measure progress. However, thepipeline construct also has its limits. First,
it assumes that career paths are linear andone-directional, and that individual scientists
seek to remain on these career paths. Such amodel posits only two types of solutions; increasing capacity at the front end and plugging the leaks along the way.
Yet today’s career paths are not necessarily
linear; they may be more of a ‘jungle gym’
than a ‘ladder’20. To be sure, almost all academic STEM leadership is path-dependent:
it’s nearly impossible to become the dean ofa faculty or chair of an academic department
without a PhD in the relevant subject, tenure
and years of service. But referring to a ‘leaky
pipeline’ implicitly devalues anyone who elects
to leave. It does not acknowledge the necessary
and valuable contributions of women and men
scientists who bring their skills to other contexts; government, industry, entrepreneurshipand elsewhere. Policymakers set the tone forresearch nationally and regionally, and muchhigh-impact innovation stems from industry
and its symbiotic relationships with academic research. While we focus in this paper on
gender equality in academic STEM, a broader
question might be: how might women scientists in academia, as well as those who have‘leaked’ from the academic pipeline into other sectors, strengthen conditions for women inacademia and contribute in valuable ways tothe state of scientific knowledge?
“It’s important that we don’t just define success in science as success in academia,” Nature
editor Helen Pearson told us. “If you train to avery high academic level, like a PhD, you cantake that knowledge and skills and use that inmany important and valuable ways in society.
10

It might be science-related, it might be politics– you mustn’t devalue those contributions tosociety.” She also suggested STEM academia
could learn from diversity practices and women’s leadership experiences in other sectors,
such as the corporate world.
What’s more, the metaphor of the linear pipeline does not fully explain the impact of underlying, external factors. It shows where andwhen women leave academic science careers,
but fails to explain why – and the why is as
important, or more important, as when. Are
they victims of harassment? Or are the reasonsless malignant, such as a desire to apply one’s
skills to policy or communications, or getting a
job offer from industry that is more attractive
than a short-term postdoctoral contract? The
pipeline model doesn’t show, either, how addressing those underlying external factors may
address leaks at multiple points simultaneously. A dedicated university initiative to reducebias in hiring and leadership promotion halts
leaks at multiple stages, and also creates conditions that are conducive to retaining younger
women scientists.

“

It’s important that we don’t justdefine success in science as being
just success in academia. If you
train to a very high academic level, like a PhD, you can take thatknowledge and skills and use thatin many important and valuableways in society. It might be science related, it might be politics– you mustn’t devalue those contributions to society.

„– Helen Pearson, chief magazine editor for Nature

Culture creates pipeline stresses

Rather, we could consider careers as part ofan ecosystem, in which changes to some parts
have an impact on other parts. To provide effective solutions we need to understand how
different ecosystem forces and factors interact
to put pressure on scientists throughout theircareers. These include factors unique to theculture of science or academia, such as tenure and promotion metrics, and other societal
and cultural forces, such as unconscious bias
or harassment.

Culture creates
pipeline stresses
We asked a series of STEM academics, STEM
diversity practitioners, gender diversity experts and others to talk about the systemic
factors that influence why women leave, as
well as potential solutions that take a systemic view. It’s not enough to say ‘the system
is sexist’ and provide a list of examples fromdiscrete points in the career pipeline. Rather,an understanding of the ecosystem – of how
cultural factors in science, academia and society combine to discourage women – will be
important for establishing how to retain themin greater numbers. Some factors do involve
inherent gender biases; others are not gendered, but they interact with others to produce gender-unequal results.

Science culture:
the one-track mind
Academic science careers are linear paths;
without a PhD, you can’t go on to do a postdoctoral fellowship. Without a postdoc (orseveral) you can’t secure a tenure-track job.
Without tenure, forget about a leadership
position in a university department. And
they’re path-dependent; if you begin yourcareer studying a specific topic like Arctic
climate or a specific organism such as yeast,
expect to continue in the same vein for atleast some time.
STEM’s closed hiring and promotion are a
related factor. Though they are employed byuniversities, faculty members are essentiallyself-employed in that they must source theirown grants and sustain a record of publications, making career breaks difficult. Meanwhile, there are lots of off-ramps, but no onramps for people who wish to return to science
after leaving.
Closed systems lead to ongoing genderdisparities. The largest gender gaps werein the labs of the 22 male Nobel Prize winners included in one study. Male postdocs
outnumbered women three to one. This cancreate gender disparities in future hiring,
because where a candidate is trained andby whom has enormous influence on his or
her hiring potential21.
Additionally, a survey by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry found that women saw academic science careers as too all-consuming
and solitary, and not collaborative enough22.
During their doctoral studies, they were also
more likely than male counterparts to have
had little pastoral care or have had to copewith a supervisor who lacked interpersonalor management skills. Moreover, they were11

Culture creates pipeline stresses

more likely to experience a lack of integration
with their research group, isolation and exclusion (and more rarely, bullying), or to havebeen been uncomfortable with their researchgroup’s working patterns, time, level of competition and expectations.
Keen competition for academic jobs – there
are too many PhDs and not enough academic
positions – is limiting. In the US, for instance,
only about 26% of PhD students eventually
move into tenured or tenure-track positions.
Yet many PhD students harbour unrealistic
expectations. A 2015 Nature survey of morethan 3,400 science graduate students aroundthe world suggested that many were overly
optimistic about their chances in academia.
About 78% of respondents said that they
were ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to follow an academic career, and 51% thought that theywould land some type of permanent job in
one to three years23.
That level of competition also pushes early-career researchers to do multiple postdoctoral fellowships to bolster their resumes
before applying for faculty positions, said
Weill-Cornell Medicine Qatar associate deanof research Dr Khaled Machaca, which adds
to the length of their training. Long training with little security may be a turnoff forscientists who don’t wish to move themselves
and their families around the globe, or who
watch non-academic peers climb the career
ladder much earlier, particularly in an economic climate where job security is valued.
“Most scientists in the biomedical field don’t
get their first ‘real’ job until they are in theirlate 30’s” added Dr Machaca.

may assume that outstanding scientists are
already being identified and rising to the top,
said Professor Abigail Stewart, the Sandra
Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University
Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies and former director of the University ofMichigan ADVANCE/STRIDE programme toimprove campus environment and faculty diversity from 2001-2016. However, that complacency causes leaders and practitioners to
doubt the value of efforts to boost diversity.
“We stress [to faculty] that we endorse the goalof excellence, and that we don’t see diversity
and excellence as opposed; we agree that ofcourse every department is searching for thebest scientists but up till now, we have been
populating our departments with bias that has
led us to an unequal situation,” she said.

Academic culture: inside
the ivory tower

Academic organisations often fall into familiar gendered patterns. Ethnographic studies in
the US point to gendered academic norms:
professors and institutions assume the ‘ideal’
or default math or physics student is a young,middle-class, white male, one with no financial constraints or caregiving responsibilities24. That’s not what today’s classroom looks
like25. Likewise, university departments may
fall into gendered assumptions about labour,
making early-career women faculty teachmore introductory courses, which takes timeaway from their research26. Similarly, women spend more time on service work in theirdepartments than their male counterparts;
they are also appointed to multiple administrative-leadership positions earlier in their caFinally, science assumes it is a gender-neutral reers than male counterparts. That detracts
meritocracy, and its leaders and practitioners from their research and hampers progression

12

Culture creates pipeline stresses

as administrative roles are not rewarded27.
There’s also funding – and its relationshipto power. In some disciplines, the fundingthat pays for graduate stipends is controlled
by a student’s supervisor, concentrating powerin the supervisor’s hands. In others, graduate
students get funding from multiple sources,
including teaching assistantships and othergrants, which empowers them and gives themmore flexibility to leave or switch supervisors
if they face harassment or bullying.

may face stereotype threat in which they
conform, subconsciously and unwillingly,
to prevailing stereotypes when reminded of
their identity as female. Stereotype threat
occurs when negative stereotypes about agroup, such as ‘girls can’t do mathematics’,raise doubts and anxieties that subconsciously affect group members’ ability to perform.
So, for example, when test-takers are told amathematics test shows gender differences,
women perform worse than men. This manifests later in careers as ‘imposter syndrome’,
Finally, our interviewees agreed that academ- in which a lack of confidence inhibits the
ic institutions could have more transparent pursuit of key career enhancers, such as
and swifter complaint investigations, such speaking engagements.
as in cases of harassment or assault. Whenit comes to investigating and addressing ha- Early-stage pipeline measures often takerassment, “In some ways, corporate environ- aim at stereotypes, enlisting role models andments do this better than academia,” said Dr girls-only STEM programmes to boost girls’
Kathryn Clancy of the University of Illinois at confidence and increase the number of girls
Urbana-Champaign. “They have much faster who view science and engineering as a viable
turn-around.” At the same time, she added, career path. That may work in some subjects
due process is still necessary, and universities or fields where the pipeline narrows at an earshould not necessarily be fully corporatized ly stage. But at UK universities, the women
either. The tenure system may also make it enrolled in some science subjects outnumber
difficult to remove harassers28. Some suggest the men, yet disparities persist at the top30,
there are lessons from the corporate sector so early-stage steps to boost pipeline capacity
here; women in flatter, less-hierarchical bio- may not be enough.
tech firms are eight times more likely to holdsupervisor positions than those in more tradi- Later in careers, workplace expectations
tional organisation structures – and paths to and demands implicitly cater to men with
progression based on business outcomes, like stay-at-home spouses. Workers in many prothe creation of new intellectual property, are fessional jobs work longer hours than ever; aless susceptible to biased evaluation29.
third of college-educated American men work
50 or more hours a week31.

Science doesn’t exist ina vacuum: milieu matters

At the same time, outdated attitudes persist
about work and family. A Harvard BusiBias in society is not limited to science, of ness School study found that while its female
course. Societal norms also colour women’s graduates expected their careers would takeexperiences in STEM.
equal priority as their spouses’, the majorityof the men still assumed their careers would
To begin with, girls in school (and beyond) take precedence, and that their spouses would
13

Culture creates pipeline stresses

do most of the child-rearing32. It’s not known
if such disparities in beliefs are as prevalent
amongst men and women in science, but such
attitudes certainly play out in practice in theUS, where women more than men adjust theircareers for family life33.
And widely prevalent sexual harassment
has been revealed in industries from media togovernment; science is no exception. In many
STEM fields, field research is an integral component of scholarship, but women face sexual
harassment and assault in hostile field environments. A 2014 survey of 666 scientists foundthat 70% of women and 40% of men had experienced harassment in the field, while 26% of
women and 6% of men had been assaulted34.
Finally, the gender biases in hiring foundelsewhere are also found in science. Those biases perniciously include unconscious biases
that are unrecognised by those making decisions. In an experiment, researchers submitted
fictitious student resumes for a lab manager
position with the name changed – on half theapplications, the candidate was ‘John’, on theother half, ‘Jennifer’. Both male and female
science faculty rated the male student as morecompetent and hireable, offered a higher starting salary, and offered more career mentoring.
Another qualitative study uncovered persistentbiases in junior faculty hiring, such as factoringin (illegally, in the US) the relationship statusof women candidates but not men35. In hiring
interviews, faculty members may think asking
about family plans is small talk that makes
candidates feel more comfortable, but instead it
pushes them away.
Indeed, biologist Nancy Hopkins of MIT outlined the extent to which prevailing norms, stereotypes and biases can be internalised by even
women scientists themselves in this anecdote
about her advisor, James Watson:
14“

The science drew me to Jim’s lab
every available moment. I lived
in a state of euphoric scientificexcitement. Jim told me repeatedly I should be a scientist. I
knew I couldn’t live without thisscience, but how could I be likethese men? Even postdocs had
wives who stayed home to carefor their children while the men
put in 70-hour weeks at the lab.
Who would care for my children?
I knew I would have to give up
science before I had children:in the era before amniocentesis,that meant before the age of 30.
So I made a plan: do the most
exciting science possible as fast
as you can, hope you do a Nobel Prize-winning experiment
before the age of 30, then retireand be a wife and mother...

„Culture creates pipeline stresses“

Given such an auspicious start, no support both for women and for science inwonder I didn’t see any gender dis- general. Some countries invest heavily in science training as part of a knowledge-based
crimination in science. But looking economic strategy, producing many womenback, it’s hard to understand how PhD graduates but lacking programmes specifically targeted at retaining them. Others
I could have been quite so slow to may be woefully under-resourced, with few
recognize that a profession in which resources to devote to research at all.
half the population can’t partici- Even in Western countries, the argument
pate equally and also have children arises that funding and resources should
be devoted to areas that are integral to sciis by definition discriminatory. I ence overall, rather than gender-equality
saw the family–work problem as a programmes36. On the other hand, retaining women in science is necessary to ensure
biological one – a woman’s choice, that investments in basic science training
unfixable. It would be years before are well-spent.
my colleague, Professor Lotte BaKENYA:
ilyn, helped me see that the way
science careers and institutions RESEARCH IN UNDERare structured is an artificial and RESOURCED ENVIRONhence changeable system designed
MENTS
by men, for men, in an era when
men had full-time wives to care for
Research on Africa is typically done bytheir families.
those from outside Africa, said Dr Rose Mut-

IN FOCUS:„

iso, co-founder of the Mawazo Institute, a
non-profit supporting women’s academic reSTEM’,DNA and Cell Biology (2015).
search and thought leadership in Kenya. Dataon women’s career paths in science is sparse,
but Kenya produces roughly 300 PhDs a
Developing and non-Western
year across all disciplines out of a population
economies: the pictureof 48 million. 26% of its researchers are female.
Male-dominated Kenyan culture also posfor women in sciencees extra constraints for women; for example,
women may be less able to move freely or
Addressing the challenges for women in sci- leave the country for further education andence is context-dependent; programmes and training due to family commitments, and theyinterventions must take into account differ- may face open bias and hostility in the culture
ent cultures and varying levels of geopolitical of universities and science departments.
—Nancy Hopkins ‘50 years of progress for women in15

Culture creates pipeline stresses

In such an under-resourced environment,laboratory-based science fields may not get
the resources and equipment they need, andgetting training in these fields is challenging
for both men and women, Dr Mutiso said.
Less resource-intensive fields such as mathematics and computer science may provide
more opportunities for aspiring scientists.
Challenges which confront women in science
also vary across and within African countries,
where science uptake is generally low, said Dr.
Peggy Oti-Boateng, senior programme specialist for science and technology at UNESCO’s Office for Southern Africa and Coordinator for the African Network of Scientific andTechnological Institutions (ANSTI). Some regions don’t have adequate systems to train or
support scientists at all, and aspiring scientists
must travel abroad to study. For those who
cannot afford to leave, or who have familycare or other obligations, this is a major barrier. For others, relocating takes away systemsof social support which would be crucial toachieving their goal.
In addition, attitudes about women in scienceeven from teaching staff can be negative. Dr
Oti-Boateng has encountered many teaching staff who think women are incapable ofdoing well in science; in that context, she believes it’s essential for women to have strongsocial support to stand a chance of ascending to professorship.

How cultural clashes
magnify inequity
None of these cultural factors alone – not closed
systems of hiring, nor outdated attitudes about
work and family, nor harassment, nor any-

16

thing else specific to one geography or another – is responsible for the departure of womenfrom science. Long hours and lengthy training
have not deterred women from becoming doctors or pharmacists, nor has fierce competition
deterred them from seeking careers in biomedical sciences where they outnumber men at entry level. Much paid employment remains implicitly structured for people with stay-at-homespouses, yet this does not deter women fromremaining in the labour force; in the US, 70%of women with children under 18 are in paid
employment and three-quarters of those work
full time37.
These cultural stresses and their interactions
help explain why some interventions to boost
gender parity in science, as well-intended as they
are, fail. Measures that operate at only one pointin the pipeline are not effective if they fail totake into account how culture influences earlier
or later stages. For instance, early-stage pipeline
interventions such as increasing girls’ interest inscience, are useful and sustainable only if the
deep and structural patterns of discriminationthat exist in science and academia at later stages are properly addressed. Meanwhile, careercoaching workshops that try to help womensucceed may be less effective in environments
where hiring and funding bias persist. And universities may provide well-intentioned policies
to pause the tenure clock for parental leave, butwhen men continue to assume their spouses will
make concessions for them, that leads to unequal outcomes: men simply use this extra time
to write more38.
However, broader societal mores - the culture ofacademic institutions and the culture of science- appear to interact in ways that are especiallydamaging to gender equality. Here are some examples that may force girls and women out atvarious stages of a scientific career.

Culture creates pipeline stresses

Example 1: Gendered academic norms
interact with outdated attitudes to workand family and gender biases in hiring
Women constitute approximately 45% of the
postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciencesat universities and research institutions in theUS, but a much lower percentage of women
hold faculty positions. In the US National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program,for example, women make up only 29% of thetenure-track investigators and hold just 19% of
the tenured senior investigator appointments.
Research chalked this discrepancy up to family demands and self-confidence and found that
30% of male respondents expected their spouseto make concessions for their career paths, compared with just 15% of women39.
Clearly, many men’s attitudes haven’t caught
up with the fact their wives work. But 72% of
full-time faculty and 74% of full-time womenfaculty have employed partners, many of themfellow scientists40. When women (and indeedmen) are hired, universities may need to raise
the question of dual hiring and have clear dual-hiring policies. If women are forced to sacrifice their careers for their spouses’, both theyand their prospective employers lose out.
In addition, the structure and demands of theacademic workplace, such as travel requirements or expectations that researchers be fully devoted to their work, weigh more heavily
on women, who disproportionately bear theburden of household management and caring
for dependents41.

Example 2: Gender bias in hiring interacts with the too all-consuming andsolitary pressure to publish and shapes
the output on which a researcher isjudged for tenure
17

Even after a woman is hired on the tenure or
principal-investigator track, the effects of unconscious bias accumulate over time to holdthem back. Women in science receive academic grants at a lower rate than men in science,compared to social science where funding patterns are more even42; women scientists receiveon average less than half the startup fundingof male scientists43. Women are also requested
as journal reviewers less often than men44andare invited to speak at conferences less often45
46while author gender has been shown to havean impact on the perceived quality of a paper47.
Meanwhile, there seems to be a distinct ‘baby
penalty’ for women academics. Women withchildren under age six were 15% less likely
than childless counterparts to obtain tenure,and 25% less likely than male counterparts
with children under age six48. Even where universities provide the option to stop the tenure
clock for family reasons, women may opt not
to take advantage of them for fear of hurting
their careers49.
Example 3: Stereotype threats and gen-

der bias in hiring influence women’s
promotion and leadership – and a lackof representation has repercussions for
future generations
While women don’t necessarily leave their jobs
at the stage when they might potentially transition to leadership, they find that pathways topromotion and leadership are unclear. They
may also bear more teaching and service responsibilities than male colleagues, including
serving as the sole female representative on alarge number of committees50. The criteria
for promotion to leadership may not be clear,which opens the door for promotion based onvague criteria (and influenced by stereotypes
and unconscious bias) rather than straightforward expectations51.

Culture creates pipeline stresses

At the same time, a dearth of women in leadership has implications for women aspiring tosuccessful careers in science, who see few rolemodels. This also has implications for women leaders themselves, who unlike men bear
the burden of having to represent their entire
gender. For instance, science communicator
Maryam Zaringhalam, of the US grassroots
network 500 Women Scientists said: “When I
get invited to speak on panels, the conversation often leads away from my science or policy interests towards the many struggles thatwomen have in science. I’m excited to go andtalk about my work or my interests, but end
up being asked about all the different ways
I’ve been abused or harassed in science while
my male co-panellists are asked about theirexpertise. It’s not a conversation I want to be
obligated to have when I have my own expertise I’m excited to share.”Example 4: Sexual harassment interacts
with science culture’s closed systems ofhiring and promotion and linear career
pipelines, as well as funding – and its
relationship to power
Sexual harassment is an issue throughout thepipeline; harassment in the field has beenfound to occur most often to female undergraduates, graduate students and those inother junior positions.
However, this may vary by field of study. Research on astronomy and physics found thatwomen of all ranks, including faculty andsenior positions face the same verbal andphysical harassment, and were equally likely
to avoid meetings, fieldwork or other professional events because they felt unsafe52.

for funding and elsewhere, can prevent themfrom feeling like they are able to report experiences of sexual or other harassment: “Youhave to make reporting mean something. It
must lead to consequences.” It also makesa difference whether the bulk of a PhD student’s funding is controlled by her advisor,or whether she receives it through grants
and teaching assistantships.
Harassment may be particularly devastating
at early stages of women’s careers, when women researchers are less likely to report issues
due to fear of repercussions or lack of disciplinary action, and are thus most vulnerable.
Even when victims of harassment do reportit, they may lose access to data or expensive shared equipment that a harasser controls, then leave science as the time and effort they’ve invested in their particular fieldamounts to little without that access.

IN FOCUS:INTERVIEW WITH
DR. KATHRYN CLANCY
We interviewed Dr Kathryn Clancy, associate
professor of biological anthropology, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr Clancy alsostudies the prevalence of harassment in STEM.
Note: This Q&A has been edited for length andclarity.

Dr Clancy notes that the unique dependence of STEM students on their advisors, How did your research on harassment begin?
18

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

From the organisational literature we find twothings that contribute to workplace harassment.
First, male domination: not just more men than
women, but more men in leadership, or something that’s typically considered to be a ‘male’
job. Next, organisational tolerance which signals
sexual harassment is permitted. People don’t
bother reporting as they think nothing will hapI was invited to give a talk on it at the Amer- pen or they’ll be retaliated against.
ican Association for Physical Anthropology
meeting, but my abstract was rejected. I was Science has both these features. Even in distold it wasn’t acceptable because there was ciplines where women outnumber men, thenothing empirical in it. I started reaching out expectations are structured for men. We’re exto colleagues to collect data, and that’s how pected to work around the clock, as though
the SAFE survey (Survey of Academic Field we don’t have bodies, as though we don’t havechildren or elders to care for, or meals to make..
Experiences) was started.
A friend of mine told me about her experiences with being sexually assaulted; she had
flashbacks and trauma that inhibited her ability to finish her degree. When she told heradvisor, she was believed, but her advisor discouraged her from pursuing action in casethey lost collaborator data.

What have you found so far?
In the field, unwanted sexual advances seemto occur more. Whereas in astronomy andundergraduate physics, what we’ve seen ismore selective incivilities, put-downs andcome-ons.

Positive antidotes: solving
For the field survey, we found that women in the gender equation
junior positions reported more harassment,but our paper on astronomy and planetaryscience did not find rank effects. It didn’t matter what your rank was, even women in faculty-level and senior positions reported harassment. And they faced it more from their peers
than people further up the hierarchy fieldwork
can be very hierarchical and linear. There may
be a sexualisation of fieldwork: ‘what happensin the field, stays in the field’. [In anthropology]
there’s an ‘Indiana Jones’ archetype of the adventurer who goes in and steals things fromother cultures without sleeping or eating.
What aspects of science or academic culture
present obstacles to addressing harassment?

19

If the cultures of society, science and academia
and their interactions are what’s pushing
women away from academic science careers,that suggests interventions need to address
multiple aspects of scientific or academic culture at the same time to improve gender parity in science. None of the following interventions works in isolation. But taken together,
they have the potential to move the needle tosome degree. Experts cautioned, though, thatinterventions and initiatives to increase gender equality in the sciences must be routinely
assessed to monitor their implementation andeffectiveness.

20source: L’Oreal Foundation 2018

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Visibility, advocacy
and women’s networks
Why it works: Grassroots and networking organisations for women in science may help
combat the too all-consuming and solitary nature of research and the stereotype
threats, including impostor syndrome. In
addition, as more women gain visibility by
speaking on conference panels, to media andto classrooms, that combats gender bias in
hiring within and outside of the academy,by dispelling misconceptions about women’sabilities compared to men’s, belying the myththat there aren’t enough excellent womencandidates for open positions and diversifying perceptions of what scientists look like.

IN FOCUS: 500
WOMEN SCIENTISTSThe US grassroots network 500 Women
Scientists was formed in 2016 as a platform for women scientists to connect
and use their skills for public good, as
well as to promote diverse leadershipin science. Today, it has more than 200‘pods’ or chapters around the world. We
spoke with several members of their National Leadership Team.

en in science also help us envision something better, like more equitable policies
and institutions.
What other effective solutions have you
implemented?
Dr Jane Zelikova, co-founder and National Leadership Team: In January 2018,
500 Women Scientists launched the Request a Woman Scientist web platform
to enable conference organisers, journalists and other members of the public
to search for women scientists by geography and area of expertise. Before thesite launched, 500 women volunteered
to be listed; today, there are more than
5,000 women scientists from close to
100 countries who have signed up. People are already using it to find speakers
for panels and conferences, sources formedia articles and speakers for classroom outreach. 500 Women Scientists
also offers or plans to offer media training, training in op-ed writing, and training
in how to give public talks to the women
who have volunteered to be on the site.
How do you reconcile that need for visibility with the fact that women in science already carry the burden of service
labour and representation?

Dr Zelikova: The benefit of speaking
about your science or your expertise in a
public venue is greater visibility for yourWhat do you gain from being part of aself and your research and potentially the
network of women scientists?
students in your lab. Today, we see the
Dr Maryam Zaringhalam, 500 Women same people speaking on science topScientists National Leadership Team: It ics in multiple venues, which reinforces
helps combat isolation or low confidence. their credibility and expertise. We needAs you grow a network, you feel less like to spread that expertise and credibility toit’s you that’s weak and more like it’s the more people than just a few men.
system that’s broken. Networks of wom21

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Besides informal or grassroots groups, institutions themselves can take steps to increase women’s representation. The Institute of Medical Biology’s (IMB’s) goal for instance is proportional
representation at the conferences it organises andat the larger conferences it chairs. Why? Acrosshigher education and private and public research
institutes in Singapore, roughly 36% of researchers with PhDs overall are women. However,
women’s numbers fall at later pipeline stages,
such as principal investigator, full professor andother leadership levels. That poor representation
may dent the confidence of early-career womenscientists and worsen impostor syndrome, said
Dr Ramachandran. IMB and other institutions
can take concrete steps to change that.In somecountries, national programmes and historical
trends have interacted with culture to achieve
unexpectedly gender-equal results, finds the UNESCO Science Report 201553. Middle-income
Malaysia has close to gender parity in science 49% of its researchers are women, by UNESCO
statistics. In Malaysia, the information technology sector especially employs a large number ofwomen as university professors and in the private sector. This is a product of two historical22

trends; the predominance of women in the Malaysian electronics industry (a precursor to the
IT industry) and a national push for a ‘pan-Malaysian’ culture. The Malaysian government has
quotas for educational support for its three main
ethnic groups, Malay, Indian and Chinese, andthe take-up rate of IT education by Malay men islow, leaving more room for women.
Several experts also validated the impact of the
L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme for representation. For instance, Dr
Machaca, who sits on the committee that selects the laureates, said the awardees have tremendous potential to shift public perceptions of
women’s career paths in science, and to serve asrole models in their communities.
However, women in STEM shouldn’t have to beoutstanding at everything they do; no one expects the same of men, argues Stanford University student Amy Nguyen in an essay. That’s why
sheer numbers and at least proportional representation are key to shifting unconscious bias
in science and academia. The more women are
visible in science, the more acceptance there will
be of varying levels of accomplishment, Nguyen
writes:“More than women who are at the top of
their fields, I need women who suck at programming. I need women who are okay attheir jobs. I need women who sometimes
have to ask questions and admit weakness…the way we keep promoting only
the exceptional isn’t going to create more
acceptance for women in tech as a whole.
It’s going to reject all the women who don’t
meet those impossible standards.” 54“

Women-in-science groups such as 500 Women
Scientists in the United States provide networking opportunities and advocate for representation. Outside the US, the non-profit Singapore
Women in Science organisation and other Singapore groups for women scientists, technologists
and clinician-scientists include women fromundergraduate level to executive leadership andenable them to mix in informal settings, said Dr
Vandana Ramachandran, a committee member
at Singapore Women in Science and head of administration at Singapore’s Institute of Medical
Biology (the Institute of Medical Biology is partof the country’s Agency for Science, Technology
and Research, or A*Star, which carries out industry-oriented research).

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Hiring and retention
Why it works: Policies to address bias in
hiring and retention, such as the Universityof Michigan’s ADVANCE programme, help
break the self-perpetuating gender disparities in science hiring, in which the labs of elitescientists, mostly male, employ more junior
men than women. The University of Michigan provides hiring faculty with information
about gender bias in hiring, including unconscious bias and how to combat its prevalence, which may also shift faculty beliefs
about gendered academic norms. Working
in concert, policies that support caregivers
and other family needs signal that employers
don’t expect work to be too all-consuming
and solitary, while clear policies to address
sexual harassment and other grievances
signal that an employer is prepared to act onreports and complaints.

IN FOCUS: THE

ported by the institution and covers various
types of diversity across all departments.
Under the STRIDE portion, which focuses
on faculty recruitment, scholars on campus
are trained to provide their colleagues withcompelling evidence on how bias can operate within hiring-committee deliberation,and practical steps to limit its impact. For
instance, practical steps include discussing
and defining candidate evaluation criteria in
advance, and avoiding global evaluations
and summary rankings which can be coloured by bias.
Within two years of the programme’s
launch, the rate of women hires had morethan doubled from 15% of all STEM hires
across campus to 32%, a rate that has beensustained since. STRIDE does not appear
to have had an effect on tenure rates ortime to tenure, as there was no apparent
evidence for disparate tenure rates at the
programme’s start. There are more womenstudents in departments with more womenfaculty. However, STEM hiring has plateauedat roughly one-third of new hires, for reasons that are unclear.

Today, more than half the faculty on camUNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN pus have attended a STRIDE workshop
and they must refresh their training every
three years. Faculty also report that they
ADVANCE PROGRAM
apply STRIDE workshop skills to other practices, such as annual salary reviews and tenure reviews. We spoke to Professor Abigail
In 2001, the US National Science Foundation Stewart, the Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distin(NSF) began giving out grants to institutions guished University Professor of Psychology
and organisations to help recruit, retain and and Women’s Studies and former director
advance women in STEM in a programme of the University of Michigan ADVANCE/
called ADVANCE. The University of Michi- STRIDE programme (from 2001-2016).
gan’s programme grew out of an initial NSF
ADVANCE grant and at the time focused on Note: this Q&A has been edited for length
hiring in STEM. Today, it is permanently sup- and clarity
23

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

What kind of pushback did you get? How
did you overcome it?
The first kind was this issue of excellence.
We stress that we endorse the goal of excellence, and that we don’t see diversity
and excellence as opposed; we agree thatof course every department is searching forthe best scientists but up ’til now we havebeen populating our departments with bias
which has led us to unequal situation.
Next, we heard, “Our field has no pipeline.”
We provide data about the actual pipelinein their field and the reasons to believe thatwomen over-perform compared to men,and therefore that 10 or 15 or 20% of thepool are actually more qualified than someof the men. Some people grasp that – that’s
persuasive.
A lot of people talk about how women makeall their decisions based on family, and wetalked about the pernicious effect of assuming that’s the case. We did exit interviews ofpeople who turned down offers and asked
them why – women found questions aboutfamily plans obnoxious, and they went elsewhere where they didn’t get asked thosequestions. That’s powerful evidence.

want to construct their own STRIDE programmes. These universities include Northeastern University and Florida International
University.
STRIDE faculty members also go to otherinstitutions when asked and conduct workshops; we’ve been doing this for 12 to 14
years now. Last year, ADVANCE offered anonsite STRIDE training programme for the
first time, and that went very well.
After women are hired, what helps retain
them?
We’re looking at the connection between
the rate of faculty from a department participating in a STRIDE committee, and thedepartmental climate (things like how often
one hears offensive comments, sexual harassment, do you feel you have a voice or influence on the direction of the department).
We believe there’s likely to be a relationship.

We look at separate indicators as well as
overall positivity of climate. Some of it has to
do with gender, some of it is overall department climate, such as whether it’s contentious or collaborative for everyone. It turns
out that improving climate predicts in thesame direction for everyone: male, female
The most important thing is to get people and people of colour.
to understand we’re not attacking them.
They mean well, but good intentions can It’s very gratifying to have the data because
it answers the question: if we make it bethave bad effects.
ter for women will it be worse for men? And
How does the University of Michigan trans- there is absolutely no evidence of that inour data.
fer its knowledge to other institutions?
The NSF provides ADVANCE funding topartnerships for sharing expertise, and we
consult for other institutions that have received their own ADVANCE grants and24

More resources for institutions that wish tolearn from the University of Michigan canbe found at: http://advance.umich.edu/strideResources.php.

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Amongst other notable efforts to improve hiring and retention are those by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
For more than two decades, CERN has hadconcerted gender-equality policies based onequal-opportunity and non-discrimination
principles such as work-life balance and family friendly measures, gender-diverse hiring
committees and so on.
CERN’s equality policies work along threeaxes: encouraging women to take up scientificcareers and employing them using equitable
HR processes; career development which integrates diversity principles into staff learning programmes and leadership development;
and creating an inclusive and respectful work
environment with work-life balance and family-friendly policies. Some years ago, CERN
introduced a competency model for hiring
to try and contain bias in recruitment. Morerecently, they brought unconscious bias concepts into their training process.
Initially, there was a sharp rise in female hires.
Women made up 3% of scientists, engineers
and technicians in the 1990s, and this rose to
14% by the start of the 2000s. However, since2009 CERN has seen those numbers plateau
and even dip slightly to 12% today. At the organisational level for all professions including
administrative roles, numbers of women haveplateaued at roughly 21%.
This is due largely to a small proportion of
female applicants, comprising 10-11% of thetotal pool for scientific and engineering positions, said CERN diversity head Genevieve
Guinot. That figure is disproportionately low,compared to the overall pool of women PhD
graduates in Europe: women made up 42%
of science, mathematics and computing PhDs
in 2012, and 28% of engineering, manufacturing and construction PhDs55.
25

Currently, CERN is studying why its female
applicant pool is disproportionately small.
“Once women are in the system they seem to
do well. They don’t leave CERN; they don’t
leave science to go to administration any morethan men do,” Guinot said. Women make up
25% of management, up from 5% in the late90s, and are in 3 of the 15 highest positions,
including CERN’s director-general, Fabiola
Giannotti.

Funding & power
Why it works: Linking research funding togender equality or addressing harassment canbe a powerful external incentive for institutions and organisations to address gendered
academic norms and be more transparent
and swifter about complaint investigations.
Once they do so, the effect may be sustained.
Meanwhile, changing the structure of individual students’ or researchers’ funding can also
alter the power dynamic between students
and advisors, or principal investigators andpostdoctoral fellows, which has a protective
effect from sexual harassment and bullying.

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

IN FOCUS:

However, the actual impact of Athena
SWAN adoption on women’s employment, satisfaction and career paths in
ATHENA SWAN
science seems to be mixed. An independently commissioned ECU survey
finds that institutions did make conSeveral interviewees cited the Athena scious decisions to increase the number
SWAN programme as one that has been of women employed, and more visible
representation of women in key positions
effective on a national level.
and senior roles56. However, while thenumber of women employed in academic medicine has increased since the introduction of the Athena SWAN Awards,
The UK’s Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), reports did not find that this increase wasa registered charity, supports various due to Athena SWAN itself57.
forms of equality in higher education,and its Athena SWAN charter frame- On one hand, women felt Athena SWAN
work was launched in 2005 to promote had a positive impact on their career degender equality in STEM. The framework velopment, such as being encouraged
enables universities and research institu- to apply for grants, fellowships and protions to voluntarily measure and assess motions. They also felt the programme
their performance on gender represen- increased awareness of gender and othtation, career progression, positive work er diversity issues in their departments
environment and other measures. Institu- and institutions, and adoption of tangitions can apply for three additive levels ble measures to support those with caregiving responsibilities, such as holdingof awards: bronze, silver and gold.
meetings only during core hours, subsidising nursery places, and supporting
flexible and part-time work. On the othIn 2011, Dame Sally Davies, the chief er hand, women remained less satisfied
medical officer for England, announced with career performance and promotionthat academic applicants for National criteria, and less likely to agree that theyInstitute for Health Research (NIHR) Bio- had been encouraged to apply for promedical Research Centre funding must motion than men.
be Athena SWAN silver award holders.
Within six months, Athena SWAN applications from medical and biomedical-re- But surveys and studies also raised queslated departments had increased four- tions about funding-linked Athena SWAN
fold. Today, Athena SWAN applications adoption: was it a mere box-checking
and membership have expanded to the exercise paying lip service to diversity?
United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, Would it be sustainable in the longer
with interest from India, Canada, the Unit- term? However, evidence suggests thatthe changes implemented as a result of
ed States and Japan.

26

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Athena SWAN were sustainable, and thatpractices introduced as a result of Athena SWAN had been incorporated at both
strategic and operational levels within
participating institutions58.

Finally, survey respondents raised other concerns: that Athena SWAN did notsupport women from minority backgrounds, that some of its initiatives remained inaccessible to certain membersof staff, and that women bore a disproportionate burden of the Athena SWAN
administrative work for their institutions
and departments. (The ECU acknowledged these limitations, and in 2015 expanded the scheme to include non-academic support staff and to require thatapplicant institutions consider intersectionality – ethnicity as well as gender –in their efforts.) A number of reports also
highlighted that Athena SWAN was significantly limited by factors beyond its
programme design, such as institutional
practices, national policies and societal
norms about women as primary careproviders 59 60.

27

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

Today, in the UK, National Institute for HealthResearch (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre funding requires academic applicants tohave at least an Athena SWAN Silver award,
while in Nordic countries, the use of publicfunding requires a gender equality plan. In
the same vein, the US National Science Foundation earlier this year (2018) announced it
would require institutions to report sexual
harassment by people working on the projects
it funds, and that it might suspend or remove
research grants after institutions find that a
grantee committed harassment. Previously,
the agency had had to rely on media reports
to uncover harassment by grantees61.

IN FOCUS:DONOR FUNDING
AS A LEVER ?

In some contexts, donor funding is theprevalent form of funding for science, andthus can have a significant impact ongender equality. The Mawazo Institute’s Dr
Rose Mutiso mentioned the prevalenceof donor funding in the Kenyan context:
when donor funding from development
agencies and other sources is allocatedfor research activities, for instance, it may
bear gender-based stipulations, which
When students or postdoctoral associates rely may serve as the only incentive for prinon a single source of funding from their ad- cipal investigators to include women revisors or principal investigators, they are ef- searchers or carry out gender-focused
fectively beholden to them, and thus vulner- research. “It’s a blunt tool, but one of theable to harassment, bullying, or other abuse, only ones we have,” Dr Mutiso said.
notes Dr Clancy. In some institutions anddisciplines, a student’s advisor funds her re- Moreover, though the donor agenda issearch, while in others, such as in the social broadly aligned with women’s interests andsciences, students receive their funding and issues in the developing-economy context,
support from teaching assistantships (effec- such research may still be ghettoised andtively serving as teachers for undergraduate dismissed as ‘women’s issues’, Dr Mutiso
classes). Some STEM departments have im- added. What’s more, if the underlying cliplemented co-advisor models so that students mate for women in science does not shift,
are not advised by a lone advisor, and thus women in science may remain in positions
subordinate to male researchers and theirless vulnerable to abuses of power.
pace of advancement may remain slow. In
addition, a focus on development-related
research is valuable, but a thriving knowledge economy needs scientists to formulate and propose their own original questions on a variety of topics.
To that end, the Mawazo Institute set
up a PhD scholarship for African women under 40 who are enrolled at Kenyan universities; research is not limited to28

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

specific questions, such as health or agriculture, but any development-focusedresearch is considered. (The institute andits programmes are funded by private donors, typically family foundations, using
no-strings-attached funding. The scholarship’s generous age cap is based on
Mawazo’s research, which found womenoften did not enter PhD programmes until after they had started families, unlike in
the West). In 2017-2018, its pilot year, “weexpected maybe 30 applications for 5 to
10 places, but we received nearly 200 applications,” Dr Mutiso said.

IN FOCUS:WOMEN INSCIENCE IN QATAR:

path for women, remain. And the preponderance of women in life sciences may
be due to the availability of more career
options for men, such as oil and gas or
military careers.
At the same time, he added, “Some of
the Qatari institutions are even more flexible and more generous than their US
counterparts in supporting family andflexibility”. Due to the country’s energy
wealth, financial concerns are also less ofan obstacle for Qatari women who are
more likely to follow their own choices topursue a science career. Given that Qatar’s science investments date back only
about a decade, most Qatari women scientists are relatively junior; it remains to be
seen how many will move up the pipeline
to tenured, principal investigator or otherleadership positions.

FUNDING VERSUSSOCIAL NORMS

Scientific professional societies:
policy changes

Why it works: Besides linking science funding to diversity initiatives, another categoryof policies is those by scientific societies andconference organisers, which due to theirbroad reach have an influence on the cultureof science. Scientific meetings can implement
codes of conduct which take aim at sexual harassment. While this is their primary cultural
influence, addressing harassment at meetings
empowers women scientists to network andinteract more freely, which combats a sense
The numbers alone don’t necessarily of too all-consuming and solitary research entranslate into a supportive environment vironments and enables them to embark on
for women in science, however. Dr Mach- more valuable collaborations.
aca of Weill-Cornell Qatar noted that social norms and constraints, such as acceptance of science as a viable career
In the past one to two decades, the relatively wealthy Qatari government has invested heavily in science education andresearch to build a knowledge-based
economy. Today, according to UNESCO
statistics, Qatar spends roughly US$ 1.28
billion or 0.5% of GDP on research eachyear, and 22% of its researchers are women, with a higher proportion of women in
the biomedical and life sciences.

29

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

IN FOCUS:

moving or even banning a harasser. “Theyare in a solid position to have an influenceon the culture – it’s one thing to do sciHOW SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES ence, but you need to publish your dataand present at meetings. What do scienAND MEETINGS CAN
tific societies do? They publish journals
and they hold meetings. So, they have a
CHANGE THE FUTURE
chance to have a pretty significant impact
on changing the culture.” Even scientific
OF SCIENCE
societies based in the US are influential
globally, she adds: they are often the largest in their field, with international memIn 2017, the American Geophysical Union berships and international coalitions.
adopted a new ethics policy defining
sexual harassment as a form of scientific What’s the impact of societies’ codes of
misconduct, following a year-long effort conduct? Many societies who have adto rethink its ethical guidelines62. That has opted codes64 that outline a clear policya direct impact on the culture of science for addressing harassment find that theand people’s behaviour at scientific con- number of incident reports increases overferences and meetings, said Dr Sherry the first two or three meetings, followed
Marts, who consults for employers and by a steep drop-off after that – a patternscientific societies to prevent harass- common to meetings which introduce
ment of all kinds at meetings. In a report, codes of conduct, signifying that victims‘Open Secrets and Missing Stairs’, she of harassment are empowered to reportfinds that harassment at conferences is incidents. However, the code of conduct
similar to street harassment due to the needs to be publicised and communicattransient nature of conferences, the an- ed, Dr Marts says. “You have to make sureonymity of a relatively public space, and everyone at your meeting is made awarethe fact that victims may have little re- of it; this puts harassers on notice and encourse and are unlikely to take action courages victims to report.”
against the harasser63.
Professional scientific societies are academic communities that convene scientists and enable them to network and discuss their research; scientists view thesemajor conferences and meetings as a
useful tool to enrich their research, andfor networking and collaboration. Societies such as AGU and the American Astronomical Society are well placed to influence harassment, Dr Marts said, as they
can set standards for behaviour at conferences and act quickly by warning, re30

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

The ‘pipeline’ construct, however, assumes that
academic science career paths are and should
be linear and one-directional, and also that individual scientists seek to stay on these tracks.
Moreover, the model implicitly devalues scienFor some fields where the pipeline narrows ear- tists – women and men – who choose to takely, at high school or undergraduate level, gen- their skills to other contexts such as policy, comder-neutral interventions that disarm stereotype munications, industry and entrepreneurship.
threat at the same time as they encourage girls
and women to enter science can be effective in While academic STEM is genuinely path-deincreasing pipeline capacity. However, there’s no pendent, and greater and greater specialisation
doubt that the model of the pipeline needs to be is required at some stage for today’s highly-spereconfigured with more on- and off-ramps and cific fields of study, it may be time to ask: how
greater flexibility to tackle science’s linear career might the pipeline be reconfigured or reimagpipelines, the long training with little security ined such that there is greater mobility between
scientists face, and the keen competition for a sectors; how might this better serve women insmall number of jobs. By offering more informa- academia and better use the talents of womtion and greater flexibility about parallel career en scientists who currently leave science compaths, a re-envisioned model can reframe nar- pletely; and how might doing so serve science
ratives about what success and failure in science itself? On a rigid, path-dependent career track,look like.
the further along you get, the higher the riskof women’s talents and perspectives being lost,
In some disciplines such as computer science and since it becomes increasingly difficult to findengineering, the pipeline starts to narrow from equivalent roles elsewhere. If pathways are lessthe beginning, when women select their under- linear or rigid, the risks of entering academic
graduate fields of study. By changing their curric- science is tempered, and more women might be
ula and instructional methods, some universities willing to give academic science a shot.
have made strides in the proportion of women Interviewees agreed that a new, reimagined
opting for these majors. For example, when model was necessary. “You need these on-ramps
Harvey Mudd College changed its introductory and off-ramps and so forth,” said Nature’s Helcomputer science courses to be more welcoming en Pearson.
of beginner students, its proportion of computerscience graduates rose to more than 50% women; But what might such a reimagined and reconfurthermore, 64% of women computer science figured model look like? Interviewees had difgraduates took jobs in the technology industry65. ficulty envisioning how this might be feasible
And by introducing project-based introductory under the current system of academic science.
design classes and hands-on skills sessions that “You’re always being judged on how many
welcome beginners, Dartmouth College in 2016 papers you’ve published and how much grant
graduated its first majority-female class of un- funding you’ve won, so if you’re behind it’sdergraduate engineering students66. Research hard to keep up,” Pearson added.
finds that such changes are a powerful way toincrease women’s participation and take-up rate Furthermore, the feasibility of on-rampof STEM courses67.
ing after leaving is highly field-dependent,

Cultivating Flexibility

31

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

pointed out Dr Ramachandran. It’s one
thing to be a bioinformatician and require
only data and a computer; it’s another tobe a lab scientist whose research is done at
the bench. “Currently, onboarding again after leaving from a postdoc is a rarity evenfor men. It’s too competitive.” In fact, onlya small minority of postdoctoral associates
achieve principal investigator rank annually– both men and women.

an individual to go in with your eyes open.”
Parallel pathways are not a consolation prize;
rather, being informed about career options
enables young scientists to fully consider what
they hope to achieve in a science career andhow they can best contribute to science.

Moreover, more women in visible STEM roles,
whether in academia or in government, industry or other sectors, will help address impostor
syndrome. And when academia has to compete
However, that’s not to say women scientists with other sectors for the same pool of talent,aren’t already trying to build their own on- that ought to improve conditions for all.
ramps. Dr Wendy Bohon, who coordinates
social media for 500 Women Scientists, is ageoscientist by training, but left research forscience communications. Before leaving, shebuilt a network of academic collaborators
and allies willing to take her on as a kind of
consulting scientist. “I’m still co-authoring
papers and still named on research grants,
but in a secondary position. That way if I
decide I want to go back into research I still
have a fighting chance…It’s out of the box,
but there’s no reason that can’t happen more
often. I know other women working as parttime postdocs until children are old enough.
So, we’re slowly building those on-ramps”
Bohon said.
Going in the reverse direction – from academic
science to administration, policy, industry or
elsewhere – is easier, but ways to do so systemically are not often discussed, meaningthat early-career scientists often have to stumble upon alternate career paths on their own,interviewees said. “Well-established scientists
ought to be more willing to talk about alternative, productive and valuable career paths,”
said Pearson. “It’s a shared responsibility: it’salso up to the institutions recruiting young scientists for PhDs and postdocs to inform themof their career options, and you have a duty as

32

Positive antidotes: solving the gender equation

source: L’Oreal Foundation 2018

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, culture and cultural interactions
need not be discouraging to women in science, and they are not set in stone. Culture is
the system of shared assumptions and values
The ideas we’ve collected here are just a start. that guide behaviour. Because the science
Clearly, more research is needed to under- environment is mostly male, the shared asstand which combinations of initiatives will sumptions and values are dominated by male
be most effective in the presence of the most influence. Thus, changing the culture will
pernicious cultural factors that discourage require male participation. To enable women to thrive and achieve STEM leadership
women from participating in science.
at the highest levels, we believe it’s time forCulture depends on context. A scientific insti- non-female allies in the scientific communitution’s culture – its beliefs, behaviours and ty to help accelerate change – to commit tonorms – is shaped as much by the culture of improving conditions for women scientists asscience, as it is by the culture of the broader they progress in their careers.
institution and of the nation in which it sits.
Interactions amongst these cultures can pro- The male leaders who occupy the majority
duce situations and environments that push of key positions in science fields have trewomen out of academic science, be especial- mendous capacity to influence the culture,ly unappealing to women, or factor into their practices and barriers that prevent womendeparture in other ways. Thus, more research from rising to the top of their chosen field.
and more granular data on cultural factors Other male allies in science, such as a new
and interactions are needed about the current generation of scientists, are also subject topicture for women not only in science, in gen- some of the same pressures that hold backeral, but in different scientific disciplines, in would-be scientific innovators and leaders.
particular institutions and in different parts Working together with female colleagues for
systemic change helps harness the potentialof the world.
of women and achieve equity in science for
Why, for example, do countries with high the benefit of all.
gender equality, such as Finland and Norway,
actually have lower rates of women’s partici- This will be a daunting task, to say the least.
pation in STEM? Questions like this demand Yet it’s a task we must embrace as a moralthat we also consider cultural factors that imperative, to unleash all of human potenencourage women to participate. Up to now, tial on scientific endeavour and enable huwe’ve focused on plugging holes in the leaky manity to improve itself again through rapipeline. Surely there are other factors that tional thought.
make women scientists want to stay in thepipeline, even if there are cracks that would
allow them to escape. In the Nordic countries,
the ready availability of attractive alternatives to STEM careers is apparently pulling
women away from science, rather than theculture of science pushing them out68.

34

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the following interviewees forgenerously granting us their time andcomments, and often directing us to additional resources:

35•

Associate Professor Kathryn B. H. Clancy,
Department of Anthropology, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign•

Dr Genevieve Guinot, Head, Diversity Office, CERN•

The L’Oréal Foundation•

Professor Khaled Machaca, Professorof Physiology and Biophysics, Associate
Dean for Research, Weill Cornell-Qatar•

Dr Sherry Marts, S*Marts Consulting•

Dr Rose Mutiso, co-founder and CEO,
Mawazo Institute•

Dr Peggy Oti-Boateng, Senior Science
Programme Specialist, Coordinator of theAfrican Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions, UNESCO Regional
Office for Southern Africa•

Dr Helen Pearson, Chief Magazine Editor,
Nature•Dr Vandana Ramachandran, committee
member, Singapore Women in Science;
Head, Administration, Institute of Medical Biology, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)•

Lotta Strandberg, Senior Adviser, Nordforsk•

Professor Abigail Stewart, Sandra
Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women’sStudies and former Director, ADVANCE
Program, University of Michigan (from2001-2016)•

Dr Jane Zelikova, Dr Wendy Bohon, Dr
Maryam Zaringhalam, and Ms. Kelly
Mistry, 500 Women Scientists LeadershipTeamABOUT THE
L’ORÉAL FOUNDATIONThe L’Oréal Foundation is committed to two main causes, that of science and that of beauty
care as a means to helping the most vulnerable members of society. Based on values of excellence, generosity and creativity, science is at the core of the Foundation’s commitments,
most particularly its commitment to supporting women researchers through its For Women in
Science program, a worldwide initiative in partnership with UNESCO. As well, rooted in the
belief that beauty care is an essential need met by passionate professionals skilled in creating
human relationships, the Foundation has launched several programs anchored by a vision of
beauty as a path towards a fairer and more generous society. The Foundation is committed
to assisting the economically disadvantaged and those suffering from physical and mental
ailments in regaining their sense of self-esteem through beauty care and training in beauty
care professions.
www.fondationloreal.com

36

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JWM-3702%20ww.pdf

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