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European Commission
The European Commission's "Science: It's a Girl Thing!" campaign has been retooled.
It's not exactly surprising that males are perceived as more competent in science than females — but researchers at Yale University were surprised to find that even professional scientists showed evidence of such bias. Now the big question is what to do about it.
"Whenever I give a talk that mentions past findings of implicit gender bias in hiring, inevitably a scientist will say that can’t happen in our labs because we are trained to be objective," microbiologist Jo Handelsman, lead author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a Yale news release. "I had hoped that they were right."
Nope.
Handelsman and her colleagues asked 127 science faculty members from six institutions to review an application from a senior undergraduate student looking for a job as a lab manager. The faculty members were asked to judge how competent the applicant was, how much the student should be paid, and whether they'd be willing to mentor the student.
Each researcher looked at the same application — but in some cases the applicant was given a male name (John), and in the other cases a female name was assigned (Jennifer), all on a random basis. When the results were analyzed, it turned out that the sight-unseen male applicant was rated more competent than the female. The mean starting salary offer was $30,238.10 for John as opposed to $26,507.94 for Jennifer. Faculty members were more willing to mentor John than Jennifer.
The data showed a disparity whether the demographic category in question was male or female, young or old, tenured or untenured. "The bias appears pervasive among faculty and is not limited to a certain demographic subgroup," Handelsman and her colleagues wrote.
The researchers emphasized that they weren't suggesting the biases were intentional or stemmed from a conscious desire to hold women back. In fact, they found that the faculty members tended to like Jennifer more than John. That sentiment was generally voiced by faculty women as well as faculty men. It's just that the warm feelings for Jennifer "did not translate into positive perceptions of her composite confidence or material outcomes," according to the PNAS paper.
So what is to be done? "Our results suggest that academic policies and mentoring interventions targeting undergraduate advisers could contribute to reducing the gender disparity," the researchers wrote.
The findings suggest that it's not enough to get young women interested in careers in science, technology, education and math, a.k.a. STEM. There needs to be a conscious follow-through by the folks who do the hiring and mentoring. You can read through the whole study at the PNAS website.
Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising to find out that scientists can be vulnerable to subtle biases, just like other people. Even journalists. Last month, for example, Lund University researchers Daniel Conley and Johanna Stadmark found that far fewer women than men were being invited to write commentaries for the journals Science and Nature.
Conley and Stadmark acknowledged that men tend to outnumber women in scientific fields, particularly at the higher levels, so there's something of a selection effect at work. But they said it was "still fair to conclude that fewer women than men are offered the career boost of invitation-only authorship in each of the two leading science journals." They called on the editors to "extend gender parity for commissioned writers."
Over time, raising the visibility of women scientists (and raising their salaries) will help draw more girls into research and science education. At least that's the idea. Here are a few more efforts that put girl power to work on the science world's gender issues:
'Girl Thing' reloaded: Remember the European Commission program that stirred up a controversy by putting out a glammed-up video about STEM careers for women? Now the EC's "Science: It's a Girl Thing" program is sponsoring a contest for videographers who think they can do better. On the Scientific American website, "Science Goddess" Joanne Manaster explains how to enter. The winning videos will be shown in November at the European Gender Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels. Three winners will each receive a cash prize of €1,500 ($1,930).
Think locally: It's worth looking for organizations that are bringing girl power to STEM on the community level. The best example is Sally Ride Science, which thinks globally and acts locally when it comes to getting girls involved in scientific pursuits. The organization, founded by the late space icon Sally Ride, presents a series of science festivals for girls in grades 5 through 8. The next one is coming up Oct. 27 at Rice University in Houston, with astronaut Wendy Lawrence as the featured speaker. Other organizations involved in girl-power science include Girlstart in Austin, Texas; and Science Club for Girls in the Boston area.
Women chemists in the spotlight: The Chemical Heritage Foundation's video series pays tribute to seven women who have made their mark in chemistry — including Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of bulletproof Kevlar fiber; Paula Hammond, a pioneer in nanotechnology for drug delivery; and Nancy Chang, a successful biotech entrepreneur.
Celebrating girl power: Today The Mary Sue is highlighting a series of posters that pay tribute to women scientists such as Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Jane Goodall. And next month, the Royal Society is planning a Wikipedia "Edit-a-thon" to improve the online encyclopedia's articles about women in science. "Female editors are particularly encouraged to attend," the society says. The event in planned in conjunction with Ada Lovelace Day on Oct. 16.
More about women in science:
- Video: Brainiacs by day, cheerleaders at night
- Wanted: More high-tech opportunities for women
- Female astronaut takes command of space station
- Women on the frontiers of physics
In addition to Handelsman, the authors of "Science Faculty's Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students" include Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoli and Mark J. Graham.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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The majority of students in my undergrad science classes actually were women! However, most were not going into the chemical, engineering, etc fields like many of the guys. They were going into medicine (MD, DO, PA). Why go into the hard sciences to work as a scientist when you can go into medicine and get better pay and not having to deal with the government making budget cuts and watching your research project disappear.
I ask myself that same question on a regular basis.
My female dentist is a real cutie pie .
Mmm, oral surgery...
Choosing a dentist because you prefer to be touched by a woman is discrimination against male dentists. I used to choose my dentists and eye doctors that way.
Would like to thank Mike_P101 for referring to the undergraduate students as women. As so many use girl and woman as interchangeable; but oddly boy and man is not viewed as interchangeable. I understand the article is referring to the need to get girls (as children) interested in science, math, etc early. And the need to change the subconscious biases that seem to be prevalent. Even amongst those who think they are not biased.
Perhaps the bias can be eliminated if we cease to continue to refer to women as girls throughout adulthood. Once one achieves the age of majority (the right to vote), perhaps being referred to as a"girl" should be viewed as just as unacceptably insulting as it once was to refer to a black MAN as "boy". No one doubts that was a method prejudiced people used in an attempt to put a black man "in his place". Maybe when we stop thinking of women as perpetually little girls; then we will stop thinking, even subconsciously, of women as less than men.
Unfortunately restating the obvious: any child, applying for a job that an adult should be doing is of course going to be less desirable than an adult that applies for that same job. After all as I stated above, the bias may be partially based in the idea that the female applicant was less desirable as an employee due to the idea that a "girl" (girl subconsciously equaling a child) is less desirable for a job for an adult than a male (often viewed as an adult very early). Perhaps she was subconsciously never even actually viewed as an adult. The bias may be as simple as the idea that we really do tend value females for as long as they are still considered reproductively viable. Even though women are reproductively viable for far longer than they are viewed as "girls" by most; that label of "girl" does seem to be the optimal description of an desirable female. Desirable does not only equate to the reproductive angle. It seems to equate to the job market etc. And stated in the article the pay level was also different. Of course it was, one does not have to pay a child at the same rate as an adult.
Ok, now before I am accused of my own bias. I actually did an unscientific survey. When females were referred to as girls they were viewed as friendly, approachable, someone one wanted to get to know, work with, etc. When they were referred to as women there was huge vacillation as to the female being viewed as friendly, approachable and someone one wanted to get to know, work with, etc. No photos used. Just written questioning. Both men and women of varied ages were questioned. In addition to the idea that the ideal female is categorized as a "girl". There does also seem to be an underlying negative view of an adult female.
Women in the workplace are critically sensitive to slights. As its said, men throw insults at their male friends but don't mean it while women shower their female friends with compliments but don't mean it.
Current corporations already have "sex positive" recruitment programs, which means that a female applicant will receive more attention because she is a woman. "Sex positive" is PC slang for discrimination against men. Positions in departments are held open to find the "right woman", but it's massive discrimination against men in disguise.
Wow, thank you so much, Citizeniam, for so eloquently saying exactly what I was thinking! It drives me crazy how often women are referred to as "girls". Language has a very powerful impact on perception. As for you, Vincent, BARF. Please tell me more about how badly the poor white man has it nowadays...(eye roll)
Citizeniam - I was going to post something similar. You would never see "boy" and "man" used interchagably as you do "girl" and "woman". To me it is insulting for NBC News to have the headline inclusive of the term "girl power" when referring to an article about WOMEN and gender bias in the sciences. It's already an uphill battle for up and coming women in the STEM fields and by continuing to use terms that imply immaturity and inexperience is a disservice both to the women coming into the field, but also potential employers.
That's because men have do to things to become men. When you're a boy, you're not independent, you have no responsibilities, to become a man requires you to take on those things.
Becoming a woman from a girl has nothing to do with actually accomplishing anything, it's an age thing, so that's why the line becomes blurred.
It's not generally considered an insult to refer to a female as a girl (intonation and context really dictates whether or not it could be interpreted as an insult. Referring to a grown male as a boy is always an insult, regardless of intonation or context.
deleted a duplicate of above comment. not sure why it submitted twice. Must have inadvertently clicked submit a second time. thanks.
Truly I believe that pointing out the notion that women are less active in science fields only draws negative feeling to the whole thing. People will do what they want to do! It might have something to do with the amount of salary that one can get, but I don't believe trying to "be more involved" will help noticeably.
citiceniam,
Yikes...we get it....and now back to our originally scheduled program.
Neither Men nor Society are holding Women back from STEM careers. Not all, but the majority of Women have been deciding not to pursue STEM careers, for quite some time now. In addition, these are defiantly not the type of careers that can it be forced on someone.
***"2016" the movie
CBS, MSNBC and CNN fact checked the anti-Obama movie, "2016," and could not find any distortions. They could not find anything that their clever reporters could twist and claim as a lie. The socialist media's only alternative is to ignore "2016." Thanks to the internet the American people are slowly finding the truth
So you think Obama is biased against women? Just because of that Jan Brewer thing? That's a little far-fetched
This has what to do with women in science?
Anyway a quick look through fact checking the movie does not say what you just said.
AP says "almost entirely subjective"
It is very misleading and distorted by many fact checking sources.
Captdont needs to be fact checked. But again what does this ahve to do with the subject
Troll!
Good glad to see that Democrat young women will be getting more attention in science. Alas we know what the Republican young women will be doing, cheerleader, drop out, pregnant, and on welfare and ending up as tattooed trailer trash in some southern trailer park. But that's what you get when you think the world is only 6,000 years old and Jesus rode on dinosaurs. Sad their parents weren't able to evolve like the rest of the country. Oh well we will always need knuckle-draggers in this world.
Being a woman I can understand the frustration of being 'chosen last' for a job due to gender however it never stopped me from pursuing a career in my chosen field. It made me work a bit harder, I suppose. Frankly, when I did land my first job out of college, it was with a company that wanted and respected me for my abilities. If I would have pushed to get into a company that was more negative towards women I do not feel it would have been as rewarding.
The truth is that the companies who discount employees based on their gender are losing out on very skilled, competent and dedicated employees, so it is their loss.
I will say that women, overall, need to think about our role in perpetuating the seemingly unending bias. When a woman uses her appearance to try to impress the interviewer (makeup, hairstyle, fashion) it gives the impression that she is compensating for a lack of talent. If we want a level playing field we need to rely on our ability, knowledge, dedication and intelligence - not on playing up our beauty or sexuality.
One final thought, and I'm sure I'll take a beating for saying this; women have biological differences from men that can cause some of us to become difficult every month (PMS). There is also the realistic consideration, for a company, that a woman will decide to become pregnant and they will need to deal with that situation. These two factors, although they are biological and not choices women make, still waft around in the back of the minds of those doing the hiring and, try as they may to ignore those thoughts, they still impact the overall impression of women interviewing for positions.
Realizing there are women like you out there disturbs me. We should to try to look unattractive to succeed? Seriously? That is not a step forward. We should look like who we are, attractive or otherwise. Maybe next you will suggest we avert our gaze, or maybe wear a burqa. Also, we become difficult each month? Serioulsy? Just an FYI, not all women get PMS. For God's sake we dont need men to hold us back with women like you around doing it for us!
A good friend of mine is a fine scientist who graduated with honors from Harvard and did a PhD at UC Santa Barbara and a post-doc at Princeton.
She's knock-out gorgeous
Almost everyone asked "how did she get that position?"
I even got into a fight with my wife defending her.
That's why women often have to try to look unattractive
tiracaiblue: Obviously you misunderstood. What I find holds us, as women back, is our need to 'cover up' who we really are with makeup, etc. I proposed LOOKING LIKE WHO WE ARE, rather than hiding behind a cosmetic mask. Reading is fundamental. What I said was:
"When a woman uses her appearance to try to impress the interviewer (makeup, hairstyle, fashion) it gives the impression that she is compensating for a lack of talent. If we want a level playing field we need to rely on our ability, knowledge, dedication and intelligence - not on playing up our beauty or sexuality."
Meaning we should NOT do those things and, rather, should concentrate on our accomplishments and abilities to secure jobs. I went on to say that, right or wrong, the biological differences between men and women do play a role in the job market whether we like it or not, and there is little we can do about it other than aim high and work to prove ourselves.
Mainly we need to QUIT WHINING and START WORKING. It may not be fair, but it is how it is in the real world. If you want to be successful you need to work around what others may see as a limitation and prove them wrong, not expect some government agency to regulate fairness.
If you expect fairness in the workplace, no matter your gender, talent or background, you will be sorely disappointed.
I have a guess! Is she intelligent and hard-working?
As a female PhD in science I can tell you that the good ol' boy's club is alive and well. I have to work much harder to be taken seriously. I try not to think about it too much and dwell, but sometimes it gets to you to see a guy, who has less credentials and experience get treated better and be given more networking opportunities simply because he is male. We really should be past this at this point, but unfortunately not yet.
I agree and I'm a male Ph.D. in science.
"and be given more networking opportunities simply because he is male"
and often men are better at networking with men. With a lifetime of rejecting idle chat from men that aren't attractive as a mate, women seem to have handicapped themselves in workplace bonding with men. Guys go out to lunch one-on-one to invest in long-term friendship bonds. Shouldn't the job that entails networking with other men be given to those with more practice networking with other men ?
If women want to get past their personal bias against networking with men, try inviting a male coworker to lunch and refusing to let him pay for the check, insisting that he pays next time.
tiracaiblue: Obviously you misunderstood my post (#10). What I find holds us, as women back, is our need to 'cover up' who we really are with makeup, etc. I proposed LOOKING LIKE WHO WE ARE, rather than hiding behind a cosmetic mask. Reading is fundamental. What I said was:
"When a woman uses her appearance to try to impress the interviewer (makeup, hairstyle, fashion) it gives the impression that she is compensating for a lack of talent. If we want a level playing field we need to rely on our ability, knowledge, dedication and intelligence - not on playing up our beauty or sexuality."
Meaning we should NOT do those things and, rather, should concentrate on our accomplishments and abilities to secure jobs. I went on to say that, right or wrong, the biological differences between men and women do play a role in the job market whether we like it or not, and there is little we can do about it other than aim high and work to prove ourselves.
Mainly we need to QUIT WHINING and START WORKING. It may not be fair, but it is how it is in the real world. If you want to be successful you need to work around what others may see as a limitation and prove them wrong, not expect some government agency to regulate fairness.
If you expect fairness in the workplace, no matter your gender, talent or background, you will be sorely disappointed.
Appel -
I agree that women cannot afford to not accept the reality of discrimination, but wouldn't you say that we should be doing SOMETHING to at least mitigate that discrimination?
Sadly it is very easy these days to see bias in the main stream media. Little true Journalism takes place anymore. No investigation, no fact checking, no presenting of both sides. If it comes from Democrats and liberals it is given the green light and it hits the presses. If it comes from the Republicans and conservatives it is either ignored or raked over the coals without any consideration to the truth.
I hope that my conservative daughter that is getting a Master's in Environmental Engineering will have a fair shot at landing a job. In class projects in public schools she showed how plants benefit from more CO2, looked at ways to remove oil from water and showed how inefficient wind turbines are.
Your assessment of the media is biased, obviously. Therefore worthless!
I hope your daughter will look at her work through open eyes, not with her left eye closed.
economykiller wrote "I hope that my conservative daughter that is getting a Master's in Environmental Engineering will have a fair shot at landing a job. "
Your daughter will have a better shot at landing a job, particularly in a male-dominated field through "sex positive" recruiting, a euphemism for massive discrimination against men.
Ask your daughter if she actually intends to work as an engineer as revealed by the jobs she applies for. Does she relocate to another state ? Does she take a job with a long commute? Does she hold a job that requires 50+ hours per week on the job, including night and weekend hours? Does she take a job that exposes her to chemical hazards ? Those are some of the job attributes that women shun.
Most women with advanced degrees have no intention of working in that industry, let alone full-time in a career. That is another reason that women with higher education earn less. On study revealed that 1 in 3 women with an MBA *never* worked full-time whereas their male counterparts had a 1 in 20 rate. The European ad shows three ladies having a great time together when the reality is that to earn higher pay as an engineer, your 50+ hour work week for 40 years is about working primarily in isolation.
Vincent -
What the hell are you talking about? First, the article was not about the private sector aspect of science, it was about getting the education itself and work in academia, specifically in the sciences. Meaning not MBAs.
And in academia, nobody EVER works in isolation. You want a job that requires 50+ hours per week? Try grad school. At my University, the MINIMUM time requirement is 60 hours per week, and the majority of the Graduate students are female. I am, at this very moment, sitting less than 10 feet from very hazardous chemicals, including carcinogens. I am also sitting next the two grad students in my lab, both of which are female. One is from another time zone, and the other has a 45 minute commute.
As for "sex positive" discrimination, that is one of the most absurdly delusional concepts in modern history. All anyone has to do is pick up any peer-reviewed journal and count the number of men vs the number of women who are first authors to see that women are sadly underrepresented.
Oh, and by the way, in regards to one of your previous posts about networking, if you think women don't talk to unattractive men, you won't believe what happens to an overweight woman at a scientific conference.
If you follow the real news, you know that the White House is sexist. Obama's people are probably as bad as Bill Clinton! Liberals tend to use women for sex. It is what it is. Look at Hollywood - Obama's strength. Women love Obama because he likes sex. What did Oprah and Obama do? Who knows? Obama appeared on the View because he knows that taking advantage of women works because the media loves it. The media is just hoping for a Bill Clinton/semen story to sell more newspapers.
<Cough>Todd Akin<Cough>
I really do love women but I am sick of reading about gender polarizing issues. Whaaa, I don't make enough money. Whaaaa, I can't fight in combat units. Whaaaa, all the doors of opportunity don't automatically open up for me. It isn't that I don't care about it, would just rather read about a solution than constant problems. It is true, men prefer to work with and mentor other men. We are objective and disciplined, follow orders/instructions and don't go out of our way to sabotage/betray each other unless it is to win the affection of a woman. This ridiculous idea that we are equal is well.....ridiculous because we just aren't.
True
Women are generally superior.
And I'm a man!
Lou-
Didn't you catch the part were they proposed solutions?
As for your analysis of male behavior, objective and disciplined? Ever been to a frat house? And we will go out of our way to sabotage/betray each other if its for women. Or to win a football game. Or the earn more money. Or get a better parking spot. Or because we feel like it.
Also, from a genetic, immunological, or epidemiological point of view, Ferrosythesis is technically correct.
LOL, it isn't what you say, it is how you say it. I meant objective team players at work, everything else is fair game. Funny that you brought up frat parties, the last one I went too about twenty years ago was at a Pike house. Times must have been different back then because you would have seriously gotten your @ss kicked if you did something stupid like an Alcohol Enema. (no pun intended).
Males are more objective because their genital points outward, towards the environment, the outer world. Females are more subjective because their genital is concave, leading to the inner world, the self. Women are more passive, like the egg which waits to be fertilized by the sperm, which swims actively to fulfill its mission. But of course, we are all both masculine and feminine in some measure - it's just that, in the long-view, general trends can be seen to play out fairly predictably, on the patterns of past experience.
Does the word flake enter your vocabulary.
Oh, you're really joking, right?
It's so hard to tell on Newsvine.
What the @$&^ are you talking about?
I have when the myth of a shortage of applicants in STEM jobs. Take a look at unemployment numbers and real wages for scientists and engineers. They have been getting worse for years. This supposed shortage is maintained by the educational "business" in our country. Professors need more students so they keep saying there are shortages and the scientific societies perpetuate it because most of them are run by professors.
If there truly was a shortage of STEM jobs then engineers and scientists would be making more than the business degrees.
That assumes that we, as a society, value scientists as much as executives, and that they compete in the same environment. Believe me, the last thing any PI wants is more people applying for the same grants.
teoteo i think you have a point