Yes, this excerpt from a study on gender bias in science is from this
year, 2012:
“Despite
efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists
within academic science."
The recent study from Yale University involving several institutions investigated gender bias on the part of faculty in biology,
chemistry, and physics, and found that male and
female faculty were just as likely to:
- judge a female student to be less competent and less worthy of being hired than an identical male student
- offer her a smaller starting salary and less career mentoring
- appear to be affected by “enduring cultural stereotypes about women’s lack of science competence” that translate into biases in student evaluation and mentoring
- and yet … report liking the female more than the male student.
“I think we were all just
a little bit surprised at how powerful the results were -- that not only do the
faculty express these biases quite clearly, but the significance and strength
of the results was really quite striking,” Jo Handelsman, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale, Howard
Hughes Medical Institute Professor, and the senior
author on the paper told The New York Times. Subtle gender bias is important to address, the study said,
because “it could translate into large real-world disadvantages” such as not
being hired, mentored, or promoted.
“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. I had hoped that they were right,”
Handelsman told the Times.
While the Yale study looked specifically at biology, chemistry, and physics, the bias behind the trend has not gone
unnoticed elsewhere in the world of science.
One trackable metric is pay. In a survey by SPIE of photonics professionals earlier this year, median salaries for women trail those
of men in every region, with the greatest gap in higher-income Asia, and the
lowest in the Middle East.
A significant effort to overcome the bias was launched last year in the European Union. SPIE
Fellows Zohra Ben Lakhdar and Jürgen Popp were among speakers at the inaugural
European Gender Summit in Brussels, which signed a policy
manifesto urging gender equality in European research programs. The 2012 summit
will be held 29-30 November at the European Parliament in Brussels.
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| Stories of success from women in science are featured in the Women in Optics planner. |
Looking
for inspiration? Each year, stories of women finding success in optics and
photonics are published by SPIE in a “Women in Optics” planner. When launched
several years ago, the planner was intended to promote the work
of women in the field. It has also become a tool for introducing girls and
young women to the possibilities of careers in all sciences, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM), with sound advice from successful women
scientists all over the world.
Regarding the salary differences shown in the SPIE salary survey, Society Executive
Director Eugene Arthurs said that the data point up the need for the industry
to look more closely at pay equity. "It is disappointing that such a
forward-looking and innovative sector mimics the historical injustice in
this," he said. "We hope to see more women quickly realize the
leadership positions in the field that their work and capabilities deserve."
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