Breaking Barriers to Empower Women in Science with Not Just for the Boys by Athene Donald

Why We Need More Women in Science. Empowerment and innovation take center stage in Athene Donald’s “Not Just for the Boys,” a compelling exploration of gender biases in science. This thought-provoking work challenges entrenched norms and champions a new era of inclusivity.

Discover the transformative ideas that are reshaping our scientific communities. Continue reading to unlock the potential of diversity in STEM.

Genres

Feminism, Science, Nonfiction, Women’s Studies, Sociology, Education, Gender Studies, Biography, History of Science, Social Science

Recommendation

Historically, women have been excluded from scientific discourse and have struggled to get the credit they deserve, and the resources they need, when working in STEM. Today, the gender gap in STEM remains significant. But women’s contributions are necessary if humanity is to find solutions to global challenges, from pandemics to climate change, says renowned University of Cambridge physicist Athene Donald. Learn how systemic factors and biases perpetuate the gender gap in STEM while gleaning insights into the concrete steps you can take to fight for equity.

Take-Aways

• The world needs more women in STEM to help navigate today’s complex global problems.
• Retire the lone male genius stereotype: Scientists should be collaborative, team players.
• Many of the historic contributions of women scientists lack visibility.
• Girls start doubting their intelligence at a young age.
• Don’t neglect early education and the importance of play when preparing girls for STEM jobs.
• Believing male brains are better suited for science is inaccurate and a form of “neurosexism.”
• Women drop off STEM career paths due to systemic marginalization.
• Push for gender equity in STEM by spearheading a culture change within your organization.

Summary

The world needs more women in STEM to help navigate today’s complex global problems.

The world is facing a number of existential crises including climate change and food security issues. Humanity cannot afford to miss out on women’s contributions when working to solve these issues. However, women continue to face steep obstacles to entering and thriving in STEM-related fields – challenges that their male counterparts typically do not encounter. Women are vastly underrepresented in STEM college majors – except for the biological sciences. At Cambridge University, for example, only 20% of undergraduate physicists are women.

“We need more women in our labs, we need greater diversity of thought and insight, and we need to make sure young women are not discouraged from pursuing their dreams.”

While women now occupy more positions of power within the scientific community than in decades past, the gender gap remains wide. Diversity is essential in STEM – and not just for “moral” reasons. Research from the Royal Society has identified both “external” and “internal” business benefits to having a more comprehensive range of perspectives in the scientific workforce: The former includes reduced costs and better products, and the latter consists of a boost to creativity, problem-solving and innovation.

Retire the lone male genius stereotype: Scientists should be collaborative, team players.

Women are less likely to consider STEM professions when they don’t see role models that look like them. People often envision scientists as solitary male geniuses. However, the ability to collaborate is vital within the modern sciences – a capacity typically (and sometimes dismissively) associated with women. Communication skills are also essential to those on the cutting edge of scientific research. You must succinctly explain your work to collaborators working in different disciplines, from backgrounds such as data science, physics or engineering. Likewise, scientists hoping to gain funding and political backing must know how to communicate the significance of their work without resorting to technical jargon. Taxpayers want to understand how governments are spending their money.

“When it comes to invention and innovation, thinking outside the box is crucial and so simply employing people who have the same attributes as everyone else in the room may be unconstructive.”

In one attempt to challenge the lone male scientist stereotype, the UK’s Science Council compiled a list of different types of scientists working across scientific spheres, including technicians, teachers, entrepreneurs and communicators. As this list suggests, scientific advances hinge on people of all different backgrounds, interests and strengths working together. Interdisciplinary teams are more likely to find solutions to complex global problems, and research shows that women are more likely than men to participate in interdisciplinary research. Yet, funders often struggle to assess such work fairly, and more support is needed to coax both women and men out of their silos to work on interdisciplinary teams.

Many of the historic contributions of women scientists lack visibility.

According to a 2014 survey of participants throughout Europe, a quarter of people can’t name a single woman scientist, living or dead. Historian Margaret Rossiter notes that, throughout history, women’s scientific achievements were frequently attributed to male colleagues. She calls this phenomenon the “Matilda Effect” in homage to US abolitionist and suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In her 1870 essay “Woman as an Inventor,” Gage listed several examples of women who patented their ideas using men’s names because, as married women, they possessed no legal property rights – even over their own creations.

“Women do science as men do science: They do science by bringing their whole selves to the task.”

Consider the case of Marie Curie, who won Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. Curie is best known for demonstrating the radioactivity – a term she coined – of polonium and radium. She also developed mobile radiography units to help wounded World War I soldiers and invented a method for filling hollow needles with radon to treat wounds. However, Curie’s husband had to lobby for her to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, which the scientific community viewed as “his prize.” Ada Lovelace, a mathematician working in the first half of the 19th century, made her mark through the back channel of translation. While translating the work of Charles Babbage, Lovelace, with Babbage’s blessing, expanded dramatically upon his ideas, laying the groundwork for what we refer to today as “algorithms.”

Girls start doubting their intelligence at a young age.

According to data drawn from the Academies of the Americas – whose fellows represent some of the world’s top researchers, in 2015, there were nearly three times as many men than women in physics and more than double the number in engineering. Women are also underrepresented in economics and philosophy, which, together with physics and engineering, are fields that people believe require “brilliance.”

“Societies around the world, particularly in the developed countries, seem largely stuck with a mentality which cannot shift from the view that boys think and do while girls are meant to nurture and care.”

Research indicates that women and girls are less likely to believe themselves to be brilliant and that this belief takes root early on. One study found that, while five-year-old boys and girls don’t see gender as a factor in whether someone is “really, really smart,” within a year, the young female students became less likely to describe girls and women this way. Other studies, like those that ask children to draw pictures of scientists or of their future career goals, give further weight to the idea that girls start receiving the message that they lack brilliance early on – from teachers, family and the media – and quickly internalize it.

“The more our society propagates stereotypes, the harder it is for girls to feel comfortable entering the hard sciences.”

Gendered notions of intelligence go hand-in-hand with derogatory views of what it means to be “feminine” or “girly.” A UK study in the British Journal of Sociology of Education asked teachers and students to share their perceptions of what it meant to be a “girly girl.” Participants mused that a hyperfeminine person would likely be more easily influenced by peers, be a bit “vacuous,” and not be interested in studying physics. The authors concluded that society’s negative views on femininity, coupled with its understanding of science as “excluding of the feminine,” decreases girls’ comfort with the notion of pursuing careers in STEM, regardless of their abilities.

Don’t neglect early education and the importance of play when preparing girls for STEM jobs.

Dismantling gendered stereotypes requires being mindful of the activities you encourage boys and girls to do: Research from LEGO shows that parents are more likely to encourage sons to engage in STEM-related play while encouraging daughters to do activities like dress-up. Toys like LEGO help teach children how to manipulate objects in three dimensions – a skill that contributes to others, like spatial awareness, that will benefit them in STEM careers. The notion that men are innately better at spatial awareness may be a case of “practice makes perfect”: Thanks to how toys are marketed, boys receive more opportunities to hone this skill than girls.

Believing male brains are better suited for science is inaccurate and a form of “neurosexism.”

People sometimes incorrectly presume that the male brain is more adept at thinking scientifically than the female brain. UK psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen describes autism, which until recently people believed was more prevalent in men, as an “extreme male brain,” as those on the autism spectrum possess a drive “to analyze or build a rule-based system.” While he doesn’t explicitly say that men are better at science than women, due to his belief in the male nature of systemic thinking, people have used his work to draw this conclusion. Gina Rippon, the author of The Gendered Brain, describes such theories as factually inaccurate “neurosexism.”

“It is my firm belief that science should be for everyone.”

Deterministic theories about sex differences in the brain fail to account for its neuroplasticity. Your brain is constantly forming new connections and pruning old ones – remodeling itself well into adulthood. Even if MRI machines show slight differences between male and female brains, these differences could result from exposure to different stimuli, as opposed to innate differences. For example, some argue that men are bigger risk-takers than women and, thus, better scientists, as researchers must explore the unknown to achieve scientific breakthroughs. While research does suggest men are bigger risk-takers in specific contexts, assuming this is an innately male characteristic fails to account for the fact that men are more likely to have job security and higher salaries and, thus, may feel safer taking risks. Also, people tend to encourage risk-taking in boys and discourage it in girls.

Women drop off STEM career paths due to systemic marginalization.

According to US National Girls Collaborative Project research, women earn half of the top-level university degrees in science and engineering. Yet, only 34% of STEM jobs go to women. Research from Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) shows that, in the UK, only 10.4% of people working in engineering are women. Women often drop off or “leak” from STEM career pipelines at the graduate or postdoc stage, in which they work as “dependent researchers.” Many women scientists fail to transition to “independent researcher” roles. Women need those in mentorship positions, such as PhD supervisors, to step up and give them the advice and encouragement they need to progress on their career pathways.

“As long as we fail to change the culture, the STEM career pipeline will continue to leak.”

Women studying STEM fail to land STEM jobs for many reasons, including:

• Family – Women disproportionately bear the caregiving burdens within their families. Organizations can support women by focusing on their productivity instead of the number of hours they spend in the office or lab. They can also schedule meetings during hours that coincide with the school day.
• Systemic bias – Women face marginalization in the form of lower salaries, less access to research facilities, and fewer resources and opportunities for external collaboration.
• Weak reference letters – People are most likely to use words linked with notions of exceptionalism and agency to describe men and to use words linked with the more passive ideas of being hard-working or likable to describe women – which don’t convey women’s strengths as effectively.
• Gendered metrics – People tend to use gendered metrics when assessing candidates. For example, when you evaluate candidates based on how many times their work is referenced, you fail to consider the fact that men tend to cite their own work or the work of other men more than women.
• Exclusion – Much of networking happens informally, over drinks and after work. Men may exclude women from such networking opportunities, and women may be reluctant to ask men to go out for drinks, worried that their colleagues may misinterpret their intentions.
• Belittling and harassment – Harassment occurs in many forms. It can be physical, verbal and sexual. Women may also experience gender-based put-downs designed to discredit them and their abilities.

Push for gender equity in STEM by spearheading a culture change within your organization.

Addressing the gender gap in STEM requires a culture shift that ensures women work in environments that support, rather than hinder, their career growth. Hierarchical cultures that support “the cult of the individual big-shot team leader” who can act however he wishes aren’t conducive to culture change and tend to enable gender discrimination and harassment. Unconscious bias training is not enough. More punitive policies, such as withdrawing funding from individuals guilty of workplace bullying and harassment, are steps in the right direction.

“I would like to believe equity will win out over special interest groups wishing to maintain the status quo.”

To address the gender gap in your workplace, consider doing the following:

• Amplify women’s voices – This can look like acknowledging the woman who made a point a male colleague is trying to pass off as their own at meetings.
• Become an ally – Allyship involves using your power to support women. You can do this by advocating for victims of gendered discrimination, drawing your female colleagues’ attention to career opportunities, nominating women for awards, acting as a sponsor or mentor to a woman colleague.
• Establish a workplace code of conduct – Draft a set of basic behavior expectations and norms to which all staff should adhere. Such codes help eliminate biases and ensure complaints are handled correctly.

The time has come to stop talking about equity in STEM and take action to ensure women with the potential to achieve the scientific breakthroughs the world needs are given unencumbered opportunities to do so.

About the Author

Athene Donald is a physicist, the master of Churchill College and a professor emerita of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge.