Thursday, June 21, 2018

Our Top Picks From June 21st, 2018


PWN's own founders, Dr. Ghazaleh Sadri-Vakili and Dr. Courtney Miller, are two of the many talented speakers featured in this video from Society for Neuroscience meeting in 2017 on "Addressing Issues Facing Women in the Early Stages of their Scientific Career."

Thank you to Jacqueline McGinty for pointing out the NASEM Webinar happening June 26th, as well as sharing this Harvard Business Review article, highlighting reasons that might be holding women back from taking leadership roles in STEM fields.

NASEM Releases Report on Sexual Harassment in Science, Engineering, and Medicine
The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) June 12 released itsreport, “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.” The committee recommends that a key area of focus to reduce and prevent sexual harassment (including the most prevalent type, gender harassment) is to create a culture and climate that does not allow such behavior, giving six key recommendations for institutions. To assist institutions, faculty, and students in these efforts, the NASEM report website provides several resources. NASEM is hosting a discussion and responses to the report on June 26 in Irvine, CA, which can also be attended by webcast. Following the report release, Darrell G. Kirch, MD, AAMC President and CEO, issued astatement. Read more at AAMC Washington Highlights. 

Flickr Image from Simon Bleasdale.


In the Personnel Today article by Jo Faragher, a discussion on the woman who coined the term "Glass Ceiling," Marilyn Loden. She introduced this phrase 40 years ago in 1978, but even in that amount of time, she doesn't think things have improved much. On International women's day, she comments on the sad reality that most people can-and do-rationalize women being paid 80% of what a man gets paid and that while some industries appear to be breaking tiny holes through the glass ceiling, other industries have only reinforced it.


Gender-bias research doesn't sell, according to Dr.'s Formanowicz, Cislak, and Saguy in their paper "Bias against research on gender bias." This blog post sums up the fact that while there are many types of bias that happens throughout STEM fields (race and gender bias being the most prevalent) only research done on race bias makes it to the most prestigious journals. There are many reasons why this may be, including people thinking 'women are exaggerating the issue,' or the thought that "there are more 'inter-gender collaborations' than 'inter-racial' therefore the gender issue may not even exist." How does that type of thinking impact the advancement of gender equality, and what can we do to help rectify the situation?


Flickr Image from UN Women Gallery. 


Where did we come from, how are we getting there, and how do we keep going? In Fiona M. Watt's Nature Reviews article (More) Women in Science, she talks about how things have changed from her 2006 opinion articles, as well as how the women in professional settings have gained their success.

Check out the paper "Researchers preferentially collaborate with same-gendered colleagues across the life sciences."
Abstract excerpt: "Here, we test whether researchers preferentially collaborate with same-gendered colleagues, using more stringent methods and a larger dataset than in past work. Our results reaffirm that researchers preferentially co-publish with colleagues of the same gender, and show that this 'gender homophily' is slightly stronger today than it was 10 years ago. Contrary to our expectations, we found no evidence that homophily is driven mostly by senior academics, and no evidence that homophily is stronger in fields where women are in the minority. Interestingly, journals with a high impact factor for their discipline tended to have comparatively low homophily, as predicted if mixed-gender teams produce better research."

Related to the article above, this piece, "Opinion: Gender Diversity leads to better science" highlights the reasons why data actually suggests there is "gender-diversity dividend in science." 



Check out these research job listings: 

https://jobflash.informz.net/informzdataservice/onlineversion/ind/bWFpbGluZ2luc3RhbmNlaWQ9MjM3MTY5MCZzdWJzY3JpYmVyaWQ9MzYxODMzMTEx


Thursday, June 14, 2018

Funding Opportunities Specifically for Women

American Association of University Women, known as the AAUW, is one of the largest funding resources available to women in academia. Be sure to keep these deadlines and opportunities on your radar.

Check it out at:

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Our top picks from June 13th, 2018



In competitive fields, it can be hard to know where to begin to get a foot in the door if you are uncertain how you will be received, and even harder if some privileges weren't provided to you based on gender, race, or parental income status. This Science News article celebrates and provides a starting point for students who may have been under-served to get into science and be a competitive candidate now and in the future. 




This week, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine came out with a report highlighting the sexual harassment that women can be even more susceptible to in the male-dominated STEM fields. This video sums up the report, mentioning that incidents of sexual harassment can be dramatically lowered by taking just a few easy precautionary steps, including encouraging diversity, and changing the model of the mentor-mentee relationships so that there is not so much dependence on a mentor for a student (possibly by encouraging mentor networks and independent funding opportunities for students).

Steps in the right direction are being made at a Harvard Medical School training hospital. As their core values align more with diversity and helping represent under-represented minorities in medicine, they have decided to take down the portraits of "medical luminaries" that hand in an auditorium. Of the 31 gold-framed portraits, 30 are white males. Read more about how this hospital is trying to make more than just a visual change in the article, "In an about-face, hospital will disperse portraits of past white male luminaries, put the focus on diversity."

Flickr Image by Elaine Smith. 

While the Keto diet (a revamped version of the Adkins diet) might be the fad right now, the idea of staying off carbs might be particularly good for women. This article highlights a study done that found that food such as fish and legumes might help women delay the onset of natural menopause, while consuming refined carbs, like pasta and rice, may actually speed it up!



Stock image: Credit © JPC-PROD/Fotolia

For hard science, where you stand on controversial topics like abortion and birth control doesn't change the outcome of the data. Check out these articles on some of the statistics and facts surrounding studies being done on both.


Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Our top picks for June 6th, 2018

A woman wearing a lab coat, lab goggles, and plastic gloves, speaks and gestures.

There is a lot of speculation on how and when we will be able to close the gender gap, but based on the trajectory STEM fields are on now the data shows that 16 years is the estimated time for the number of publishing female academic authors to equal that of their male counterparts. But even 16 years for some fields is a gross underestimate. Read more in The Atlantic's article "When Will the Gender Gap in Science Disappear."


Flickr image from Womensphere Community. 


Women are just like everyone else, we get by with a little help from our friends! Discov-her has put together a list of 7 organizations that encourage and empower women to continue producing relevant, hard-hitting scientific advancements.



Flickr image from Betsy Weber. 


Fighting the stereotypical damsel-in-distress saved by the knight-in-shining-armor bit, the article "Mentoring Women is not About Trying to Rescue Them," addresses the correct mentor-mentee relationship and attitude that should be present in academia. This "reciprocal mentoring" challegnes the unidirectional mentoring model, benefiting not only women in science but male mentees too and could be one of the most helpful things to bring to light for academic mentors.