Our Top Picks for August 2nd, 2018

⭃Alexandra King's article, "The uncomfortable question powerful women should answer," talks about the work-family question many women are often asked when they achieve success while having a family.  She applauds Lauren Groff's response of, "Until I see a male writer asked this question, I'm going to respectfully decline to answer," since it brought attention to the inherent sexism of the question itself, but also compels other powerful and successful women to answer the question, so that working moms can actually learn from them and apply the advice they have to share.

Flickr Image by 1DayReview.

⭃Nature's article, "Leaky pipeline for women dries up after they win first big grant," says that after they secure their first major research grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), women are almost as successful as men at netting further awards from the agency, according to an analysis published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 


⭃In an interview with Jess Wade, a postdoc in plastic electronics at London's Imperial College, she speaks about how she is encouraging women to get involved in science. In the last year, she has written over 270 Wikipedia articles on women scientists and their achievements, hoping to make women role models more tangible and relevant to the upcoming generation. She also speaks about how the initiatives to get women into STEM fields are all well and good, but the efforts and money allotted to the cause may not be being used in the most efficient ways. 

Check out the article, "Five amazing female scientists you've probably never heard of," to see how Jess Wade's efforts are already paying off.  


⭃"'When it comes to silencing women,' writes Mary Beard, 'Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.' Academe is no exception. A recent conference at Stanford University featured 30 speakers — all of them men, all of them white. The incident sparked ridicule and outrage, as well as a sense that higher education is facing a reckoning. Over the past few months, amid mounting revelations of sexual harassment, The Chronicle Review asked presidents and adjuncts, scientists and humanists, senior scholars and junior professors to take on the theme of women and power in academe." Check out Maggie Doherty's article, "The Awakening: Women and power in the Academy," to see the responses.  


⭃"Forbes has named Duke University among 'America’s Best Employers For Women,' ranking the university among 300 employers in its first list of this kind. Forbes partnered with online statistics partner Statista to survey 40,000 Americans, including 25,000 women, working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees." Check out the article "Forbes names Duke among 'Best Employers for Women' in 2018," to read more about what perks Duke employees enjoy to earn them their spot on this list.

Flickr image by Ata.

⭃Harvard Business Review published the outcome of some of their experimental research in the article, "Why Women Volunteer for Tasks that Don't Lead to Promotions," that suggests that women are more likely to volunteer for "non-promotable" tasks than men, and more likely to be asked to take these types of tasks on. They found, "women were 48% more likely to volunteer than men," and that "women received 44% more requests to volunteer than men in mixed-sex groups," in their experimental design. 


⭃"The fact that gender differences exist, in itself, is not always a problem. But problems arise when individuals are treated differently as a result of these behavioral differences." This article, "Are women penalized for being team players," talks about how behavioral differences in males and females often leads to women being more collaborative in nature, but this can be detrimental to a woman's academic career since collaborations bring less individual attention to researchers, and can often take longer to publish.