Our Top Picks For September 30th, 2018

Check out the article by The Nation Bureau of Economic Research in which they say, "We study the effects of peer gender composition, a proxy for female-friendliness of environment, in STEM doctoral programs on persistence and degree completion. Leveraging unique new data and quasi-random variation in gender composition across cohorts within programs, we show that women entering cohorts with no female peers are 11.9pp less likely to graduate within 6 years than their male counterparts. A 1 sd increase in the percentage of female students differentially increases the probability of on-time graduation for women by 4.6pp. These gender peer effects function primarily through changes in the probability of dropping out in the first year of a Ph.D. program and are largest in programs that are typically male-dominated."


#STEMtoo is a submission based zine on sexual harassment in STEM fields for women to share their experiences and guidance in hopes that this zine will "provide a platform to heal; to say the things you can’t say without more harm, and to convey with imagery what you can’t speak in words" and "remind everyone impacted by SVSH in STEM that they are not alone. We may not know how to fix the mess that sexual predators created, but we can try to do it in solidarity." Check out this call for submissions for the #STEMtoo Zine here. 


"The National Institutes of Health (NIH) does not tolerate pervasive or severe harassment of any kind, including sexual harassment, whether it is within the agency, at research organizations that receive NIH funding, or anywhere else NIH-funded activities are conducted." Check out the article "NIH Announces Plans to Update Harassment Policies" to learn more about this recent change the NIH hopes will better educate the scientific community about sexual harassment. 


Read about the Women In Leadership Development, or WILD, program on their homepage Wildforstem.com. "The Program comprises three distinct components that will better position women to attain competitive, senior STEM positions and forge successful careers, in turn inspiring the next generation of female leaders."


Despite some effort from the community and great initiatives, female neuroscientists are still under-represented in various neuroscience conferences (BiasWatchNeuro). The aim of this Women in Neuroscience Repository is to help you identify and recommend female neuroscientists for conferences, symposia or collaborations. Check of this Women in neuroscience initiative here.

"Impostor phenomenon is an internalized experience of intellectual phoniness. People who feel like impostors are typically bright, motivated and successful, yet usually have incorrect, unrealistic and self-defeating self-perceptions. They think that they are not smart enough and may not have a realistic sense of their competence. [Washington State University] would like to understand if these self-perceptions affect how people navigate their career and opportunities to advance." Participate in this research study by completing a survey and interview if you are a qualified candidate. See the parameters and ideas behind the research study here.

Our Top Picks For September 18th, 2018

After studying 23,005 comments left on videos about science and related topics, Adrianne Jeffries wrote about research conducted on the types of feedback female STEM YouTubers get in the article, "Women Making Science Videos on YouTube Face Hostile Comments." Check out the New York Times article to learn more.


With weapons ranging from Title IX complaints to online petitions to creating new policies for federally funded agencies, #MeToo has entered the research lab. Many men and women are changing the culture of STEM fields and the stigma that can go along with reporting sexual harassment. Follow the story of Sherry Marts who encountered sexual harassment in Academia, and realized many of her colleagues wanted nothing to do with helping her. Check all this out and more here. 

One of the UK's leading female astronomers is to donate her £2.3m winnings from a major science prize she was awarded. The sum will go to fund women, under-represented ethnic minority and refugee students to become physics researchers. Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been awarded a Breakthrough Prize for the discovery of radio pulsars. This was also the subject of the physics Nobel in 1974, but her male collaborators received the award. Check out her story in the article, "Bell Burnell: Physics star gives away £2.3m prize." 

Angela Saini’s Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story sparked conversations immediately upon its release. "It is a powerful, impartial and thoroughly researched look at the origins of Damore’s—and troves of other engineers’ and scientists’—misconceptions. Inferior examines both the science and the scientists, delving into how easily bias and motivated reasoning creep into experiments, analysis, and the way we see the world." Check out the article, "A New Front in Fighting the Bias against Women in Science," which takes a look at the culture of science which caused the need for such a book to be written, and how understanding this look at culture and history is important for school children to learn. 

Follow the link below to find funding opportunities for women in or going to graduate school! 

https://www.gograd.org/financial-aid/scholarships/women/

Our Top Picks For September 13th 2017

⭃Our culturally ingrained perceptions of STEM individuals indeed play a role in our professional decisions, as we act to reinforce stereotypical roles and maintain homogeneity in working environments. While those of us in STEM would like to presume that we judge each other solely on scientific merit, data suggest that we reflect our unconscious biases around gender and race in our assessments of ourselves and others. This Neuron article, "Advancing Science: How Bias Holds Us Back," talks about how bias in STEM fields is creating a less diverse environment, and how that can affect the quality of science, and its discoveries. 

Flickr Image form Queen's University. 

⭃"Taking a confident leap into uncertainty," is Melina Schuh's own account of her progression through the ranks of scientist to group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory at Cambridge, and on to Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany. She talks about how she decided to apply for the positions that she did, and how she knew that starting a family wasn't something she could put off while trying to wait for the elusive perfect time. 

Flickr Image from Hagerstown Community College. 

⭃"What fewer women in STEM means for their mental health," says, "the reality is that STEM professions are most commonly male and it remains surprising when these professional roles are held by women. The large gender imbalance means that women may naturally feel they’re outsiders at school and at work. This situation is often uncomfortable and mentally demanding, when even just showing up and doing your job comes with constant social stresses and anxiety. Ironically, the difficulties that they (we) encounter often dissuade the next generation of women from joining us. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle that we need to break."


⭃Working conditions in academic labs encourage abusive supervision. It is time to improve monitoring of and penalties for abuse, says Sherry Moss. Check out this Nature article, "Research is set up for bullies to thrive."

Flickr Image from Hagerstown Community College. 

⭃The article, "Gender and international diversity improves equity in peer review," hooks you in immediately with the opening of their abstract, which reads: "The robustness of scholarly peer review has been challenged by evidence of disparities in publication outcomes based on author's gender and nationality. To address this, we examine the peer review outcomes of 23,873 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions that were submitted to the biosciences journal eLife between 2012 and 2017. Women and authors from nations outside of North America and Europe were underrepresented both as gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) and last authors. We found a homophilic interaction between the demographics of the gatekeepers and authors in determining the outcome of peer review; that is, gatekeepers favor manuscripts from authors of the same gender and from the same country."

⭃Gender discrimination in the workplace remains rife, with many young women experiencing sexual harassment, job insecurity and low pay compared with male peers, a survey has found. Almost a quarter (23%) of females aged between 16 and 30 have been sexually harassed at work but only 8% have reported it, according to the poll for the Young Women’s Trust. See the troubles women in England, Wales, and all over the the Guardian's post, "Workplace gender discrimination remains rife, survey finds" and how people are reacting to this information. A Government Equalities Office spokesman said: “This government is committed to tackling burning injustices, including closing the gender pay gap and sexual harassment in the workplace."

Check out this event: 

In the past year, the worlds of medicine and science have been part of a broad reckoning about the obstacles that can block women from advancing and feeling comfortable in the workplace. Universities, hospitals, and life sciences companies are launching and expanding gender diversity initiatives, but what’s really moving the needle?

As part of Boston’s Hubweek, STAT’s Rebecca Robbins will lead a conversation about what’s changing — and what’s not — in laboratories, executive suites, and boardrooms. Coffee and snacks will be provided. Register below to reserve a seat.

Location
The Broad Institute
415 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02142

Date & TimeTuesday, October 9th
10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.

Register here! 

Labor Day finds

⭃Havard business review recently studied three organizations in-depth using a combination of surveys, interviews, and direct observation, and noted a consistent theme: While everyone in the organization experienced collaboration overload, women felt the burden disproportionately. Check out the reasons why this might be the case in the article, "In collaborative work cultures, women carry more of the weight."

⭃The article, "A Summary Report from the Research Partnership on Women in Science Careers" is an academic approach to understanding the problems women face in STEM fields. It states that "women still contend with sexual harassment, stereotype threat, a disproportionate burden of family responsibilities, a lack of parity in compensation and resource allocation, and implicit bias. Strategies to address these barriers using the Bronfenbrenner ecological model at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, academic community, and policy levels include effective mentoring and coaching, having a strong publication record, addressing prescriptive gender norms, positive counter-stereotype imaging, career development training, networking, and external career programs such as the AAMC Early and Mid-Career Programs and Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM)." 



⭃In another academic approach to understanding the reasons behind the gender gap in STEM fields, "Gender Disparities in Faculty Rank: Factors that Affect Advancement of Women Scientists at Academic Medical Centers" is an article that comprehensively covers many contributing factors. "Qualitative analysis demonstrated several emergent themes that affect women’s advancement, including gendered expectation norms (e.g., good citizenship, volunteerism), work-life balance, mentorship/sponsorship, adoption of a team science approach, tenure process milestones, soft money research infrastructure, institution specific policies (or lack thereof), and operating within an MD-biased culture. These findings are compared with the extant literature of women scientists in STEM institutions. Factors that emerged from these focus groups highlight the need for evidence-based interventions in the often overlooked STEM arena of academic medical centers."

⭃Check out the article, "Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified." The statistic that men will apply for a job if they meet only 60% of the job qualifications, but women will only apply if they feel that they meet 100% of the required qualifications may not be for the underlying reasons that you think. This article highlights that this may be not because women are less confident, but that their view of the hiring process is a bit different than their male counterparts. 



⭃Graduate students, Ph.D.'s, and Professors alike suffer from imposter syndrome. Read this Huffington Post article about one doctor's experience that helped her own her Imposter Syndrome and use it for the better.


⭃Register or submit an abstract for the 8th World Congress of International Association for Women Mental Health in Paris this coming March (2019) here!


⭃In the article, "Relying on Women, Not Rewarding Them," it says, "Women shoulder a disproportionately large workload at home in ways that might disadvantage them professionally. But are female professors also 'taking care of the academic family' via disproportionate service loads? A new study says yes and adds to a growing body of research suggesting the same." This service can lead to less time devoted to research and teaching efforts, which in turn can widen the gap between gender income averages. 


⭃Read about how "activists are protesting imbalanced conferences, editorial boards, and other professional activities by refusing to join," in the article "To Highlight Gender Gaps, Scientists Decline Opportunities." For example, "Jonathan Eisen, a microbiologist at the University of California, Davis, first declined an offer to join a 'manel' in 2014. Since then, he’s called attention to dozens of male-dominated scientific meetings on his blog, and many more men, are following suit."